HAPPY HALLOWEEN ghouls and goblins

Happy happy Halloween everyone! 

So last weekend was our annual HOLLIween party at our place and we had sooo much fun! I started decorating pretty much the first week of October , a little bit very night after work.  The good news is that I didn't need to buy any more decorations because I have tons already.  I still have to change it up though so it looks different from previous years. This year I hung several witch hats from the ceiling. I loved how it looked! I went easy on the spider webs but used a lot of the scary netting to cover shelves. We also decorated the garage more than usual and so I hung a bunch of Halloween table covers to hide all our junk. I hung a white sheet from ceiling to hide the Harley and painted REDRUM like from the Shining.  I had scary dolls hanging in various places with blood on their shirts. I had scary rubber snakes around the dolls. I had a jar of baby heads and parts.  Lots of stuff to look at! 

I loved my jackolantern because we bought some dry ice and put inside the pumpkin and it blew out smoke from the mouth. I also had lots of costumes laying around for decorations and if someone wanted to play. 

This year every single person minus 2 dressed in costume which I feel is huge success! There's just too much that I didn't capture but here are some pics to her the idea. 

Please be safe and have tons of fun today. I can't wait to see all the cute trick or treaters tonight. 

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Tuesday Tunes

I am soooo excited that Halloween is in 2 days and yet i'm sad that its almost over. I wish Halloween was twice a year. I still have so many Pinterest ideas that i didnt get around to doing. hahaha.   I must say that my party this past weekend was a huge hit! Oh my gosh was it so fun. That will have to be tomorrow's post and i will tell you all about it with pictures.  I think today's song is cute for Halloween and i used to love listening to it when i was a kid.
Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon.

I am also a fan of Rocky Horror Picture Show and so here's a song from that soundtrack. I can dance along with this just like they do in the movies for the record! LOL
Timewarp

Have a great Tuesday Y'all!!

For my viewing pleasure

It's funny that i've been caught saying once or twice " oh i rarely watch TV". In the past ( before marriage) i could say that the statement was true. I didnt pay for cable and i subscribed to tons of magazines and so i found myself reading A LOT! I read lots of books too and would listen to my radio in the background. Fast forward to now and i have a show almost every night that i like to watch. The funny thing is that most of the evenings are not on cable stations. I will start with Sunday night: I love the show Revenge and have watched it since the very beginning. It's so dramatic and no different than a daytime soap opera but i really enjoy it! The guys on there (mainly Jack) are very nice to look at. Monday and Tuesday evenings are The Voice with Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Ceelo Green, and Christina Aguilera. There happens to be quite a few Texans that have made it on the show. I believe its true talent and they're not mean and make fun of non-talented people like some shows do. To add to Tuesday evenings, after The Voice i get to watch Sons of Anarchy that is on FX channel. OMG do i love this show! Todd watched it from the beginning and when we started dating 2 years ago, i got caught up on all the seasons so its Our Show we watch together. When it starts back up, Bates Motel was on Monday evenings and i really like that show and cant wait for it to start again. Wednesday Nights i just started watching for the first time American Horror Story. My mom has watched all the seasons and talked me into watching now. So far so good. Pretty creepy and i like that! Thursday's i TRY to watch Parenthood but i missed most episodes last season. I don't DVR it so its not a priority to stay tuned. I dont have any shows that i'm tied to on Friday and Saturday but we do DVR Saturday Night Live and watch it on Sunday's since i'm in bed when it comes on. In the meantime i DVR every episode of Ellen because i love her guests and i think she's so funny. Depending on times of the season but we also watch the tattoo shows like Ink Master hosted by Dave Navarro. I also have American Pickers and Duck Dynasty and Fast n Loud ( based out of Dallas) saved for those times in between to watch. You can see that my tastes are different but thats what i like. LOL. So what are your shows that you watch?

Tuesday Tunes- Come play along

Today's song gets me in the Halloween mood. Well, any song by Rob Zombie will get you in the Halloween mood with the name like Zombie. LOL.   My party is this weekend and y'all i'm just so excited i cant stand it! You should see my house right now. Halloween has thrown up all over the house and it's wonderful. I will post pictures very soon.  Have a great day everyone and thank you for stopping by my blog. It means a lot to me!

