Taco Soup

Here's the recipe from Sandra over at Will Work for Shoes.

This soup is really good and easy. Just brown the meat and then add everything else and simmer for about 20 minutes. You can serve it with grated cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and chips. It makes a HUGE pot of soup.

2 lbs ground meat (you can use beef or turkey - both are good)
1 can rotel
2 packages taco seasoning
2 packages hidden valley ranch dressing mix
1 big can diced tomatoes
1 can navy beans
1 can black beans
1 can pinto beans
2 cans shoe peg corn
2 cans water

Made a haul...

I just made a haul at Wal-Mart. Holey gee-moley, groceries are expensive now! However, there's stuff at WallyWorld that's cheaper than at the grocery store. And then there were a few things that I just couldn't live without. Like the bright yellow volleyball with a happy face on it. It's for Kelton. He needs something to roll around and chase. And I need a happy face to smack the silly out of when I've one of those days at work. What's that? You think I need a punching bag for that? Yeah, I thought the same until I punched Hubby in the shoulder the other day and hurt my fist. Sissy.

I also bought some hair color. I have yet to download new pics off my camera but I'll be taking before and after photos of my hair. Hair color out of the box is a heck of a lot cheaper than the salon, but if I don't like this, I'll end up at the salon anyway to fix it. *keeping fingers crossed*

My main reason for going to the store was to get the ingredients for taco soup. A friend at work made it for us Wednesday at lunch and it wonderful!! And it's so simple! As soon as I finish this post, I'm headed in to the kitchen to make a batch up for us. I'll post the recipe, too.

Our Labor Day weekend has been pretty quiet. Our 21 lb alarm clock goes off every morning at 6:30...he smiles and thinks it's time to play. We've pretty much stayed home. We're headed out of the city tomorrow to a friend's place to go fishing and maybe dove hunting. His wife will loooooove watching our little man, so it should be a nice day. OH! A breaker went bad here at the house on Friday, so we're without a microwave and the big kitchen lights (weird wiring). We're back to the good ole way of warming bottles....hot water. Can't wait for the electrician to get here on Tuesday. I'm missing my micro!

Anyone had any good weekend plans come to fruition?

I have nothing to say!

I think the baby stole my last brain cell of creativity. I haven't been able to come up with a good topic in a while. Here's what's running around my cranial cavity...

The baby's playroom had us freaked out for a few days. He has a stuffed bear in there that stands on all fours. For the past few mornings when we walked in there, niether of us could remember if that bear was on all fours or sitting on its rear the night before, but in the morning, it's sitting on its rear. So, last night, we set the bear on all fours and slept anxiously awaiting the morning to see if the bear would mysteriously be back on its behind. It wasn't. I think reading those Twilight books is starting to freak me out. But I can't stop...I have to finish the story. In the meantime, I'm keeping my eye on that smiling little bear.

I have a month's worth of pictures on my digital camera. I haven't sat at the computer long enough to download them, so I'm sure once I do I will have plenty of blog fodder. Maybe I'll do that this weekend.

K-man was awake at 4:40 this morning. Not like awake for his bottle, but bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed awake. And grinning. And keeping us awake. I thought for a moment about pointing to the clock and telling him what time it read. Before I could debate on the plausibility of his understanding my disgruntled tone, he had already stuck his tongue out at me and was blowing spit on us. Nothing like a little morning shower to start the day off...at 4:40AM. ugh. (my normal rise and shine time is 5:45 on work mornings)

Sopapilla Cheesecake

One of my friends at work made this last Friday for an after-work get together. I wasn't able to attend but I heard that both the dessert and the conversation were awesome. She sent out the recipe, so I thought I'd share.

Two 8oz Crescent Roll dough
Two 8oz Cream Cheese
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup sugar
1 stick of butter
2 cups cinnamon sugar


Roll out one roll of crescent roll dough in the bottom of pan. Mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla. Spread over dough. Put additional crescent roll dough on top. Melt stick of butter and pour all over. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake 350 for 30 to 35 minutes. Will puff up a little like sopapillas. Serve with lots of love.

Link to an article

Follow this link to an article that I found insightful. Short and an easy read...I saw myself in some of her reflections.

Books

I've been lost the past few days. Lost in books. I have blogging to thank for that! I've read on other people's blogs about the Twilight series and I could take it no longer! Hubby picked up a copy of "Twilight" at Target last week, and Friday night I opened the cover and started reading to see what all the buzz was about. The ONLY reason I quit reading at 3AM Saturday morning was because my eyes were so tired they were puffy and my eyelids were sticky on my eyeballs! I devoured the rest of the book Saturday afternoon. I started "New Moon" last night.

In as much as vampire books go, I never really thought I'd get in to them, until I read "The Historian". That was another book I zoomed through. No teenage love story there! That was a great whirl through history with a wonderful story interlaced through it.

I now have "Immortal" laying on my desk behind me on loan from one of my friends. It's making its way around, so I'll post on it when I finish it.

My favorite book of all time is "The Shepherd of the Hills". I think John Wayne made a movie on it years ago. It was terrible. Nothing close to the real story. If you ever come across this book, please read it. It touches your heart. I've read it four times and will continue to read it again over the years. It was written in 1907 by Harold Bell Wright.

Please share your favorite book(s) on the comments. I love a good read!

PS - If I remember my writing classes from high school correctly, I believe book titles are supposed to be underlined, not in quotation marks. But I can't figure out how to underline things in the blog window...

Children's Place - Sale and Coupon

The Children's Place is having a big sale and there are coupons out there for an additional 15%-20% off. I didn't pay more than $8.20 for any one of my items...and that's after taxes and shipping! I just loaded up on several things for this winter and into next spring...and even some pants that will last through most of next year.

