Convert Me

Many of you out there are very passionate about your slow cookers.  Some of you even run entire blogs dedicate to rocking the crock-pot.     I am clearly missing something.  

I am of the opinion that they are perfectly useful to keep stuff warm and super handy for holding nacho cheese at parties, but not as a great culinary cooking device.  My experience w/ crock pot food is that it has been somewhere between truly awful to merely edible, but never have I eaten anything made from a crock pot that I would rave about.

However, I struggle with finding the time to make dinner when the kids are home after school.  Especially since many days, I am driving them around and miles from my kitchen. In desperation,  I have given in and finally bought a slow cooker.  

For my first attempt I made 6 Sisters Cashew Chicken.  The chicken had a great texture, but it was way to salty (my husband wouldn't eat it).

 Do you have any amazing slow cooker recipes? Then please share by either linking them up or leaving them in the comments. Pretty please.

Mommy Command Station

#13 on my 40 by 40 list was to create a "Mommy Command Station".  

I wanted to put it in the little hallway between the laundry room and the coat closet on the back wall of my kitchen (hardest spot in the house to photograph by the way). I've been collecting ideas for months (check out my Pinterest board here  if you're looking for ideas too) and finally finished it up this weekend.

1. Welcome sign (the little circle thing changes each month, but currently we are in the middle of birthdays)
2. Allowance Jars 
3. Dry Erase Menu Board
4. Calendar
5.  Baggie full of Box Tops (don't we all have these in our kitchens?)
6.  Thingy from Ikea-I can't remember what it's called, but it was cheap and a great way to hang the kid's art work etc.
7.  This is just a 2x4 that I painted/ glazed and then added some hooks.  The idea is that the kids will stop dropping all their stuff by the front door, but they aren't quit trained yet. 

I just notice there is a Yankee's hat on top of a Red Sox sweatshirt that would make both teams cringe, but I'm just happy they aren't on the floor.

On the opposite wall, I hung some wire baskets that I found for $9.99 at TJ Maxx.  Each kid has a little mailbox to keep homework, notes, permission slips etc.

I also made a giant ruler growth chart and hung it at the end of the hall.  

Hopefully this will help us all be organized.  

16 more goals to finish up and I have a little less than 3 months to pull it off.  I never blogged about it, but I also finished up my 30 days of no sugar last week.  After the first few days it wasn't really a hard at all.  I'm addicted to sweets and I need to come up with some sort of life long plan.  I want to try and limit it to special occasions, but haven't decided how I am going to define "Special Occasions" yet.

To see where I link up or to add your party, please click here.

Putting Pinterest to the test: Natural Drain Cleaner

 I've heard the average person loses about 100 hairs each day.  I think about 99 of mine end up going down my bathroom sink, and so it was no surprise when my drain started to drain a little slow.  

I've seen natural drain cleaners all over Pinterest and I decided to give this one from Crunchy Betty a try.  

I was doubtful it would work.  I became even more doubtful after I poured baking soda and vinegar down the drain and it went from being a slow drain to a completely clogged drain. My sink filled up with nasty black stuff and sat that way for 30 minutes.

  I was all ready to go to the store to buy some Draino, when I decided to see what would happen if I pulled the plug up and down a few times.  Whoosh-it all finally went down the drain.  Yippee!  

It was a little slower, but way cheaper and safer than chemicals and I so I will use this method again. 

To see where I link up or to add your party, please click here.

Features!

Thanks so much for all of you that participated in any of my 55 linky parties!  I tried really hard to visit every one's projects and I have been so inspired by all of your awesomeness.  

Here are the final features:
 Grandmother of the year goes to Gramma Luvlee.  She puts on the amazing camps for her grand kids that are truly amazing-this is a lady that knows how to stick to a theme. The latest theme is Reality TV shows, but she's also done pirates, Egypt, Willy Wonka, Toy Story...  You should each take an hour or two and scroll through her blog.  I may steal an idea or too for some b-day parties.  



I love every single little fancy detail in this divine Fancy Nancy Party from Vixen Made: 


  

And the most viewed link in the final party was:

Mason Jar Witches by Smart! School House Inc.

