Jiffy Pop and a New Tea Canister

Remember the old Jiffy Pop popcorn? My kids saw it in the store the other day and wanted to try it, so into the cart it went. :) I haven't made it in YEARS, but it was just as good as I remember. Kinda makes you feel like you're sitting around a camp fire. We just popped it on the stove, then enjoyed it. 

It hasn't changed a bit!

I recently gave up coffee (too much caffeine) so I decided to go back to just drinking tea. My grandmother used to make me "milk tea." It was hot tea with lots of sugar and milk. I love flavored teas too. The "Lemon Lift" by Bigelow is one of my new favorites. I wanted something "decorative" to store my tea bags in. I came across this from Hob Lob. I love it! 

Here's a close up. 

Here are a few of my teas inside.

Check out that price! Originally $11.99 on clearance for $2.40! That jumped right into my cart too. :)

And just for fun, here's a quick pic of Holly napping. :) Hope y'all have a great day!

Mother's Day and a Birthday Celebration

I know it's really late to be posting about Mother's Day, but I wanted to go ahead and document it here. :) If you missed my post about our Graduation Party Decor/Food and a Gift Idea for Grads, click HERE We had a family get together at our house to celebrate Mother's Day and a Birthday. We just celebrated both in the same day. Here are a few pics: 

I love these little metal birthday hats!

I didn't have plates to match the napkins, so I just used these. I did open up a napkin and place it on top of a plastic plate to hold the smaller plates. That way it matched a little. :) I always tie ribbon on top of this plate holder too. I keep the ribbon so I can reuse it.

Here's a full shot of the table.

These pretzel hugs were a huge hit! Recipe coming soon...

I loved using these birthday mints on a cupcake plate.

I put more mints in this glass holder.

I'm so glad I picked this caddy up at Homegoods when I found it. I use it all the time at parties to hold forks and plastic cups. I usually tie coordinating ribbon on the handles. It was originally black and I spray painted it Heirloom White.

I wrapped each fork in a napkin and tied it with a piece of jute. Of course I saved the pieces of jute so I could reuse them. :)

I love this little wooden tray. I spray painted it heirloom white too and use it all the time now. 

Of course I had to put my birthday cake on the welcome sign.

Here's the cake I made. I know it doesn't look fabulous or anything, but you have to bake it in a cookie sheet, so there's not really a pretty way to display it. :) 

It's a chocolate sheet cake with cinnamon and brown sugar. So good!

I thought these flowers were so pretty.

 Here are a few more pics...

Well, I guess that's it for now. Thanks for stopping by!

I'm joining these parties: Sunday Showcase Party, Amaze Me Monday, Inspire Me Tuesday, Tuesdays At Our Home, Wow Us Wednesday, Create It Thursday, Grace At Home, Flaunt It Friday, Works For Me Wednesday, Give Me The Goods Monday

Garden Pics

My backyard goes through so many gardening phases during the year but I'm always happy when things really start to bloom in the summer. My garden is in a good "bloom" phase right now, so I wanted to share some pics. To see more of my backyard, click HERE

The butterfly bush is going strong. :)

Here's one of the vitex trees.

Vitex blooms up close

The vitex is virtually maintenance free. It thrives in our heat.

This yellow esperanza blooms all summer long.

I finally found a spot where the blue plumbago is happy. :)

The orange esperanza does just as well as the yellow one.

I've had these begonias for years. They just keep coming back year after year. 

I finally had to replace my petunias. They just couldn't take the heat. The yellow one is melampodium, on the bottom of the plant stand is ageratum, and in the pot to the right is angelonia.

We also planted a white angelonia.

Jett, Cal, and Jim are enjoying the warm weather. :)

I'm trying this scaevola in the window box. We'll see how it does in the heat. 

The knockout roses are still doing great!

Hope y'all enjoyed the pics! Now I can't wait for the crepe myrtles to start blooming. :)

I'm joining these parties: Cottage Garden Party, Sunday Showcase Party, Amaze Me Monday, Inspire Me Tuesday, Tuesdays At Our Home, Wow Us Wednesday, Create It Thursday, Grace At Home, Flaunt It Friday

A Dozen Random Things About Me...

Since I'm a new blogger, I thought I'd do a post like this so you can learn a little more about me. :) An alternate title for this post could have been "10 things about me you could have gone the rest of your life without knowing." :) 

1. I'm left handed. (obviously these aren't going to be interesting things. :) Actually, my hubby and I are both left handed, but all our kids are right handed. Go figure.

