Men love to play with kitchen utensils

White Sox rule.

Life is a box of chocolates and I think I ate them all.

Birthdays are not for the faint of heart.

Broken bones are a pain.

I despise cleaning house.

Did I mention, White Sox rule!

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I can’t even say I’ve been overly busy, although, I have been busy! I just really seem to have been out of the blogging mood lately. This is my secondary blog, and I haven’t felt much like blogging on my primary blog, so this one has definitely been in hiatus and I’m sorry about that!

Right now we’re getting a record snow fall here in Dallas, the largest snowfall in 30 years. That’s ironic since the reason my husband wanted to move here from Chicago was to get away from the snow. Oh well!

I’ll try to post photos later. The dog sure loves it. We’ve got about 6 inches on the ground and she likes to run around biting it. She’s pretty funny to watch.

I’ll try to stay more current here, I promise!

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Just wanted to send a quick “shout-out” across the Pacific to my friend Ali in sunny Honolulu, Hawaii!

Ali runs the airfare-now.com website with all kinds of tips, coupons, strategies, etc. for findng holiday airfare deals. Now airfare comparison travel sites have come a long way in the past few years but there are still literally thousands of them to choose from. So here’s a big aloha and mahalo to Ali for keeping it simple on a pretty nifty little travel website!

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Last week I received a lovely green box delivered on my front stoop with big white letters on the outside, IZEA! I was so excited! Who doesn’t love getting packages in the mail?

I took my shiny new green box inside where my daughter and I quickly opened it up and found a fantastic turkey hat and a soda bottle filled with….TOFURKY soda? What the heck is Tofurky and how did it get in this soda bottle?

According to the Jones Soda website, Tofurky and Gravy Jones Soda is a meatless alternative to eating turkey and gravy! They also suggest serving it along with mashed potatoes and gravy and a good side of humor!

Now, I have to admit, I love the hat (so does my daughter)! The Tofurky and Gravy Jones Soda I’m not so sure about! It does certainly make a great gag gift though and can even be ordered in gift packs. I do like the sound of the other flavors that Jones Soda has to offer, Black Cherry, Pom and Vanilla Bean. Now those sound like tasty flavors! If you order the Tofurky gift pack, you get all of these flavors AND a Tofurky metal lunch box which is very cool in my opinion!

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I had to work Friday morning so couldn’t take advantage of the early morning doorbusters, but I probably wouldn’t have gone out to fight the crowds anyway.  My daughter and I headed out to shop about 10 in the morning and I only had one item on my shopping list, a printer for my mom’s Christmas gift.

So, with my printed email ad in hand, we headed off to Staples.  I figured since they had opened at 6 a.m. and we didn’t even leave the house until 10, it was a bit unlikely that I would still get the doorbuster deal, but I thought I would check anyway.  I also figured that Staples is not exactly a “destination” shopping store, even on Black Friday, so there might still be a chance.  Imagine how happy I was to walk in and still find the wireless printer I had seen in the ad still available!  Not only that, but it was at the doorbuster price of $59.98, $60 off the original price!  What a deal and I really think my mom is going to like it, especially since her printer that she keeps in her winter home in Arizona was recently stolen.

After making my one purchase, my daughter & I headed off to a few other stores just to check out their deals, including ToyRUs and Best Buy, but we wound up not making any more purchases.  It was such a beautiful day, 70 and no wind, we decided to head home and put up our outside Christmas decorations.  We got lights on the trees and my daughter even managed to get up on the roof to put wreaths up on the dormer windows.  Today I’m going to work on decorating the tree in the family room.

So, what did you do for Black Friday and did you get any deals?

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This year I have decided to go out on a limb and make some new recipes for our Thanksgiving meal.  I’m not sure what possessed me to do this, I even had to purchase ingredients that I’ve never purchased before, ever!  The recipes appear to be easy though, they simply have different ingredients than what I normally use.  The one good thing I noticed right away was the fact that I can make these dishes ahead and the recipes even give directions for reheating them on Thanksgiving day.  Since I have to work Thursday morning until 1, I thought I’d spend tomorrow afternoon preparing the side dishes.  Then, I’ll just have to roast the turkey and make the mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving day.

Am I crazy for trying new recipes on my favorite cooking day of the year, especially since I have to work that day as well?

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