Getting to know me....

I am so outgoing and don't mind sharing information, but every so often I say something that totally shocks the people around me. I get comments like "I am so surprised." or "I would never have guessed that about you." So I decided to do a blog about things that might surprise you about me if you knew them. So here it goes...

MUSIC

I am well known for my love of country music. Everybody that knows me knows me as a die-hard country music fan. But did you know that one of my favorite songs is Paradise City by Guns N' Roses.  And that I absolutely love any song sung by Bon Jovi. Yes, I was a fan of the Big Hair Groups of the 80's. 

On the other hand, I love Beethoven and have times at home where I put on a classical piano music while I clean house. 

My all time favorite song of any genre is Take it to the Limit by the Eagles. 

BOOKS

I love to read. Romance novels are my greatest love. All my reader friends swap book recommendations for our favorite romance novels. But if there is a new John Grisham book out, it goes to the top of my MUST READ list. I am a true fan of his and have read almost everyone of his books. Even though I love romance novels and Danielle Steel is the Queen of romance novels but I have only read two or three of her books ever.

TELEVISION

I don't watch a lot of television. But when I do, it is usually The Voice or a comedy. But I love to watch American Pickers, Counting Cars and Pawn Stars. Over the past month or so I have become addicted to a show that my granddaughters watch. It is geared to around the 10 year old age group, but one of them had it on and I was mesmerized. So much so that I have my DVR set to record every single episode and I take a couple of nights a week and do a marathon to get caught up on what is happening on it. It is called Maco Mermaids. I just love it.

MOVIES

As with books, I like my movies to mostly be romances. Dirty Dancing, Sweet Home Alabama and The American President top my list of favorite movies. But I some older ones I own that I just love. My all time favorite movie ever, ever, ever is Summer Magic starring Hayley Mills. I watched it when I was younger and it will always be my favorite. But I also love the old musicals like Oklahoma and South Pacific. My favorite musical ever was Lil Abner. And my favorite old movie was Spencer's Mountain with Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara.

FOOD

I am a picky eater. But I love comfort food like pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs. I adore fried chicken with mashed potatoes, brown gravy and corn on the cob. And I could eat breakfast for supper every night. But my favorite meal is hamburger browned and mixed in with Velveta cheese, milk, butter and noodles and a big skillet of fried potatoes with onion, garlic powder, and black, red and white pepper on them. And normally I never put pepper in my food, but fried potatoes, I do. 

FLIP FLOPS

If you follow my blog or are friends with me on Facebook or know me in "real life" you know of my love of flip flops. I patiently count the days starting in February and watch the weather daily, just so I will know when we will peak 55°. Then I start bringing them out. And come October/November/December I start dreading the day I have to drag out shoes and socks. But do you want to know the truth? I would rather be barefoot than to even wear flip flops. Flip flops are as close to barefoot as you can get, but if I am sitting at my desk or if I go outside at home these little tiny feet of mine are happiest if they do not have to have anything on them at all. When I was little, it would take longer to wash my feet that it would to do the rest of my body and wash my hair. Simply because I ran around and played outside barefoot most of the time. I love not wearing shoes. It is that simple. 

An Inspirational Sunday...

And the winner is......

Congratulations to Ms. Terri D. You are the winner of an Easter Egg Wreath. 

I will contact you for your mailing address and get it out on Monday. 

Thanks for all your comments!

East Tennessee Weather

I am currently in a love/hate relationship with Mother Nature and my Weather Man. I believe they are in a conspiracy to insure my flip flops stay in their winter storage. Here is what we live with in East Tennessee.

Cold, sunny, sunnier, rainy, stormy, bring on the snow and then back to warming. 

Dear Ms. Nature, 

Seriously. Pick a season and stick with it. There are FOUR seasons every year. That is annual. That is a few months at a time per season. Nowhere can I find a rule that says you must inflict all four seasons in one week. I need to get my flip flops out and you need to cooperate. Thank you.

