A little stress relieving profanity never hurts

I pride myself on evolving into a wholesome stay at home suzie home maker mommy. But every once in awhile my rowdy past rears up and I am not claiming responsibility for what I do or say!! Last night was one of those nights and what spewed from my mouth was a shrieking chorus of Motherfuckers that would make a sailor proud.

I had gotten all my kids showered and tucked into bed and decided to call it an early night. I head into the bathroom to remove my contacts, put on my pajamas and brush my teeth. I reach up to the window ledge to get a bag of flossers and the bag accidentally knocks over a bottle of red nail polish. In slow motion I see this happening and think in my head.....no, no, no....please don't break.

SMASH. SHATTER.

MOTHERFUCKER. I scream this. Seriously. There is red, and I mean bright cherry red, nail polish everywhere. Not to mention shattered glass all over the white bathroom tiles and the wood floor of my bedroom. What the hell do I do? I try to tip toe out of the bathroom to grab a box of wet wipes in Maddens room. The flipping box is empty, so now I'm rooting in his closet trying to open a new package of wipes...in the dark mind you. I get them opened and run back to my room and try to start wiping the mess off the floor. It's already dried. MOTHERFUCKER I scream again. Quick dry nail polish....really does dry quick. (I should write to the company and tell them how much I appreciate that their product really works....just not on my motherfucking floors!!) OK...this is not getting the red off the wood or tile. I need nail polish remover. I jump up and try to tip toe out of the bathroom again around the glass and blobs of red paint. MOTHERFUCKER. I step on a piece of glass and now my big toe is bleeding....or is that red nail polish? No, it's blood. No time for a band aid...this shit is drying on the floor and walls and Shaw is gonna kill me.

So I leave a trail of bloody toe prints down the hallway to the linen closet and grab the nail polish remover and a bag of cotton balls. Back to the bathroom and tip the remover bottle upside down and its empty. AHHHH MOTHERFUCKER. Who the hell put an empty bottle of nail polish remover away? Well there are only 2 girls in the house who wear polish and it wasn't me, so I'm thinking I know who did it. Back out to the hallway...toe still bleeding...and go into Brooklyn's room. Open her nail polish drawer and there is the new bottle of remover. Back in the bathroom I quickly get to work trying to wipe the tile floor and the walls and the bedroom wood floor. Thank God it's working. I use about 50 soaked cotton balls, but the red polish is finally off all the tile and wood surfaces. I look at my hands and they are covered in red polish. So I practically pour the rest of the bottle over my hands and rub as I try to remove the polish from my skin. Thankfully it's also coming off quite easily. My tank top on the other hand....trashed. Splattered red polish over a yellow tank is not a good look...unless for Halloween I want to look like a stabbing victim. Hmmm...might hold onto the tank top.

Onto my bleeding toe. A quick wash in the tub and a band aid and good as new. Clean up the trail of bloody toe prints before Shaw gets home and I jump into bed to read.

As stressful as that whole 15 minutes was....I felt great. There is something quite therapeutic in hollering out MOTHERFUCKER. I suggest you try it. Much cheaper than a therapist!

