Holly’s Happenings

This is king of long, but looked like fun!

What kind of soap is in your bathtub right now? Dove body wash for the girls and Irish Spring for the guys

Do you have any watermelon in your refrigerator? Nope!  I refuse to pay the price they want for it this time of year!

What would you change about your living room? I’d change the spot that they drilled the hole for the DirecTV, other than that, I like it the way it is!

Are the dishes in your dishwasher clean or dirty? I’m the dishwasher, and I have no dishes in me…LOL

What is in your fridge? Milk, cheese, leftovers from last nights dinner, potatoes, onions, grapes, tomatoes and TONS of condiments!

White or wheat bread? Wheat, specifically Hillbilly bread.

What is on top of your refrigerator? A shelf that I need to hang in the living room, my daughters Pyramid that she got an A on and a lid to a small tote.

What color or design is on your shower curtain? Green and pink circles in the back bathroom and a violet floral print in the front bathroom

How many plants are in your home? NONE, I have a brown thumb!

Is your bed made right now? Are you kidding me?  Why would I make something I’m going to turn around and mess up again?  LOL

Comet or Soft Scrub? I’m a Comet girl!

Is your closet organized? NOPE!

Can you describe your flashlight? Which one?  I have one that will light up an airport runway if their power goes out and I have a small black one.

Do you drink out of glass or plastic most of the time at home? Glass, I HATE drinking from a plastic glass!

Do you have iced tea made in a pitcher right now? SURE DO!

If you have a garage, is it cluttered? No Garage, but we have 3 sheds that are VERY cluttered!

Curtains or blinds? BOTH!

How many pillows do you sleep with? Just two, I switch them up so I use a different one every other night.

Do you sleep with any lights on at night? TOTAL darkness!  Lights keep me awake.

How often do you vacuum? Although we have wood and linoleum floors, I use the vacuum on them about once a week since a broom and/or dustmop doesn’t get all of the dog hair.

Standard toothbrush or electric? Battery operated Oral B’s!

What color is your toothbrush? Pink!

Do you have a welcome mat on your front porch? Nope

What is in your oven right now? The pan I use when I make taco shells.

Is there anything under your bed? A folding table, TONS of dust bunnies and even more dog hair!

Chore you hate doing the most? Folding Socks!

What retro items are in your home? The shower curtain in the back bathroom.  I’m not a retro type person, so that’s all.

Do you have a separate room that you use as an office? NOPE!  not any more!

How many mirrors are in your home? Three, one in each bathroom and one in my daughters room.

What color are your walls? Varies from room to room.

Do you keep any kind of protection weapons in your home? Three dogs and several BB guns that look like small hand guns.

What does your home smell like right now? Don’t know, my nose is totally stuffed up!

Favorite candle scent? Apple Cinnamon

What kind of pickles (if any) are in your refrigerator right now? Dill, sweet and bread and butter.

What color is your favorite Bible? Black?

Ever been on your roof? Not this one yet, but was on the other one at the old house for almost a week straight when replacing the roof.

Do you own a stereo? Yup!

How many TVs do you have? We have a total of 7, but only 5 are hooked up right now.  The other 2 are stored in case one goes out.

How many house phones? Four, 2 corded and 2 cordless

Do you have a housekeeper? Yup, his name is hubby…LOL!

What style do you decorate in? Style???  Decorate??? I don’t know what you are talking about?  LOL

Do you like solid colors in furniture or prints? Doesn’t really matter

Is there a smoke detector in your home? Yes, but we didn’t unpack them until yesterday morning after hearing about an overnight first on the news that killed a mother and 3 children.  There were no smoke detectors in their home.

In case of fire, what are the items in your house which you’d grab if you only could make one quick trip? The dogs and lock box first, after that what ever I could safely grab.

Since I am not sure who reads here right now I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you want to do this or not.  If you do, please let me know so I can come and read your answers!