Living Dead Girl.

tsk tsk tsk! Open mouth insert foot for 2 celebrities all in same week.

If you havent heard by now there has been quite the flurry of angry and shocked audiences dealing with some pretty crazy statements said by 2 different celebrities. Martha Stewart insulted Bloggers and Judge Judy compared Lupus with Alcoholism and pretty much dismisses the true seriousness of the disease. I have feelings about both of these articles of course with me being a blogger and with my Mom and dear friend Marla both suffering from Lupus. I am disappointed in these ladies and have lost respect for both of them. I'm sure they will be sad to hear of that. LOL. Either way in my own little world, my opinion matters and this is how i feel. What do you say to this? Its appalling that both women would say such stupid things out of their mouths .Really all we can do is pray that listeners are able to not take every word as the truth and have their own opinions outside of these 2 women. I've read several letters written by other bloggers to Martha and there is a wonderful letter of response from Lupus foundation to Judge Judy. If you have not seen or heard what i'm talking about here are the links: Judge Judy interview Martha Stewart interview Here is a blogger response to Martha that i thought was fair. Here is a response to Judge Judy from Lupus Foundation Have a great weekend y'all!

Its Wednesday - I got nothing

So most all of you know that my bestie/cousin Lauren was also my photographer for the wedding. She wrote a post about it on her blog so go HERE and read up. She's got some cool pictures of the wedding and who doesnt love seeing those? Funny story, this past Monday was our monthly CMA ( Christian Motorccyle Association) chapter meeting. I met Todd there after work and when we get there we have to sign in and my badge still has my maiden name on it. I guess because when i put my nametag/badge i had that name in my head for the moment because i totally signed that and not my new married name. Todd signed in right after me and he didnt say anything until a few minutes later. He said " so did you see how you signed your name? I know right then- oh crap! So i ran over and added my new name at the end. Its only be 6 weeks and how often do we ever have to add signature really? I have changed my name on Social Security and Drivers License. I still am working on all credit cards and my passport is left to do. Eventually.... Have a great day!

Tuesday Tunes- 10/15

Today's song is Overcome performed by Ed Kowalcyk who used to be lead singer of one of my all time rock bands called LIVE.  Ed's voice is very distinct and i love listening to him. His band split up and he went solo and is doing wonderful things across the world.  He raises money for a few childrens groups and some of his songs can be heard on the Christian radio stations. You can listen to his lyrics and KNOW that he is a Believer. One of my favorite lines in his song- Heaven is " I look at my daughter and I believe. I dont need no proof when it comes to God and truth.  and That was on one of his rock songs played on hard rock stations.
He's also done some collaboration with Chris Daughtry and many others.  This song i am posting happens to have a surprise visit from Sinead Oconnor but you can barely hear her. 

Happy Tuesday.....

Out with the old

Hello out there blogger land. So how was your weekend? Mine was productive yet uneventful. I'm other words pretty dang nice not to be running all over the place like usual.  Before Todd and I moved in together, I had my own apartment that was a one bedroom plus study and it was filled to the gills. Todd had his own place with a fair amount of things so we got a large storage place to hold all of our things we weren't ready to part with. Fast forward a year and we will still renting the large space. 

Todd rented the smallest space they had and we spent all weekend condensing into it. This decision was so good for us for 2 reasons: the first one is the money saved! It's a significant amount going from largest size to smallest size the warehouse offers.  To be honest, we're still paying for wedding and will be for a little longer so every dollar counts. The second reason is it's liberating to get rid of clutter that we don't need. We will eventually get a house and away from apartment life so I have a few things that I don't want to part with in hopes I'll have the space for it. I have 2 cedar chests that belonged to my great aunt and my mom that are precious to me.  I also believe in Gods timing because we had to be out of our large storage this weekend and there is a family that is need of anything and everything right now. We delivered my truck full of stuff yesterday and it's a nice feeling that my stuff has new home and is appreciated. 

