Lookie what came in the Mail!

My UPS, FedEx and Mail person dislike me. Ever since I have moved to the Knob I have had a package of some sort delivered EVERY WEEK. Portland Sister sent me this pin from Pinterest. It sums it all up!!!

So, thanks to financial prompting, I got my hubby off his duff and made him do some online shopping for our Movie Room Theater chairs. Now, you would think since I moved to the Knob I would have ALL these great stores at the end of the crazy highway system here. HA! Yep, this is what I thought too. Boy was I so wrong. I went to SEVEN, yep, seven furniture stores and couldn't find a simple theater chair to save my life. I went to Best Buy and HH Gregg--two electronic stores who SPECIALIZE in said products--yeah, get this?!?! They don't sell theater chairs. What's up with that? Now, you can get loveseats that recline, massage your back and even come with a COOLER  in between the seats, but this is not a stream-lined simple recliner like you would find in a movie theater. I don't want a massage while watching a movie with my family. I have a bar within 10 feet of my theater room, so I don't need a cooler attached to the chair. I do not need to sit next to someone. I want a divider. I want my own cup holder. I want the person next to me to have their own cup holder. Such simple requests. SO EXPENSIVE TO find. Okay, so at this point, I was thinking WE CAN FINANCE. Who cares the cost? I just want to find simple, reclining black leather chairs with cup holders. I found some! YEP! At Nebraska Furniture Mart. They will even ship them for ONLY $6,000. Interest free for 18 months. WOOT. My Prince Charming about had a heart attack. WHAT? For Chairs. No way.

You know what this did? Yep, it prompted him to get off his bum and do his own research. Mind you, he never got in his car and had to deal with the big city traffic, but he did manage to find a place that had chairs at a GREAT price and they shipped them within a week. How is that for wonderful? Simple theater chairs at a great price and they came to me.

Movie Theater chairs 

Now the funny part---I wasn't home for the delivery. I had to get my hair done. My neighbor works from home, so he said that would be fine. He came over, opened my garage door and signed the sales receipt. You know how he signed it, "Billy Boob Thornton." I really think I'm starting to like my neighbor's smart-alec sense of humor. LOL! Too much fun!

Nice, beautiful colored up the gray hairdoo!

The treasure at the end of the Rainbow!

Isn't that beautiful? I have been doing a TON of yard work lately. On Friday it rained. It rained a lot. We needed it. I had just received another box in the mail from Breck's Nursery and needed to get the plants in the ground. I did...in the rain. I'm sure (if I could understand Spanish) I would have heard the workers next door laughing their rear ends off at my expense. I'm so tired of having people outside my front door each and every day. There is no peace. I find it is best to garden at 9 p.m. but this just isn't feasible. In the midst of feeling angry I looked up in the sky to discover a FULL rainbow. At the end of the rainbow was my lovely new home on the Knob. It takes more energy to be hateful and mean. It makes me stew and brewed and make a small problem into a huge mountain. I get so mad and play out different ANGRY scenarios in my head. My Wichita BF just put a quote up on her wall by Theodore Roosevelt, "Comparison is the thief of joy." Well said Mr. Roosevelt. How often we compare ourselves to others. How often we get ticked off about things that have NOTHING to do with us. How often we stew and brewed over things we don't need to be concerned about. I was glad God put that rainbow above my house. Keep it real. Keep it simple. The people at the end of that rainbow are the best things in my life. I need to be grateful and appreciate the here and now. I need to thank the Lord above for all that I have and I have everything I could possibly need...and so much more! I was glad I had a glimpse of the promise. His promise to us. What a beautiful sight.

Okay, I'm stepping off my soapbox.

Remember what Mr. Roosevelt said. 