Signed, 

The Queen of Flip Flops

How to make an Easter Egg Wreath

Hooking up with Friday Foto Friends at Breathing in Grace

The Easter Egg Wreath is very simple and fun to make. You need one dozen plastic egg, a roll of ribbon and a spool of floral wire. Most of this can be found at a Dollar Tree or Walmart. It is less than $5.00 for your first wreath and many of you probably are like me with tons of ribbon to choose from already. make sure the eggs are the ones that have little holes in both ends.

Separate your eggs and lay them on your work surface. A small wreath will take 8 eggs, a medium takes 10 and a large takes 12.

Cut off a length of floral wire (you can just work with it right from the spool, but it is awkward having to keep unwinding it. I usually cut about a yard. You will have some excess, but a yard will give you more than enough for any size.

Make a big loop in the end to keep the eggs from slide off one end as you put them on the other. 

Then start feeding the wire through the eggs. Make sure you do the eggs all int he same direction. I go through the bottom (larger) half of the egg first.

Pull it through....

...and come out through the hole in the top of the small part of the egg.

Snap the egg closed.

Continue until all the eggs are on the wire. You can do your color pattern however you want or you can do all one color. It is up to you.

Pull the ends together and tie the wire in a real tight knot. I tie it in 3 or 4 knots to make sure it is good and tight.

Cut off a length of your ribbon.

Trim the ends of your wire, leaving enough room to make a loop to hang it. Tie the ribbon around the wire at making a bow. If you are a great bow maker you can do any bow that hits your fancy.

Then come down part of the way on each side and tie a small piece of either matching or coordinating ribbon between a couple of the eggs. 

Here is the end result for the 10 egg wreath.

My thoughts on Thursday....

I don't know if you are aware or not, but I absolutely love hot dogs. Imagine my excitement when I discovered the other day that Burger King (which is 2 minutes from my house) now carries hot dogs. And I must admit, for a burger joint they do a pretty good hot dog. 

I don't know if it is because I just never noticed or I never thought to look, but did you know Pillsbury has the cookie dough roll in peanut butter? I usually make mine from a package mix and then fuss the whole time about how hard it is to mix up good. But oh the roll! The cookies are perfect to make and so super simple. Taste as close to homemade as anything I have tried. Definitely added this to a must have on my list. 

Do you remember when I bought my cute little tray and fixed it up for Valentine's Day?

Well, I decide to change out the dish cloth and heart and little chicken. I am keeping the flowers because they are very "springy".

I added a yellow and white checkered towel I have had for years. Put a few white fake eggs in my little basket and added a bunny I found for $1.00 at the Family Dollar store. 

I am loving the result. I mentioned the other day that I had made an Easter egg wreath for a friend. I make these for somebody every Easter. Tomorrow I will post the tutorial. I haven't done a giveaway on here for years. I am going to make one for one of my readers. Everyone who leaves a comment today or tomorrow will be registered to win one. Drawing will be Saturday morning and I will announce the winner then.

Blogging like a magazine cover today.....

If I were a magazine cover this morning, I would be displaying this lovely lady in her beautiful dress strolling on the beach along with a byline of how wonderful and stress free her life is and what she does to keep it that way. But in real life we both know I am never going to look like this and I am going to have stress just like everybody does. So telling me her story will probably inspire me for a nano second until the real world invades.

Then a little smaller on the side, I would urge you to lose weight and stay healthy with some new diet fad or exercise craze. But in real life, I am starting to walk. I downloaded a pedometer to my phone and started my walking Monday. Here are my results. So happy with myself. Would have walked more but it started to sprinkle. Was going to walk yesterday and the minute I pulled in the driveway it started raining and it is raining hard this morning. The magazines don't tell you to check your weather forecast for the week before you start the life changing walking routine. 

The next item on the cover is always a delicious dessert guaranteed to make you come back from said walk and eat 50# of chocolate. I would put this on my magazine cover....

....except the candy bowl is on MY desk and it is the only reason that I even go to work.

Have a great Wednesday

Tuesday top 10

Top 10 things I love about the signs of spring

1. The sight of robins in my yard as they forage through the grass and dead leaves looking for food. 

2. Seeing cardinals traveling in pairs, male and female.

3. The sound of a steady raining falling on the roof as I sleep

4. Getting out my flip flops to see what ones are still in good enough shape to wear again this year and which ones go in the "only to work outside" pile.

