Today's Grab Bag of Thoughts

I've never been a bandwagon type of person.  I'm loyal to my sports teams no matter how bad they are, and believe me they are BAD.  However, over the last year or so I kept hearing the hype of how wonderful the new pressure cookers are amazing.  The world was all a twitter (no not the site) over the InstaPot.  Honestly, I kept thinking why oh why would I need another appliance in my kitchen.  Flash forward to August and the pre-release of the Pampered Chef Quick Cooker.  As a independent consultant for the Pampered Chef I thought well, if they think it is great I should probably finally jump on the pressure cooker bandwagon.  I NEVER LOOKED BACK! When I say I love this thing, I don't even think that it expresses how much I love this thing.  I have the ability to totally forget to take out food for dinner AND still deliver a healthy dinner very quickly to my family.  I have used the Quick Cooker almost every day since I received it. The...

 Over the last few months I have worked almost nightly on making my wedding dress.  I did this so that I could get married  a dress prayed  over, made with love and that included just a bit of those we've lost over the years.  It seemed to me that I could not get married without my little sister and grandparents there.  So I came up with this great way to include them. My Grandma Perkins loved silk pajamas.  I am pretty sure she wore them daily.  When she passed away in 2007, many of us asked for a pair of her Pjs.  I have kept mine with me since then.  When I was thinking about the best way to include her in my wedding dress (apart from using her sewing machine) I decided that I would line the bodice of the dress with her Pjs.  It was hard at first, but then a feeling of love came over me.  It was so great to have her so close to me on that special day. My Grandma Dominguez loved to sew and make things.  She used to...

 This past Friday I got engaged.  Honestly NEVER thought it would happen to me, but yippee.  My Fiance is the most caring, generous, honest, silly, adventurous man I've ever met.  He's jumped into a big place and has decided that he never wants to leave.  He's happy to take on the position of keeping my crazy, grumpy and sometime bratty self happy AND helping to raise my two very wonderful children. Now that I am going down the path of marriage and I have started to sew, I have decided to sew my own dress.  YES, it is a big task and YES it will be hard and YES I will get frustrated at times, but it means a lot to me. Why? 1. I get to make one most important piece of clothing I will every wear. 2. I will be using a sewing machine that used to belong to my grandmother. 3. I will be able to add fabric piece of clothing that belonged to both of my grandmothers and my little sister to my dress (inside).  They won't be there to see me finally walk do...

I'm alive because these two great men fall in love with two great women.  Both men from two very different backgrounds.  Ray from a fatherless home with a extremely hard working, straight line keeping mom.  Humberto from a high class family in Cuba, whose best friend let's just say climbed to a high place that my grandpa refused to help or be part of.  One served in the Navy, one worked hard to start his life after military school on the USA.  Both men with equally hard challenges some that same and some different.  What they do have in common is that they both raise families of 4 children.  Both worked hard, played hard and loved with all their hearts, even if it looked different coming from either one.  Both men were strong, courageous, loving and faithful.  From these two great men came these 4 great men:  Each of these men have also lived very different lives, even if they came from the same houses. All have seen their struggles, had...

Hmm well see that is a really hard question to answer, ok honestly it isn't really but in order to save face I will just say that it may or may not have been my idea.  What might have or might not have been your idea you are probably asking.  Well that would be to watch "A little bit of Heaven" tonight on Netflix.   (Movie synopsis below)  Let me just stop there and say unlike many many people and critics, I actually liked the movie.  Yes there are some people that are all pissed off about the portrayal of a terminally ill cancer patient and yada yada yada but HELLO IT IS HOLLYWOOD! They never said it was based on a true story.  But to those people on the contrary there are people that keep their hair after treatment, that laugh and love their way through cancer and my Grandma was one of those people.      So, no the stupid idea is NOT due to the movie being a waist of my time like the Nicole Kidman/Kate Hudson musical "Nine" which was 2 hour...