I guess I’m more mature than some people think I am

You Are 86% Grown Up, 14% Kid

Your emotional maturity is fully developed, and you have an excellent grasp on your emotions. In fact, you are so emotionally mature - you should consider being a therapist!

I’ve put this off for over a week now, I’ve given the excuse that I have other things to do and have avoided getting it done, but no more!  Today is the day I tear apart, de-clutter and clean the living room so that I can start getting the Christmas decorations out.  So wish me luck and cross your fingers.  And if you don’t hear from me for a few days, call out the National Guard…LOL!

Or how would you like to win a brand new laptop to replace the one you’ve been using since the 1980’s?  I had heard a few people talk about bid4prizes.com, so I thought I’d head over and check it out. It’s Christmas time and if I have a chance at winning something that would make an awesome gift for the hubby or kids, or even myself, rather than having to pay for it, that would be a definite bonus! To me, the whole perception of a reverse auction seemed confusing at first. But after checking out their website and reading their FAQ page, I understood the idea behind how it happens much better!

The first, and most important, step is to sign up for an account! Once you have your account you can start playing for a chance to win some amazing prizes! There are several different ways of playing for prizes. The method that seems to be the most common are their text-based reverse auctions. What happens in these auctions is that the person with the lowest unique bid wins the prize that they are bidding on. For instance, my family is planning a trip to Florida sometime in March. One thing that would REALLY help would be if I were to win this $1,000 American Airlines Gift Card. Currently, the lowest unique bid on this is between 43753 and 43773, so if I wanted to bid on it I would simply bid a number that I thought would be lower than the current bid. If I am the lowest I’ll then need to keep an eye on the auction to make sure that I am the lowest unique bid and when/if it changes that I’m not, I’ll have to make sure I enter a new bid.  But the key isn’t just to be the lowest bid, because everyone could enter a bid of “1″, the key is to be the lowest unique bidder!  The best thing about bidding in the games is that if I do win the prize, it’s mine free! On top of that, they’ll ship the item that I have won, to my home, also for free!

Their website is very user friendly, which definitely helps in the playability of the games!  And they have some AWESOME prizes that you can play for.  For instance they have HDTV’s, Cash prizes that include cash and gift cards from some of your favorite retailers, laptop computers, iPods, Apple i-phones, and even tickets to a Broadway show in New York City!

So what are you waiting for?  Get over there and start bidding!

As much as I love the holiday season, it is also a very difficult and stressful time for me that usually ends up in a severe bout of depression.  I could tell all week that I was on the verge or breaking, but I just kept ignoring it and not doing anything about it.  I guess I was hoping that it would just go away, but it didn’t, it never does.

Mornings aren’t the best times in this house.  With a mouthy teenager and a mouthy almost teenager, both of which are not morning people, I dread when I hear alarms go off at 6:00!  It means that my quiet time is over and the arguments are about to begin.  I love my kids with all my heart, but most mornings I totally understand why some mothers in the wild eat their offspring…LOL!  And this morning definitely was no exception to normal around here.

But what should have been something fairly minor this morning turned into an all out scream fest between the two kids and their father and I.  After the kids left for school their father and I continued the argument, which is VERY rare and I simply got so pissed off that I put my coat and shoes on, as well as an extra coat and hat and I walked right out the door.  Now, at this point, most “normal” people would get in their cars and leave.  But not me, I have to be the stubborn one!  I decided that I was going to prove my point of walking out by doing just that, walking!  First, I walked to the end of the driveway, then I walked to the end of our road, then I turned and walked all the way up to the end of the next road.

It was about that time that my cell phone rang, it was the hubby.  He was sorry and if I wanted to come home, he’d come and get me.  Being the stubborn person that I am, I simply told him that I was walking, that I was to the point that I just couldn’t take this any longer and I was walking.  To which he said “I know you are, tell me where you’re at and I’ll come and get you, it’s too cold for you to be out walking.”  I hung up….LOL!  The reason I hung up is that in the hour that I had been walking I had already had 3 very nice people stop and say the same thing, “It’s too cold to be walking, can I give you a ride”.  Come on people, it’s only one degree below freezing, and it’s not like I was out walking in a bikini, I had on a heavy coat, a hat, gloves and long pants, GIVE ME A BREAK!

