Bad Luck Bre

I've been busy, busy, busy!!  Unfortunately, it's not really been with fun stuff either.  Two years ago we bought Sabrina a used Chevrolet Cavalier and it's been nothing but trouble ever since!  Every time we think it's running good, it goes right back down.  I have a friend who's a service technician for Chevrolet and we had him look over her car and fix what the biggest issues were.  We get it back and the very next day:

- a kamikaze deer decided to attack her car in the middle of the night.  It ended with her having a small crack in her windshield and her driver's side mirror ripped off.  The next day, in the pouring rain, her car cut off while she was driving it to work and she couldn't get it to start back up.  We found out that she has a short in her wiring which was draining everything we had just replaced; alternator, battery, starter, etc.  Her car now needs a whole electrical wiring job, which is going to have to wait a little while.  

Only having one vehicle and two adults working and in school means I'm constantly behind the wheel of our car.  I start my day driving at 7 am and don't stop til 9:30.  My housework has fallen behind and my poor projects are almost nonexistent.  Every few days, I get a little break though, like today.  I don't have to drive until 4:30 this evening, woohoo!!  Projects, blog post and housecleaning on my list!

Now Bre has had some exciting things happen lately as well.  She went from blonde to auburn hair and absolutely loves it.  I think it really makes her stand up and look more mature.  She's always looked young for her age and it does make it difficult when she's in classes with adults.

Before:

After:

The blonde picture was taken in July and the auburn picture was taken this week.  Huge difference and she obviously prefers to take selfies in the car :D.

She also became adult and infant CPR certified last night and received her AED and First Aid certification as well.  AND she did her first blood collection almost perfectly! The new hair color and all the certifications really make me wonder where my baby went?  She's really growing up but luckily she's still living at home while she gets her schooling and career started, I don't mind one single bit!!

Regulating

I have a horrible ability to adjust to things easily.  Most people would see this as a good thing and honestly, most of the time it is.  I adapt to new situations without much struggle at all.  It's terrific really but what's not terrific is the fact that my body adjusts quickly as well.  

Over the last 20 years as I've been treated for this and that, I regulate to my doses extremely fast.  My last doctor would switch me between medications every three months because of it.  I thought that since it had been so long since I had been on medication, I'd take awhile this time.

Nope, not even close. 

My RLS is worse.  My muscle spasms are worse.  And the back pain is back.

I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday, but it really sucks!

But onto more interesting stuff.  Monday, Sabrina started her Phelbotomy classes, woohoo!  She's loving them and came home tonight with specimen tubes, needles and a tourniquet.  She's been going around all night practicing with the tourniquet.  Wrapping our arms and pointing out the veins: cephalic vein, basilic vein, median cubital vein.  Then she practices her one-handed removal of the tourniquet.  I'm so happy she's enjoying it that I even volunteered as her first guinea pig.  See?  There's my arm in the picture.  The gorgeous, young thing is Sabrina.  You'd let her practice on you, right?

Saturday night, Zakk stayed with his cousins at his grandparents house and they all went out for pizza.  He and my nephews were so excited to go, they all piled into my brother-in-laws Tahoe way before everyone was ready to leave.  So in Zakk's boredom, he decided to buckle himself into my youngest nephew's car seat and was in quite a hurry to get out of it before I could get a good picture!

The next day while Dustin and my brother-in-law were being nice and doing an emergency brake job on my SUV, Sabrina took Zakk and the nephews to Steed's Dairy.  

Sabrina

Zakk, Corran, and Brennen

After they came home, I snapped a quick pic of the face paintings they had done at the dairy.

Zakk, Brennen, Corran

Today, I finally finished weeding my garden and thinning out the radishes.  I had been almost done on Saturday when Zakk begged me to take him to Grandma's and wasn't being patient at all!  I also trimmed up my basil and since I had lost three broccoli plants, I filled in the bare spots with garlic.  It's really the only thing that can be planted this late in the fall and I wanted a full garden, so now we will have 26 garlic bulbs to dry out and enjoy come summer.

I went out in the early afternoon hoping to avoid the mosquitoes this time but it didn't work out that way.

All that was after taking Dustin to the doctor, I thought he had strep after loosing his voice over the weekend but it was bronchitis.  I'm not happy with him but that's because I'm probably going to end up with it.  

I don't let the kids have soda except for special occasions and the rare treat.  Grandma's doesn't count.  But I drink soda nonstop, trying to keep the kids from developing the habit, and Dustin will pick up my glass and take a long swig off of it.

