More fun in water

On Sunday, we went to Harrison Bay State Park and had some fun in this water.

Isn't it beautiful?!

Here I am with my niece. The bottom was so rocky that we had to wear shoes in the water.

Here we all are socializing! :)
Here's my sister and her son. He loves the water.

See... He is having too much fun!

Fun in the Pool

We had big plans! Both my sisters and their families, us, and my parents met up in Cleveland, TN for a holiday weekend. Since there were so many of us, we got a hotel room. So, with the hotel room there was a pool.

So the first night we were together, we hung out at the pool.

Can you see how much fun my newphew is having? He's jumping up and down in the water.

Look at them all having a great time! Nothing like being with the family! Only wish that the SD crew could be with us.

At the square

We took some time on Saturday to walk around the square in Lebanon. I have a friend who started working at a cool jewelry store and I wanted to see what it was. We checked out a couple other stores where we knew the owners and then went a cabin that they have on display.

Maybe one of these days we'll get around to looking at all the neat antique shops, but we had other errands to run and couldn't spend any more time looking.

A new unit

We had talked about moving to a new place this summer because it's just so unbearable in our house without central air. But, the more we've talked about it, we're not really ready to do the move and even less ready to do all the searching to find a new place.

Our compromise was to talk to our landlord about getting anouther window unit to have in the livingroom. As you've seen in previous posts, (go here) it can get pretty hot in there!

She gave her approval over the weekend so we decided that we'd go for it. We picked up an air conditioner from Home Depot and look forward to getting it installed pretty quick! Hurray for some relief!

Making Lunches

This week, one of Barry's co-workers is "baching" it as his wife and son went on vacation without him. In the past I have sent lunches for him when she's been gone so I did it agan this week. It's a little tough to be creative with lunches for the two of us, but to add him to the mix it makes it even more of a challenge!

Hope we come up with some good stuff for the rest of the week!

Traveling outside the U.S.

Look what I got in the mail today!!!! We are getting excited about our trip to Michigan and then a day trip to visit family in Canada. The last time I had been to Canada, we went to visit my grandma in the nursing home. This time we'll be visiting her grave and seeing my aunt and uncle.

We're still waiting to get the documentation that I provided along with the request for a passport, but expect it to come any day.

Woo hoo!

Several Cards

This card is for a co-worker who just had a grandson born on Wednesday. I used the star paper as the basis for the colors and theme. The circle has a saying - "A brand new little baby boy, to fill our lives and hearts with joy." I cut out a red star and added the sticker that says grandSON.

These next two cards I sort of mimiced the design. I used the orange die cut flowers and used a hole puncher to do the white in the middle. It didn't look quite right and when I shook out the other pieces that were punched, there was this one that had a middle piece cut out. I thought that looked pretty cool so that what I did. I also die-cutted the word friends.

For this one I decided to use some ladybug stickers. Since I had cut out the friends in black, I had to move it over on top of the other papers so that it would stand out on the card. I think the contrast made it stand out pretty good.

I have a friend who just got engaged so I made this card up. I added blue hearts across the middle piece of paper and added the flower with 3d tape. On one of the petals I wrote, "he loves me". Inside I wrote "Congratulations, Adam & Mallory!"

I did this card for a friend's daughter who just graduated from high school. Her school colors were black, purple, and white so I decided to focus on the purple. I added a die cut purple flower with purple brad and some purple organdy ribbon. The sticker is pearly so it stands out. I wrote on it "congratulations."

Should be a good week to share a few nice words and thoughts with friends!

Relief Items for Memphis

We wanted to help with the relief work that our church is helping with in Memphis, so I worked this week to find coupons and sale items so that we could help with it.

Here's a run down on what we have:

5 wash cloths

9 deoderants

3 bars of soap

1 body wash

1 box of tampons

2 pkgs. pads

1 pkg. liners

The total value of the items is $77.71. Can you guess how much we paid? Half price - $37? $25? Actually, we paid $16.46!!!!! That is a savings of 79%. So, for less than $20 we were able to provide 20 items for the relief efforts.

