Giveaway Winner !

I'm so excited about the giveaway!  If you didn't enter the contest, you missed out!  Just look how cute this dish towel is!!  And you just can't beat a monogrammed dish towel!

I had never seen so many entries from my gal pals!  Some of y'all had like 4 entries each!  Some only had 1 and some had 2, but ALL had a great chance of winning!  I'm thrilled with the participation for the embroidered dish towel!

The WINNER is......

TANIA at http://taniascott.blogspot.com/ !  Thank you for entering the contest Tania!  I'm so excited for you!!!  **Tania, be sure to send me an email at charonbenton@dishmail.net so I can get the details for/from you for the embroidered towel !

Thanks y'all !  Happy Easter!

Family Fun

We spent some time with my brother, his girlfriend, and my nieces last weekend and had a blast!  It's always a good time when we're together!  Tons of laughter!  Not to mention, our kids get along fabulously!

A pick up game of baseball and grilled burgers are hard to beat!  Ice-cream with Reese cups topping for dessert topped off the fun!

Even though I got a nice purple bruise on my leg from a stray ball, it was SO MUCH FUN!  I figured since we had all been at the ball field since early that morning, everyone would be tired of baseball, but not so! 

What a fun day with FUN people!  Love my family!

p.s. Don't forget about my giveaway, details here.

We're Going To The Fair

Carter had chickens in this year's local Fair.  It's a big deal around these parts to show animals at the youth fair.  Many kids show chickens, heifers, steers, hogs, etc.  Nolan was supposed to show a steer, but his steer was crazy as a coon so we weren't able to take the steer to the Fair this year.  Hopefully next year will be better.

Carter worked hard for several months taking care of his chickens and the week of the Fair, they started laying eggs!  Now we get fresh eggs every day!

We had Carter participate in Showmanship, just to get some experience.  Here he is getting last minute directions from his Dad.

Because Carter is so young, he is still in the Cloverbud category and cannot win any Grand Champion, Reserve Champion etc. type awards.  He can only win a ribbon for participation.  (he was not happy about this either, ha!)  As we were standing by his chicken cage, the judge came over and asked if it was our pen and when we said yes, he said "I wish he was not a Cloverbud, because he definitely had the Grand Champion pen!"

Carter was MORE than happy about this (as were we) !

This was our first Fair experience and I definitely think we'll have many more!

18th Birthday

A few weeks ago the boys and I went to a little dinner for one of my cousins who was turning 18 ! I can hardly believe he is turning 18 !  I don't know how he can be since I haven't aged a bit! HA!

Isn't he handsome??  Sorry girls--he's taken.

We gathered at a restaurant near us and had a wonderful dinner and just enjoyed each other's company!  Wes had several gifts to open too!  He is off to college this fall and my family got him a book about the experience--what to do and what NOT to do! HA!

Wes' parents (my aunt and uncle) bought him monogrammed cuff links! And y'all know I'm a sucker for a good monogram! LOVE IT!  He'll put these to good use because he is always doing some sort of presentation or taking a trip to Tallahassee for meetings at the Capitol, etc.

After gifts and dinner it was time for CAKE!  YUM.

Our family just loves Wesley (Wes) and can't wait to celebrate graduation and summer with him!  His college of choice is FSU or Duke.  "We" won't hear about Duke for another month or so but no matter where he goes, he'll be successful!

Happy Birthday, Wes!

GIVEAWAY!

I LOVE a good giveaway! It has been quite some time since I've had the opportunity to do a giveaway on my blog and I'm absolutely thrilled to be doing one now! It's SPRING y'all--and what better time to do a giveaway than spring? (especially when you see what it is!)

One of my sweet high school friends sent me a box of goodies last week as a preview of what she wants to bless one of my sweet readers with! I liketa wrecked my truck down my driveway I was so excited over the cuteness of it!

The picture is kind of bad, and I couldn't get the lighting just right, but look at this most adorable waist apron and matching dish towel!  I wish the color was better for you because the apron is a beautiful pale turquoise with hot pink/salmon colored stripes!  The dish towel is nice terry cloth material and matches the pink from the apron perfectly and need I say how much I LOVE embroidery?  OH MY.

She suggested I model it for you until I asked if she was ten shades of crazy!! HA!

Aren't they ADORABLE?!?!?!?  My sweet friend wants to bless one of you with TWO of the dish towels!! And with spring here and all of us needing to do some serious spring cleaning I thought it would be perfect!  Not sure which colors she will choose, but really who cares when they are as cute as this????  Can you tell I'm in LOVE with my goodies!?!?!

A little about my friend and then the details of the giveaway!  My friend is a married, working mother of 3 beautiful girls!  She does sewing and embroidery to supplement their income and because she loves it!  And hello!  She's GOOD at it!  She has an album of a few of her items on Facebook, here and if you can't get to the album, be sure to message her and ask to be added as a friend so you can see it!

Now the details of HOW TO WIN!!
1.  Leave a comment on this post!  That'll get you one entry!
2.  Are you one of my followers?  That'll get you one more entry!
3.  Spread the word about my giveaway on your blog with a link back to mine!  There's another entry!
4.  Do you plan to do some spring cleaning?  Tell me what you're doing and I'll enter you yet again!

I'll draw a winner Thursday and notify you by email so be sure to leave me your email address!

GOOD LUCK!

Menu & Giveaway Announcement!