  

Good thing I don't drink alcohol often and try to disguise it!  I kept telling him to knock it off because he was getting sick and he'd shoo me saying it was just allergies.  So if I get sick, it's completely and totally all his fault!

And what did I do with all the basil I harvested?

I made basil oil and then topped baked chicken breasts with it, tomatoes and mozzarella for some yummy Chicken Caprese.  It was a hit!!  Incredibly easy and incredibly delicious, basil oil is awesome!  I had never tried it but I think it's going to become a staple around here.  In fact, next planting season I will have to at least double the amount of basil plants.  I made mine without straining the basil out afterwards because I like the color and wanted a stronger flavor, but a lot of people like to retain the look of the oil.

Basil Oil

2 cups fresh basil leaves, tightly packed

1 cup good quality extra virgin olive olive

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Blanch leaves in boiling water for one minute.  Remove and place immediately into an ice bath to stop the blanching process. Dry leaves with paper towel.

Place all ingredients into a blender or food processor (I used a smoothie maker just for convenience), pulse for one minute.  Let rest for 30 minutes to let the froth die down then either pour directly into storage jar or strain the basil out, then store.

Oil will last up to one week in refrigerator, but let it warm to room temperature before use.

Baking, Beauty and Bugs

Did well today.  Late last night I ended up making some dark chocolate chip pumpkin bread, which I honestly didn't like but the rest of the family did.  That tends to happen a lot.  I'm a "eat to live" while the rest of the family is "live to eat" and it causes us to have much different tastes at times.  But I like making them things, so I'll keep trying new recipes.

Fridays, my father-in-law and I have a standing "date" where I run him to his Diabetes Dr. followed by lunch.  Had some nice chatting time with him and then we hit Popeye's Chicken afterwards for lunch.  I tried the new Hushpuppy shrimp on his recommendation but wasn't really a fan.  I don't like fried food, but every once in awhile I'll eat it.  Fried shrimp and hushpuppies are both a nice liking of mine, but I didn't like the combination.

I also got out into my garden today.  A couple of weeks ago, I planted green cabbage, garlic, broccoli, radishes, spinach and basil in a raised bed.   I lost a few broccoli plants and one of my cabbages is struggling but other than that, it's growing!  I seriously have a black thumb so I'm surprised it's lasted this long.  I'm doing exceptionally well at growing clover.  If Lucky Charms ever runs out, I can help!  Pink hearts, orange stars, yellow moons, green clovers, ya know?  This afternoon, I thinned my radishes and spinach and pulled all the little tiny clover patches.  In half the garden anyway.  The mosquitoes chased me inside before I could finish.

Sabrina and I also received our favorite shipment of the month: Ipsy!  Below is my haul.  The Warm Love is a pumpkin exfoliate mask.  The Indie Lee is a facial cleanser.  I also received a Tattooed eyeliner in black, Starlooks lip gloss and Rose Berry hand cream in Fig and Rouge.  The eyeliner was full size.  I plan on reviewing them eventually.

Sabrina's haul included Ayres Body Butter, Epice Facial cleanser, the same lip gloss by StarLooks, Volumeyes mascara and Nicole Opi nail polish in On A Gilt Trip.  Both the mascara and nail polish were full size. 

I received my monthly Birchbox as well which included: Vasanti Brighten Up facial exfoliating cleanser, Ellovi butter in vanilla (for body and hair), Ojon Hair Oil Therapy, Jouer Matte Moisture Tint and ModelCo Powerlash mascara.  I'll be reviewing these as well and seeing if I can get Sabrina to review hers.

This evening, it was just me, Sabrina and Zakk in the house.  As a lot of ten year old boys do, Stitches has stinky feet.  So I jumped on the "girl's night +1" bit and did a pedicure on him.  Started with an eucalyptus and spearmint foot soak.  Normally he clips his own toenails, but he's a boy and hates doing it so they always look horrible.  I clipped those, pushed his cuticles slightly back then scrubbed them down with a pumice stone.  I then followed with a peppermint and plum foot scrub.  After he was all rinsed off, I gave him a nice foot massage with Burt's Bees Almond Milk cream, tossed on a clean pair of socks and told him to keep them on til morning.  Zakk has always loved foot rubs so he ate up all the attention big time!

I also finally picked up my used iPhone 4 from my sister-in-law.  I've been fighting getting a touch screen phone and she bought a new one, so handed me her old phone.  I happily accepted it mostly because of the better photos I could get with it, lol.  So, I've been having a little fun playing with it and of course, all pictures in this post were taken with the new phone.  Still don't know if I'll ever turn into an Apple person but we'll have to see.  All in all we had a really nice day. 

