Loving Picasa

I found a couple of great tutorials on how to use Picasa photo editing program to its full potential. I have been playing around with making self portraits look better... not the picture, but the faces! Here are a few I have played around with.

Me while camping - smoothed out the face. This is the first one I tried. I 'softened' the wrong part of the picture. This was a learning one.

Hubby and KFC - Nothing done to KFC; Hubby got his skin smoothed, eyes blue-er, mole removed, and wrinkles smoothed out. Soooo, this makes him look too feminine!!! He of course hates it, but I think he is very pretty!....Whatcha think, Chessy with stubble! haha

This one is my favorite. The top picture we look so tired with dark circles around the eyes! But the bottom picture, we look refreshed!

Not sure if I have perfected the looks, but I had a lot of fun playing around with it! I probably will be altering any pictures of me from now on!!! :)

Butter My Toast

I saw on another blog (yes, I know, I'm obsessed with blogs...but you find GREAT ideas!), how to make homemade butter in a canning jar. Seemed like a really fun idea, but also a lot of hard work for your arm, as you had to shake the jar for about 30 minutes! I knew KFC would loose interest in the amount of time it took. Then I came across last Friday yet another blog on how to make homemade butter But in your Mixer! After forgetting to pick up some cream while at Target Friday, I managed to remember it yesterday while grocery shopping. Here is our process of making the Yummiest butter!

Pour in Heavy Whipping Cream

Lock and turn mixer on high

Wait...and wait some more. Takes a good couple of minutes!

Smell the whipped cream!

After several minutes you will have made whipped cream

Then the butter will start to separate from the buttermilk. At this stage is when the shield for the bowl was needed as the buttermilk splashed everywhere. The picture on the right is where you can see a little bit of the milk separating.

Keep mixing until it completely separates

Pour out the butter milk into another jar to save for another recipe. Then we added a little water to clean out the butter from the rest of the buttermilk. Drain off the excess water. After this you can add salt to make it salted butter, but we chose to keep it unsalted.

Scoop butter into cheesecloth and squeeze out off excess liquid

Place in jar and you're good to go! We used a pint of cream and this is how much butter & buttermilk it made.

Of course we had to make some toast to try out our fresh homemade butter! It was DELICIOUS!

I might just turn some of this butter into cinnamon butter! Mmmmm Mmmmm!

Meet Louie

Last week while hubby was away at work, I asked KFC what she would like to do one evening. She said "go to the place where the dogs get their haircut and have cats". Ohhhh so you want to go to Petsmart... Off we went. I  take her there every once in a while to see all the animals. Really, its like a free trip to the zoo! KFC's cousin BT had gotten a beta fish a while back, while I knew I would eventually get one for KFC I just didn't realize she had it in her sneaky mind that we were getting one that night! They're cheap so why not??? Better than the cat she has been asking for to live in her room! After watching a dog get its hair cut, visiting the sad looking kitty cats, looking at the birds and other rodents(ewww!), we ended with picking out a beta fish. After we gathered all its supplies, we were standing in the check-out line when I asked KFC what she wanted to name it... Louie was what came out. Ok, at least it matched the fish's gender.

So here is Louie the Beta Fish

I love the little light that came with the tank. It makes for a great night light!

Sew Another Dress

I have been wanting to do some more sewing but the joy of it was just not there for a long time. I even had lowered the sewing machine back inside its cabinet! - Which I have not done since I brought it home! But something clicked and I got back into the groove. I saw this tutorial, back in early May, from a blog I follow make it and love it. I knew I wanted to make this dress for KFC but was unsure if I could actually do it. It was a little more involved than the 'pillowcase' dress I have previously made. Her post said that making it was not as hard as it looked, so I decided to at least attempt it. KFC and I went this past Friday to buy the fabric.

The fabric really needed the use of a serger! Although I wish I had one, they kinda make me nervous on how to use them!!! I asked a friend that has one if she would do it for me. I also needed button holes made into the top and of course my machine didn't have the correct foot for that. She was able to do both for me! Now the dress looks 'professional'! haha

Dress Completed

My Model

Here is what the dress looks like from the blog I got it from... and what I went by every step of the way!

Working For The "Man"

Hubby has gone out of town for work and won't be back till hopefully Friday! I am trying to fill KFC and I's days so each day doesn't seem like an eternity. Today we started off at the library for a puppet show. It was VERY good! It was a one man show and he did all the puppets along with the different voices. I just figured there was at least 2 people back there! A cousin of mine lives across the street from the library and as we were leaving we saw him sitting on his front porch. We stopped by to say hi and he invited us in to 'tour' his home built in 1901! Very cool inside! We then left for home to have lunch and some rest.

