How Will You Spend Memorial Day?

Memorial Day Flags (Photo credit: eddiecoyote)

Memorial Day has become a day where many people have off of work and people across the USA get their grills ready and have a big cookout.  Some people forget what Memorial Day is really about! It is not about cooking out or having a day off of work.  Tho it is nice to have a day off and don't get me wrong, we will be cooking out here too.

Memorial Day is really to honor veterans and all men and women who put our freedom before their own lives.  The men and women who were brave enough to stand up for and fight for our country.  Please remember all of these fine people who fought for us and the many who also died fighting for us.  They are more brave then I.  Yes I consider myself to be a brave person, but not as brave as them.  I personally never served in the military or any branch.

Remember all veterans and all they did to defend our country and allow you to have the freedom we have in our country.  They are awesome men and women and I have a world of respect for them!

How will you spend Memorial Day? Will you be cooking out or will you also honor veterans on Monday? We attend the local event and parade every year.  They honor those who are serving, those who served and those who lost their lives defending our country.  It is a nice tribute with a parade that ends by the river.  They usually set off the cannons, have a plane fly over head and have small mock battleship float down the river.  I am proud to go each year to honor all the brave men and women!

To all who has fought or is fighting for our country:

I thank you for your bravery, you are a stronger person then I.  Thank you for standing up for our country and defending our freedom.  I am proud of each and every one of you.  If you are still serving now, I wish you a safe return home and to be reunited with your family and friends.

Green Cleaning, No Need For Chemicals!

So I have been trying to be a little more natural lately.  I don't like the harsh chemicals when there are alternatives that are natural and non toxic! I recently published a guest post for a friend of mine (Michelle) about using baking soda and vinegar to unclog your drains.  I also have been using other combinations for cleaning as well.  Michelle has a wonderful blog for green living and other green cleaning tips.  I recommend her blog for anybody who is interested in green living and using natural products :)

I also heard great things about castile soap.  I just got a bottle of it and I am going to be putting it to good use! Not know exactly what all I could use it for, I Googled about it last night.  I came across a wonderful site about all of the uses of Dr Bronner's castile soap, this is a blog that is written by Dr Bronner's granddaughter and she has all kinds of natural cleaning methods for this soap!

I am definitely going to be using some of her little recipes for this soap.  It is an all natural soap so it is not toxic like bleach or any other cleaning chemical.  I just wanted to share her blog in case you are interested in using castile soap to replace harsh chemicals :)

http://lisa.drbronner.com/

Friday's Blog of the Day - May 18th

Happy Friday! I can't believe it is Friday already, this week went so fast.  You know what time it is? Time for Friday's Blog of the Day :) I have been so busy this week that it feels like we should still be on Monday - glad we are not tho!

The winner of the day is...drumroll please...Lemon Drop Pie.  Ginny is a sweet person who has battled a very dangerous and devastating illness - breast cancer.  She is a strong survivor who not only battled it and won, but also became a mother after surviving it! That is something to be quite proud of :)

Ginny is somebody I talk with in our communities and I regularly visit her blog.  She has some funny life stories to tell about life with kids - and we all know that can be an adventure! Ginny has always been very kind to me and everyone else here.  Check out her daily adventures of life on her blog - Lemon Drop Pie.

Happy Mother's Day to All Moms

Today is the day to celebrate Moms! We do a lot of hard work whether we work out of the home, work at home or a stay at home mom.  I don't think people realize exactly how much a mother does each day, it is not an easy job sometimes.  Of course dads do work too, but it is our day to shine today :)

Try to make your day a little more relaxing today.  Laundry can wait (well unless somebody else is willing to do this for you), cleaning can wait a day and you should make sure to spend the day with the family.  Of course I will be cooking today, but this is for the safety of our house - seriously, it is! It is ok tho, I am making Pizza Lasagna today and looking forward to it.  It is worth cooking to me!

My laundry will be waiting until Monday and so will my cleaning.  The honey will be helping with the dishes (he does this anyway) and the kids will be helping me plant my Mother's Day flowers they gave me.  It will be a great day, I will make sure of it!

To all moms:

Happy Mother's Day, make sure to relax and have some fun today.  You deserve it, you work hard enough all year! What are you doing today to celebrate yourself and all of your family life accomplishments? We are staying home which is just perfect with me.