Anyway, I made it to the end of that road and turned when my cell phone rang again.  Yes, it was hubby again, but this time I didn’t answer.  I didn’t want to, I just didn’t feel like talking.  I had walked almost 4 miles by this time and I was feeling good, guilty, but good.  The next thing I knew I could hear a car pulling up behind me on the side of the road.  I knew it was my hubby, I knew the sound of that motor!  He got out of the truck and pleaded with me to get in, that it was cold and I was going to get sick, and that he was sorry and wanted me to come home.  I did not want to get in that truck, I did not want to see him and I REALLY did not want to come home!  BUT man did I have to go to the bathroom….LOL!!  And since we live out in the country, there weren’t any stores or anything for me to go into to use the restroom, and I very highly doubted that if I walked up to someones house and knocked on their door asking to use their restroom, they’d let me…LOL.

I’m mad, I’m frustrated, I’m stressed and I’m depressed.  But walking out of here wasn’t the right thing to do, even though it seemed like it was at the moment.  So here I sit, all by myself, the kids are at school and the hubby left for work.  I don’t know what to do most days, I don’t know how to handle how I’m feeling.  As much as I love the holiday season, I wish it were over!

I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed my break from school, but it’s time to get serious about getting things ready to go back to classes after the first of the year. As much as I enjoy graphic arts I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the right direction for me to go in. I’ve checked into a couple of different business types of careers and I am leaning more towards getting a degree in advertising or market research, which I think would be more along the lines of something that I would be more interested in. I’d love to have a job that allows me to research what types of products people actually like and what I can do to make those products even more appealing. And who knows, maybe I could still dabble with my passion for graphic arts on the side.

I don’t get up to the area that I grew up in very often, and when I do it’s usually just going from here to my mom’s house and then right back home. When I was out and about Friday I was able to drive through the area that I grew up and see all the changes that have happened over the years. I grew up on a very large farm and my father came from a family who had several generations of farmers, it was just something that was in his blood. What shocked me the most Friday was to see all of the farm land for sale! Fields that had been owned and farmed by families for several generations sat dormant and it was obvious that they hadn’t been farmed for a very long time! I know it’s not just the area that I grew up in that’s going through this, I see it around where I live now as well. Land that was being farmed when we moved down here over 12 years ago now hold large subdivisions or factories instead. It makes me wonder about the future of farming in the US. We need these crops to maintain our country, but if these farmers are selling their land left and right, how are we going to continue to maintain the need for the crops? To put it simply, we aren’t! We’re going to rely more and more on getting our crops from other countries, which, to me, is very sad! It’s not the principles that farmers like my father stood for!

Good morning everyone!  Before I got to the point that I didn’t have the time to sit here I wanted to take a moment and wish you all a VERY Happy Thanksgiving!

I was sitting here reading through some of the top news headlines at my favorite news site when I read one of the headlines to my husband. The headline read “Is Nicole Richie back in drug rehab“? My darling daughter, who seems to think she has to butt into everything my husband and I say to each other, blurted out “Nicole Richie has the diarrhea”? My husband and I about fell out of our chairs laughing! One of these days she’s going to get herself into a sticky situation if she keeps butting in on peoples conversations!

Hello everyone and happy Thanksgiving Eve!  I hope that your week has gone well and that your Thanksgiving plans are well under way!  Our Thanksgiving plans have changed twice this week…LOL!  Initially we’ve been planning on having Thanksgiving dinner at my sisters house, but a few things happened this week and we had to cancel those plans.  So then we were just going to have our own dinner here at the house.  But then something else happened and we ended up changing our plans to just have dinner here and we’re now going back up to my sisters house tomorrow…LOL!  I know, we can’t make up our minds, can we?

