After having a great, early Christmas dinner at my parent’s this past Friday my hubby and I decided to drive around the Country Club area of our town. In the past you could count on some of the streets to have the trees lit up to look like candy canes, but this year there were plenty of houses that out did themselves! This year there’s even a company that is doing carriage rides around the Country Club area. It’s pretty neat and kind of reminds me of the carriage rides you take when you visit NYC. So of course I did take some photos for your viewing enjoyment! One of my more recent favorite places to stop is a tree in front of Hamilton Park that the owner definitely puts some time and effort into decorating. They must add more lights every year because I don’t remember it being this bright last year!




If you live in Wichita County and drive into Wichita Falls often this house and its tree is a must see!

This is a really cute addition underneath the tree. So after I jumped back in the Jeep and my hubby drove around some more we came upon these houses…
   
Now this house and its lights we could see from a mile a way! The first thing that popped into my head was the movie Christmas Vacation!

These trees are actually off to the side of the house, the house is decorated pretty plain-jane compared to the trees.

And last, but certainly not least, the final stop on our tour:
  
I heard lots of oh’s and ah’s coming from the cars as they drove by this house. I can’t remember the street it was on but if you drive through Country Club I’m sure you’ll find it, since it’s the house next to the one above. Well that’s all the photos for now. I’m sure there’ll be more and maybe some video since we have a couple of houses to drive by that aren’t in the Country Club area plus the Burns Fantasy of Lights on the MSU Campus. My husband made the comment that the BFL seems to be shrinking, he says he remembers when the displays would start as soon as you drove up and now you have to drive in the lane for a bit before you see the first display. Either way we’ll be making a visit soon! So stay tuned there’s more to come!
Ok before I go two more of my favorite stop:

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Once again today was COLD! Not as bad as last Wednesday, but cold nonetheless. So I did wear my trusty brown coat again today and underneath my outfit for Wednesday was…

A long sleeve  2 in 1 sweater vest blouse by Austin Clothing Co. for Academy that I don’t really like, this is the second time I’ve worn it, but it keeps riding up, so if anyone wants to trade with me, I’ll trade my medium 2 in 1 sweater vest for your medium sweater just leave me a comment with what you’d like to trade and your email address so I can contact you. And my Levi bootcut 515’s ,which I ♥ wearing for many reasons, one being that if I’m wearing them that means my workouts at the Y must be working! Saving the best for last, my boots by Antonio Melani, I bought these earlier this year when they were on sale, that’s right, just call me Mrs. Frugualista! I can wear them all day and walk to and from the courthouse without my feet aching that is a major plus in my book! You can’t really see them since I didn’t wear them over my jeans maybe I’ll take a pic of them and post them later. So there you have it my outfit for Wednesday.

I hope everyone is having a great December please stay warm, stay safe and thank a solider because you are warm and safe!

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True fact: every time I bake cookies I end up in the hospital! Not because I’ve given my self extreme food poisoning or anything like that, it’s just one of those things. Just ask my hubby, he ate the very last batch of cookies I will ever bake while I was eating liquid “hospital food”! Since I have a big sweet tooth I instead find other things to bake/make, one of those is Oreo Balls. Yes, I know one of the ingredients is Oreo cookies, but I’m not baking the Oreo’s I’m just using them in the recipe and fyi you don’t actually have to use Oreo’s you can use the store brand cookies. I prefer to use Oreos since they’re my favorite. So for those of you who would like to give it a try here is the recipe:

What you need:

1 package of cream cheese (I use Kraft Philadelphia Whipped 12oz container) If you decide not to get the Whipped you’ll need to soften the cream cheese you’ve chosen.

