Not Down For the Count, Yet.

Holy Moly! It's been OVER a week since I sat at my computer, and my fingers on the keyboard feels foreign!  I have a ton of things to catch up on, here in the virtual world and the real world.

A week ago I went to the ER unsure if my stomach pain and misery was real or if I was the biggest wimp in the world.  Turns out I'm no wimp.  I got my very first CAT Scan and Surgery that same day!

Turns out my appendix decided it no longer liked residing in my abdomen and ruptured.  One surgery, three days in the hospital, lots of morphine and IV antibiotics and an extraordinary amount of whining later...here I sit.  A woman with a mountain of laundry to do, a dirty kitchen and a very loving family!

Some other stuff happened in there in between the doses of pain pills and antibiotics...I'll fill you in as I remember the highlights.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and that Santa was kind to you and yours!!

I'm back!  Not down for the count, yet...

Biting My Tongue and Putting on My Christmas Spirit

Ho Hum...I haven't written a blog post in Fooooooorrrrrevar!  Oh well.  I'm in the middle of testing out a bunch of products you're going to LOVE when I tell you about them.  And also, surviving life...yeah, that takes skill and talent and lots of alcohol some days!

Anyway, I was perusing Facebook Thee Debil earlier and I'm just amazed at some of the people I associate with!  I'm thinking it's time to clean out my friends list!!

I mean, between the people who gladly and confidently share their false statistics trying to assert that more than half of the American population is LAZY and that's why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the people who don't know the difference between there, they're and their...I'm ready for a damn drink going to pull out my hair!

I'm wondering if all this access to social media is good for our country.  I mean, some days I look at the wealth of information easily available on the internet and I'm amazed.  I used to have to write reports for school using a public library's resources and the Encyclopedia Britannica set we had in our home that was older than me!  I had to use a CARD CATALOG to find something I needed in the library!  And now there's Google. And Bing. And whatever other search engines are out there.  (I'm a Google girl - sue me!)

In 2.3 seconds you can Google how many people are receiving disability benefits - and then you can Google the US population - then you do a little division and "Voila!"...approximately 3.5% of the US Population is receiving disability benefits from Social Security.  NOT 51%!!  Holy hell that's a BIG difference!  So, why would you share a statistic like that without KNOWING it to be fact?  Why wouldn't you just educate yourself rather than rely on a news station broadcasting skewed facts information bullshit?

People!  The information is out there!  Avail yourselves of it!  Form your own opinions!  Listen to BOTH sides of an argument and then decide what makes sense to you.  And QUIT JUDGING EACH OTHER!!

Here we are in the middle of the "Holiday" Season - everyone I know screams about commercialization of the holidays and "getting back to the meaning of Christmas".  A week from now (if not sooner) our Facebook Debil walls will be full of posts from our friends and associates (and fellow internet farmers) reminding us of "The Reason for the Season!" And yet we sit in judgement of each other constantly.  I do...I know I do.  I'm imperfect.  But I'm trying, dammit!

Let's quit judging each other and just have some empathy.  OK?  I will if you will.  I'll leave my chronically-misspelling-can't-use-correct-grammar-to-save-their-life friends alone and just smile when I see that they've used "their" instead of "they're"(YET. AGAIN.) if you'll quit telling me that the disproportionate distribution of wealth in the US is because half the people in our country are LAZY.  OK?  Deal?

Cool.  Merry Christmas!

OH, and if you want to view some of the videos that inspired this rant, check these out:

Make Your Own No-Sew Tutu or WIN One!!

A few months ago, I helped a friend make a tutu for her daughter's dance recital and just fell in love with the cuteness!  I enjoyed making a few more tutus in my spare time.

Today I'm showing you how to make your own and giving you a chance to WIN this custom tutu created by ME!  The best part - there's no sewing involved!  The only tools you need are scissors!

Enter to win at the end of this post!

To make your own tutu, all you need is a pair of scissors, an elastic headband and tulle - the headbands can be found at your local Wally World in the hair care section (ours even has them in the craft section near the tulle) and the tulle can be found in the craft section.  I used black and white tulle from the wedding section for a "checkerboard" tutu I gave to a friend and I used super-cute red tulle with glitter on it over pink tulle for the tutu you can enter to win!

Once you have your tulle and headband, prepare to assemble by cutting your tulle into strips - I found that I preferred strips that were approximately 6 inches wide and 30 to 36 inches long (the tutu will be half the length of your strips, so if you're making it for your own child measure from their waist to their knee and make strips twice that length).  I cut tulle until I had a mountain of strips ready to go and then I started assembling!

To assemble the tutu, I prefer to stretch the headband around a book and then add loops of tulle.  It's actually so easy to do you could enlist your child for help in creating this!

Simply fold your strip of tulle in half, creating a loop in the center then pull the loop up through a hole in the headband.

Next, bring the "tails" of the tulle up and through the center loop of the strip and pull it tight.

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The PINcentive Blog Hop: Week 13

Welcome to the thirteenth week of the blog hop!  I think a big THANK YOU is in order to everyone that has been linking up.  More so for making it EXTREMELY difficult for our co-hosts to choose winners each week and providing us with such great recipes, crafts, tips, parenting advice, tutorials, (you name it)!  Your content has truly been a pleasure to read and it keeps getting better each week!
If this is your first time linking up; WELCOME!  I am extremely excited to provide this link up for you today and the opportunity for you to increase your traffic, followers, and improve your page rank!