I am weird & a GIVEAWAY!!

Remember when I was talking about feeling the need to purge my house, but that I didn't know if I could wait until next weekend to do it??  Well, I couldn't wait - my living room is currently the biggest mess that it has been in I don't remember how long!  I know that NO one would ever look in my drawers and closets unless I asked or told them too, but man I am going to feel sooooo much better when they are all cleaned out and organized!!  My only problem is that I forgot to bring some boxes home from work so, my ETC donations will have to go in my laundry basket and in a pile on the floor until another day.

The reason that I say I am weird is because I love to clean!  Okay, not all of the time, but it brings me so much joy to have everything clean and orderly!!  I have been thinking about coming home and purging my house all day long - I have been giddy about it!  Who does that?  Who works 8 hours and then wants to go home and clean??  I know I am weird, but you love me anyway and if you don't then too bad!

So, on to more important things like a GIVEAWAY!!   I love, love, love getting cards in the mail!!   I got the itch to be crafty a couple of weekends ago and I made some cards!  I want to share those with you.   They are just plain white cards that I decorated.

The giveaway is for a set of 4 cards!  I will even send you envelopes for them - I am nice like that!  The picture above is just a sampling of the cards that I made.  You may or may not receive the actual cards in the picture, but they will be similar.

So, here is what you have to do to enter the giveaway - leave me a comment below telling me what the best piece of mail you received lately is.

I will be giving away 2 sets of cards so that means there will be 2 winners!!

The giveaway will close at midnight on Sunday and I will announce the winners on Monday.

To all of my friends that don't blog - you can leave comments here too - just choose the anonymous profile and then sign your name to your post!

Good Luck!!!

Random thoughts...

I need more time in my day!

There is always so much that I want to get done and there never seems to be enough time to do it in!

I really feel like I need to purge my house again, but that is a BIG project and I need lots of time to do that in.  I have the itch to be more organized - if you visited my house you probably wouldn't think I am unorganized, but if you opened my closets or my drawers you would be shocked!  I need an entire weekend just to clean, purge and organize, but I have stuff going on this weekend and I am not sure I have the will power to wait until the following weekend so, this may become an evening project and my house may be a mess for quite a few days and I may just have to be okay with that!  (I think that may be a run-on sentence, but I don't think I really care!)  

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Did I make the right decision?

I was asked to be on the Outreach Commission at my church.  I agreed to finish out someone else's term for the next year.  I prayed about it and I felt like God was leading me to do it, but it is something I do not feel like I am equipped to do.  I absolutely know that it is very important to reach out to people, but I don't feel as passionately about it as others on the team or as much as I think that I should.  That makes me wonder what I am doing and if I really prayed enough before I just jumped in.  I know that God calls us to get out of our comfort zones and to go where he leads.  He calls us to reach out to those who don't know Him and to those who need reminded.  It's just so hard sometimes and something that I am trying to work on - I just feel so in adequately prepared for this.  I just pray that He will use me where He needs me and that I can get past my own fears and just go with it!

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I heart awesome friends!  I got to go to dinner with my friend Carrie last night.  Carrie and I are kindred spirits.  She is the kind of friend that you can be yourself with - your true self - and she loves you and accepts you and all of your craziness!  Thanks for a great dinner, Carrie and yes, we really should do it more often!

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My to do list is really overtaking my brain right at the moment and my stomach is telling me that it is time for dinner.

Hope you had a great start to March!  Can you believe it is March already???  Where on earth did January and February go to??

Oh - I might be doing another giveaway soon so keep watching for it!!

WooHoo!!

I am so excited!!


I must admit that I have been down lately - life has just felt out of sorts and I have felt like I had a rain cloud that just follows me wherever I go.  


NOT ANY MORE!!


Several days after I blogged about my health issues and the side effects of my medication I started to feel so much better!!!


I actually feel like myself again!!  Oh how I missed feeling like myself!!!  I am so excited about that - you have no idea!!  It has been way to long since I have felt like this.