My crazy ass summer

I am becoming such a blog snob and by that I mean completely ignoring my baby. I had so much fun in the beginning of its creation and vowed to write a post each week and now I am averaging about one every 6 months. Eek. Well as I was scrolling though the posts tonight, I decided enough of this foolishness. I have enough craziness in my life that I could actually write a blog post a day if I wanted. Maybe I should.
I could say that since the kids went on summer vacation, I've been too busy entertaining them to write...and that would be partially true. Or I could say that since summer started, I've been too busy working on my tan...and that would be partially true. Or I could say that since July I've been busy travelling...and that would also be partially true.
June and July this summer were a whirlwind of adventure. I can honestly say, I don't think I've ever packed as much travel excitement into one summer before....at least since I've had kids. In June, my son's All Star baseball team competed in the State tournament in Pensacola, Florida. The past 2 years, States has been held here in Pinellas Park so the farthest I had to travel was approximately 7 streets up. From my house to Davis field....phew, wiped me out! Pensacola was about an 8 hour car ride and lucky for me my husband decided he was going to send me alone with our kids and he was going to conveniently fly into Pensacola the next day...Say what? Who approved that travel memo? I usually drive about 3 of the 36 or so hours when we venture to Canada....so this was a major concern for me. Fortunately we made it...all squished together in our little black Honda Civic because once again, Shaw made the decision this would be the more reliable vehicle of the 3 that we own. Again I ask, who approved this travel memo? Our 5 days there was a lot of fun. We came in 2nd in the State and the boys played their little hearts out.
Time to head home. Hmmm....now since Shaw didn't drive up with us, there was room in the Civic for the 4 of us. Not so much now. After some switcharooing... Dallas ended up in the McClanahan van. So far so good. Fast forward 5 hours or so and its torrential pouring rain, complements of Tropical Storm Debby, and we are stuck in a complete standstill on I-75 due to a tractor trailer of diapers flipping onto its side and our trusty, reliable Civic decides to crap out on us. So we cut across 4 lanes of traffic and start driving in the breakdown lane at 20 miles/hour...the fastest the car would go. To make matters suck even more, the motorists we were passing I'm sure assumed we were the a*holes who thought we were better than everyone else and tried to cut off the breakdown lane we were driving in. Shaw, in his very mature calm manner, started screaming (through closed windows) and gesturing to these cars that we were broken down and had to get off the highway. This wasn't embarrassing at all!!! So, to make a long story short, we got off at the next exit, and Brooklyn, Madden and I jumped into the McClanahan van and left Shaw and the sorry ass car in Lake City. He did get it to start driving normally again, after letting it cool off (some sensor issue) and we finally made it to PPark after about 13 hours of driving, vowing to never drive that long in a vehicle again with the kids. My how quickly we forget!!

July 7th comes around and I am sipping a coke and reading my kindle all alone while flying 40,000 miles above the United States....did I mention I was all alone? Now THIS is how you take a vacation. My BFF since primary was trying the knot with her hunky man and I was bound and determined to be there. So after pawning off my children onto unsuspecting victims, neighbors, I happily flew to Canada and relaxed with my dad and childhood friends for a week. Hylas wedding was amazing and a reunion of sorts and I was sooo happy to have been a part of her special day. The next day, I wasn't hung over at all and a delicious breakfast was hosted by her new family and I was feeling soooo relaxed and content. Fast forward a few hours at the airport and I'm looking at my watch and then at my boarding pass wondering why the heck I'm not already on the plane and the sweet voice of the ticket counter lady comes on the PA system announcing that my flight has been cancelled. Not delayed.... cancelled. My wonderful, happy, feelings evaporate. So after many phone calls and ticket vouchers printed up and bags being located....I'm once again headed back into the city. The only silver lining to this fiasco was that I got to spend the evening having dinner and drinks with my 2 besties. The next day, I'm up and headed to the airport at the butt crack of dawn. I really didn't even fall asleep that night because of the shady hotel I was booked into, but I was going home and that was all that mattered. Landed at 12:30 in Tampa and I was off again!

Got picked up, drove to the St. Pete/Clearwater airport to pick up my rental van, went home and literly flipped my suitcase over...dumping all contents on my bed...and then repacked, with all the baseball clothes I had set aside before my Canadian adventure. Packed a suitcase for Brooklyn. Packed a suitcase for Madden and off I went again. 4 hours later, after landing in Florida, I was on the road again. Picked up my passengers...Kati and Payton (Madden and Brooklyn too) and we started to drive. Punched in Germantown, Tenn on the GPS and prayed for the best. I was so exhausted, that I was a bit delirious. Needless to say Kati drove until 10pm. Continued on the next day and made it to Tennessee. Here we were for baseball AGAIN. World Series, baby!! So the next week was a little bit of baseball with a lot of fun thrown in!! Taking over the microphone and singing Proud Mary with the band while cruising up the Mississippi River in a steamboat. Dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly. Riding the mechanical bull. Looking for Elvis at Graceland. Watching the waddling ducks at the Peabody Hotel....all great times with baseball moms!!
There was some baseball played in between all that fun and our team did place 9th out of 50 teams. Such a disappointment for the boys who all wanted to play some more and make it farther, but they played amazing and we were so proud of them for their dedication and sportsmanship.