 I won't name any names but I'll explain the situation I was made aware of. A dear friend of mine received a call from her niece in Florida crying and asking for help. The niece is around my age and has 2 teenage kids- a 14 yr old boy and 17 yr old girl who just had a baby boy of her own 3 months ago. Come to find out the husband of the niece had beaten the crap out of her and has for the last 22 years. So my friend drove from Texas to Florida and picked up all 4 ( well 3 and 1/2)  and brought them home with her.  Eventually the niece will get a place of her own for herself and the kids so they need everything.  The items we gave might be old like the huge tube TV and VCR but they work great. The girl wears the same size as me so she struck clothing gold. LOL. Even shoe size was same.

 To add to this story , I happen to love some spices that I came across at a Tastefully Simple party and I needed more. I went online and put in my work zip code to find a seller near me. I found a lady 3 blocks from my office and I went by her house after work last Thursday . When she invited me in her house , she had 2 large bags of clothes against the door. I thought you know I have nothing to lose if I ask her for them so I proceeded in asking her if she had specific charity she used and told her about my church ministry The Closet and said we even have tax receipts. She was so happy that I had truck that I could haul her stuff right then and all she wanted was the receipt. I was mostly interested in the clothes because she mentioned one bag was her husbands and the other was children's. The church is in much need for children's and the 14 yr old boy I mentioned above needed clothes . Score!! 

On more fun stuff , I went to a few thrift stores and Target to look at Halloween stuff and couldn't resist playing around. I'll post some pics soon of my home with all its decorations. I've been decorating a little every day for the last week. 

We are having our annual Halloween party and I'm crazy excited!!  

We are also getting rain here in Dallas which is soooo needed so its a good day! Happy Monday y'all! 

The Closet

Happy Hump Day! I never get tired of watching the Geico commercial with the camel. Do you love it?   My weekend was busy volunteering for a great cause. My church started a new ministry called The Closet. It's a division of a national ministry and non profit organization. We provide free quality used and new clothing and shoes to people in need. So we have been taking donations of clothes for the last 6 months and they all had to be sorted , tagged, folded or put on hangers .  We handled over 8000 articles of clothing in preparation for our "free shopping day". 

There is a hotel/ motel near our church that has several families that live there. Many of them have drug addictions and just a step above homeless. A team of church members visited last Friday and signed up families and gave them their shopping time. We had a few other families show up too from word of mouth from one of us. We didn't do a lot of advertising in the community because we wanted to get through our first shopping day under our belt before we went too big. 

So Saturday morning , all the volunteers showed up around 9am so we could continue sorting and organizing and then the first group showed up. How it worked was that each group had 20 minutes to shop and then we checked them out. When people signed up they got an index card with how many pieces they could have. Example, each adult gets 10 pieces and each child got 5 pieces. If they had 3 kids and husband, they could get 35 pieces total. It went very smoothly and the people were just shocked that it was all for free. I saw some great stuff like full length leather coat, name brand jackets , even a wedding dress ( not mine). We had our sanctuary set up like a department store with racks and all.  The best part was that we had a prayer group at the end if the checkout line. Of course if someone wasn't comfortable with that they didn't have to. I would ask them if they had anything on their heart that they would like prayer over and if they said yes, I would point out our prayer leaders. To see all the people in bowed heads and many in tears was amazing. By that I mean that tears of relief of having someone actually care for them and their freedom to shed some burdens off their chest. 

Another favorite part of my day was holding all the sweet babies that came through. I could just squeeze them! We had another lady that also held the babies . The moms loved having us hold the kiddos so that they could shop with both hands. One mom even let me hold their daughter the whole time and i got a little worried. Lol. I went up and down the aisles asking " is this your daughter"?   

We were done for the day around 3:30 and I think all in all we served over 300 people   And we learned so much about we want to do differently the next time. What's also nice is that we have also helped a few families in immediate need leading up to our shopping day.  I am a shopper and I love love buying new clothes. The down side is that I don't have the closet space anymore. I personally felt good that I was able to donate many large stuffed bags of clothes.  I feel better shopping now. Haha! 

