New Cards . .

The Week before last I sat down and made a few cards, We have a lot of birthdays in August and September so I had to get some made, I really do want to get a back-up of cards made but I never do seem to be able to make enough in one sitting for that..Hee!

This one is my first time using my Stamping Bella stamp that I ordered. I don't have any good markers yet to color my bella's all pretty but I love the way this card turned out :)The Birthday stamp and paper are all CTMH, my most favorite scrapbooking company.

This one is using CTMH stamps and Paper.

This one is using CTMH Stamps and paper. This one was fun to make, I used versa nark ink and embossing powder to make the flowers white and a sponge and my CTMH inks to color in the flowers and background, I look forward to doing another background like this again :) Love the way it turns out :)

Grocery List - Menu Planning

Mondays are normally my grocery shopping day. The Monday following payday (like this one) is the heaviest one. The cost of groceries have gone up so much that I've had to cut down to frugal yet yummy recipes. So I've been doing a lot of searching online and different places to fine low ingredient, cheap ingredient recipes. We are a family of four and we live on one income so we do live by our budget. If I spent more money on groceries than we allot for that means no fun extra's. So I try to keep within the grocery budget.

So I'm meal planning this morning and after the baby finishes her nap we'll go grocery shopping before Big Sister get's home. So I thought I would share my menu plan with you this week. You may already know I keep a Recipe Blog if any of these are well liked by the family they will wind up posted on there maybe even with a decent enough picture, I always like to see what things look like before I make them but my camera is a cheap one and I'm no photographer.

So here are the recipes I have on my grocery list to make this week!

Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloaf - This is one of the Recipe Challenges for this week.

Crockpot Tuna Casserole

Garlic Pizza With White Sauce - I'll be trying this Pizza Crust Recipe

Chicken & Rice Casserole - another Recipe Challenge recipe for this week

Beef & Rice Casserole

Chicken & Linguine In Creamy Tomato Sauce - Made this one once before

Dawn's Layered Chicken Casserole - Made a million times for years.

Only two recipes I've made before, Something has to really be excellent for us to eat it more than once a year because I try a bunch of new recipes every week.. Keeps it from getting boring for sure :)

Guess that's it for now :)

The Bathroom :)

If you've been reading any previous blogs you may remember that we were doing a lot of work in our bathroom. It certainly turned out to be a lot more than we bargained for but you have to expect that with these older houses. Jake and I did everything ourselves. We know nothing about home improvement. But we're learning as we go along, This house needs a lot of work to give it an updated look and we can't afford to pay anyone to do the work :)

So I present to you the bathroom... before . .

and the bathroom at present time :)

One of my favorite things about the bathroom besides the lovely new paint color is this :)


I'm an organizing junkie of sorts, I like for things to look and be orderly, clutter brings me down so I love these things for the bathroom :)

Twitter

Twitter is so neat! I had to give in and see what all the rage was about... If you twitter add me and if you don't I really wish you would :) So I could follow you :)

http://twitter.com/MissMandiGirl

Casey's Visit

2 weeks ago we had Jake's friend Casey fly in to spend a week with us. Jake and Casey have been friends since early childhood. They were video game buddies growing up. I'd met Casey before in Washington, we were all very excited about his visit. We did have such a great time while he was here.

He flew in on Tuesday, The girls and I had planned to ride up to Oklahoma City with Jake to pick Casey up, but the night before Ashley was up sick all night, It must have been something she ate because she seemed fine the next day.

Jake and Casey had tickets to see Weird Al in Concert on Wednesday night in Grand Prarie, TX so we planned it to be a family trip. We reserved us a hotel room and I made plans with my sweet friends in Arlington to join them in their girls night out. Me and the girls had a great time. Jake and Casey enjoyed the concert.

Thursday morning we ate breakfast, swam at the hotel and loaded up. We decided to go in the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. It was so neat there, There was also a wax museum and a mirror maze that we did. We spent about 4 hours there and everyone really enjoyed it :)

After leaving Grand Prarie we took Casey to Frisco Texas to our favorite mall and we loafed about there all day then headed home, We had a great time.

Friday & Saturday were lazy days and Casey went home early Sunday morning. We had a such a great time and look forward to him coming back to visit again someday :)

Here are some photo's from our fun time....

This Weather . .

Oklahoma Weather is well known for it's crazy, unpredictable and ever changing weather but this is insane, This was an article in our Ardmore newspaper from 3 weeks ago, The past two weeks, It's been raining!! It's insane! We're "supposed" to get the rain back in spring, when we hardly got any. It has cooled things off considerably though, we're staying around the 70's. It will be nice to see the Electric bill go down :)

I haven't posted in forever I know and I have a ton to post, but don't see posting about everything in one blog, so there will be several :)

Mandi

Bloggin Crazy

I think what has happened with my Blogging is that I have taken to reading so many blogs that I forget to post to my own! BAD Mandi! I am really addicted to crafty blogs though and there are so many good ones out there I just love it... and with my 3 hobbies (knitting, sewing & Scrapbooking) that means even MORE blogs to chose from, They are a great inspiration though! Seriously.

So we've had a lot going on around here (and yes I do mean other than blog surfing LOL) We have some special company coming on Tuesday. Jake's friend Casey from Washington is coming down to spend a few days with us, He'll arrive on Tuesday and we'll pick him up in OKC from the Airport. Then come home, Then on Wednesday Morning we'll head to Dallas (Grand Prairie really) Texas. Jake and Casey have tickets to go see Weird Al (insert eye roll) in concert and while they are there me and the girls will be meeting up with my retreat Girlfriends for their normal girls night out for dinner. I'm really looking forward to it and everyone meeting the girls :) We have rented a room to stay in on Wednesday night and have a lot of piddling planned for our trip home Thursday who knows where the road will take us on the way home, We're open for anything. The rest of Casey's visit is planned to be filled with lots of visting and playing the WII. . .

Speaking of the WII we are pretty excited around here about a big upgrade we made. It was badly needed.... A New TV!! Our old TV didn't have a very good picture and we were just waiting on it to go out.. So here is our entertainment center before. . .

and here is our entertainment center after.... wowoowowowowo BIG TV :) We're so happy to have a nice TV to play the WII on and watch movies, Plus getting rid of that old entertainment center made the living room look bigger...

If you have any young girls in the house you probably already know all about the Hannah Montanna 3-D concert that aired last week on the Disney channel, That day I had been gone to a small crop in Nebo Oklahoma. I was looking forward to coming home and watching the Concert with Ashley. She had been so excited about it. HM is so cute and I love her music :) Here we are with our 3-D glasses.

If you've been following me you know we've been working on redecorating our bathroom and hall, we are almost finished and I will have pictures of that soon. But I had taken everything out of the hall closets to paint them and was astonished to see all of the blankets that family and friends have hand made for me and the girls and Jake even has a few in there... Here they are 3 stacks of them even!!! I love handmade gifts.

Something else new and exciting in our house (but only to me) is my very first order with Stampin Bella stamps. I just LOVE these stamps, They are adorable, We've been so busy putting trim down in the hall and bathroom and getting ready for the Garage sale we're having tomorrow I haven't even had a chance to mount and play with them!!!! I can hardly wait!

I have been finding a little time for some knitting, I managed to finish this dish towel, it's called the Leftovers Dishcloth :)

I think that's it for today, I need to get the girls their lunch and call AT&T about some HD DVR action for the new TV :)