This blog started out as a scrapbooking blog

Occasionally, I like to read the stats and find out how people came across my blog.

This has to be my all time favorite:

I don't know what I have written in the last seven years that made my blog come up for this Google searcher.

Also, I had no idea you could put so many search words in the Google search engine.

Trying to redeem myself for eating plates of hot wings and cheap wine from Hooters, or

the sandwich recipe I stole from a seafood restaurant I've never stepped foot in.

Several years ago my oldest daughter, Ashley, called me and asked me a question that would change the course of my life as I knew it:

"Mom, do you want the rest of my sandwich from Bluefin? It's disgusting."

I've never been to Bluefin and I've never had salmon on bread, but after she described the sandwich, I knew it had to be mine. Besides, it came with fries and I knew if I didn't like the sandwich, I could just eat those.

Soon, Ashley stopped by with a small aluminum container that held fish and fries.

"It's yours", she said as she plopped it in my hands. It was still warm. "It's disgusting. I hate it."

"Thank you" was all I could say as I watched her walk back to her car.

She left and I carefully tried to release the greasy chipboard top from the death grip hold of the sharp edges of the aluminum carry out container. By the way, why do they have to make those edges so damn sharp??

I took a bite and it was awesome!! I knew I had to make it for myself because God knows, we can't afford Bluefin or anything in that shopping center.

Here is the line up of ingredients. Shhhhh...don't tell anyone I stole it.

Salmon - grill it if you can. I only add salt and pepper.
Caramelized onions. Don't even think about using margarine. It's butter and olive oil. Period.
Pesto. I made my own when I wasn't busy ironing sheets or polishing shoes.
Swiss cheese.
Rye bread.
Mayo.


That's it. 

I used margarine on the rye bread (that's ok to do because it spreads easier) and threw them on the grill with the cheese.

I guess there was some confusion over who was supposed to be watching the grill. The bread burned a little bit. I thought Erik was going to watch the bread because I was busy inside talking to Casey, drinking wine and he was outside grilling the salmon.

I was wrong, though.

Whatever.

Now I know that he watches only what he puts on the grill and not what I decide to add later on.

Lesson learned.

After the bread and salmon were done, you just stack it up like it shows in the picture. Eat it and enjoy.

Oh, and isn't this funny? Just as I was typing this, Ashley called. I told her I was just writing a blog post about her and the Bluefin sandwich.

She said, "Oh, you mean that DISGUSTING sandwich with the salmon?"

Don't listen to Ashley. Listen to me and try Heather's Stolen Salmon sandwich. You will be glad you did.

Do you have days like this?

It started out great.

I did my cardio workout.

I did my 30 minute sculpting class (arms) that I HATE!

I had a handful of fresh blueberries for breakfast.

I made a vegan lunch for everyone. It was delicious quinoa and black bean burgers. I felt good eating them...so healthy"

By 6 pm, I wanted hot chicken wings like crazy, and by 8 pm, I was at Hooters sucking down crappy chardonnay and using cheap paper towels to wipe hot wing sauce off my cheeks and nose while trying to steal luke warm french fries off the kids' plates.

The kids won't let me take their pictures because they're annoyed with me for stealing their fries.

I guess I can always start over tomorrow.

Do not stick that in your ear!

Do not stick that in your nose!!

The last two times Blake has visited, the three of us (me, Trent and Kat) have found ourselves saying these things.

Lately, Blake has had this weird obsession with trying to put EVERYTHING either up his nose or in his ear.

The list of items is long:

avocado
peanut butter
Mickey Mouse's tail
his finger
someone else's finger
the straw on his sippy cup
beads from his necklaces
Cheerios
Q-tips

and I'm sure there are other things that I didn't catch or have already forgotten about.

A lot of people have asked about the beads. He really, really likes shiny and pretty things and he was always trying to wear my pearls and other necklaces. I didn't want them accidentally flushed down the toilet (which he has been known to do with other items) so I bought him his own beads.

He LOVES them. They were two bucks at Walmart. I now use them as his currency. For example, if he runs away from me in the parking lot, he loses beads. When he does something nice or holds my hand all the way across that parking lot, he gets them back.

It seems to work pretty well.

When he was here yesterday, I noticed that he kept calling Kat and I, "Mom" or "Mama". He called my mother that, too. When his Aunt Courtney picked him up, I asked her what he calls her and she said, "Mama or Mom".

Then we asked Blake to tell us, "Who is that?", and we pointed to Trent.

Blake replied with what sounded like, "Bubba Gene".