Homemade Hauntings: 26 Projects, Recipes, and Tutorials for a Happy Halloween

My blog has had 666 followers all week, so I guess a Halloween post is appropriate.  
I do worry what kind of effect having 666 followers will have on my upcoming craft projects.  If I start to have a bunch of crafting fails, I may have to start begging for followers to break the curse:)

Here is a round-up of all my Halloween Posts. If you click on the name next to the picture it will take you to the original post.

PUMPKINS
(I love pumpkins because you can leave them up until after Thanksgiving.)

Dollar Store Topriary

3-D Paper Pumpkins  

Fall Mantel   

No-Sew Pumpkins  

    Corn Husk Pompoms   

(yes I realize these aren't pumpkins)

Costumes

Trick-or-treating at the White house/Beauty and the Beast  

  The Blue Man Group  

 Mary Poppins   

 Click HERE to see 12 years of crazy costumes.

DECOR

Harry Potter Books  
  Spider Pocket Pillows      
 Candy Corn Candle Trio   

  Giant Spider Web

 Bat Pillow

Bat Invasion 



Batty Lights

Candy Corn Pillow

House-O-Latern

FOOD

Mummies toes, alien eyeballs, magic potion, witches fingers and monster's q-tips. 

Cheesy Candy Corn

So clearly, I may like Halloween a little too much.

To see where I link up or to add your party, please click here.

A Hairy Dilemma

Since we've moved back to Texas I have not been able to find someone I like to do my hair.  Since it's hot and humid and I wear it in a pony tail most days this is not a problem.  However, some days a girl just wants to look pretty. I found the above on pinterest and thought it might work on my hair.

I printed it out and took it with me to show the lady.  I just picked a random salon, but was hopeful when my stylist had long thin hair.  I figured, maybe she would be my kindred hair spirit. 

 She was charming and pleasant, and I won't have to wear a paper bag on my head (and it's better than what I started with), but not what I asked for:

Not even close

I am a big chicken and when she asked if I liked it, I just smiled, and paid her-even tipped her.  I was afraid to either hurt her feelings or end up with something that I would actually need a paper bag to cover up?



Survey time: What do you do when you get a bad haircut?

Will Craft for fun.... finale

So one of my personal blogging pet peeves is when a blogger goes on and on with a sob story about why they are giving up a particular part of their blog or giving up blogging all together.  However, I also don't like it when a blog I follow suddenly goes MIA w/out any explanation. Worse is when bloggers leave vague cryptic reasons for their absence.  Here's my best attempt to avoid all three:


1. I feel it is my duty as a hostess to visit and leave a comment on each project linked up, but I have been failing miserably and don't expect myself to do any better in the near future.
2. My life is crazy busy with many wonderful things and a lot of driving my kids around.
3. Blogland has an overabundance of linky parties 
4.  I am not retiring from blogging, just as the hostess of regular linky parties, so please still stop by and visit me.

Most of all:
I have so appreciated each of you for showing up each week and sharing your creativity with me.  I have been inspired by all of you and plan on still visiting all of you on your blogs on a regular basis.

So now let's move on the the Finale of Will craft for...Fun!
The most viewed link from last week:



Crafty in Crosby made this awesome Halloween wreath.  I love everything about it.

Snickety Things-could this Jessie be any cuter?

The Messy Roost must share my love for birds.  

I'll post my favorites and the most viewed next Tuesday.

Manly Things

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Buffalo Wild Wings for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Todays post is all about my middle child.  He is an all around great-great and his 2 favorite things in the world are:

1. Football

2. Chicken Wings

After years of begging, we finally let him sign up for tackle football and seemingly overnight he turned into a super fan.  Instead of cartoons and kid comedies, he started watching the sports channels.  Although he struggled with learning his vocabulary words each week, he had no time spouting off endless statistics about the game. It was liked he turned into a man over night. My husband was thrilled to finally have someone to talk football with and I was excited to no longer be that someone.

About that same time, he develop a love of chicken wings.  No more kid's meal for my boy, he wanted a big 'ole plate of wings.  

I can make my boys very happy, by driving the family down to our local Bufflao Wild Wings to watch a game.  The boys can watch football and everyone gets to eat what they want. This means no whinning.

Did you know that while they do a fantastic job serving up some delicious wings they have a full menu-burgers, sandwiches, salads, kid's meals and even desserts?  They best part is that I don't have to cook or do the dishes afterward.Protect the football. Get to B-Dubs

 

Football season is here and Buffalo Wild Wings is ready for it with lots of big screen tv's and great food.