Tuesday Tunes

Today's song is the controversial Miley Cyrus. I am going to tell you that i do like this song " Wrecking Ball". I dont condone her wild behavior especially knowing that she was a role model to girls for so long as Hannah Montana. I am also not a fan of her being naked and licking the hammer. So lets just listen to the words shall we....

Forgiveness

So last weeks post about the macaroni made me think of another topic :Forgiveness. When I was 13 my world literally got turned upside down. As if being 13 wasnt hard enough on its own. I was a girl who was so happy and had everything to look forward to at that time. We lived in a condo ON the beach in small community beach town of Imperial Beach, California. I went to a Catholic school in the middle of Coronado ( if you’re not familiar with this gorgeous Navy town look it up), and there were only 25 students in our whole grade. As I had mentioned in previous post, Mom had bought all my uniforms and school supplies before we left for out vacation in Texas so that we wouldn’t have to be rushed and scramble when we got back home. Something I also should mention is that we had just moved to Southern California the year before after living in San Jose for 2 years . So I had spent this year being the new girl in town and having to settle in and make friends all over again. When we left Texas to move to California (San Jose) my homeroom class threw me a going away party and all the students in my class made me the cutest cards. Then when we left San Jose to move to Imperial Beach, my class made me a little book that had everyone’s signature, address and sweet things they wrote. I am a pretty sentimental gal and I held onto these cards and notes. I also had a diary with a key that I had received for my birthday that I had been writing in. My grandfather was my greatest hero and I loved him more than anything in the world. Poppy was who I missed the most in Texas and so he gave me a few items that were very special and I was honored to have them. Poppy had a big beautiful Harley and would enter his bike in ALL the bike shows around town. He had several trophies and because he was Choctaw Indian, he decorated his area with a feathered head dress, 2 painted drums and some trophies. He sent all that with me to California so I could think of him. I also babysat and saved every penny to buy a ten speed bike and was so proud of my bike when I finally had enough money to go buy it. Fast forward to the summer vacation of HELL, my stepdad ( “L”) had sent a shipment of about 6 large boxes of items to Mom and the only thing he sent of mine was just a handful of random clothes that he grabbed out of my closet. He didn’t send me my most prized possessions and I was devastated! I had my own bedroom with all my things and I didn’t get one thing that mattered. I was so hurt and more than anything I felt abandoned. “L” had been in my life for 5 years and I also called him Dad. I think because he knew my real Dad was in Dallas , he thought I would be OK. That was it-hands washed of any memories of the step-daughter he once had. Not even a final I love you. My brother was 3 and he had at least sent his little cars and toys. In a 13 year old girl who went from Riches to Rags overnight, I became angry. I had no one to vent to because at the same time it was a stake at the heart to hear Mom crying in the shower everyday. I literally said I HATED “L” for ruining our lives. I knew that I was not to say I HATED anyone but in my heart I had no forgiveness for him. I grew up and I was OK no thanks to “L”. Almost 2 years later, My mom had remarried an amazing man that loved my brother and I as his very own . Some things cant be replaced but it doesn’t take away the memories attached to my stuff. Along the way, I finally realized that my hatred and bitterness towards “L” had to be Let Go. I attended a women’s bible study 12 years ago and you guessed it- Forgiveness was part of that study. I knew in my heart that I held resentment and it was not doing me any good to hold onto it and continue to carry it around any longer. I was embarrassed that I was in my 30’s and still had anger from when I was a kid. Some of us (me ) are a bit slow at things sometime. The truth is that when I said out loud- I No longer hate you “L” AND I forgive you, as cliché as it sounds, I felt the weight lifting off my shoulders and float away. I only wish I could have Forgiven much sooner because I loved the feeling I had and thought how cool it would have been had I not had such burdens. I have had serious relationships, friendships, jobs, etc where I have had my feelings hurt a time or two. I get upset yes but I have forgiveness and I move on. Life is so much better now.