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I am also excited because I finally won something - not just ONE thing, but TWO things in one day!!


First I won the contest that we had at work - I blogged about that here.  I won a gift certificate to ETC!!  woohooo!!  With the great prices my gift certificate went a long way!!


Second I entered to win one of three giveaways on Megan's blog - It's A Darn Good Life  - click on her blog name to check out her blog.  Megan was giving away a photography book, a devotional and a photo session - I won the photo session!!!  Megan is a very talented photographer - you can check out her photography blog here.  


I never win anything so to win to things in one day just really really made me happy!!


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My niece, Tennessee, got to spend the night with me last weekend and this weekend my niece, Korrine, got to spend the night.  That didn't make her little brother too happy, but Korrine loved it because she used to spend the night a lot with me and she hadn't been over in quite awhile.  


We did get to spend some time all together this afternoon at the mall looking at all of the race cars!  We are a racing family and going to look at the cars at the mall is somewhat of a tradition and it means that racing season at the local track it getting nearer.  One of the drivers let the kids sit in her car - that's right I said HER car!  The kiddos loved it!!

I even got home in time to see my favorite NASCAR driver win his first race in almost 2 years!!!

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I am truly blessed, even when life isn't going exactly the way that I would want - I am still blessed.   It is those frustrating times that make me appreciate these happy exciting times more!!


Hope you have had a weekend full of blessings!

Roller Coaster

There are reasons that I don't ride roller coasters - 1. I don't like the ups and downs 2. I don't like not knowing what is coming next  3.  They make me sick

I feel like I have been on a roller coaster for the past 4 1/2 months.

I have had a hormonal imbalance which caused my monthly "visitor" to come for an extended length of time starting over 4 months ago. So long that it only left for a day up to a few days here and there.  I went on 3 months of progesterone which gave me horrible mood swings and hot flashes!  They did help a little bit as they gave me a couple of 2 week breaks.  I went back for a follow-up a week and half ago and they started me on birth control.  I will have to stay on these for the next 6 months to see if they can get my hormones in check.

I don't like that my emotions are sometimes often out of my control.  I don't like for people to see me cry and I have had some out of control cry-fests in the last couple of months.  The really unfortunate embarrassing thing is that I had one in the middle of a restaurant this past weekend - I started crying and could NOT stop!!  Thanks goodness I really wasn't in the middle of the restaurant but rather in the back corner so hopefully not too many people noticed!

I really don't like taking medication and avoid it if possible, but I guess the alternatives are much worse.  Although the birth control makes me really tired and makes me not feel well most of the morning.  I guess that is because birth control tricks your body into thinking it is pregnant.  Now - I tease my pregnant friends about their baby's taking all of their brain cells - I really feel like I have lost a few myself these last several days!  Unfortunately I don't have a good excuse for it!  HAHA!

Sorry if this is more than what you wanted to know, but it is what I am feeling and dealing with everyday.  I just pray that this works and that in 6 months I can stop taking the meds and get back to feeling like I am me again!  I really miss me!

Hope you have a good week!

Great Birthday!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!!  I hope you spent the day with people that you LOVE!

I spent the day not thinking about love and all of that mushy gushy stuff, but rather - I spent my day celebrating!  For the last few months I have been thinking how old 36 sounds and I didn't really want my birthday to come, but you know what?  36 is not that old!  It may have helped with all of the love that I felt yesterday!

I started celebrating on Friday and to be honest - I think that I am still celebrating!

A friend took me out for dinner on Friday night and then we watched a movie or rather she watched a movie - I watched part of it and the other part I slept through.

My parents took me out to dinner on Sunday evening.  We started out trying to go to Olive Garden - I really wanted salad and bread sticks - so yummy!  But, the wait was an hour and I didn't want to wait so, we went to Johnny Carino's and it was good!  Then on Monday my co-workers brought TONS of food to snack on all day.  It was all so good!!