Trent was slightly irritated with the name, "Bubba Gene". I kinda liked it and so did Kat.

"Bubba Gene" was Trent's name for the rest of the afternoon. If there was anything Trent learned this summer, it was to ignore mild teasing because any negative reactions caused more "Bubba Gene" comments. I am my father's daughter after all.

We only have a couple more weeks of Blake left. His mother and father are moving to Texas and they're taking him with them. The nerve, huh?!

I don't know when I'll be able to see him again because we really don't have a lot of cash to spend on luxury items like vacations and roof repairs. So, we will have to just settle for lots and lots of pictures for now and record goofy stories about "Bubba Gene" and "Mickey Mouse tails up noses".

I know it will all work out in the end.

"Can you believe this stupid weather?"

I was sitting at the bar with Erik when I received the phone call from my neighbor. She was pissed about the really angry "teaser clouds" that had appeared. I've started to call the build up of afternoon monsoon clouds, "teaser clouds" because that is all they do.

Tease.

We thought for sure it was going to rain. It was going to hail. The temperature had dropped at least 10 degrees. There may even be some small tornado action.

but no.

Nothing. NOT A DAMN THING.

See those clouds? How could they NOT turn into something crazy.

Even Zoe the dog was acting crazy.

I thought it was hilarious that she had called to complain about the weather. She had mentioned that all her other Tucson friends on Facebook were talking about the glorious rain they were receiving. She ranted for a minute or two and I laughed because it was so true. And so frustrating!

The other side of town always gets the good rain.

Erik and I had taken bets earlier about how it would turn out.

I said there would be nothing.
He said it would rain.

I won. I have simply accepted that God is a tease.

Instead of sitting around waiting for the rain, I suggested we just go to Happy Hour.

So, the dog pictures....

It was an overcast day and those are the best for taking pictures. Katrina wanted to pull out the bubbles for Zoe. Zoe goes crazy over bubbles.

Here's a little "behind the scenes" action before I cropped out the blower (the bubble blower). After 30 seconds, Kat got bored and I talked Erik into being the blower.

Ok, have a great Sunday everyone!!

School Days

Arizona summer sunset

 

School is fast approaching. Soon we will have to start thinking about the dreaded science projects.

We didn't do a damn thing this summer and I have to admit it was kinda nice.

No vacations, no strict schedules of movies and worrying about which size popcorn box to get. The $7.00 size popcorn (I call it the"tub-o-fun" and the people behind the counter always know what I'm talking about) is always the best deal because you get a refill!!

But then you're stuck eating 12 pounds of popcorn and you ALWAYS feel obligated to get the free refill. You could be full, have heartburn and the front of your shirt is covered with grease because the napkins they give you suck and you end up wiping your hands on your shirt, but if you don't get that FREE REFILL, you're wasting money and the Financial Gods are frowning down on you.

I hate it when the Financial Gods are frowning down on me.

I can't tell you how many moms I've tried to pick up in the lobby of the movie theater to see if they wanted to share a "Tub-O-Fun" with us. I even bring extra brown paper bags for the other kids to make sharing easier.

I usually get dirty looks as the moms grab their kids and drag them off down the hall, away from me...

So the kids and I end up with the giant "Tub-O-Fun" and try to eat it by ourselves. Whatever we don't eat, we bring back with us thinking, "Oh, we'll eat it later" but everyone knows eating popcorn at home from the movie theater is gross because it gets cold and stale as soon as you exit the theater doors.

I don't know why that is.

I also don't know why I think $7.00 is still a good deal for popcorn when I can buy mountains of popcorn at the grocery store for $7.00.

Anyway, the point of this post is not about my anxiety over popcorn box sizes, it was to share the layout I made the other day.

Here is Ms. Kat wearing my elementary school shirt from when I was in 1st grade. I don't know how, but the shirt is in excellent condition with no stains or rips or even dry rot.  I added the doll pattern as the background (with gesso and gel) because it's the actual pattern that my grandmother used when making me doll clothes around the same time I wore the shirt.

Kinda cool, huh?

Again, another shining example of how I can't throw things away.

I also added some hand sewing, sequins (because everything is better with bling), rubons and scraps of patterned paper I had sitting around from the last layout I completed (because I can't throw things away).

Thanks for looking and thanks for your comments. :) Have a great day.

Goodwill sucks

I can hear Trent in the other room talking to his father.

"The girls are crying."

"Why?"

"We just got back from Goodwill."

Then I hear Erik shuffling in his flip flops, coming to me in the scrapbook room, "Are you ok?"