This week slows down just a little for us as we only have one ball game and two practices.  Whew!  The boys start Spring Break Thursday afternoon and I have a quick trip planned for us for the day on Friday and a few other fun things to do during the week next week.  I have to work some and I'm off some, but we do plan to have some fun!

Here's what is on our menu for the week!  If you missed last week's menu, go here.

Monday - Oven Fried Chicken (a Paula Deen recipe and SO GOOD), mashed potatoes and peas
Tuesday - leftovers from my mother-in-law because we have a game
Wednesday - Ham, peas, mac n cheese
Thursday - Hamburger Pasta

I have a HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT! I have a precious GIVEAWAY scheduled for this week!  A sweet friend I went to high school with does sewing and embroidery work and sent me some goodies last week.  She also wants to give one of my readers/followers a blessing through a giveaway!  Come back this week for more details on how you can WIN!  I won't show you what it is just yet, but it's spring colored AND has embroidery!  OH MY HEART loves some embroidery!

See you soon!

Weekly Menu

I like to sit down on Sundays and take stock of what I have in the pantry and freezer then make my menu based on what I have.  Sometimes I do have to run to the store to pick up a few odds and ends, but for the most part I normally have everything I need on hand.

This week, we have a crazy  busy schedule (again) so my menu has quite a bit of chicken on it because it's the easiest thing for me to cook.  {not to mention that I'm on a diet and chicken is pretty easy to eat on a diet}.  I already have the meat I'll need thawing in the fridge too.

Sunday - roast @ my mother in law's house
Monday - Rotisserie chicken w/ vegetables
Tuesday - leftovers?  Or a quick dinner w/ leftover rotisserie chicken like chicken n rice?
Wednesday - Salisbury Steak w/ vegetables and some sort of potato dish (mashed?)
Thursday - Oven Baked Chicken
Friday - Suwannee River Fair (which means we'll have to eat drive through or leftovers)

What's on your menu this week?

My Pantry. Again.

My brother is forever telling me that I organize my main pantry too much (we have 2 - one is the main food pantry and the other is where I store all my baking supplies, etc.).

I organized it AGAIN a few weeks ago.  It's just one of those spaces in our house that gets messed up with 2 young boys in and out of it and us being so busy!

I organized the pantry here.
Completely overhauled it here.
And had to clean it yet again just a few months ago in January.

This time I had to clean out my other pantry, what I like to call my "baker's pantry".  It holds all my baking supplies, cake decorating supplies, baskets, mixes, etc.

 Clearly, it was a HOT MESS!

 I took all the old stuff out, combined a few things, threw items away that were expired, old, etc. and now I have a beautifully organized, manageable pantry.

 I like my things neat and organized!

 It could still use a little work and a few more baskets to hold supplies, but it sure is better than what it was AND I can find things easily and quickly!

Do you organize your pantry?  How do you store items together?  Baskets? Bowls?  
 

Bridal Luncheon

I hostessed a Bridal Luncheon along with 3 other girls this past weekend. I LOVE doing luncheons and have done so many that I have when to do what food down to a science.

The bride-to-be is such a sweet young lady and I just love her to pieces.

"P" (the bride to be) loves the outdoors and enjoys hunting, etc. so we went with simple decorations for the luncheon.  Natural elements such as pinecones and pine tree arrangements were perfect for the table.

I took these photos early in the morning, hence the sunlight streaming through the windows....

We used the china I received for my wedding, as I always do for luncheons.  I LOVE my china and I get so excited to be able to use it for functions like this!

We served poppy seed chicken over a bed of wild rice, green beans with toasted almonds, and cream style corn.

We just knew someone would want coffee with their dessert, which was a warm brownie with vanilla bean ice-cream and hot fudge sauce drizzled over it.  YUM.

Such a beautiful day for a luncheon.

It was such a sweet time socializing with the bride to be, the mothers, and her bridesmaids.  We had a great time and we're on the countdown to WEDDING DAY!

Pollen and Sickies

The weather here in Florida has been SO unpredictable the last few weeks.  One week it's FREEZING and the next it's in the 80s.  No wonder we are all staying SICK.
Since spring has sprung, the pollen is horrible right now (hoping the windy weather right now will knock it out of the trees and such but who knows).  My oldest suffers from terrible allergies to pollen.  He gets nosebleeds, rashes, etc.  Just awful.
We actually stayed home from church Sunday because my youngest woke up not feeling 100% and my oldest woke up with dark circles under his eyes that looked like he had been in a prize fight. HA!
It's SUPER cold here and the boys and I had a lazy Sunday.  They laid around and I did laundry, menus, school folders, etc.

 
Hopefully you all had a nice weekend and stayed warm!

Weekly Menu

With baseball upon us I have to be diligent about planning a weekly menu or we will eat out and that's not healthy for our wasitline OR our wallet.

This week is going to be unusually insane for us in that we have practice twice and I have meetings on the two nights we don't have practice.  Add to that, that it's time for the Fair here in our town and our youngest is showing a chicken through the weekend.  Yikes.

Here's our menu for this week (we may switch a few days around but because I've taken the time to write everything down and plan, I've already got my meat in the fridge thawing)

Sunday - cube steak
Monday - breakfast or ham?
Tuesday - crock pot roast
Wednesday - either ham or breakfast (whatever we didn't have Monday)
Thursday - leftovers OR chicken casserole
Friday - Fair

What's on your menu this week?