Tonight we ran into town and picked up the things I need to make what I’m taking to my sisters for dinner tomorrow.  I’m making green bean casserole, sweet potatoes and the bread and rolls.  I was initially going to do all of the bread and rolls from scratch, but I found a few things tonight that made me decide to make them partially from scratch.  They’ll still be as good, they just won’t require as much work on my part tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow night I’ll spend the night at my moms house so that mom, me and my sister can drag our butts out and hit the stores as they start opening at 4:00 AM Friday morning.  This has been an annual “tradition” for the  three of us for 27 years now, with me only missing one year.  I even went the year that I was 8.9 months pregnant…LOL!  Fortunately we don’t stand outside in line for hours before the stores open anymore, we simply wait until the doors open and allow the initial rush to get through.  But with mom pushing 70, me in my mid 40’s and my sister pushing 40, none of us are any too thrilled with the thought of standing outside in the freezing cold for hours any longer!  By the time I get home Friday I’ll hit the couch and sleep for a few hours because I’ll be completely exhausted!   But hey, that’s the fun of it, isn’t it?

And yes, he said he’d check it twice…LOL! But will it show that I’ve been naughty, or nice? I have a difficult time telling people what I’d like for a gift, I have had for a very long time. Mostly because I just don’t like people buying things for me. I’m a very picky person and it’s not easy for me to pretend I like something when I really don’t. I tried to tell him that anything would be just fine as long as it wasn’t exercise equipment. I had a bad experience on one of the ellipticals at a gym I used to go to, so I have this phobia about exercise equipment now…LOL!

I’ve been trying to get in touch with an old friend for a couple of weeks now. Initially, she got in touch with me through my sister and told my sister to have me call her. Not a problem, I had her phone number, so I called right away. Now, this is the only friend I had through out high school that I actually kept in touch with after we graduated. Granted, we aren’t in constant contact with each other, but we do touch base once or twice a year.

So I called her shortly after my sister told me to call her, and got her voice mail, so I left a message. I’ve called her three more times over the past couple of weeks at varying times of the day, always getting her voice mail, and yes, I’m sure it’s her because her message says “Hi, this is “so and so”. I tell you, I feel like I’m being avoided in the same way that I would be if I were standing in the middle of the local mall dressed in leather lingerie. Fortunately, I’m sitting at my computer in my flannel pj pants instead!

From the moment we woke up this day went down the tubes and it hasn’t come close to coming out of them yet.  When we woke up this morning I went to get water for coffee and there was no water coming out of the tap.  Fortunately I had some water in a jug, so I made coffee from that.  My hubby went downstairs in the crawl space to see what was going on and found that the water pump was hotter than all get outs!  So he unplugged it in hopes that if it cooled down all would be well.  I guess thinking that it would be something simple was simply too much to ask because almost 9 hours and a brand new water pump later, we still have no water.

The worst part is the fact that when the old pump was disconnected, there was no water in the lines at all, which is making my husband wonder if maybe the well has gone dry?  But with what we know about water pumps and wells, if the well had gone dry we would have had some sort of indications before the water just completely running out.  I don’ t know what’s going on, but what I do know is that not being able to use the bathroom SUCKS!  LOL

Today’s mail was filled with the usual items, bills, bills and more bills…LOL! I also got a FUN package that I’ll tell you more about later, a letter stating that our health insurance is going to be canceled in one week because we forgot to sign something and a bank statement.

First topic, letter about the insurance being canceled. The last piece of paper that I signed for this insurance was in April, over 7 months ago! I immediately got on the phone to find out WTF was going on and the person I need to talk to about this matter wasn’t available and I was sent to their voicemail. I left a very detailed and polite message and hung up the phone. I then called back and asked for this persons supervisor, figuring that if the person I needed to speak to wasn’t in, their supervisor might be able to explain. Once again, I was sent straight to voicemail and once again, I left a very detailed AND polite message. I then went online and looked up an email address so that I could send an email trying to find out what is going on. I mean, for God’s sake, it’s Friday afternoon, no one is available on the weekends, Thursday is a holiday and they’re saying my policy will be canceled on Friday. That gives me a grand total of 2 freakin days to try and keep my insurance policy from being canceled. Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this scenario? So, I sent out a very detailed AND polite email in hopes that between the voicemail messages and the email that someone would get back with me today, to at least acknowledge that they’ve heard from me. I mean, how difficult is that? Apparently too difficult, because it’s been 2 hours now and I’ve heard NOTHING!