Book Review: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

I’m a fan of The Hunger Series, The Mortal Instruments Series and The Divergent Series….thanks to Victoria Aveyard’s debut series I have a combination of all the above. Due to the responsibilities of life, I usually can finish a book in a week—not this week. By chapter three of the Red Queen I threw heed to the wind (and all responsibilities!) and read all day and night to finish this book. From the nasty trenches of the ‘Stilts’ where our young protagonist, Mare Barrow, lives and her family is trying to survive, I was entranced. She is a member of the Reds; a group of impoverished slaves fighting for the eilte Silvers. She is a pickpocket lacking any skills to get her out of going to war—conscription as it is called in our story. Her father lost a leg and a lung from the war; her three older brothers were conscripted at age 18 and went to the war front to continue fighting for the Silvers. Her younger sister, Gisa, is an amazing seamstress who is saved from conscription due to her talent. Kilorn, her friend, was safe from conscription as he was apprenticed to a fisherman. As fate would have it, Kilorn loses his apprenticeship, leaving Mare to beg his freedom from Farley, a woman in charge of the Scarlet Guard—a secret group determined to fight for the freedom of the Reds. The characters are larger than life and hooked me!

Mare goes out to procure the funds for Kilorn’s freedom when she pickpockets a young man who catchers her in the act. This short encounter leads Mare to a job being a servant girl at the Palace- forever changing her destiny! During Queenstrial, a long standing tradition for Silvers to determine who will be the next queen, Mare is serving the elite when the floor shifts, and she falls to her assumed death on electrical wires. BUT she doesn’t! To her amazement, and the shock of the watching Silvers, she consumes the electricity making her all powerful. A Red cannot have powers! Only the elite Silvers can have unique powers and this low-life Red has shown she also has them. The King and Queen must explain this phenomenon and create an alias for Mare; she is the long lost Princess, Mareena Titanos to whom will be betrothed to Maven, one of the Silver Princes.  Mare is given a gift. She is now to be a Princess in the Silver family with power and fame: giving her inside secrets to help the Scarlet Guard overcome the Silvers.

Yogi visits FKE Spring Fling!

Who is Yogi? What is FKE? Okay, so FKE = Floyds Knobs Elementary. This is where the two Jedi Knights go to school. Who is Yogi? This guy:

 He is a Indiana University Basketball star! Now to us Kansas people, this didn't mean a whole heck of a lot, but to those who know him THIS WAS AMAZING! I had been on the planning committee for the 3rd & 4th grade Winter Social, but we were in Kansas for that party, so I missed out on this one. BUT we were here for the K-2 Spring Fling! It was awesome to be a part of something so amazing. Another Mom and I made table decorations and put pinwheels all over the place. It was a great event. I'm super glad to be meeting moms and being a part of an elementary school again! I'm trying to figure out how to get a picture of my banners to the blog, but I'm so "SMART" phone DUM....

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl is on the shelves and I REVIEWED IT. Sweetness.

I was at Target the other day and check this out....on the shelf a book I reviewed and got to read before half the population!

I was pretty stoked. I am enjoying reviewing books and the best part my boss had an author respond to one of my reviews. I'm not going to lie---it made my whole day! My last book to read was The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. It was out in February, but I still enjoyed reading it!

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie Review by Ms. America:  (Taken from BooksandWhatnot.com)

I have a love/hate relationship with books that I know are going to be a series. You make me love you, but then you make me wait. This new series is a page turner from beginning to end, and Paige McKenzie brilliantly hooks the reader with Sunshine. The protagonist, duly named Sunshine, is a teenager who is uprooted from her life in Texas before she is to start her junior year in high school. The stage is set from the beginning of the novel by a voice telling the reader of Sunshine’s 16th birthday party and the moment when she blows out the candles by the slight chill she receives and the racing of her heart—momentarily there, but so slight that even Sunshine questions if she felt it.

The reader soon discovers the house Sunshine moved into is haunted by a little girl and the reenactment of her horrendous death. The reader won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough as the death is told in minute details. It was bone chilling. Sunshine has to figure out who has caused the little girls demise, as well as the personality change in her once best friend and mother. Sunshine must learn who she is in order to survive the hauntings of her home and save herself, and those she loves, from going past the light into the dark side.