Savings at Walgreens

I know that I've been absent this week and maybe I'll tackle that subject tomorrow, but I'm back today to share about some big savings.

I haven't done a real good job figuring out how to shop at Walgreens and doing their deals with their rewards bucks. To me, I don't have the time to strategize the deals and hope that all the items are at the store to match the list. I did have it pretty much mapped out -- what items I would buy together to get the most reward bucks to then spend on the next transaction, but it was disappointing when we got to the store and they didn't have everything I wanted.
This is the breakdown:
Dove deodorant - FREE
Off Clip-On Refills - $2.99
3 Scotch Tape - FREE
Gillette Fusion ProGlide razor - FREE
2 Kotex - $6.98
Not shown: 2 candy bars $0.78
Tax $3.38
Total: $14.00, savings: $35.38 or 72%

I think that I did a fairly good job. I might try to check out another Walgreens tomorrow and see if I can find a couple of the things that I didn't get tonight, but I'm pretty satisfied with what I got.

I'm trying to get some items together for some relief efforts our church is doing for Memphis. We got some body wash for $0.49 at Target and 5 washcloths for FREE at Kohls. Hopefully we'll get a few more good deals tomorrow so that we have a good bit to donate.

Church

So, you know that we left our church back on March 27 (see here) after quite a long struggle with some challenges there. Initially we had about 3 weeks in a row where we had opportunities to worship at friends' churches, but now we've been going to another church for about 4 weeks. We had the chance to go to their membership class on Sunday and then that evening attend a small group meeting. We're not totally set on this church, but felt like attending the class would help us to know more about the church.

We're trying to figure out where God would have us and how to slowly get back into ministry. Change can be a challenge.

Picture is from here.

Some Couple Pics

We haven't taken a real "couples" picture in a while so last Sunday (before all the cicadas struck!) we set up the camera and took a few pictures. Aren't we so cute?!

More Country Music Hall of Fame

It's almost hard to believe that this was last weekend! The temperatures this weekend were in the high 50s! Pretty crazy compared to the high 80s last weekend. Anyway... Here is the final part to our visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
They had a huge display for Hank Williams & Hank Williams Jr. Here's Barry next to a suit for Hank Williams Jr. and his "Are you Ready for some Football?" suit for Monday Night Football.
I really like Martina McBride - she was the first real country singer that I started listening to when I started dating Barry. I stood next to a dress she wore to receive one award.

Here we are in front of the sign... Wish I knew how to photoshop the pictures together so it looked like we were standing near each other.

Here's a view of the museum from across the street where there was a nice little park.

Since we went I've been able to share this great deal with several co-workers. Hopefully others will be able to share on this great deal too.

Company Picnic

Barry's company decided to do sort of a family event instead of just a fun afternoon for the employees. So, we were supposed to meet up at 6pm at the Sounds stadium for sort of a buffet dinner before the game started at 7pm. As we were driving to the stadium, it started pouring! We got to the stadium and just sat in the car for it to let up. Our dinner was going to be out on one of the patio areas, but since it was raining still we got moved up to the 4th floor.

So, we ate up in the top most floor where there is a restaurant people can sit and watch the game. Then our seats were down right behind the Sounds dugout. It was pretty close to the action! The game was delayed until 8pm. But, we got to sit in the air conditioning for a while. Can you see that the temperature dropped? It was 68 at game time!

The first pitch! The Sounds went on to win 5-2 against the Fresno Grizzlies.

Three of the guys from the company were called up at one of the in-between-the-inning games. They had to show us how they'd wash their hair with Pert shampoo -- dancing to the music. It was pretty comical.

We had a great time even though we only got to see 4 innings.

Birthday Food

It was the 2nd Wednesday of the month, so time to make something good for birthday lunch. I decided to make up some banana bread since we had several bananas and I had gotten walnuts a couple weeks earlier for that very reason.

I also saved a hunk of it to give to my boss since his son loves banana bread.

Here is the wonderful birthday cake that I made for my boss - Oreo Cookie Cake!

It's a butter cake and then a mixture of Oreos & chocolate chips in the middle and then on the top. The topping is just powdered sugar and milk, drizzled over the top.
Hope it tastes good!