But, the other piece of mail brought GOOD news!! Yes, I’m talking about my bank statement. The last time I had checked my checking account, I had a grand total of $1.51 in it. I figured I’d just let it sit there and draw me a penny’s interest every quarter….LOL!!! Imagine my surprise when I opened my statement today to find that my account no longer had $1.51 in it, instead it had MORE! So now I don’t have to fret and worry about how I’m going to pay one of the bills that was due yesterday, which is a HUGE relief!

So, even though I’m really ticked off about the insurance thing, the balance in my bank account made me feel better….LOL!:D

We decided that tonight was time for dinner out!  We haven’t eaten out in forever, so it was much over due!  And with the discovery that I made a little while ago (which I’ll post about after this), we’ve decided that it’s going to be something other than the restaurants we typically go to!

With that decision being made then comes the chore of figuring out something that the four of us can agree on.  I tell you, between myself and the kids, we’re the hardest bunch to please when it comes to going out for dinner, especially when we decide against our typical spots!  Applebee’s was the first option that my daughter brought up, but unfortunately with the fact that I don’t eat red meat or chicken, the options for me from their menu are few and far between, and frankly their veggie pizza sounded revolting!  Then my son brought up Smokey Bones.  Now, although I don’t eat BBQ, they have a couple of salads that I absolutely love.  But my daughter voted that one down because there wasn’t anything she’d eat.  My husband brought up Olive Garden, and as good as that sounded, I have a problem buying dinner entree’s that I can cook myself…LOL!  Finally, I brought up the place that I’ve been wanting to eat for a VERY long time!  I am a self proclaimed crab leg addict, I could eat the things for every meal, every day.  At first everyone was saying EWWWWWWWW, but then I pulled up their website and everyone got to looking at their options.  After some minor arm twisting on my part, we finally all agreed, Red Lobster was the winner.

So tonight I will finally get my crab leg craving satisfied!  Hubby and I used to go out to dinner for my birthday at a restaurant called Joe’s Crab Shack.  It was my all time FAVORITE restaurant!  So once a year, I was “allowed” to be a crab leg fiend.  But they closed up a few years ago and I haven’t had my crab legs since.  I guess I’d better get ready, cuz they’re threatening to go without me if I don’t hurry up….LOL!

I like putting fun things in my kids stockings, you know, the things that they never think about putting on their wish lists? This year is going to be no exception! Since the kids are older I have to get more creative since they’ve out grown many of the different types of stocking stuffers I’ve used in the past!

Since the kids are into electronics and they both recently got new cell phones, I’m thinking I’ll get them some fun cell phone accessories for their new phones! My son would love an awesome case for his phone and I heard him asking his dad about Bluetooth headsets, so since the price has really dropped on those lately, that would be a great stocking stuffer!

My daughter is into this “all things cute and pink” stage, which is weird for me because she’s always been a major tomboy! So I’m going to grab a cute pink cell phone case as well as some cute charms for her cell phone!