To the family:

Don't forget to make mom feel special today, it is her day.  Let her know how much you love her and appreciate her for all that she does for you! And please, tell mom the words she loves to hear from her family "I love you Mom."  On Mother's Day, she should not have many demands that need to be met.  Try to help her out and let her relax a little today :)

Friday's Blog of the Day - May 11th

Happy Friday! I can't believe the week is coming to an end already, it has gone by so fast.  It is time for another great blog to be shown off on our Friday's Blog of the Day :)

Today's blog is...drumroll please... Richly Middle Class Experience the Dream by Cynthia.  She has a really neat blog with all sorts of topics for us to enjoy.  She shares things about parenting, recipes, health and beauty and so much more.  She also has topics for men and for women (it is completely family friendly.)  Did I mention she has funny stuff in the mix too?

Cynthia is a wonderful person who I have had the pleasure of talking with in the BlogFrog communities. I am sure you will enjoy her blog, it really does have a lot of great topics and you will find something that interests you there!

Check out Cynthia's blog Richly Middle Class and I am sure you will find something funny, useful or just all around great.  Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Early Mother's Day Gift

To me the best gift for Mother's Day is a gift that my kids made or did for me.  This is something they are so proud of to give me.  I had just posted that all I wanted for Mother's Day is a homemade gift or something similar and tonight they were able to plant me a flower in the biodegradable pots.  So I can put them in the garden in a couple days.  I will wait a couple days tho so I don't shock them since they were just planted into the pots.  Both my girls were so proud to hand me a flower that they actually put the soil around.  Of course it made my day to get these tonight :)

My Mother's Day Flowers
source: http://www.dawnconklin.com

They did this in girl scouts, one of the great things that the girl scouts do with the girls.  They are in different troops, but often they visit each others meetings.  Since I got the one thing I wanted for Mother's Day, I may have to go for my second want and see if I get that too! No worries, I am not expecting anything expensive but yet it is asking too much.  I just want Mother's Day to be a day with no sister fights.  I know I am asking a lot on that one, but hey I already got my one want.  

What do you want for Mother's Day this year?

Easy to Make Shrimp Scampi

Shrimp Scampi
source: http://www.dawnconklin.com

Peppers, onions and garlic
source: http://www.dawnconklin.com

Frozen Raw Shrimp, split and deveined
source: http://www.dawnconklin.com

We all love shrimp in our house! This is an easy way to make shrimp scampi that the whole family enjoys.  I never buy the scampi sauce from the store, I always throw something together.

To me scampi means garlic, oil and butter.  Those are the main ingredients and from there we add on.  As long as I have the main ingredients, I am good.  I always add vegetables to mine too.

I use frozen raw shrimp to make it.  I prefer to cook with raw shrimp, it keeps it moist and tender.  Already cooked shrimp can get a little tougher if you use it in a hot meal.  It can be used, you just have to be careful not to overcook it while warming it up.

This is the raw shrimp with the shells on (little more of a pain, but it was on sale) but it was de-veined and split.  It is easy to get it peeled and de-veined, but any raw shrimp will do.  Just make sure to peel it before cooking.  We use half of the peppers and onion, but we use these a lot so the other half gets put into another meal.

What you will need:


1 pound shrimp preferably raw

Green pepper - about half of the pepper chopped

Yellow pepper - about half chopped

Orange or red pepper - about half chopped

about half an onion chopped

4 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons oil

4-5 cloves of garlic or equivalent if using garlic powder.

Other spices you may want to add, we don't add salt as we are on a lower sodium diet and the butter already has enough salt.  Often I add pepper and Italian spices.

Start out with peppers, onions, garlic, butter and oil in a frying pan.  Don't add the shrimp until the onion starts to soften and the garlic starts to flavor the butter and oil mix.  Add any spices you are looking to add.

As soon as the onions start to get soft, add the shrimp.  This should only need to cook a couple minutes with the shrimp in it.  Cook until the shrimp turns pink, don't overcook it.  Once it is completely pink, it is done.  You are now ready to enjoy your shrimp scampi!

I often make rice or noodles to put it on top of.  I also make another variety of shrimp usually when I make shrimp scampi too.  We make it a shrimp kind of night :)