Cicadas are here.

Here are the dreaded pests! After a 13 year period of living underground, the crazy things are out in full force. We have them everywhere! Yes, they are on the house, on the garage, on the irises, on the tall pieces of grass, on the trees, on the ground, on the tires!!!!

Every night, Barry has knocked them off the house and then the next morning there seems to be even more! I mowed and it seemed like that brought them out even more. They say if we get rain (as they're predicting for Thursday & Friday) that we'll have even more coming out. Yuck!

Need any extra nuitrition? You're welcome to come by our place and pick up a handful. There's gobs of them around the base of the trees in our yard. The decomposing bodies smell just wonderful, let me tell you.

Another Set of Cards

This card turned out so well! It's for my boss' birthday on Thursday. He's in the Navy and I used the Navy anchor as my guide, but instead of USA, I put his initials. Inside I wrote "Happy Birthday!" It's a 5"x7" card.

Here's a simple card that I did up on the regular 4"x6". I used 4 papers with hot pink & black as my main theme colors. I cut out the heart and wrote "thinking of you". I added my friend's initial.

It's my good friend's birthday Friday. I made up this card using a design that I've used before. I used six papers and added a piece of pink organdy ribbon. I also put a vellum flower sticker on one of the squares. Inside I wrote Happy Birthday.

This final card is for my sister's birthday. I used all sorts of light pink papers. The little cream paper has the word celebrate on it and its definition. I added a piece of pink organdy ribbon and a white M.

Walking Program

So, have you tried to track how many steps you walk in a day? My office is trying to have everybody individually walk 100 miles by July 9. In order to get people to walk, we got pedometers from our insurance company so that people could wear them and keep track of their mileage. I had a couple days last week where in just the work day hours I had walked over 3 miles!

Today, I just had 2 miles, but it was good to keep track and see what I was walking.

Rolls

I found this recipe in the Sunday coupons a few weeks ago and thought I'd give it a whirl. It took about 1 1/2 hours to make them and as you can see...

They turned out wonderfully! They're no Sister Schuberts, but they were yummy!

Saturday Adventure

I had seen that Bank of America was providing free admission to museums the first weekend in the month. We decided to take advantage of this and go to the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum. This was an awesomed deal because each adult ticket was $19.99. We saved $40!

The neat thing that was all throughout the museum is those songs that went gold or platinum. Here Barry's listening to one of the songs.

This was a "record" that was on the floor.

Here's one of the walls that has records on it. There were so many records that there would be no way to count them all. It was pretty awesome.

I'll show some more of our trip later in the week.

Mother's Day card

Here's the card that I made for my mom. I used a template that I had already, but altered it to fit with the papers that I had. The base paper is sort of an orange color that matches the flowery paper. I split up the flowery paper and put a piece of brown paper in the middle. The bottom blue paper has sparkles all in it. I used some blue organdy ribbon across the middle and added a flower, die cut flower, and a pink brad. The inside is just simple, "Happy Mothers Day."

Several Cards

These cards are of varying sizes from large to small. The motorcycle birthday card is 5"x7", the thank you card is 4"x6", and the bottom birthday card is about 2 1/2" x 4" big.

This card is for my friend at work. He loves riding motorcycles. I found the motorcycle stickers (half off at Hobby Lobby!) and got the motorcycle paper at a scrapbooking store. I decided to use the Harley-Davidson symbol to make the Happy Birthday part. I left the inside blank so that the person who's using it can write their own message.
Back in the fall, I received a gift of a beautiful tie-dyed dress from Nigeria. It was sent with one of the men from my office who had been doing some work there. I had been wanting to do something special to say thanks and got my chance! This man is going back again to Nigeria on Monday and is going to take the card with him. This card has 5 papers. I used bubble letters to spell out thanks and then wrote the name of the family in calligraphy. Inside I wrote Acts 20:35, "It is more blessed to give."

This last card is so small, but has a bunch of stuff on it. I used 7 different papers and some blue organdy ribbon. Inside it says Happy Birthday. It's for a co-worker who has her birthday Friday.