Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Tattoo Tuesday: Friends Forever

I had asked via Facebook a while back for friends and family to share with me some of their ink and the stories.
 
 
Many moons ago I met this guy we all know as Cheeze Burger...
 
 
Cheeze has always been himself and so fun to be around! If you know him and become his friend it is a life long friendship for sure. His musical talents are amazing to boot and he is an ink addict too!
 
Location on body inner left arm
Location of shop redlands ca
Time in chair 6hrs
Price free
Pain level 9
Artist bobby
Age 28 when I got it
  Shop name empire tattoo
This is Vanity she was the first dog Cheeze got when he moved out on his own.
She was a true roll dog and lived a lot of life with him and was his best friend for years.
She had a litter of 10 puppies and he kept one and gave the rest to friends who all still have them to this day.
Sadly Vanity passed with no warning do to a heart murmur ..but still lives in his heart and protects him to this day.
 
 
 
Thank you Cheeze for sharing your story of Vanity...
 
If you are interested in having your ink featured here feel free to email us with the subject: Tattoo!
 
 





An Angel In Heaven...

Sunday morning the girls' great grandmother lost her 4 year battle with cancer.
 
 
I met her when I was 16 and from the moment I met her she earned a special place in my heart. She was always patient, loving, welcoming to be honest the best way to describe her was she IS the definition of southern womanly charm.
 
Her home was always welcoming, always organized and cleaned and there was not a holiday that was not held at her home.
 
 
The feeling is so unreal at this point as they laid her to rest yesterday in her home town of Mobile Alabama.
 
To the family our prayers and thoughts are with you at this time.
 
 





Friday, January 9, 2015

Dating Your Spouse

The hubby and I have been togetherfor almost 11 years. It is so hard to believe some days. Then others it seems like forever which I think is true for all relationships no matter how much time as been sent together. 

To be honest we have been very (coughs) spoiled in our 10 years together. 
The majority of the time (like 99.99%) we have been able to spend every night together. There has been VERY few nights where we were separated or didn't get to see each other. We never had to really "fit" each other in our schedules.
Back in August I went back to the working world after three years of being a stat at home mom. Though going back to work was a HUGE change not only for us but for our kids we decided I would work overnight... This has been an even MORE change for us because now mom is on a different planet.. 
I have a different schedule than every living soul in our house.
I sleep during the day and they are at work or school, my days are thier nights, etc. 
This has taken a HUGE toll on not only family time (more about "dating" your family later) but also on time me and the hubby has together. 

With 2015 among us I thought it would be a great idea to start "dating" my hubby again.

Now I will be real with you. With 3 kids, schooling for us all, work schedules, school functions, house to do's and life in general having a REAL out of the house date for us is like winning the lottery... Literally!!! 

I hit Pinterest hard with at home date night ideas and we kicked it off this week...

Here is the plan:
We each swap weeks to plan date nights. 
There is not a set night so its flexible with all of the other life happenings. 
Only rule is that there are NO CELL PHONES allowed (only exception is a text or call from one of our kids) 
The hubby claimed the first week to kick off and let me tell you. I was pleasently surprised! 

Monday night our "date" consisted a candle lite bubble bath... It was a great way to start off my weekend (since Monday nights are my Friday's) and it was so nice to have that alone time to be able to chat about things.

We originally made the goal for one night a week but we were lucky enough to squeeze in two!
Wednesday night while the kids went to church with the neighbor girl. We snuck in another date night.

We decided we would "beat" each other up on the xbox aka I got my ass kicked and like all are loosers do I had some wine ;)

  
I will be sharing a few at home date night with you all next week.

What's your favorite way to share time with your spouse? 

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Pinterest for the WIN!

There are two VERY huge trends right now that I am a sucker for...
Pintrest and Chalkboards

I got this amazing chalkboard for my 30th from my best is in Cali and I LOVE it and use it ALL the time. Down fall it NEVER came clean... 
So... 
I got on a mission through Pintrest to find out how to clean it to where it looked brand new every time I erased it...

I did not want to have to go buy a special product either so when I saw several pins stare to use coke I was a little skeptical. I mean who thinks of these things?! Really?! 

Yesterday while on my cleaning spree I decided why not. What could it really hurt? So I got the coke I didn't finish the day before and hasn't thrown away yet and tried it...



My results? 





Short of amazing right? 


I was amazed the Chalkboard was like it was brand bew!!! 
I even kept what was left of the coke and added it to my cleaning cabniet. 

Is there a pintrest win that you have found? 



  

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

New Year brings CHANGES

With 2015 among us I have really spent a lot of time thinking about the things in my life that need to be revamped.
 
Some of these things are personal and some of these are geared towards my business adventures, blog and other things.
 
So here are my personal goals:
 
 
Time:
 
I want to spend more time with the hubby and kids, I feel like with me on a different schedule that this is something I don't do enough of.
 
The hubby is back in school so that gives me a "date" night with my girls!
I am excited about this and I hope to be able to utilize this to the fullest.
 
Also the hubby and I are now swapping weeks for at home date nights.
 
With three kids, and opposite schedules we don't get a lot of time to have our time and we thought this was a great way to spend time together.
 
This is our first week and the hubby called grabs on it ( which was a nice surprise).
So he gets to plan and set up as many date nights as he would like...
 
