Crochet Me Crazy

Alison & I baked Daddy a cake for Father's Day....it was mostly Alison but I helped a little. She made the cake and icing from scratch and even used my Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator to make it pretty. She dyed some of the icing green and added some sprinkles. It turned out real cute.




Daddy even got a fancy decorated bowl of extra icing because he likes to add extra icing to his cake!







You might wonder why I always post pictures of my daughter and not my son...well, it's because Michael never likes his picture taken and I have to force him to be in most pictures. He pretty much knows he has no choice on birthday's and Christmas! :)

Hope everyone had a great Father's Day and told their dad's and husband's how much they appreciate them!

I finished this project yesterday I had left neglected in the basket for a few months. Alison wore this today on our "Mommy/Daughter Day". We went to the mall and ate at her favorite little chinese place.

Next, I'm committing myself to finish a baby blanket I had started before I start any new projects!

I'm so excited...it looks like I'm actually going to get some tomatoes this year! We tried tomatoes last year but our blooms kept falling off and we never really got much. This year our okra and tomatoes are growing nicely!



Okra





Peppers

Another year is finished for Alison's ballet. She danced well and made us all very proud. Last night Daddy brought her a HUGE bouquet of flowers. She was exhausted last night. We went and ate after her show at Chili's and then we came home and she was ready for bed. All that adrenaline rush all weekend long takes a lot out of you. I felt the sorta the same way.

I loaded my pictures and this is such a lovely picture of Alison, I am going to have prints made of this. It's perfect....

Daddy's Dancing Princess

I've been getting really tired of the same old recipes so I've been looking for new & different stuff. I found this recipe on All Recipes one of my favorite recipe sites. I made this today for lunch while Michael had a friend over. All the kids and my husband loved it. It's quick and easy so I'll probably make this one again.

2 TBSP Oil
4 large red potatoes, diced small
1 lb. Kielbasa sausage, diced
1 16 oz package frozen pepper and onion mix
1 11 oz can of kernal corn
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to tast
eggs

Heat 1 Tbsp of oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in the potatoes and kielbasa, and cook until sausage is browned and potatoes are nearly tender, about 10 minutes. Add frozen pepper mix and corn, season with red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is hot and the potatoes are tender, about 10 more minutes.

Serve in bowls and fry an egg and serve on top of each serving!

My husband started scraping and sanding the wall in my living room this weekend so its a mess! He went to get some supplies at Home Depot and ended up buying a water filter for our house. He goes over to where the water comes into the house to install it and gets stung by a hornet! it hurt like crazy so we put some of my Wild Oregano Oil on it. It killed the pain but his lip swelled up really big for a few hours. Back to the walls in the living room, right? Wrong! Right while he's in the middle of that on Sunday, our A/C unit quit working!!!! He's got to stop in this middle of this to deal with the A/C. He tried changing the battery in the thermostat first but that didn't work. Anyway, it really hasn't been too bad. The house stayed fairly cool most of the day. It started getting a little warm last night but I didn't lose too much sleep. Michael had a friend come over yesterday to spend the night. I told him he picked a bad time to come since our A/C just went out! LOL -- Oh well, they can swim all day if they get hot today. We got a referral for a homeschool family owned A/C business that is coming out today to look at it.

Will be very, very busy with dance rehearsals this week for Alison's show. She goes today, tomorrow, Thursday for full run through rehearsals which will be for 3 or more hours, then the show is Friday night. We get up again Saturday and spend the whole day at the theater because she will dance in two shows. My husband's parents are coming this weekend. Will we get our house back together before they come? :)

I actually joined a homeschooling group. We've been homeschooling for 15 years and I've never joined a group. We were just going to the tween meetings that I heard about through a friend but then I decided to just go ahead and join the group so I can get the notifications and access to all the activities they might have organized. I don't know how active we'll be but sometimes some cool field trips and stuff come up through group activites and maybe the kids will make some friends. Today, we went ice skating with the tween group. Alison met a girl there that she's been emailing with for awhile and we've been trying to get them together but it hadn't happened yet. Well, they finally met today. It was the first time for both of my kids to ice skate. They both had a great time!




We came home, Alison got dressed and we headed for dance class. We got home this evening and my neighbor and I went on our nightly walk. I'm about to get ready to go to bed early tonight because I have to be up early in the morning to take Alison to dance rehearsal. I'm going to have to find something to do for 3 1/2 hours while she's at rehearsal tomorrow.

Another thing Alison and I are excited about is Alison is going to be starting piano lessons in August!!!! I've been thinking Alison will enjoy piano because she loves music so much. I've found a young girl who's teaching close by so we're going to give it a shot and see how she likes it. The girl teaches you by ear and to read music.

I tried this soup recipe this week for dinner and my whole family LOVED it. I added 1 TBSP of Cumin instead of the 2 tsp. It's easy and I'll be making this one again.

Old Republic Inn Tortilla Soup | Hillbilly Housewife

I've started walking every night with my neighbor so that's been taking up a lot of the time I would have been crocheting in the evenings. I've been doing some other excercises along with the walking and I can already tell I've toned up in my legs alot since I started 2 weeks ago. I also doing crunches every day. I'm hoping if I can strengthen my stomach muscles, it will relieve some of the back pain I've been having. I've really been feeling pretty good since I started excercising and I'm always having people tell me how good my skin looks! I give the credit for that to taking the Wild Oregano everyday. It's done wonders for my skin. I've pretty much given up make-up.

I am having crochet ADD right now though...I have 3 different projects going right now. I hate it when I do that because it keeps me from finishing any one thing very fast. I'm recycling an old tank top that had gotten too short. I'm adding a crochet trim to the bottom of it so I can still wear it this year since I loved that shirt. That will probably be the first of the three projects I actually finish so pictures of that will soon come!