Yup, it’s Friday!  Can I hear a great bit WHOOOHOOO???  It’s been a fair week, nothing horrible happened, but it’s also been a semi stressful week as well!  My son’s first high school grade card came this week with some extremely bad grades.  (Who know there was such a grade as an F-?)  I get a letter yesterday from my daughters school that she has 2 missing assignments and 2 late assignments in her reading class, which is very rare for her, she’s an honor roll student.  We also discovered that the clarinet I bought for her in eBay a few weeks ago is a MAJOR piece of junk!  Her old clarinet is VERY old, like 15 years old, and she was having a difficult time with it, basically it needs a complete overhaul.  So I went on eBay and got her a brand new clarinet, thinking that it HAD to be better than what she had, even if it wasn’t a top of the line instrument.  WRONG!  Pads are already falling off the new clarinet, we’ve had to glue 2 of them back on.  On top of  that, the upper register notes are VERY difficult to play, even for me, so there’s obviously some sort of air leak going on.  Fortunately, I contacted the seller I bought it from and they are more than willing to exchange this one for another, so I need to get it shipped out to them sometime in the next week.

I did manage to get my Christmas shopping started this week, which is amazing because I’ve always been a last minute shoper when it comes to Christmas shopping!  I ran up to Michigan and met my mom and sister at Kohl’s.  They were having a sale and on top of that my mom had a coupon giving her an additional 30% off the total price of her purchase.  I snagged up a cute corduroy winter coat for my daughter for  $17.50 and some jeans for less than $7.  Mom grabbed some shirts and sweaters for the kids as well as a winter coat for my son, so she’s getting her shopping started as well!

I’m hoping to get the house in order enough over the next couple of days that I can start getting out my Christmas decorations either this weekend or the beginning of the week.  I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t be able to put my Christmas tree up for a few more weeks, but that doesn’t mean I have to wait to put everything else up now, does it?  LOL  Hubby will, of course, have a fit when I start putting my decorations out, he always does!  I just hope the dogs don’t chew up my decorations!  If they do, then I’ll just move them outside to the shed until Christmas is over…LOL!

Yes, I’ll be the first to agree that the jolly old guy makes the Christmas holiday special as well as making kids scream with glee! But when it comes to finding great deals on my special holiday gifts, I’ve found a different source! So Santa, as much as I love you, I’ll take care of the gifts for my family and friends this year and give you a break for a change!

Other than my traditional day after Thanksgiving, wee hours of the morning shopping dash with my mom and sister, I’ve decided that I’m going to do my Christmas shopping online this year! And why wouldn’t I when CouponChief.com offers me the ability to shop at my favorite online retailers with some of the best discounts available?

For instance, one of the items that is at the top of my daughters “have to have” list is an iPod. With the help of CouponChief.com’s Apple Coupons I can get a heck of a deal on either shipping or a refurbished iPod. At the top of my son’s list is a new computer since his is currently on it’s last leg!! CouponChief.com gives me several options to save money on a new computer with coupons from HP and Dell.

So no matter what type of gift you plan on purchasing your that special person in your life, CouponChief.com is sure to have a great discount for it! I highly recommend that you check them out before you start your shopping, because as fun as it is to find that perfect gift, it’s even more fun to save some cash in the process!!!

THIS is the she I am referring to

Today is the big Michigan - Ohio battle at her school and even though she asked a few weeks ago if it would be OK if she decided she liked Ohio from now on, which made me want to PUKE, she decided that she was going to dress in Michigan colors today.

I think it’s awesome that schools do stuff like this with the students!! I think more schools should take the time to do things that are “out of the norm” with the kids, it gives them something fun to look forward to and allows them a break from the normal day to day routine that can get boring and tedious!

As for me, well, this is what I say. You can take the girl out of Michigan, but you CANNOT take Michigan out of the girl. So even though I now live in Buckeye country, I’ll always be a Wolverine at heart!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO  BLUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One thing that the people in my life know about me is the fact that I don’t give up easily! Even when I do give up, it’s not until I have no other choice. As you may know, some of the posts that I do on my blogs are sponsored or paid posts. One of the main ways that the companies who offer sponsored/paid posts determine eligibility to do so is called pagerank. If you do a quick internet search on any search engine BESIDES Gaggle (a.k.a. Google), you’ll be able to find all the information you need to explain what page rank is. Exactly how Gaggle has determined pagerank, however, has been a well kept secret. But many websites and blogs have gone to great effort to obtain a decent page rank.
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