KFC and I ask Papa if he would like to go to dinner with us and of course he did! :) I had a coupon to a local restaurant for a Free kids meal, so thats where we went to take advantage of the coupon. After dinner we dropped Papa back off at his house and headed to another library for a 7:00pm kids program thing. I felt the show was a disaster. I think it was a husband and wife team where the obnoxious wife sang 'educational' songs while her husband that was dressed as a giant tree frog danced! KFC somewhat enjoyed it but I wanted no part of it. We scooted out of there early and just played in the main part of the library.

In the past if hubby was gone I have allowed KFC to sleep with me. No change for this time. She knew what to expect. I can't sleep with her in the bed - I think I have heard too many stories of parents suffocating their children while they slept. Yes this is mainly for infants, but in past experiences I CAN NOT sleep but for 30 minute spans if she's in the bed. So, I made her a nice place on the floor next to the bed. I think she was asleep within a minute!

It's definitely hard not to have another spouse here to help out, especially when you are on duty ALL day long... No breaks! BUT, it is nice sometimes to do whatever you feel like doing. :) Oh, and not having to have the house clean every afternoon so it doesn't look like you've been a slacker all day! haha

Tomorrow we will try out a kids movie program that going on at our local movie theater. They usually replay movies that are not currently out right now. It's $5 for admission that includes a drink and popcorn. Thursday is the same schedule but at a different movie theater. Tomorrow we will be seeing 'How To Train Your Dragon' and on Thursday will be 'Shrek Forever After'.

I think I can... I think I can...

Help!!!

Blogger just informed me, as I was attempting to upload more pictures for a post, that I have reached my maximum free storage allowance for uploading pictures!!!! Anyone know how to get around this without having to pay for more storage??? I haven't even had my blog for a year and now its at a standstill. If I can't find a way around it, I don't know if I should spend money to blog or just create a new blog!?

Oh What A Mess!!!

Last weekend I noticed that the floor around our shower was 'squishy'. We waited till this past weekend to investigate it... Turns out to be a HUGE mess!!! In order to get to the flooring around/under the shower we had to take the glass door off, rip the plastic shower walls off, and then we could pull up the bottom of the shower. The plastic walls were not salvageable after pulling them off. When we first decided to buy this house I knew I eventually wanted to expand our shower and make it more of a walk-in shower. But right NOW was not in our budget time frame. This will probably be a very drawn out process, but in the end I will be happy with my new shower. Fortunately we have another shower, but I hate having to walk from the other side of the house to take a shower. Here is what it looks like so far...

Hubby ripping off the walls and starting the floor. Makes me mad to see that ugly wallpaper again. I had finally finished painting this bathroom in hopes of never seeing those ugly flower design ever again.

Hubby and KFC taking 'showers' in the kitchen! :) Notice how KFC copied her Daddy with the armpit washing and butt washing! Haha

Here is what we found under the shower floor... Gross, Nasty, Smelly mildew/molded flooring! The insulation under the flooring was even wet. Just a big ole mess! Also in the corner where the shower floor had a slight upwards grade to allow water to run to drain, there was a mouse's nest! Hubby said when he was cleaning the insulation out that was sub-floor he found, to be expected, mouse droppings, but also SNAKE SKIN!!! Needless to say we have filled all holes while we wait for the process to proceed! 

After pulling up the linoleum floor we could see that it reached far more that I expected it to be. It had gone under that 'fake' wall as well as starting to go up the Sheetrock. The wall had to go too! Hubby had to tear the linoleum up to get far enough out to replace the flooring. That means, we will now need new linoleum for the entire bathroom.

Old sub-floor cut out and all icky wet insulation removed (insulation not yet out in picture). Hubby has replaced the sub-floor and filled in all cracks with foamy stuff. Next is to design what will be the new shower.

What I would like to do is take that whole area, from the right side of the picture where the wall starts over to the other wall where old shower was, and tile it all. We would build another fake wall to give the shower another side but leave an opening for the doorway near the wall that on the right. That way its like a walk-in/ hallway  of a shower. We will move the shower head from off the 'fake' wall where it used to be, to having the shower head come from the ceiling. We will also need a light in there too. I had no idea it would require this much effort to fix a 'little' leak! If anyone has any cool ideas on the design or tiling let me know! Kinda going back and forth on a few ideas.