A memory triggered- Why i say NO to Boxed macaroni

My sweet friend Marla inspired my post today because she is all about the Kraft mac and cheese with the powdered bright orange cheese flavor. I on the other hand will only eat it if it’s the last possible thing to eat during the apocalypse. I will eat grass and mud though seriously before I am defeated and eat the macaroni. I have so many thoughts now literally FLOODING my memory. All this hate and strong opinion stems back from a time in my life when things were not so good and my family was struggling. Its funny how even food can remind you of such an intense memory it determines decisions later. This specific life event was a formative time that both scarred me and at the same time gave me some of the character I feel I have today. One summer my mom, my brother ( he was 3) and I were in Dallas visiting all the family for what we thought just 2 weeks. Long story short, my stepdad and Mom were going through a divorce and so we never made it back to California. It was literally 2 weeks before school started and all I had was shorts and flip-flops. I was enrolled and had been attending a Catholic school in San Diego and my uniforms had already been purchased and were ready to go in my closet there. My mom immediately set out and found a job and then we needed a place to stay of our own although I enjoyed every minute of living with my grandparents. Being a single mom with 2 kids all of a sudden was a hard pill to swallow. Mom did the best she could with what she could afford and at this time it was an apartment in a very bad part of town and it backed up to a grocery store. The grocery store turned out to be a Huge factor is my decorating the apartment. I was RE-Purposing items way before it was cool and good for the environment being Green. We had zero furniture like dressers to hold what clothing items we had so I began stealing the milk crates from the alley between us and the grocery store at nights and on weekends in between deliveries. I understand what stealing is and believe me I had a huge dose of the Catholic guilt going through me every day but I’m certain I’m forgiven to provide necessity to my family. Each of us had crates in the closet to put our underwear, t-shirts, socks, etc. Then I stacked them up as a vanity for mom and I put on our makeup for school and work. We had family giving us all their hand –me-downs dishes, knick knacks, etc and someone gave Mom a makeup mirror that we put on our crate vanity. We also found a mattress from the very rich part of town- we beat it with a broom and sprayed it with Lysol and added sheets to it. I’m telling you times were tough! I stole 9 milk crates and we put the mattress on top so that it wasn’t on the floor and once you make the bed with long bedspread, you never even saw the milk crates. We had family that lived somewhat close and I transferred to same school that my cousin went to so that I could ride the bus with her everyday to school. Mom would drop me off at her house every morning. When she came home with me , we would make a game out of picking out the colorful crates from my bedroom window and we would head out to get them once the truck left. They were always dirty and we would wash them down in the bathtub. To add to the tough times and nonexistent budget because it takes money to budget, we lived off pasta. And by pasta I mean a case of macaroni and cheese boxes. You could buy a case with like 12 boxes of mac and cheese for almost 4.00$. We had macaroni almost every night of the week with the exception of the Fridays mom got paid every other week. Paydays were laundry days and lucky for us there was also a Laundromat in same shopping center as the grocery store. I would have the laundry basket and soaps ready for when mom came home from work, we would load up the car and go. We were so excited because our treat to us was ONE small box of stouffer’s French bread pizza. It came with 2 small pieces and we would split it 3 ways. The macaroni was made with the packaged cheese some nights, then maybe just with butter on other nights, we would add the imitation bacon bits to it, sometimes take one thin slice of sandwich meat and tear it up in pieces and add that, every single frickin way you can change a box of macaroni it was done!! Burned out doesn’t even cover how I felt. I vowed to my 13yr old self one day that if we ever rose above this period of life, I would NEVER eat another box of Macaroni and cheese or Stouffer’s French bread pizza. Now don’t get me wrong, I still love everything macaroni and cheese as long as its home made and the noodles come from a bag and the cheese isn’t powder. In fact we had Gouda Mac n Cheese at our wedding. I know this was a long story to say why I don’t like something but there is history that went to my strong feelings. The good news is that we made it! There have been tough times here and there but by gosh boxes of pasta never appeared on my table. Have a great day! My apologies that this is one massive paragraph. Downside to blogging on lunch hour at work.

Tuesday's Tunes

Leslyn is one of the hosts for our Tuesday Tunes. Jump over and link up at her page today.

My song today is by Pink. I love her songs!