I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and if you ventured out yesteday, I hope you found all you were looking for.

We have a nasty virus hanging around our house so my 9 year old and I stayed home for Thanksgiving and feasted on ice cream and Cake Boss. My little guy started with it today. I am not thankful for nasty viruses!

Since the kids weren't feeling well, I hadn't made any plans to go out shopping on Friday and stayed home in my comfy pj's. It was a perfect day for online shopping-well, what day isn't perfect for online shopping-and I got a good deal on some sweatshirts at American Eagle and 77 Kids.

We only had one small tragedy this holiday weekend,

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my handmixer gave up on me in the middle of a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Guess the cookies were too much for her to handle.

So now, I've added to my Christmas Wish List, this baby

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Probably not in red, but I think she could handle a batch of chocolate chip cookies just fine. Along with all the cakes my 9 year old is planning on baking a la Cake Boss.

I am participating in Infarrantly Creative and Tatertots and Jello’s Blog Hop for a chance to win a Mint Cleaner. It is the revolutionary machine that cleans your hard floor surfaces for you.

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Bed, Bath & Beyond

I {Heart} Cupcakes

and since the kids were home yesterday, I thought is was the perfect time to try out The Perfect Cupcake (using a mix) recipe I found at Tidymom.

I had an assistant who was more than willing to lick the bowl along with me bake cupcakes with me.

and another assistant who decided he needed to have the dozen of eggs on the counter and climbed up while we were filling up the cupcake pans.

needless to say, he wasn't very happy when I removed him from the eggs and refused to participate in any more cupcake baking.

I'm very happy to say that The Perfect Cupcake does live up to its name! And to make it even better, it was no harder or longer to do than using a cake mix and following the instructions on the box. The batter was much thicker than the batter made when just following the directions-noticably thicker. Taste is yummy, yummy!! I cooked mine a tidge too long so next time I'll grab them out of the oven a bit sooner. Other than that......quick, easy, delicious=no more just following the instructions on the box for me!

The ladies at eighteen25 have started a new linky called Snapshots of Life.

They post a specific time of the day on Wednesday for you to then take a picture on Thursday to then link up on Friday. Cute!

This week the time was 10:00 a.m.

Usually it would just be my son and I at home at 10, but since the kids had no school yesterday, at 10:00 a.m. my 10 year old was getting ready to go on a bike ride with her friend. At about 9:55, I was none too happy that my husband had hung all the bikes up in the garage (still don't understand why but I'm not asking) and I had to finangle to get hers down!

Linking up to eighteen25 Snapshots of Life, I'm Loving It at Tidymom, Round Robin with Amy at Keeping up with The Schultz Family and Weekend Bloggy Reading with Amanda at Serenity Now

Shutterfly.....Christmas Photo Cards Made Easy

Well, ordering and receiving the cards will be easy, I can't guarantee the same for the picture taking!

Even before Halloween was over, my kids were already anxiously figuring out how many weeks and days until Christmas. If it didn't take so long, they'd probably know the minutes too! The calendar has been poured over, the Toys R Us Toy catalog is in tatters and I hear almost daily "8 weeks until Christmas"!

Aaahhh! 8 weeks!

Definitely first on my Christmas list-cards.

Love, love, love to send and receive photo cards-my kids too. They can spend hours looking at all the pictures of their cousins and friends and it's a great way to catch up with everyone, especially those who don't live close by. The past few years I've ordered my Christmas cards from Shutterfly and personally, I've had a great experience. Easy to order and quick to deliver. I've never had a problem.

Shutterfly has some beautiful new holiday cards this year-I'm thinking maybe choosing may not be so quick and easy-I'm loving quite a few of them!

Loving the blue and red together......

and the bright colors......

more blue and red.......


Love all three of these photo cards!

I have to admit, I usually stress myself out each and every year trying to find the perfect picture for my cards. Every year, I say to myself I'm not going to, but I do! I'm so glad that now there is the option to put more than one picture on a card-just brilliant!

If I can't get a picture of all 5 of my kids together-where one of them isn't looking the other way....or making a goofy face....or jumping up so they just look like a blur.....I'm going with this card. I know there are 6 openings but I saw a great idea on the Shutterfly site. In the 6th opening, they just had a Christmas kind of picture-like a picture of one of the kid's hand holding an ornament. More brilliance and no stress for me!!

If you want to get a jump start on the holidays and cross some things off your to do list Shutterfly is offering 20% off all holiday cards.

Disclosure: This is my honest opinion about Shutterfly's Holiday Cards and my experience with Shutterfly. I am participating in a holiday promotion with Shutterfly and they are providing me with free Christmas cards.

Too. Much. Candy.

My sentiments exactly!

Although my daughter wasn't saying she didn't want any more candy.....

oh, no, quite the opposite for my kids...they are loving it!

I on the other hand, have eaten more candy in the past few days than I do all year.

And that includes all the peanut m&m's I keep hidden away for those moments when I need to sneak away for a bit of alone time.

My kids had a blast on Halloween. It was a bit chilly but we beat the rain and didn't miss trick or treating at one house.

This was about all my son wore his Halloween costume for-just a few pictures. He trick or treated dressed as himself.

No problem wearing his sister's costume though!

Hope you had a wonderful Halloween!