2. I'm TERRIFIED of frogs. I can't even touch a stuffed animal frog. Nope, not gonna happen. It's so bad, I should probably seek professional help. Seriously. 

3. I can only eat a banana the FIRST day I bring it home from the store. It has to still have a little green on it. After the first day, forget it. I'm not touching it after it's gone bad. To me, "gone bad" means "no more green on it." 

4. I NEVER leave the house without makeup. Like, never. I don't really even go out to the mailbox without makeup on. LOL! In 14 years of doing school drop offs/pick ups, I've never gone through the line without makeup. How silly is that? :)  When I was in college, I lived in a newly renovated dorm and they were constantly having problems with the fire alarms. They would go off at all hours in the night. Every single time it went off in the middle of the night, I'd sneak into the bathroom and quickly apply a little make up before evacuating the dorm. It's not as bad as it sounds...we knew it wasn't a real fire because the alarms went off all the time. At least we hoped it wasn't a real fire. :)

5. Every single Thursday night in our house is "Fend For Yourself Night." Meaning everyone has to fend for themselves for dinner. I've heard some people call it "YOYO" night for "you're on your own." I LOVE Thursdays because I don't have to cook. Also, every single Friday is "Pizza Friday." I love not cooking on Thursday and Friday. 

6. I love movies. I love everything about them. I'd love to be a fly on the wall watching how a movie is made. I'd be in absolute heaven sitting in on meetings about everything from music selection, casting, editing, location scouting, etc. I can watch the same movies over and over. I LOVE to re-watch a movie while listening to the commentary and watching all the extras. Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors and that's not just because he's a fellow Texan. :)

7. I'm a huge animal lover. I can't stand to see an animal (or a person for that matter) in pain. Those Sarah McLachlan SPCA commercials get me every single time. I immediately tear up. When I was little, I was always bringing (sometimes dragging) strays animals home, all the while insisting they "followed" me home. :) I think my mom knew better. Ha!

8. I love to travel. If I won the lottery, I think one of the first things I'd do would be to travel all over the world. My oldest son shares my love of travel. I'd love to just drop everything and take off for London or Paris. Or both. Yes, definitely both. And Italy. 

9. When I was in first grade, I decided I wanted to be called Jan. (as in Jan Brady from The Brady Bunch...LOL!) I just decided this one day all on my own. When my teacher called on me, I didn't answer because she called me "Lisa" and not "Jan." This eventually led to a parent/teacher conference. :) They decided I had to answer to "Lisa" and I had to put my real name on my papers, but then I could put Jan in parenthesis next to it. This was acceptable to me. :)

10. I've always wanted to live in California. Ever since I can remember. I think it's partly because it's so hot here in Texas and California has such pretty weather. Whenever I'm in Cali, I'm so content and happy. I'm always going on Realtor.com and searching towns all over Cali. Wishful thinking, I guess.

11. On any given day, you can find me in yoga pants (which I've never actually done yoga in) a t-shirt and  Reef flip flops. I do dress up a bit when I go out shopping, etc. "Dress up" means jeans, a nicer t-shirt and flip flops with a necklace and earrings. I almost always wear jewelry when I leave the house.

12. I have a habit of abbreviating words. Like for instance, sometimes if I'm at Starbucks, I'll text my son and say "SBUX?" He knows this means I'm at Starbucks and I want to know if he wants anything. Another example is "JITB" that's short for Jack In The Box. When I write half and half on my grocery list, it looks like this "1/2 & 1/2."  You get the picture. Well, I often buy a 5 pound bag of potatoes at the grocery store. (you can see what's coming, can't you?) :) I always abbreviate it like this "bag of pot." I JUST realized that for about 20 years, I've had "BAG OF POT" on my grocery list!! LOL! Too funny! I can't believe it took me so long to realize what that looked like. Ha!

Are you still awake after all that boring randomness? Ha! If you've made it this far, then God bless you! I'd love to hear some new things about y'all too. And y'all know I can't post without a pic, so here are just a few. I pulled these from my phone, so they're not the best quality. These were all taken back during Christmas when we first got our kitten, Holly.

Here she is IN one of the trees. :)

And here she is IN one of the other trees. She would NOT stay out of them. It obviously didn't bother me too much because I always stopped to take a pic before getting her down. LOL!