Packed up and ready to hit the road back to Florida. Fun and vacation is all over....BUT WAIT...is it really?? In the lobby saying goodbye to friends who were planning on staying another night and then driving to Chicago the next day, and I casually say that I wish me and the kids could go to Chicago instead of going home. Hubby looks at me and says....Go. Just like that. I'm thinking I didn't hear right, after all, the van is all packed and we are heading home in 2 minutes. But nope, he says it again. "That's not a bad idea....you should go to Chicago." And just like that, we are unpacking his suitcase from the van and repacking with Kati, Jack and Paytons suitcases. So Shaw and Dave hit the road to Florida and me, Kati and 5 kids, hit the road North, to Chicago. I think by this point, we have officially lost our mind. The temps in Tennessee rose above 100F, and I think maybe we fried some brain cells. But there we were....driving through Arkansas, Missouri, and into Illinois. We land the next day at Kati's aunt Sally's house and unleash the wildness of having 7 people converge onto a home that already has 3 occupants. The next 5 nights and days were jam packed with fun and excitement culminating in Bettyfest, the annual birthday party of said Betty, who happened to be 91 years young this August. We were welcomed into this crazy, and I use that term loosely, family like we were one of their own and my kids and I will never forget the hospitality and friendliness that was shown to us.

So now we are really packed up and ready to hit the road back to Florida. Another 5 states and we are finally HOME. The rental van was due for drop off at 1:45 and we had it cleaned out and dropped off at 1:28. Now that is what I call....amazing! To say that I am exhausted, doesn't even begin to describe how I am feeling! I haven't slept in my own bed in 24 nights, I have no clean under ware and there is sour milk in the fridge and mold on the bread that I forgot to throw away before our adventures began. But we are home, safe and I still have 3 children and that's all that matters. Not for a long... very, very long time am I going to take a road trip again with the kids.


But I hear Washington, D.C is beautiful in the Fall, and it would be so educational for the kids........... hmmm!!!!

Obsession. Addiction. Call it what you want.

WOW....I'm thinking this post is gonna need some tweaking since I'm a little rusty here. I can't believe that the last time I posted was July of last year. Why hasn't anyone told me they missed me? Or wanted me to write a new blog??? I'm kidding, I have heard from you many times telling, demanding, pleading...that I write a new blog post, but for whatever reason, time and life has interrupted my writing. So bare with me as I work out the kinks...gotta remember how to do this, but I'm sure it's like riding a bike, you never forget.

In this post I want to introduce my new love, my new obsession, my-eyes-are-shutting-because-it's-midnight-but-i-just-want-to-pin-one-more-diy-idea....Pinterest. For those of you living under a rock and who have never heard of Pinterest or Pinning....drag yourself from under that dark hole my friend and find out what you have been missing out on! Lately whenever I make something, be it a craft or a food, someone is sure to ask me...."where did you get that idea? Pinterest?" It has sort of taken on a life of it's own in my crafty world.

Now Pinterest can make me feel a like a depressed schizo at times. Sometimes I feel like the craftiest person around who can give Martha Stewart a run for her money and then other times I feel like OMG...how did someone manage to do/make something so fabulous, I could never in a million years do something like that. One minute I feel happy when I find pictures of places where I have travelled and they bring back wonderful memories but in the blink of an eye my mood swings and I'm drowning in a Pinterest funk because let's face it...I'm a stay home, unemployed mother of 3. I'm never going to frolic on the beaches of Bora Bora or sleep in an underwater hotel or eat exotic food in a restaurant hanging above the Chang Jiang River in China. I'm not exactly sure when I started following the website. I think it was sometime over the summer while I was home in NS on vacation. But I wasn't truly a fanatic until about November...and then holy moly, all hell broke loose. I started pinning things here and there, not really pinning anything in particular, just something that I would see and like. I didn't even really know what to do with the damn thing once I did pin it. But eventually I got the hang of it and realized that you could create boards and browse categories and really the options are endless. So now I have 12 boards and 415 pins. I have 102 followers and I follow 103 different pinners. If this all sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, then all I can say is...get with the program!!

So Christmas was interesting because that's when my obsession kicked into full gear and I was re-creating everyday something new that I had seen on Pinterest the night before. From desserts to gifts to appetizers...you name it. If you all are facebook friends, you saw the album I posted with Wilson's nightly shenanigans. Wilson was our Christmas Elf on the Shelf, but he did much more than sit on a shelf...he created havoc in our house and most of the ideas, I got from other pinners who were having as much fun stress as I was.

By the time Christmas rolled around though, I was SOOOO over Wilson and trying to think up new scenes for him, that I just wanted him to die a slow and painful death so that I could end it.

He apparently didn't take the hint because he was around again the next night. Booze and prescription pills are not the answer to your problems folks!!

