So excited (although my back is crying) to be making my way through the house, painting the mouldings/trim white. We did this with our last house and after 5 years of living here in Sammamish, I’m finally making my way through this house! :) It looks awesome!
I already did the bonus room and the hallway upstairs, but today I’ve been working on Lindsey’s room. Her room has always looked SO DARK, but now with the white trim, it looks so much brighter!!!
I’ll post photos when I’m done! :)
For the 18th year in a row, Todd is making his annual ATO Chili recipe. It’s gone through quite a few variations over the years, but hasn’t changed much in the last five. Most of the changes were to make it healthier, like grass-fed ground beef (no one should ever eat corn-fed beef, it’s bad for your heart!), natural turkey sausage, organic beef broth rather than water for the base, more fresh vegetables (fewer canned), etc. And of course, my favorite addition, SOUR CREAM as a condiment. …??? Ya, who doesn’t put sour cream in their chili? *wink*
While in the check-out line at Whole Foods Market this morning, the checker asked Todd what he was cooking as she scanned his items. He told her it was his annual chili recipe that he makes ever year on New Year’s Day (and randomly throughout the year too). That’s when he suddenly did the math in his head and realized he had been making it for 18 years! She smiled and said it was nice to hear people still make things from scratch and keep traditions like that alive. She said so many people came in this year and bought prepared meals and boxed dishes for their holiday festivities (Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year’s). How special is that? Not that speedy short-cut meals don’t have their place in the family kitchen (we all do it!), but for special occasions… Would you pass down a recipe for generations that was emptied out of a box?
What homemade (mostly!) family recipes do you make each year? What will you hope to pass down to your kids? It doesn’t have to be one that CAME from generations past, it could just be one YOU came up with that you hope to pass down to future generations. My grandmother has a wonderful Thanksgiving gravy recipe that my mom mastered this year - every bit of it’s made from scratch. My mother-in-law has the most fabulous potato salad recipe, IN HER HEAD, that I hope she someday writes down so I can add it to this website!
There is just something so rewarding about eating a meal that you know someone put a lot of effort into.
So excited to have finally finished the girls Christmas dresses this year. I still need to attach the belt, but for now double-sided fabric tape worked quite nicely. LOL :)
Our friend, Dr. Kevin Brown, DDS is not only a dentist, but also an amateur photographer and took some wonderful photos of the girls today in his office. :)
And a special thanks to Carla Crim from YCMT for the wonderful digital dress pattern that I used as a starting point for these dresses. :)
A good friend told me has been bragging about Swagbucks for a while. I read the things she said about it, but didn’t think much of it. Finally I decided to give it a try yesterday. Very cool!!!
I wasn’t interested at first because I love Google……… But, Swagbucks uses the Google and Ask search engines, so at least you know your results will be reliable! You earn points for searching the web – not every search, but one point here and there throughout the day. As the points add up, you can redeem them for lots of different things, but I think the most useful will be Amazon.com gift cards. :) Talk about TOO COOL for Holiday Shopping!!! I buy so much Christmas stuff on Amazon each year! Now I can use Swagbucks points towards that stuff! :)
If you want to get WAY INTO IT, they also have drawings, polls, secret codewords for earning extra points, etc… But the basics are simply to search as you usually do. I just set Swagbucks as my default web page so I use it automatically instead of google. :)
Just had to share!!! Thanks Rachel! :)
Oooh, and of course… I get referral points for anyone who signs up using my account name, so make sure to click on any of the links (or the graphics) in this post so I get credit if you sign up. :)