1 package of Oreo cookies

1 package of Chocolate Almond Bark

FYI I bought all my ingredients at Walmart

Here’s what to do with your ingredients:

1. Place the Oreos in a gallon size plastic bag and crush the Oreos. You can do this in many ways, if you have a small hammer you can lay the bag flat on a large cutting board and have at it! Or you can take the bag outside and smash the bag against the driveway/sidewalk/porch. Either way it’s a great way to vent (if you need to ☺)
2. Put the crushed Oreos into a mixing bowl and add the cream cheese, with a hand mixer using the 1 or 2 setting mix the Oreos and cream cheese together. This can take a while since the Oreos and cream cheese can get stuck in the attachment of the mixer, so you’ll need a spoon to get the mixture out. You’ll mix until moist.
3. Now you’ll need a spoon. Scoop some of the mixture onto the spoon and mold into a ball. You can make the balls any size you want. My first few batches were quite big so I didn’t have a lot of Oreo balls. Place the the molded  mixture unto wax paper preferably place on a baking sheet then place the sheet in the refrigerator to cool for at least 30 minutes
4. After 30 minutes, but before you take out the molded mixture from the refrigerator, take your almond bark and following the directions on the packaging to melt the almond bark bar
5. Once the almond bark is melted to your liking take out the molded mixture and dip them in the melted chocolate. There are various ways of dipping them in the chocolate, you can using a toothpick or tongs, I’ve tried both ways and I prefer tongs. Once it’s been completely covered with chocolate take it out of the chocolate and place it back on the wax paper.
6. Place the Oreo Balls back in the refrigerator to cool and be prepared for requests for Oreo Balls from now on (if you share them that is)!

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Weather alert!! Today was freezing! So for my feet I had two choices my Uggs or my cowboy boots by Ariat (my favorite boot maker by the way), I picked my cowboy boots since I was going to workout at lunch and it was so cold I figured I may as well have socks on my feet already. I was also hoping for some kind of precipitation but that didn’t happen! My jeans (one of the perks of my job) of course are Lee Rider’s and my sweater is by Liz Claiborne Petites, I did need to put a t-shirt underneath it though or I would’ve froze before I arrived at the courthouse! So there you have it my hiatus is over and a new installment of WWSWW has begun!

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So what do you wear when it's 22 degrees outside and the windchill is 12?!? You wear your heavy coat by Preston and Yorke (petites) your very cozy handmade (not by me) scarf and of course gloves (not my favorites, but more on that later)! Even with all that on, my trek to the courthouse was torture! I've been in Texas for 15+ years and I'm still not use to this weather!

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

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I've been on hiatus! Doesn't that sound better than saying "I've neglected my blog" :) I actually had kept up with the pics for WWSWW, but just didn't get around to posting them. So tomorrow I begin again! I may write a mobile post to get the pic to my blog faster, but I like to edit/crop first and a negative about my Palm Pre is that it doesn't have any kind of editing feature for photos. So a quick hello to let you know my hiatus is over and expect a weekly WWSWW starting tomorrow!
Here's a photo of how I spent some of my hiatus:

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I’m beginning to understand why celebrities travel with their own hairstylists! I was finally able to get my hair colored the other day and I asked my hairstylists, Jodie, why I was having such a hard time keeping a curl in my hair. She told me I needed to add layers so I told her to go for it! So of course after layering my hair she styled it and this is how my hair looked after she styled it:

 

              Nice, right.

So after I shampooed my hair, because you gotta wash it sooner or later! I tried curling it with my curling iron…FAIL! I was very close to looking like I had some kind of bowl afro! So the next day I tried my flat iron since that’s what Jodie had used anyway…FAIL again! So last night I came home and asked You Tube for a little help. Wow! I wasn’t expecting that much help! I finally found this video:

Armed with my new found knowledge I was ready for the next morning! Here is what I ended up with after I messed with my hair all day, since this picture I took sometime in the late afternoon.

                                        

            Still blah! IMO

If there’s any hairdressers out there with some advice please comment! Or if you are an expert flat iron user comments are welcome! Because if I can’t figure this curl out then to quote my husband ‘if we ever when the lottery’ I am hiring Jodie as my personal hairstylist!

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This morning I was feeling quite lazy and I’m bad and don’t get my clothes ready the night before. I know! I really should. I think I’m going to attempt to start doing that from now on….we’ll see. So back to my laziness. I just threw on my Lee Rider jeans and my Ralph Lauren blouse, which I usually only wear during the winter time months. The shoes are one of my favorite pairs by Steve Madden. The weather was actually quite nice today and I could have worn my outfit from last week today but if i hadn’t-guaranteed it would’ve rained! So here you go my outfit for Wednesday:

Yay for side sliming!                              Not so slimming.