Just a quick tip for the moms out there....

Friday Favorites

My favorite websites...Other than blogs...

• www.weather.com - I like to know just how blasted hot it's going to be outside tomorrow. 95? I can gripe a little but proclaim what a nice sunny day it is. 105? Heaven help the car that cuts me off in traffic. Plus, Weather Moose won't post forecasts for Texas, so I gotta go somewhere for local weather.
• www.ebates.com - I like coupons...a lot. Rebates...eh, not so much...too much work to get back some money. Now, ebates...I love this. You go through this site to navigate to the store you want to shop from, and you get automatic savings that are credited to your account. Once a quarter, they mail you out a rebate check. I love money in the mail! (coming in, not going out!)
• Wal-Mart Free Samples - I sign up for something at least a few times a week. We're always getting sample size freebies in the mail. Hubby wonders where they come from!
• Etsy - I love homemade things. I've bought several baby clothes for K-man off of some of the shops.
• Texas Co-Op Power Magazine - There is always the latest copy of this magazine on my grandmother's coffee table. I like the stories and the recipes, and now I can get it on-line.
• Canton, TX Trade Days - Ooooo...this is fun. And now you can browse the sellers on-line!

It only took 8.5 months

Gestation for our little guy was spot on 40 weeks....9 months if you count it one way, 10 months if you count it another. I believe there is a conspiracy in the world of obstetrics to confuse the hell out of women during a time when their hormones are raging so out of control that they're considered in a state of 9 month confusion anyway. (was that a run on sentence?) As I've said before, I intended to give natural childbirth a try until the sonogram taken at 39 weeks revealed what appeared to be a 10 pound baby. I'm 5'1"...I used to wear size zero jeans (now I look at zero and fall on the floor at Kohl's laughing) All it took was the sonographer saying she "...thinks the baby is about 10 pounds. Isn't he a cute little punkin head?" for me to throw that whole childbirth thing out the proverbial window. We did, however, walk away from that appointment with a strip of 3 sonogram pictures. Two of them I couldn't figure out what the heck we were looking at and the last one was clearly a large foot.

I found these pictures last weekend in the console of my vehicle and got all mushy about them. Then I snapped back to reality when I remembered it took 3 dammm attempts to get the needle for the spinal block where it needed to be. I posted the sonogram pic on the side of our fridge so I could enjoy seeing them for a few more days before I reconciled them to the baby album (which hasn't seen the light of day in 4 months). After 3 days of looking at them on the fridge, I finally 'saw' the pictures! And I realized what I was seeing. Keep in mind that we didn't know we were having a boy until the doctor got him out and announced it....we wanted the surprise. So, imagine my surprise when I figured out the top picture was him facing the camera looking at us (such cute cheeks!). And that the next picture are his bottom cheeks...and a very clear indication that our baby is a boy! I grabbed the pictures, ran back to the bedroom, shoved the picture strip under Hubby's nose, and said, "SEE THIS???? Do you know what that is?!" We had the answer right under our noses for a whole week but never really understood what we were seeing. I love it. I'm so glad it was still a surprise for us.

Essential Oils and Aromatherapy

I don't quite know how I got in to using essential oils. It started a few years ago with the green cleaning movement. I probably read two sentences somewhere and took off in the deep end from there. I do that sometimes. okay okay, I do it a lot of the time!

Essential oils aren't just lavendar and vanilla to make the room smell good. They do actually have healing and balancing properties. Lavendar not only calms your mood, it is also an excellent antimicrobial agent and mucolytic. Thyme happens to be one of the strongest in the category of antibacterial and antifungal. Eucalyptus is a very strong dissinfectant. There's also rosemary, grapefruit, lemongrass, ylang-ylang (good for balancing us feminine folk), tea tree, and some others stuck in my drawer at home that I can't think of off the top of my head.

Here are some uses that I've found that worked:

• Athletes Foot - My hubby has had the worst case of it. Not like raging bad but just plain stubborn. What finally turned the corner for him was using a combination of tea tree, lavendar, rosemary, and thyme. I've also been sprinkling eucalyptus in the shower after he's finished in there.
• Earache - Mix 5 drops of lavendar, 5 drops of tea tree, 3 drops of thyme, and a tsp of olive or almond oil. Dab a cotton ball in it and place the cotton ball over (not in) the ear canal of the hurting ear. Change every 5-6 hours as needed. I slept with mine in my ear. It's not the skin contact with the oils, it's the exposure to the oils as they become air born.
• Hand Scrub - 1 cub epsom salts (or sugar), enough sweet almond oil to make a scrub, 15 drops of lemon or lavendar oil. Mix thoroughly. To use: Dampen hands, use a spoonful of scrub on hands and wrists, rinse off with warm water, and pat try.

Keep in mind that although these are just oils, they can be very potent. Some oils come from different forms of the same plant, rendering some useful for skin applications and some only for aromatic purposes (they may be irritating to the skin). Like thyme...for topical uses, you only want thyme thujanol.

I have two favorite places to check out essential oils. One is the website for the Veria channel (we have DishNetwork). http://www.veria.com/ And go to the page for the show "Everybody Nose". She has some of her recipes listed in there under the different show episodes. The place I like best for purchasing essential oils I can't find locally is Emily's Oils and Essentials. http://www.eoils.net/ She has a wonderful variety and has a short information blurb on each oil.

If you have ever tried essential oils or happen to try one of the uses listed above (the hand scrub is easy and oh so nice!), let me know. I always like to hear what other people have found that works.