Speed Bumps

Sometimes the hardest part of writing is coming up with the title.  A title should be something that completely sums up the entire post.  While thinking of the days events, I recalled an incident that just had me laughing today that involved speed bumps and that definitely applies to this post.

I've been having a couple of decent days lately with my depression but today it started creeping back up on me.  I wanted to just be lazy, but there were a few things that had to be taken care of with Sabrina.  So I sent her off to get the mail while I got ready for the day.  That involved getting dressed in something comfortable, brushing my hair and teeth and throwing on my tennis shoes.  No make up, no great hair style (or even my usual mediocre attempts at styling my hair), nothing fancy.  We got in her car and headed out.  The car is still being sketchy but I refuse to give into it.  Hubbie was home so I knew we had a rescuer, if needed.

We ran around having a great time of it, laughing but still getting things done.  At one point, we pulled into a parking lot and Sabrina was having so much fun going over the speed bumps that five stores past the one we actually wanted, I had to remind her that we had to park if we were going to get anything done.  She wasn't flying over them but going over speed bumps in an SUV isn't the same as doing it in a compact car.  Her little car doesn't handle bumps like my SUV does, oh no, not at all!  So she had some fun with it.

About halfway through our errands, the tiredness hit me.  Full on exhaustion which really made it hard to get through the rest of the day.  We finished up and headed home about thirty minutes before it was time to head out for church.  The kids ended up going by themselves even though I had committed to helping out on Wednesday nights.

We had decided on salads for dinner and didn't run to the grocery store while we were out.  I had two and a half hours to run to the store down the street and pick up stuff for dinner while the kids were at church.  It took me almost that long to get myself going.

I also missed a deadline for a project Zakk had in school.  He was actually supposed to turn it in on Friday and I just haven't been up to helping him with it.  After a call from his teacher today, I had to tackle that as well, past his bedtime.

I'm definitely dropping the ball here and it's so hard not to feel guilty about it.  The guilt only makes the depression worse, but how do you let go of it?  Life is full of speed bumps.  You run full force day after day until one of these little devils creeps up and slows you down to almost a crawl.  I normally have such a hard time slowing down but lately it seems it's just one speed bump after another.  I want back on that interstate, but can't seem to find the right road.

Hubbie's been patient with me for the last two weeks, that ended tonight.  He had gone to bed and got back up a few hours later, upset that I hadn't gone to bed yet.  I'm depressed, I have a houseful of people.  It's nice to have some quiet time without anyone making any demands on me.  He doesn't understand that.  He doesn't know how to handle this situation.  Normally, I'm the one keeping everyone straight, figuring out schedules, making sure everyone's where they need to be when they need to be there.  I'm making sure kids are getting homework and chores done.  I'm the motor behind the wheels and now, this motor is needing a serious overhaul.  I spent two years working full time and going to school full time.  For a year, I was the sole bread winner while he dealt with a job loss and depression of his own.  I was burning my candle at both ends and now, this candle is just burnt out.  We'll get past this of course, just like we always do but this is one speed bump it may take a while to get over.

If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.

– Oprah Winfrey

Family Introduction

Welcome to my crazy family!  This is most of us, missing are my oldest son Austin, his wife Jessica and their daughter, Victoria.  Hoping to get a picture of the ENTIRE family this year.

Top Row (left to right): Sabrina, Hubbie, Me, Dustin and Billy

Bottom Row (left to right): Zakkary and Shalyn

Billy is 19, Sabrina 18, Dustin 16, Zakkary 9, and Shalyn is 8.  

I adopted Austin, pictured holding my first grandchild Victoria, when he was three.  I married his father who had full custody and his birth mother allowed me to adopt him.  Sabrina, Dustin and Zakk are my birth children.  I divorced their father and married my current hubbie who brought Billy and Shalyn into our family.  Hubbie and I have been together for almost six years, married for three.

Stitches holding Victoria this summer.

Now for the children that I nanny.  I've been with the family for about two years and they've definitely become a part of the family.  Sabrina attends high school online so she co-nannies with me affording me the opportunity to attend classes.

Surprisingly, I don't have a clear picture of all three of them together.  Gave them nicknames just so I don't have to worry about anything.  So first up is Ace, 7.  He's a first grader so I really only see him occasionally.

Then we have Flutterby, she just turned 5 and those are her absolute favorite pants in the whole wide world!

Lastly is Bullet, he's 2 1/2.  Nicknamed appropriately, this little guy keeps Sabrina and myself on our toes.

