Holiday shopping? Hah! Nope!

Braving oodles of traffic, weaving around lines of cars waiting to turn into the nearest shopping mall?  Nope.  Driving around a huge concrete jungle looking for a parking space, for hours?  Nope.  Shouldering through large crowds to move through the mall to the next store?  Nope.  Waiting in long lines to purchase a few pairs of boxer shorts?  Nope.  Passing by the mall Santa and hearing children having melt downs?  Nope.  Getting bumped, seeing people grab, witnessing arguments over material possessions, feeling sorry for the cashier getting an ear full from an angry customer?  Nope.  Nope. Nope and nope.  Watching people drive badly, cut each other off, curse and shake fists?  Nope.  This year I took the road less traveled.

Pennsylvania Dutch Sand Tart cookie recipe

Thin, crispy, buttery, sugar covered cookies....I fondly remember my Grandma making these treats every Christmas!  I don't have her old recipe, but I do have a recipe from a family friend.  Let me tell you, I made this recipe and they look and taste like I remember - SCORE!

Best baked bone-in chicken EVERRR !

Note the perfect match up - wheat beer!

I received some chicken thighs with the skin on and bone-in, truthfully, I had no idea what to do with them.  I feel so stupid, all those years cooking bone-less skin-less chicken for $3.99 lb or more (unless on sale, then I am grabbing them up like chocolate on sale, which never is by the way) and not realizing there is a cheaper, juicy and delicious cut of chicken out there....(shakes my head)  Really though, its not MY fault!  I had no one to teach me to cook, I learned some things in Home Economics class, from friends and even my husband taught me a lot of stuff.  So here we are, I think I found the mother of all recipes for skin-on, bone-in chicken - breasts, thighs, whatever - been using this recipe faithfully.  In fact, as I write this, I have this recipe baking away in my oven.....YUM.  (oh and I am a skin eater, in which case this recipe is PERFECT for skin eaters)

MOPS

I have been part of this exciting thing lately.  I say exciting because any amount of outside the home activities are considered excitement for me.  A family member mentioned this group called MOPS once, I was like mops?  What is that?  Mothers of Preschoolers she says.  I shrug it off and forget about it.  Then I start seeing a friend post on Facebook all this fun stuff she is doing with her MOPS friends.  Play dates, outings, picnics, meetings, fundraisers, so I start snooping around.  I first googled it and found their website here - http://www.mops.org/.  Then I watched this video:

House faery thefts

Since my husband and I were married, we have been plagued by a mischievous house faery.  Missing rings, lost pendants, money gone astray, disappearing paperwork.....of course WE would never misplace anything.  Nobody else to blame but the house faery!

Homemade powdered laundry detergent

Fresh smelling, clean, more money in your pocket and safe for cloth diapers!!!  Low sudsing recipe that works for high efficiency machines too!  This recipe is over two decades old and still going strong.

The Carnival Series ~ Chapter IV: Carnival rides, games, other unique attractions and Mark, who is Mark???

Trashcan covers! Creepy....

This is the part where I wish that I had taken photos.  Back then you could not take photos with your cell phone.  Lots of people didn't even own a cell phone!  I would have loved to show you photos of our games, but my colorful descriptions will have to do.  JB had been doing Wax Hands for quite sometime before I came along and he felt it was time to take his business on the road.  After September, Ocean City Maryland slows down, waaaaaaay down.  Living there year round is hard, not many jobs, not many tourists.  Many residents or summer inhabitants flee, until the next season starts again.  JB would take on house painting jobs to hold his family over the winter season, until he met us.