5. Planning summer vacation.

6. Going outside with a light jacket ... or better yet, no jacket at all. 

7. Watching the blue jays coming back to my apple tree outside the window.

8. Being able to take a walk around the neighborhood in the evening.

9. Seeing daffodils sprouting up along the roadside. 

10. And my favorite sign of spring that lets me know winter is just about over....my Bradford pear trees starting to bud. 

These are all things I have seen this past week and it lightens my heart to know spring is just around the corner.

Every once in awhile....

I am so glad my body knows when to just shut down and catch up. This weekend has exhausted me. Saturday morning, I had a Thirty-One meeting with my local group. It was a little over two hours long. Immediately afterward, I had to run a few errands while I was in town and I stopped by the local Walmart to pick up a few things. 

Headed from there out to my friend Stevie's house to attend her little girl's 7th birthday party. 

Left the party and headed to the grocery store to get my groceries for the week. Stayed up till midnight reading and watching TV. 

Got up at 6:00 on Sunday and did my Sunday School lesson and made an Easter egg wreath for a friend. After church, I spent some time telling my sister-in-law goodbye as she was leaving immediately after church for Florida. She has been planning her move the past few months and today is the day she and my niece left for their new home and her new job.

Came home and fixed me some lunch. It started pouring the rain and I decided to lay on the couch and listen to it and hopefully catch me a little cat nap. 

But my body said, no short nap today. I closed my eyes to listen to the rain and woke up four and a half hours later. 

I must really have needed the rest.

Sunday Sillies

What is your opinion?

Okay, I normally decorated for spring after Valentine's Day and the later on add my Easter stuff. But Easter is the last Sunday in March this year, so I am trying to decide if it I want to start this upcoming stuff putting my spring decor out. Here was last years display.



Not sure how I want to do this years. Think I will just put all the Easter and spring out at one time next Saturday, the 27th. Then I will be ready for the whole month. What do you think?

My faves this Friday

It's only about 5 months (well 148 days to be exact but who's counting) it will be time for National Conference. I am really excited about going. This will be my 3rd year so by now I know about what to expect, although they change things up on us each year so it keeps everything new and fresh. We always have an awards night and everybody has a nice pretty new dress for it. So this is going to be my conference dress this year. It's by the same people who made my short length black one last year and I love it. But I want to go with jewel tones this year. 

For shoes, I want something gold/jewel tone to match the dress. Maybe something similar to these ... but NOT THESE. Especially at $110.00 per pair...uhm that would be a big fat NO.

But I do love this necklace from Charming Charlies to go with the dress. 

I may even get this for Easter and then just wear a shawl or cardigan with it if its cool. Do you think this would be cute for an awards dinner?

A few of my favorite things...

These are a few of my favorite things right now that I wanted to share with you. Ms. Wanda at my church was doing a project for the GA's and she had a couple of bags left over so she very kindly passed them my way. Aren't they adorable. She said she ordered them from Lakeside Collection. That catalog is full of fun stuff. I am put grass and plastic eggs in them to create a Easter display. I love them. 

I found this little tin can for just $2.00 a Dollar General. I am not sure what to store in it yet, but I had to have it for my Thirty-One office at home since that is one of our teams favorite sayings. We even have a conference t-shirt that has that on it. And yes the shirt sparkles.

On my way home last night, I was talking to my dear friend Georgeanna and she suggested I pop in Dollar General because she saw they had put their spring stuff out and they had some cute little brown bunnies, much like the ones in my favorite photo I posted the other day. They were just a dollar each. They are adorable.

 Georgeanna also told me she had a bunch of philodendrons and was going to bring me one to church. She even had it potted and ready for display. I am going to keep my eyes open for a wicker container to put the plant in. But for now, I couldn't be happier how this is coming together and I only have $2.00 in the display to get the look I want.  

So what do you think? Did I get pretty close to the picture.