Besides the Basketball team of children, we also have two basset hound/lab mixes.  They're brothers from the same litter but they don't look like it.  Bo is Dustin's dog and he's about the size of a basset.  Harley is my dog and I swear he was mixed with a great dane!  I wanted dogs that we could keep in the house without destroying everything, it didn't quite work out.  Harley's tail takes out anything he walks by!

Bo (mostly white here but now mottled brown/white) and

Harley (mostly black) at three months old.

We also have two cats, both male as well.  We had a third, who my sister-in-law let out of the house accidentally one day and she came back with our oldest male,Tye, as a surprise.  She lucky only had the one kitten but she passed away soon afterwards.  Tye is solid black shorthair and is also Dustin's pet.  

Tye, Dustin's cat.

Bandit the day we found him being held by Shalyn after his bath.

Bandit is the newest addition, one I wasn't wanting but couldn't say no.  He's a black and white with medium fur which belongs to Sabrina.  She had been begging and begging for a kitten for months and I kept telling her we already had a full house.  Well, parked outside the grocery store with ALL the kids in the car on a cold, rainy night, we saw a tiny bundle of fur sitting in the middle of the parking lot.  He was dripping with both rain and blood.  Sabrina ran out of the car, put her hand out and called him over.  He came right to her and he became a part of the household.  Luckily, he just had a small cut on his nose that we were able to take care of easily.

Bandit a couple of days after he joined the household.

Well, that's us, we've definitely got a full house, but it makes for a full heart.

Fashion makeover...in progress

Today, I'm sporting an extremely fashionable, trend setting, old pair of black yoga pants with hot pink hearts going down the leg.  I topped it off with a fashion forward hot pink hoodie, no make-up and hair up in a ponytail.  This is normal work array for me, at the moment.  Here in just a few weeks, that all changes.  I will start a very corporate internship with a CPA firm and my "style" NEEDS to change.

So, I've been doing something I very rarely do...looking for fashion ideas.  Not necessarily clothes, because I'm pretty good in that regard when I want to be, but hair and make-up.  I have thick, wavy hair that reaches down to my waist.  So many things I could do with it, I just don't know how!  When I wear make-up, I normally go with a innocent, barely there routine.  It's seriously time for an update.

I have two classes today, one being a resume writing workshop, so I asked Sabrina for help.  She loves to do hair, especially braids.  I can french braid my hair, but it's so long, my arms are dying before I'm half way through.  So she sat me down, did a french crown and then put it into a fishtail braid:

Told ya, hot pink hoodie, lol.  I think if I teased the top and practiced a lot, I could pull this off in a business environment pretty well.  I need to practice my up-dos as well, that's always a handful.  That's my goal for the next two weeks, to find 5 or 6 styles that I can pull off and make look polished.  Make-up shouldn't be much of an issue.  My only surprise in looking for ideas was that there's fifteen million different types of make-up brushes.  Can't you just use the ones that come in the make-up packages? ;)

Holy Foaming Soap Batman!

While engaging in one of my favorite downtime hobbies, browsing Pinterest, I came upon a DIY tutorial for foaming hand soap. I clicked and followed the link to TheFrugalGirls.com then pinned it to my DIY board. Not wanting to go out and buy a bottle of foaming hand soap just for the pump, I never got around to trying it.

Then my boss bought some for her kids because of the Halloween wrapping. I waited and waited for the kids to go through the soap and finally last week, it happened! They have three bottles of soap at their sink, so it took a little while. Asked my boss if she minded me taking the empty bottle (she probably thinks I'm nuts!) and it sat on my kitchen counter until one of the kids tried to throw it away. I grabbed it and followed the directions with a bottle I had grabbed on my last JoAnn's visit. They had had a sale on their hand soap and Sabrina was with me. Sabrina loves soap, like really, really loves soap. She also can't buy any type of soap or lotion without smelling EVERY SINGLE VARIETY in the store (don't get me started on scented candles!). So while waiting in line, she sniffed every bottle on display and found a coconut one she liked. Mixed it up, using 1/3 of the original soap and we're foaming baby!

 I paid $1 for the soap, 1/3 of it was used in the foaming recipe, this means I now have 3 bottles of foaming soap at $.33 each. This makes my frugal, accountant side absolutely overjoyed! It also means I can now "splurge" on the pretty, more costly varieties such as Bath and Bodyworks.  And now, there's no such thing as wasted soap (notice the mostly empty bottle on the right that I've refused to throw away) as you have to mix water into it.  God, I love Pinterest!

Follow me on Pinterest to see more items on my "to-try" list!