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It’s amazing how changing the way you dress even just a little can change the way people look at you. I knew today would probably be the only day I could finally wear my new outfit before the weather got too cold and wet for me to wear it. So even though it was already windy and a bit chilly I wore my new outfit (top half anyway).

My  somewhat cap sleeve top is an eggplant color (the ‘it’ color for the season) courtesy of Gi Gi V Boutique and was made by aryn K. my slacks I bought a couple of years ago at Old Navy (a frugalista even back then) my shoes I bought at Shoe Carnival and our made by Delicious.

Since it was cold out and I’ve been dying to wear it I also wore my other new purchase.

Another Gi Gi V. find was this jacket made by Nilika. it kept me quite warm when I was outside for a bit. I was surprised to find it would keep me as warm as it did.

So there you have my new outfit, finally!

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We had a great foggy day about a week ago and there’s an area in our park that reminds me of what the meadow could possible look like in the Twilight Saga. I went out there and took some quick shots before it got really foggy. Here’s a few.
  

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Well thanks to Tropical Storm Rick my original outfit for today remains in the closet. I had to go with something warmer, that would keep me dry for my walk to and from the courthouse, so here you have it: A slate grey, long sleeve blouse with attached vest by Austin Clothing Co. for Academy, my Lee Rider jeans and my trusty Ariat boots my hubby bought for me at Cavenders. Pretty basic today…thanks Rick!

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Here's the basics:
Ragu pizza sauce 1 jar
Hormel pepperoni
Pizza cheese at least an 8 oz bag
Pizza crusts we use Mama Marys from Walmart
We spread the sauce on Lil Seal's crust, but other wise he puts as much cheese as he wants and I just use the cheese and pepperoni. When we have family pizza night my hubby will add different vegetables and meats to his.
We put the oven at about 400 for 3 pizzas and pull them out when the cheese has melted and is a bit bubbly. We use a pizza pan (that's the pan with the holes in it) to help the crust become nice and crunchy. And there you have it! Enjoy!

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

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So here is what I wear when my 6 year old has a 102 degree fever and vomits…in my hand! :P We woke up Wednesday morning got dressed and headed to the clinic. It took an hour before we were put in a room to see a doctor. The nurse swabbed his nose (to test for flu) and swabbed his throat (to test for strep) and the result was: flu! Thankfully it’s just the regular flu and not H1N1.

Now back to what I wore. Starting at the bottom my Uggs-which I changed out of because when I opened the door it was raining so I put my rain boots on, my baby blue Adidas sweats which are quite comfortable, blue striped Sonoma shirt from Kohl’s-which you can’t really see, my John Deere Dri Duck for Her jacket (courtesy of my hubby), and white & brown striped scarf from Aeropostale. I took a quick pic before we headed out and there you have it. Once again my new outfit must wait until next week! I know you’re waiting patiently Suzi! :)

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Good morning everyone! It's a cold, wet morning here in North Texas so my original outfit for today has been left in the closest for something warmer. I'm wearing my cowgirl boots made by Ariat that my hubby bought me at Cavender's. They keep my feet nice and dry on the walk to and from the courthouse. My jeans of course are my Levi's 515's. My sweater is Apt. 9 from Kohl's and I'm wearing a shirt underneath for added warmth that I bought at Academy. So there you have it my cold weather outfit!
I had a request from Suzi who wanted to see the outfit I bought recently, that I had planned on wearing today, so here's a sneak peek!