So back to more pins....everyday I found myself at the grocery store with my list of ingredients for something new that I was determined I was gonna make. If you look at my boards, the pins with food in them are the largest. W.O.W.....Word of Warning....do not Pin late at night when you are hungry or when you are trying to eat sensibly, because that is when you are going to find the yummiest looking cakes, muffins, cookies and pies...hell even flattened cauliflower for a pizza crust looks good then! Buy everything on my list, and then some, get home and re-create the pin. Now for the record, everything I have decided to make has turned out amazing and yummy, so this is not helping my crazy-pin-insanity. Had I made a few things that turned out to be disasters, I may have scaled back on my ambitious cooking and baking spree. Oh hell, who am I kidding, no I wouldn't have!!! Carb induced coma...coming right up!

So to now show off and brag about some of my copycat pins...prepare yourself

This was apple butter. The before picture in the crock pot...and below, the after simmering 8+ hours. YUMMY on home made bread.

This was an ooey gooey breakfast pastry ring, but no matter what it looks like...and it was compared to dog droppings...it was delish and my kids begged me to make another one right away.

 Another fun yummy craft was the heart lollipops. My friend Tiffany had made me one last year for my birthday, so I guess I didn't originally see the idea on Pinterest, but I followed through and made them after having the directions in front of me.

These Santa hats were the hit of a party I took them too. So easy and how adorable are they!

 These marshmallows cupcake also were not an original idea off Pinterest. A friend from home, Holly, had posted pics awhile ago of these cupcakes that her kids had made with a babysitter. I was in awe of them when I saw them on her fb page and they were sooo easy to make. They were however time consuming and I had sugar all over the floor, but they were super yummy and a hit at my husbands mini birthday party, although it was stated that they weren't very manly!

This was a yummy sandwich that I had seen one day and decided to revamp it to fit my likes and what I had in the fridge. It was so good that I made it for lunch one afternoon when I had the WooWoo Sisters over and they all LOVED it. So it passed the taste test. Avocados, tomatoes and mozzarella.

So that's it for the food part....please wipe the drool from your chin, it's so unbecoming! I have made many other things including honey balsamic glazed carrots, ginger cake with warm caramel sauce, tomato/mozza/basil caprese appetizers to name a few, but seriously...I can't take pictures of everything I make!!

Some of the more crafty things I have copied from others who come up with these amazing ideas:

This was the first thing I attempted and I decided to take this on as I was hobbling around on crutches the day after knee surgery. What was I thinking? They turned out so great that I made a smaller pair, added some votive candles and Voila. Instant mantle decorations.

Fun times in the tub for Mad Man. Glow sticks cracked and thrown in the bath water. A word of caution...don't crack too hard or the glow stick will explode leaving you covered from head to toe, including eyelashes, with glow in the dark liquid. This may or may not have happened to me!!

A cute Christmas decoration. A note to Santa along with a "house" key.

This is a wall piece I made for my friend Kati as a Christmas gift. It was an empty frame, I filled it with some pictures of her family and then used scrapbook paper to put in the other empty frames and typed on them the days of the week. It now becomes a family weekly activity dry erase board.

These cute Sundae bath gifts were made originally for Brooklyn's friends on our street but then someone saw them and asked me to make her 8 so she could give them out as gifts. I gladly made 8 more and delivered them the next day!

There are so many ideas for teacher crafts that I may never again buy something at a store! These were made for all the teachers with M&M's. There was a cute tag attached with a poem about teachers and m&m colors...it would make more sense if I had a pic of the poem....but I'm a slacker!

The kids thought this was hilarious. Made this at Christmas for Janie, our next door neighbor. A box of Ho Hos and Ding Dongs. The attached card said, "Ho Ho Ho. Merry Christmas from the Ding Dongs next door" Seriously....I couldn't come up with these ideas on my own!!

This last one was an idea I got to run a paper bag through your printer. I was going to order expensive thank you tags for Mad Mans birthday party but tried this first and it turned out super cool

So there you have it. My copy cat Pinterest ideas. With Valentines Day and Easter coming up...I'm sure to be busy! My latest accomplishment is painting a chalkboard wall in my kitchen. The paint is drying now as I type. I snagged this idea from my friend Sarah, who is a photographer extraordinaire. She isn't as funny as me, but she does have her own blog. Check out her work if you are looking for a fabulous photographer. Here are just a few of the many that she snapped of my kiddos.

If I haven't convinced you yet that if you aren't on Pinterest, you are missing out on a life changing addiction, then you might as well crawl back under that rock where you were living.

One last picture. Because Pinterest has turned me into the next Martha Stewart, I feel that I should have a craft room that looks like this:

Instead, I have a craft space approx. 2ft by 2ft that looks like this:

I need to work on that.