We love cooking out for the 4th of July. Every year our family makes large batches of Bourbon Slush to aid in the celebration. I highly recommend this drink for hot summer days and relaxing with friends and family!
Bourbon Slush
6 ounce can of frozen orange juice
6 ounce can of frozen lemonade
1 cup sugar
6 cups cold water
2 cups water with 2 to 4 tea bags steeped
1 1/3 cups bourbon
Mix well together orange juice, lemonade, sugar and 6 cups cold water. Then add 2 cups of tea and bourbon. Pour into a bowl and place in freezer until slushy. Serve by itself or half slush with ginger ale or lemon/lime soda.
If you have dark circles under your eyes or laugh lines that you want to disappear…try this! My sister loves Benefit products and I have to say, I am starting to love them as well. If you don’t want to order them online, visit your closest Sephora.
I have a few social occassions coming up and I decided that versus digging in my purse for paper and pen to collect numbers that I would have calling cards made. This is an example of what I ordered from Nella Designs on Etsy. I got 50 cards for $18.00.
I love fruity smells for the summer and I swear this smells like you smeared mango and oranges on your body. This was $10.50 from Bath and Body Works.
I am addicted to Sobe Strawberry Kiwi “Calm-O-Mile” Lifewater. If we find this at a store, we buy all they have on their shelves. It is good stuff! Target has the best prices in our area. I can get 5 for $5.00.
Last but not least, I love the song “When Love Takes Over” by David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland. Roll the windows down, enjoy the breeze, and blast it!
Lately death has been on my mind. It has been a running theme in every book, song, or movie, that I have come across in the last week. We watched Band of Brothers over the weekend and last night I read Elizabeth Berg’s novel, “A Year of Pleasures”. It is the story of a widow who relocates to the Midwest after her husband’s death and what she goes through. I cried and cried as I read the book and I have decided that I have to die before my husband. I think he would handle the situation better. In my mind, I have already scheduled his next physical, removed all fat and salt from his diet, and implemented a new walking regiment. Something is really wrong with me. I was reading this morning about these poor people who died in an explosion at a Slim Jim plant. I am hard pressed to come up with anything more depressing than my last minutes being in a burning beef jerky plant. Burning and drowning are just about the worst ways to die in my opinion. Not that there is a good way to die. No one wants to die, well except for martyrs. Does anyone else fixate on crazy crap like this?
I haven’t been posting all that much lately because life has just been nuttier than a Payday bar. I am smack in the middle of the next round of fertility treatment. I have been injecting myself twice a day in addition to taking my Metformin, a fistful of vitamins and drinking gallons of Smart Water. At times I feel like I am floating. I am in the doctor’s office for blood work and internal sonograms every other day. I actually broke down and ordered Smart Tags for our cars because of the frequency I find us paying tolls to go to the doctor’s office. The process is draining but worth every minute! We took our nieces to see UP in 3-D this afternoon. Those kids adore my husband. He is better than a swimming pool, a swing set, and ice cream rolled together in those kids’ minds. The movie made me cry like a baby, but these days virtually anything makes me cry. My husband saved some baby ducks from a storm drain…I cried. I have given up watching the news because I cry. My brother-in-law’s 75 year old aunt, who I had never met, passed away and I cried. I have packs of tissues hidden everywhere! We have found a new place to rent. If all goes well, movers will be packing us up in 6 weeks. Things have not improved with the neighbor and I think I might have a criminal defense if I broke into his house and destroyed his stereo, TV, electric guitar, and amp. I might have to make restitution, but I don’t think I would get jail time. The hormones made me do it. In addition I have decided I need botox. I bought prescription sunglasses and I have noticed that my mark of angst has deepened. What is a mark of angst? A mark of angst is the crevice that develops between your eyes because you scrunch your forehead whenever you are angry, perplexed, frustrated, or the sun is just too bright. My friends say this is the hormones talking and that I would never get botox, but I am not so sure about that. So Life is busy and a little frustrating, but I am alive!
I was checking out television shows on Hulu and I came across the pilot episode for Glee. I saw that Jane Lynch, who just makes me die laughing with her performances, was cast in the show. Glee was created by Ryan Murphy, who created Nip/Tuck, so I thought I would watch the show while I was doing laundry. The show is engaging, funny, and full of amazing performances! If FOX keeps up with the quality exhibited in the first show, this is going to be a favorite for a lot of people. If you have a spare 43 minutes check out Glee on Hulu. It is free!
I was in the store the other day and I was drawn into a conversation with some ladies about how to cut household expenses. I told them them that one of the best ways I had cut expenses was when my husband and I got rid of cable television. We use to pay about $70 a month or $840 a year for cable. We realized that we didn’t watch it enough to make it worth the expense. We decided to cut back to basic cable which costs $15 a month or $180 a year. In addition, I take advantage of Hulu.com and abc.com to watch programs for free. We also have a lot of DVDs and our friends do as well. We started trading DVDs around, so there is plenty to watch. I no longer have Netflix because I always find something to watch in a friend’s DVD library or even better our local library has an amazing collection of DVDs. One lady said that her kids could not live without television and I said, “Yes, they can. Imagine what they could do with the time they are spending sitting in front of the television.” I am not quite ready to jump to no cable at all, but I have been thinking about it. What are you doing to save money?
Fortunoff is going out of business. Fortunoff is like Macy’s or if you live in the south imagine Dillard’s. Today, my friend Nicole and I decided to take advantage of their sales. I went in search of a new oscillating fan for the upstairs but I soon found myself is shopper’s hog heaven. Everything was 60% off the regular price. I needed a new frame for my wedding portrait. I found a lovely Reed and Barton tarnish-proof silver plated frame that had originally been $95.00 and I got it for $38.00.
A friend of the family is getting married in June and I found a beautiful Waterford silver-plated frame that had originally been $80.00 for $32.00.
My last find was a set of 100% cotton, 800 thread count sheets for my king sized bed for only $52.00. These sheets feel like cool butter against your skin. I don’t think I will want to leave my bed tomorrow.
I did learn a valuable lesson today about final sale/no returns. I somehow managed to pick up a queen set instead of a king set and I realized it only after leaving the store. Luckily the queen and king sets were the same price, so they allowed me to exchange because there was no need for a transaction. If the king sheets had been more expensive, I would have been out of luck with getting the right size. Always check the size of sheets, because people move things around and don’t always put things back in their right place.
I think the key to motherhood is maintaining a good sense of humor and laughing as much as possible. If you missed Saturday Night Live last night then you also missed the followup to D*** in a box by Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg. These boys are devoted to their mothers.
I am sitting here, bracing my head against my palm, while trying to type and not fall asleep. Every night for the last four nights, you have managed to wake me up multiple times during the night. It was adorable that you subconsciously needed to cuddle at 4 a.m., but I had just gotten to sleep from when you woke me up at 2 coming to bed. I really need my sleep or my alter ego is going to erupt from my psyche and I just can’t be held accountable for the things I say at 3:30 a.m. or the look I give you at 7:45 a.m. when the alarm goes off when you don’t plan on getting up until 8:30 a.m. I strongly urge you to to enjoy all the comforts of our guest room.
Dear Darling Kitties,
I have dreamed of duck taping you to the wall. I know the hubby comes to bed later than me, but this is not an invitation to jump on me, lay on my face, or to attack my feet because they are moving around under the sheets. What is up with the hairballs at 3 a.m.? Do you have to do it right next to my side of the bed? I would run and hide if you wake me up tonight.
I am getting my sleep tonight come hell or high water!