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As we (ladies) all know finding a ‘girlie’ camera bag that doesn’t cost you the same amount that your (digital) camera did is nearly impossible. I actually found one that I liked, but at check-out found out they only ship with-in Canada! Argh! So I was back to square one when I found this blog posting so I thought I’d give stenciling a try. I had a camera bag that we had bought a while ago, but mainly used for our video camera and it was just a plain black bag so I thought “why not stencil something on this?” Well. didn’t quite work out how I thought it would. I’m not sure if it was the nylon the outside of the bag is made out of or the wonderful Texas humidity or both, but the paint came out sticky and even adding an extra 30 minutes to the required one hour waiting period didn’t help. Then I saw the Sharpie commercial and the light bulb went off! I went looking for a white sharpie…they don’t make a white sharpie! I decided to go with silver and it turned out to be a good choice.
So here is what my bag looked like before:

and here is my camera bag in progress:

The runes can be found here. I blew up the runes I wanted then cut them out and traced them with the sharpie because I am definitely not good at drawing free hand. lol I haven’t decided what to put in the middle. I was thinking I’d put the Cullen Crest there but I’m not sure it would come out right. I’ve got some other ideas I’m mulling over so this is definitely…

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Empire Strikes Back and Twilight of course! Or is that themselves??

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My son came to me last week with this magazine and said 'mama can you please put this somewhere' I thought it had just fallen off the magazine rack in the bathroom while he was brushing his teeth or something. So before we left that morning I put it back and that evening when it was time for him to take a shower he saw the mag again and said 'mom! Why is that magazine there? It's freaking me out!!' so I asked him what was making him freak out and he said 'that lady on the front, her face!' Sorry Gwen but you're freaking my son out! FYI on last month's cover was Jessica Simpson he had no problem with her! Lol

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Or for today What She Wore Wednesday. I was running late this morning so I didn’t get to post this until now because of course son’s homework, cleaning, and oh yeah a lil nap came first. So here is what I wore: the top is from notations, I bought it at McClurkans which is no longer around and I’m wearing my Levi’s 515’s and Steve Madden shoes, which I found at Ross (I ♥ that place). A side note to the shoes I’m wearing, if you plan on being on your feet most of the day I do not recommend wearing these. I don’t know if that goes for all of his shoes, but I was constantly taking these off. So there you have it short and sweet today or I guess I should say tonight.                                                             

Have a great night!

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Hello all! It's Wednesday! Finally! Seems like it took forever to get to this day for some reason or maybe it's just because I'm dreading Friday and Saturday. lol Well in honor of  yesterday being the first official day of

Fall, I decided to wear this lovely ensemble. I'll start at the bottom because, well hello, start with the shoes! Or in this case boots. These are yet another great budget conscience find: Payless!! Brand is called Lower East Side, so I can close my eyes and pretend I'm in NYC with my twitter peeps Sue Ann, Tangie and Michael. I'm once again wearing my mom jeans by Lee Rider, my top I bought from Dillard's and finally my long draped cardigan by Chaps for Kohls. So there you have it, my Ode to Fall.

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I was hoping to read Vampire Diaries before the season premiere on the CW, but I was finishing up a book and didn’t get to it before the premiere so I watched the show first and thought it was ok. I wanted to know what was up with the crow since of course everyone i’m sure was thinking “isn’t that suppose to be a bat?” and if Elena really did have a psychic friend and if Damon really does bite someone and how they lived...
My friend Cari loaned me the book and I was finally able to start reading it, I had asked her some questions but didn’t want to bombard her with too many! Well…I didn’t even finish two chapters and I had to put it down. Elena was getting on my nerves! Book Elena and TV Elena are two totally different people and even the CW people could see that. BE is blond, beautiful and the girl everyone wants to be or be near and she knows it and cries about. Boo hoo for her. She's not getting any sympathy from me. TVE basically in a nutshell is Bella. I’m definitely in the camp that says Vampire Diaries was only made to ride Twilight’s coat tails. I'll give CW credit though, by changing Elena for TV they'll definitely be around longer than if they had stayed true to the book.

I’ll watch Vampire Diaries, but I’m not going to be sad if I miss it. I will not finish reading the book.

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Well it's time for another installment of WWSWW! I can't believe it's already Wednesday! Yay! Well today was pretty basic since it's suppose to rain later this afternoon and my job involves walking. So with that in mind I decided to wear my Lee Rider jeans (always comfortable, but close to being 'mom jeans') and my boots that my hubby bought for me from Cavenders, I'll take a close-up pic of those later and finally my polo shirt from Academy, they have their own brand called Austin Clothing Company that's very comfortable and washes very well.
Have a great Wednesday!

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