Then my sister took me out to lunch at my fave Mexican restaurant - Carlos O' Kelly's!

Then on Monday night a friend brought over German Chocolate Cake and ice cream!

So as you can see - I have been well fed and I probably went backwards on the weight I have lost in the last 3 months!  So, I guess I need to be more disciplined this week!

I was also blessed with a gift certificate for a manicure - (can't wait for this!) and I also got chocolate - lots of chocolate and beautiful flowers and a balloon!

I also got lots of texts and messages on fb!

I am so LOVED!!  I am so BLESSED!!!

Thanks to all of those who helped me celebrate - it meant the world to me!

I heart ETC

Some people think that I am crazy because I work 6 days a week.

I work in corporate America 5 days a week and on Saturdays I work at my local thrift store.  The Et Cetera Shop to be exact...find them on Facebook here or on the web here.

A lot of people ask my why I choose to work 6 days a week.  I started working at Et Cetera on Saturdays about 3 1/2 years ago.  It all started as a way to earn some extra cash and to have somewhere to be on Saturdays.  I have grown to absolutely love working there.  It is a way to connect with and serve the community.  I have made so many new friends from the people I work with to the volunteers to the customers and the people who donate.  I love interacting with the volunteers - I love hearing about their families, eating all of their yummy treats and enjoying all of the vegetables they bring me from their gardens every summer.

I love that the Et Cetera Shop meets the needs of so many on so many levels.  It serves as a place where people can donate stuff they don't want or can't use any more.  It serves as a place where people can buy clothes and household items for a fraction of the price of buying it new...which helps all of us living on a budget.  It serves as a meeting place - relationships are formed between staff, volunteers, shoppers and those who donate.  The best part of all is that the Et Cetera Shop is not only serving the community, but the world beyond.  It is helping the environment by keeping things out of the landfill.  The profits of the Et Cetera shop are donated to Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).  "Your purchase or donation supports the disaster relief, sustainable community development and justice and peace-building work of Mennonite Central Committee locally and globally."  Learn more about MCC here .

I love finding vintage treasures!!

 Need shoes?

 or maybe a new coat?

 These great wooden toys are handmade by one of our volunteers - aren't they great!?!

 Clothing and other items that can't be sold are used to make rugs or place mats or coasters or bookmarks.

These are made on the looms right in the store!

 Need craft supplies - so much more affordable to buy them at Et Cetera rather than your craft store!

 Need buttons - there are always plenty!

  There are always lots of books and magazines too!

 Today was an extra fun day - the Saturday crew was challenged to put together an outfit.  These are on display in one of the front windows and we posted pictures of them on the Newton Et Cetera Shop Facebook page.  We are having a contest between the four of us to get the most "likes".  Below is the outfit that I put together.

I love, love, love vintage things and this is a great vintage dress.  I also love the red vintage purse.  They are sort of hard to see, but there are some awesome red sunglasses hanging on the pocket of the dress.  Go check out the rest of the outfits and vote for your favorite by clicking on 'like' under the picture.  Don't worry I won't hold it against you if you 'like' one of the other outfits more than mine!  

If you live locally and if you are now intrigued by the Et Cetera shop and you want to spend some time with me on Saturdays we are always looking for volunteers.  We have so much fun and you wouldn't be disappointed!  

Scarf Giveaway Winner!!

I am sorry to be posting this a little late today, but I am turning another year older on Monday and the birthday festivities have started already tonight!

**Thanks for a great dinner and a movie, Nancy!  - Sorry that I am getting so old that I can't stay awake during a movie!  HAHAHA!

Okay so, I know you just really want to know who the winner it is so here you go.....

Winner of the SCARF GIVEAWAY is.....

STEPHANIE!!

I love the big snowflakes that are falling right now and covering everything with a blanket of snow. I don't like the wind I also see out there! 
Stephanie


Stephanie, Congrats - send me an e-mail and let me know what color you want!!


Thanks to everyone for entering and keep watching for more giveaways! 


Hope you have a great weekend!