"No! I hate Goodwill."

and I do. I've written about this before. 

Sometimes I think if I load the car up as fast as I can and then drive to Goodwill with old toys and outgrown clothes and then drop it off real quick and NOT think about it, it will be easier.

But it never is.

I was making the u-turn to get to Goodwill when I started having doubts. I wiped away the tears and kept driving. I reminded myself that I am not throwing away memories, just toys and clothes. We keep moving forward to make new memories, right?

We quickly got out of the car and gathered as much in our arms as we could. We wanted to get rid of it before we changed our minds and before I started crying again.

"Wanna receipt?"

I grabbed the receipt, said, "Thank you" and got in the car as fast as I could.

I wasn't even out of the parking lot before I started crying.

When I turned out of the parking lot and got on the main road, I heard Katrina crying. I turned around to look at her and she said, "I miss my big horse." Giant tears are rolling down her face.

She picked it out herself this morning as a donate item. It did surprise me when she chose it, but I didn't say anything. I wanted to encourage the cleaning out of her room. Her room is a disaster.

I told her that it would be ok. I told her that she hadn't played with it in awhile and some other little girl or boy would be so excited to find it and take it home.

It would make their day. 

I guess that helped a little. I thought about making a u-turn to take her back and retrieve it but I turned right instead of left.

I kept going until we pulled into the driveway and then finally into the garage.

Only one item made it back alive from Goodwill. At the last moment, we decided to keep Trent's pirate ship kite.

Maybe the next time we take a trip to Goodwill, the pirate ship kite will go. Or maybe I'll make Erik take the dreaded trip to Goodwill. He is so much better at it then I am.

My attachment to "things" has got to end one of these days, right? Geez. I've watched enough Hoarders to know better. 

Pages from last month

I'm updating here with the pages I made last month and maybe in May...

Thanks for looking. :)

Nephew of the Year...October Afternoon, BasicGrey and a really old bread tag from who knows where. A Cherry on Top picked this up for Featured Layout. I was so excited! 

Pride...Authentique and a tag I saved from Trent's hat we bought him just for this Boy Scout camping trip. I've mentioned before how I have problems throwing things out, here is just another example. Oh, and the chipboard stars are Technique Tuesday.

Misty Morning Ride...this is Glitz and Prima.

Lucky Me....another fine example of how I just can't throw shit away (or in this case, return). The red background is a Netflix return envelope. They printed them up special for Mother's Day and I knew I had to use it. By the way, I wonder where that movie I rented is hiding? Oops. There is a bunch of other old stuff on here like Studio Calico, Daisy D's (love, love, love), K&Co, 7gypsies, Foofala (can you believe it?) and I think Scenic Route.

Top Notch Friend...Cosmo Cricket, BasicGrey and really old Sassafras.

First Day...more BasicGrey (cuz you know I hoard that stuff), really old felt Fancy Pants (I hoard that, too) and a left over chipboard Technique Tuesday star that I didn't use on the Pride page above. This layout doesn't have ink smears, gesso or paint. It felt weird when I decided it was done.

I was going to add links to purchase the products I used, but I realized that everything I used (with the exception of the Cosmo) is over three weeks old (and in some cases over three years old) which means it is already old and out of style in "Scrapbook World".

Again, thanks again for looking and I'd love it if you left a comment. Anything. It would be even more awesome if you followed me. Or gave me a job. I'd take that, too.

Summer and the dog

This is the only time you will ever see me in my bathing suit on the internet or maybe even in person. So savor it while you can.

This is how I swim. Yes, it's true. I usually don't have the dog with me but he wanted to hang so he came, too.

I hate the sun in my face. I usually wear a hat but I forgot it.

I hate getting my hands wet. I don't know why but it started several years ago. It's a texture thing or something.  Look, I can hardly stand to touch the dog because he is wet.

Yep, so that's me. You now know something about me that I don't tell very many people. It's only because I like you.

:)

It's hard to take full length pictures of yourself

in the mirror.

I saw this skirt at Target and forced the kids to come with me to the dressing room.

They stood outside and then giggled hysterically when I walked out of the dressing room. I gave them "the look".

The lady behind the counter said, "That skirt looks really cute on you."

I looked at her.

She continued, "I would never tell anyone that just to get them to buy something. I wouldn't want someone to tell me I looked good in something when I really looked horrible."

The kids continued their giggles.

I said to the lady, "Thank you. I'm going to try on that bikini now."

She said, "No, don't"

and then I knew she was telling me the truth and I bought the skirt.

True story.