Hey!

You know what's fun?  Starting a blog and then life gets so ridiculous that you can't even keep up! 

Let's see if I can sum up...

Moved the Dad in with me a few years ago and have been helping him like crazy with doctors appts and in trade, he is home for the Fizzle and animals when I get to travel to all the places.

Had a seriously delicious man enter my life. He's pretty much the best thing ever.

I started school again. The bucket list of getting the degree is coming into full swing here. Fizzle will have no excuse to go once I get this thing completed.

My heart decided to make sure that I was paying attention to it and crapped out this past June. So now I'm LoSo everything.

The Fizzle is 13. Still my everything and still seems like it's me and her fighting the world together to make our lives as perfect and the best we can.

I have new addiction to craft beer. This was assisted by HHBL (hunka hunka burning love) and it's our thing now. We scour the DFW area for the awesomeness.

And yeah... that about sums it up. We are all doing great-ish here, and still breathing.

I'm actually trying to figure out what I'd like to do here with this blog. It was all "Jenn is a Pinterest Maniac" but to be honest I really just spend my time on Pinterest looking up LoSo recipes and advice.  And maybe that's the direction this thing will go. 

I'd love to just test recipes and review them I think... but that requires time and cooking.  I love the cooking... I just need the time!

Until I can figure out the next step... 😗😗😗

It's First Frost Day!!

For most of you in the states, you are either knee deep fall, or enjoying an early winter. In Texas, we have two seasons.  Summer and winter.  Summer lasts from March through November and winter...glorious cold weather lasts December-February. 

Today is what I'd call our first day of winter.  First Frost Day.  It's the day that when you wake up in the morning, you feel the chill in your bones.  You go outside and see the overnight ice on everyone's windshields.  The fields are covered in mist.  The mist hangs ever so gently over the water. And you need to turn your heater on in the car because your legs won't stop shaking.

Clearly, it's my favorite time of the year.

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas!

Jenn Jenn Bo Ben

Taking the good with the bad...

The Bad

My checking account has seen a lot more doctor's entries lately.

I've not been feeling so hot lately and we're trying to figure out the reason.  For sure item # one is

Arthritis

I hate typing that even now.  I feel ridiculously to young to even be even in the same category as people with arthritis.  But really.. years of not taking care of myself is the culprit.

For sure item # two is

Fatigue

I'm just going to blame this on my inability to sleep all my life. On a serious not though... I've NEVER slept as much I have been doing the past 6 months.  I'm not sure why my body is turning against me, but we are delving into some more scary reasonings including

Fibromyalgia

If this is the cause... I'm going to be hating life. I've been pricked and drained of blood so many times now I am surprised I'm not dead. I'll keep posting my "diary" of progress.  It's a bit cathartic to get it out of my system and hopefully share some talking points on my discoveries.

The Good

This weekend though, I had extraordinary energy and only took one nap midday all weekend.  Yes... this is a feat. :)

The cats have a newly redesigned room that Jasmine can also use for artwork. We cooked, we cleaned, I nearly felt like my old self.

Things that Fizzle and I tried this weekend (of course via Pinterest):

Caramel Pull Aparts

Chicken Spaghetti

Chocolate Syrup & Caramel Syrup

Chocolate Mug Cake (I actually took pics of this one)

Conversations with Dad #1

I got an email yesterday from Jasmine's theater teacher wanting to see if the students could have an extra practice this week. So I email Dad and see if he's available to pick her up and, of course, he can. So after school, Jasmine gets home and Dad says to her, "So you have an extra practice for theater tomorrow after school, right?" and she says, "No, that 's on Friday." and they go back and forth on this a few times until my Dad is semi convinced that maybe...just maybe...he did have it wrong.

I get home and make dinner, and talk to Jasmine about the extra practice, to which she agrees is totally happening. I sit down on the couch to watch the voice with dad and he casually looks over to me and says, "You know your daughter is going to be a lawyer." and proceeds to tell me about the conversation he and Jazz had.

I laughed and then said, "Well, Dad you know, she's been raised by a strong willed woman and with very little male influence." He raised his eyebrow and I completed my thought, "and women are never wrong".

Gotta love powered doughnuts....

Jasmine and I had to have a long talk this morning about her apparent crack addict habit. Turns it she was only eating donuts. Oops! My bad!

That is all

Today sucked.  Happy three day weekend.





That is all.

I can't stop making wreaths

So forever now.... I've had the materials to make this:

The Pinterest Link

It has sat in my craft cabinet for at least a year. I just love the fluffiness of it. I'm soooooooo loving this wreath I think that I'm going to use this every non holiday time and just switch out the bows.
So there's the cast if characters:

Here's what was key to this project. A thick marker type pen to stick in the filter. Not only did it help space out the filters, but it also helped get a good amount of glue on each placement.

So off I go. Sticking filters on a foam wreath. Over and over and over again...

Then I get an ingenious idea. Get the girls involved. Soon I had a fortress:

Here we are after one row...and then I realize....this thing is going to be huge!
And here we are after 3 rows

And 5 rows...almost done!

This is where it got hard. I wasn't sure if I should stop at this point, or add one more row. But being that I don't seem to do anything small...

I flip over the wreath and add another row.

Glad I did.... Looooook at that bit of loveliness!!!!!!!!!!!

Well that took forever to post.  Sorry it's been crazy busy at work. :)

Enjoy and definitely TRY THIS!  In total I used 4 packages of filters and about 4-5 sticks of glue...and worth every penny.