Here she is enjoying herself Christmas morning. She had a ball with all the wrapping paper. :)

The Laundry Room Tour

Time to show some pics of the Laundry Room. It's really small, so this will be quick. : ) You can see the Bathroom Tour HERE,  the Family Room Tour, HERE,  the Kitchen Tour,  HERE, and the Dining Room and Foyer Tour,  HERE All pics enlarge when clicked. Edited to add: To see additional pics of our laundry room with the new dryer, click HERE

I got all the baskets at JoAnn's on sale.

I added some labels to the baskets.

Those flower prints were $1 at Walmart and the frames were $2!

So, that's the laundry room. Thanks for stopping by!

~Lisa

I'm joining these parties:Amaze Me Monday, Sunday Showcase Party, Inspire Me Tuesday, Tuesdays At Our Home, Wow Us Wednesday, Works For Me Wednesday, Create It Thursday,  Grace At Home, Flaunt It Friday, Weekend Wrap-Up Party, Friday Flair, Sundae Scoop, Serenity Now

An "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" kind of day...

Did you ever have one of those days where one thing just leads to another and you soon forget what it was you were trying to do in the first place? I call these days "if you give a mouse a cookie day" after the popular children's book of the same name. Basically, the book talks about if you give a mouse a cookie, he'll ask for a glass of milk to go with it, then he'll want a straw, then he'll want a napkin, etc. etc. 

Sometimes I start out attempting to accomplish one single thing, but soon find myself taking care of everything else that comes up and I never really accomplish what it was I first set out to do. Case in point:

The other day, I ran a bunch of errands in the morning. I came home and desperately wanted a cup of tea, but I had a ton of other chores to do. I'm one of those people who can't relax and enjoy anything unless all my work is done first. :) I honestly CAN'T relax until ALL my work is done. I just can't. I can't sit on the couch and enjoy a movie if I know there's laundry to be done, floors to be swept, etc. 

So, before I had my cup of tea, I decided I would very quickly put a load of towels in the washer. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, here's how it went down:

I went into the laundry room to put the towels in the washer. Then I noticed the glass container that I keep my laundry soap in was almost empty, so I decided to refill it from the box. After I refilled it, I went out into the garage to recycle the laundry soap box. While I was in the garage, I noticed the garbage can was still out by the curb. So, I went out to bring the garbage can back in the garage. While I was bringing the can back in, I noticed I hadn't put the new sticker on the can. (We pay for garbage pick up quarterly, and they mail us stickers to put on our cans so they know we've paid the fee.) 

I then went inside to grab the new sticker to put on it. After I put the new sticker on, I went back inside to throw away the backing of the sticker. When I opened the kitchen garbage can, I noticed it was pretty full, so I decided to empty it. As I was taking the garbage out, I happened to glance into my car and saw my broken sunglasses on the front seat. 

That reminded me I needed to get new ones. So, after I went back inside, I made a quick note to myself to stop by the store and get some new ones. Then I thought of a few other things I needed at the store too, so I  sat down and made a big list. One of the things on the list was bottled water. That reminded me I needed to pay the water bill. 

So, then I went online to pay the water bill. While I was paying the water bill, there was a commercial for a yummy looking dessert. That reminded me I needed to figure out what I was going to make for a family celebration we were having that weekend, since I was in charge of the dessert. 

I went to get my dessert cookbook out of the pantry. When I opened the pantry door, I noticed our kitten had gotten in there and chewed through her brand new bag of kitten chow. Why she does this, I don't know. She had a full bowl of food two feet from there. :) So, then I had to transfer the kitten chow to the cereal container that I keep her food in. She heard the clinking sound of her food being poured and came running. She looked up at me with that "I really want a kitty treat" look on her face, so I of course had to get out her treats and give her one. Or two. :)

About an hour later, I finally sat down on the couch and realized I never got my cup of tea. :)

Do you ever have days like this? Please tell me you do. I'd hate to think I'm the only one who does this on a regular basis. :) 

And just because I hate to post without a pic, here are a few:

Here are the new sunglasses I got to replace the broken ones. Aren't they cute? :)

I think I already posted most of these on Instagram (chels70) but I wanted to share them here too.

Here's Holly in her "Halloween Cat" pose. Sorry it's kind of blurry, I took it with my phone and didn't have time to focus because I was trying to catch her in this pose. Ha!

I don't know what this was about. LOL!

Do y'all have a Menchie's in your area? Oh my goodness...it is so good! This was their pink lemonade mixed with coconut. Yum!

Y'all have a great day!