 
Blog:
 
The blog will continue (no fear) but I want to try new things, pinterest hacks, DIY's, home décor and things like that. I WILL be keeping our Tattoo series her for you all. Seems like that is one of the best read ones here and I LOVE my ink just as much as the rest. :)
I will also revamping it and making it more of my own versus the style I have now...
so stay tuned.
 
What the Photography
 
I will be revamping my photography biz... I will share the info as soon as I am done working out all the details but the changes will be HUGE!
 
Creative flow:
 
I have not been in a creative mood in well forever so I have started a 365 photo challenge project!
I invite you all to follow us on the dedicated blog for it here and join us!
Link up with us and encourage the other, comment, give feed back, share with friends and family and even ask them to join us! You don't have to be a photog, grab your cell phone and have fun!
 
I am really excited about this year and I hope that I will become a better mom, wife and overall person!
 
 
 Our Home:

As sad as it is to admit we have been here since August and we have yet to unpack everything...
Our home is our space, our safe place the one place we should WANT to be and ENJOY being at...
Well we will be working on just that. As a family we plan on making it more of a home and less of a house. We plan on unpacking and revamping it to be OUR place of serenity and safety and a lace where we enjoy.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Thursday, January 1, 2015

Welcome 2015: Our NYE Recap and Resoltions

Well we are OFFICALLY out of 2014!
If you would have told me that we would NOT be flying cars in 2015 about 20 years ago I would have told you were CRAZY!?
Hard to believe that we have made it to another year already!
I swear the older you get the faster time goes by and well I don't like it...(pouts)
Since I was lucky enough to have New Years Eve off I threw (literally) together a family fun NYE Party...
My guest?
4 girls ages 12 and under... I am STILL a WILD CHILD :)
Decorating was BARE minimum lol with party hats and noise makers and my handy dandy chalk board...


As you can see we ended up with buffet style meal with JUNK food and goodies that they could snack on into the new year... I did do some last minute change ups to the menu due to lack of time...


We enjoyed "wine" in fancy glasses


Ok so mine really was wine :)


The hubby was unable to ring in the new year with us since he had to work today so I decided to (again) throw together some activities to keep the girls busy, partying and quiet until the stroke of midnight...

See THROWN together... I started these at 4 pm and the first event was set at 6pm AND I still had food to prep... HAHA

#waytogomom

They all took turns (youngest to oldest) opening the activity and reading them out load...


Then it was off to have fun and enjoy the activity!




The activities went well until closer to midnight when the kids started loosing the battle to stay awake started... then they dropped one by one like flies LOL


We had activities like dressing up, makeovers, resolutions, favorite memories, crazy hair, charades, pedis, and a few others...


I think that this is something I will do next year too BUT actually make it LOOK good, this year the activities were ALL girly but I hope we can do one more versatile for boys and girls if needed and for all ages!


We (and by that I mean me and D) rang in the new year with our own "champagne" bottles!


Overall I am happy with the way the night turned out.. I didn't get my New Years Kiss from the hubby and I wish he could have celebrated with us BUT I got to spend it with my girls. Soon they won't want to hang out with mom...
 
 


Now for the REAL FUN!
 
Resolutions!!!
 
This was one of the activities last night and I have to say I was pretty impressed with what they came up with.. well minus a few
(we can't ALWAYS be serious right?!)
 
So here we go:
 
Boo:
 
Be nice to the cat...
Clean my own room more often (PLEASE JESUS!)
AND
Have more fun!
 
Lo:
 
Do the best make up for one year (insert eye roll)
AND
Learn to use liquid eye liner (eyes are officially stuck in the back of my head)
 
D:
 
1. Learn to cook
2: She will no longer be a vegetarian but a pescatarian now
  3: She forgot the rest
4: Oh Well TGINY (Thank God It's New Years)
(Totally her words...promise)
 
As for me and the hubby we decided to set a few 7 goals TOGETHER
and I have a few personal ones for myself,
 AND a few for my businesses and blogs
 (I will share these tomorrow)
 
(I PRAY this works better for us)
 
Here are a few of our 2015 goals:
 
1: Pay OFF certain bills:
 
There are certain bills we need gone asap like umm car payments etc... We have a few of these like we would like to kiss good bye in 2015...
 
2: SAVE $:
 
We have set an undisclosed amount to save every month each of us contributing half... NOTHING HUGE but it is a start and that is what counts
 
3: DATE NIGHTS!
 
With me back in the wonderful world of retail AND me working over nights our time together is less than it has ever been... I have found this to be MORE important than ever!
 
#anyonewannababysit
 
4: FAMILY DAYS!
 
Again another MUST DO I am off in the middle of the week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) and he is off on well the weekends... so our family time is SLIM!
 
Time to set time aside and make memories...
We do only have 5 years before D graduates high school! EEEKKK
 
5: BUDGET:
 
So this is something we don't do a lot of and that is where we mess up the most, don't get me wrong bills get paid but we don't take in consideration savings and school fees and then some thing comes up and we STRESS lol
 
6: CHORES:
 
With the kids 12,11, and 7 AND both of us working full time it is time that we ALL help.. I have started the chore charts for the kids this will help us with everything really more time to spend with each other when we all help
 
7: OUR education:
 
I took a break from college when I started working, I couldn't get a grip on a sleeping habit and kids and work and EVERYTHING else (hell we are not even unpacked all the way) this is something I think we BOTH need to get back to doing better...
The kids learn form example right?
 
 
I hope you all had an amazing New Years!
 
Does anyone else think D will win again?
LOL