May 1968

This is my dad.  Taken in May of 1968, according to the slide I found.  Yes, a slide, like the kind you fill into the round circle thing then push the button to get to the next picture.

I only have this one picture of him when he was so young…a whopping 21 years old!  Taken during Vietnam.  Pretty good looking huh?

Dad, do you have any more slides???

New Eating Habits

Lately, I have been reading about the food that we buy now.  We are not in good shape as a country when it comes to our food.  There have been many things that have triggered my interest in eating healthier, but looking at my girls has been the biggest motivation.  Is what I am feeding them good for their minds and body?  While we eat healthier than most families…the answer is no.

I stumbled across this blog Maria’s Health and was amazed at what she was making!  Everything we love…just so much better for you!  So I ordered her book.  Oh.My.Gosh.  The small book is PACKED full of recipes that sound awesome!  The best part is a lot are gluten free and low/no carb.

With this change in eating comes a change in buying groceries.  I had to place a rather expensive order (I ♥ Amazon!!!) to get some of the ingredients.  This is only some of it, the rest will be delivered next week.  I told Wade…we can pay for it now, or we can pay for it later when we have health issues.  (And it is better than paying for some weight loss program!)

Today I made my first recipe.  It was for cheese danishes.  They were pretty good!  The Stevia (Wade found it at HEB) is really sweet, much sweeter than sugar, so that will take some getting used to.

(oh…and don’t forget to grease the pan! “fake” sugar does NOT come off of anything…even non-stick! lesson learned.)

Blurb Books

A while back I was introduced to Blurb.  I found it looking for a way to print my blog to a book.  Well…they offer so much more than blog printing!  Every year I print (yes print) our family picture from the year and put them in an album.  I usually print 500-700.  Yikes! And this is what that looks like (there is another row behind these on each shelf)…

This year I decided to put them in a “book” format.  As I went looking for companies, I could not find any for a decent price that could handle the number of pictures I wanted in the book.  In comes Blurb.

The binding was a little looser than I would like, but that could be because I upgraded to the better paper.

It is press printed, so it looks like it came from the press.

But I still love them…I only have about 13 more to order!  The other neat thing is that you can share your book online, and other people can buy it.

Brass Doorknobs

I am not a fan of them.  Nor is Wade.  When we moved into our house, we did not want to spend the hundreds to upgrade the doorknobs and said we would do it eventually.  Several times we priced it out and figured it would cost about $300 to replace the whole house.

Instead, I read a blog about a lady that just spray painted the.  I decided to try it.

They turned out AWESOME!  Surprisingly, they have not chipped either.  I did go over them with some steel wool before applying the paint.