Iron Man Costume

You want to know what happens when you take an eight year old boy to a new Marvel movie? Yep, he comes home and wants to be one! J-Bird took it upon himself to create an IronMan costume. We went to Wal-Mart (my mistake for taking him with me....) and he found new and improved masks there. My gut and instant reaction was you already have one of those.

No, he informed me, he has two. One is too heavy for his face. (Portland sister bought it and it actually shoots foam bullets from the mask and it is kinda heavy for his little face if worn ALL day, which if you are Iron Man you have to wear it all day, or at least have it ready when evil comes.)

And the other one smells. (Okay, the kid has a point. The other mask we found when exploring Santa Fe Lake once. It was during a really DRY summer in Kansas and the lake was dry. We were walking where 8-10 feet of water normally hangs out and much to our WONDERFUL discovery, was an Iron Man Mask. Some poor soul lost it off their boat, but TAH-DAH, we found it at the bottom of the lake. Bottom of lake = horrible smell)

J-Bird did have birthday money burning a whole in his pocket! Why not? Buy another mask. Well, you just can't have a mask---you have to have the whole costume. Sigh. I do have a new sewing machine and he DID happen to find a brand new with tags still on it white shirt in his closet. It was perfect. He even drew the pattern and brought it home from school. (REALLY?!?! Aren't they supposed to be learning and stuff? Nope, they had free DRAW time. JUST MY LUCK.)

We were off and going. He was measuring and designing. Now, I just had to cut and sew. JUST. What do kids think? J.U.S.T. Yep, let me put on my Super MOM cape and I'll get right on that...


He loves the costume. I hand sewed it so I could take it a part and not have to rip out too many stitches. I don't think it looks like IronMan, but he LIT up! He loved it. It was HIS vision, so whatever works.

My own little Iron Man!

Morning Walks

My Gym BF told me when I get bored to go for a walk. Although this seems like a horrible idea, he is right. I do have a lot of free time and I am constantly complaining about the summer clothes that are not going to fit me, so I'm trying to take a walk about 500 times a day. In the mornings the birds are chirping, the deer are out wandering around and so am I! Off in the distance of the Knobs you can see the skyline of Louisville, KY clear as day. It is a beautiful view. This morning it was rather foggy, but you can still see the tops of the buildings if you squint and look closely! I also have discovered the beautiful, leafy vines trailing up and down the knobs are pretty too look at, but DO NOT
TOUCH. It is poison oak.....

How do I know this you may ask? Well, as luck would have it I was cleaning up around my beautiful White Pine trees in my backyard and discovered trees and vines trying to choke one of them to its death. I could not have that!!! I can't wait to show off my beautiful White Pines to the Christmas Tree Farmer, so I will protect these trees at any cost. Apparently the cost is itching blistering pusses of noxious plant juice! I find Benadryl works for about 10 seconds and then I start doing something and before I know it I am itching while multitasking and realizing, OH NO! You are itching again. STOP. Oh fun times. Just to gross you out and because I had to go look at images on Google to find this and trust me, you don't want to Google this image. WoW. Some people are scary and gross looking. I have it mild compared to what I found on the Internet.

It is a bunch of dots, with several small blisters---they are all pus filled with the nasty oil from the plant. This oil is what causes it to spread. It is now from wrist to shoulder, from ankle to knee and on my face. I'm really trying to stop itching. Really, I am! I believe I will be going to the doctor tomorrow as the ones behind my ear are a mess and I'm sure will be in my hair by tomorrow. For the first time since I moved here I had something EVERY DAY this week. Sigh. No time for this Mama to be sick.

An image of Poison Oak, IVY or something of that noxious family:

Ended up going to the minor Emergency care center at 8:15 this morning. My face looks like this:

 Yep. If you are going to do something, do it to the best of your ability! It is UP MY NOSE. OMG. Steroid shot to the bum.