Silhouette Giveaway & Discount on The Bragging Mommy

The Bragging Mommy is giving away my dream toy...tool...creative outlet... the Silhouette!

This beauty does EVERYTHING!

Cuts out any shape you can dream of, etches glass, cuts vinyl and stencils, draws elaborate designs, creates scrap booking supplies, makes temporary tattoos, magnets, creates custom apparel and MORE!

The BEST part...you don't need to pay out all of your hard earned dough to buy dozens of expensive cartridges {when you really only like a handful of the designs on a cartridge anyway}!

This wonderful creation works with your PC {and MAC's} allowing you to download and pay for only the designs you love...not to mention many digital images are already included and you can use files saved on your computer! How great is that?! Even better...you can draw your own images as well. I know!!! :-)




One lucky reader (let it be me!) will win the following via the Bragging Mommy site...

Silhouette SD Machine

1 roll of premium black vinyl

1 roll of frosted vinyl

1 roll of premium transfer paper

A Home Decor CD of cuttable images

Head on over to The Bragging Mommy right now and enter to win before it is too late! If you don't win, be sure to take advantage of the great discount that Silhouette is offering for The Bragging Mommy readers!

Bragging Mommy & BrewBot!

One lucky Bragging Mommy reader can win a Tassimo T20 Home Brewing System! While I hope it is me, I would be happy if it were someone I know too so I can still come over and enjoy a yummy coffee with a great friend.

Head on over to The Bragging Mommy and over to BrewBot.com and see what I am talking about.

Keep your fingers crossed and cups ready!

Lisa's Holiday Wish List

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme

TodaysMama and GameStop are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What is your holiday wish for your family?
The wish is for my daughter to be able to create real and happy memories of being surrounded with love on Christmas and her birthday (since they are the same day)!

2. What is your Christmas morning tradition? Opening presents!

3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be? To spend Christmas in Hawaii. I loved Hawaii and would love an Island Christmas!

4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money? Hot cocoa, spiced cider, a good movie and a warm blanket to cuddle with my hubby and daughter under.

5. What games did you play with your family growing up? Uno, War and Yahtzee

6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood? We watch Emmet Otters Jug Band Christmas every single year without fail. It is such a classic.


7. Where would you go for a Christmas-away-from-home trip? Hawaii or to California to be with my parents if they were not coming here. :-)

8. Check out GameStop and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year?



A Kinect of course!

A shiny new DSi to replace the one my daughter wore out!

Ohhhh...and Zumba to widdle my middle after the holidays!

Updates...

Oh my aching muscles...

Now I am not complaining so don't get me wrong but between the gym and bellydancing I am S-O-R-E! My weight loss is going slowly but surely which is all I can ask for. I am just going to keep at it and before long I know I will reach my goal.

B is on her last day of Pre-K today and then she moves up into the wonderful world of Kindergarten. She is doing good in school and is enjoying it. She is also doing great in swim class so that is nice. She really loves the water and asked her teacher on the first day of lessons when she was going to learn how to dive. She is too funny sometimes. :c)

Scott and I are doing well. Most things are just status quo which is nice.

The weather is heating up here in our part of the world so we are bracing for a very warm summer. We have been up in the 100's several times already this year so it looks to be a long one. Oh well, I still say it is better than the cold. :c)

I will try to get some pictures on here soon so you can see the fam and how we are all doing.

Aloha, aloha and aloha...

Since it has 3 meanings I thought I would use all three with you! We have been back from our trip for the week now and while I enjoy coming home, this was a trip I could have extended a bit and been fine with. As you know we took Bay to my parents where she chilled for the week and got very spoiled by everyone. Scott and I went on from there to Oahu with a day trip to Maui as well. It was simply gorgeous and rained for perhaps a total of 5 minutes the entire week. The weather was mostly 75-78, sunny and some winds that were harder at night but still as beautiful as could be. I could not have ordered up any better weather and by some miracle I managed 6 days in pure sun without even the slightest bit of pink on my skin!

Without further ado here are a handful of pictures from the trip. I have a gallery of them if you want to see more (just shoot me an email) but here are some of my faves...

First of all I highly recommend riding a horse on the island. Here is the beauty we took out for the week!



Here is Scott in his natural element...the beach of course!

And here I am in my least natural element...the beach of course!

This coconut was hanging out on the same beach so I thought I would share it with you!

"Jack" was in our tour group at the Polynesian Cultural Center!

At the luau!

Dinner at the luau! It smelled just like ham. :c)

I learned some Hula as well as some Tahitian dances while at the PCC. Ignore my big booty!

The show at the Polynesian Cultural Center was breathtaking. This was one of my favorite parts.

He is Samoan and one of the funniest people I met. Did you know that Samoan means Happy People? It's true. The men cook, clean and hunt which makes the women happy so naturally everyone is happy! :c)

Here are a few shots from our trip over to Maui. That place is amazing but don't try to get to Hana in a rental car unless it is a Hummer or tank! Those roads will kill you and your car. In fact, do like we did and get the funniest tour guide at Hana Tours...Barry. He makes it educational and fun so make sure to ask for him by name.

Here are some Mongoose. They are so cute and remind me of ferrets. They are everywhere if you look for them.

...us.

Back on Oahu we went to Pearl Harbor for the day. The memorial was sad but inspiring. We went on the USS Missouri which I had been on in 1985 while dry docked in San Diego and also checked out the new Aviation Museum. Those were all pretty cool but my favorite by far was the USS Bowfin. I am not sure why but I really love submarines so any chance I get to tour one I am all over it. The submarine museum was sweet too with all of the flags from the various subs. Did you know that the crews all design their own flags? They have a lot of them hanging in the museum so if you ever get a chance to go there you really should. Sadly 58 subs were lost in WWII.

Here is the USS Bowfin flag from WWII. This is also the only sub known to have ever hit a bus with a torpedo. The various patches signify merchant ships, battle ships, subs and of course the bus that they sank during wartime.

To close I thought I would share with you a pineapple! Not that I ever thought much about it but I would have sworn they grew on trees. It was a shock to see fields and fields of this. Huh...I really did end up learning quite a bit on this trip.

Oh and the deep sea fishing trip was a bust so I am not showing pictures of it since I would have rather been in a shark cage. Oh well...at least it was a bust in Hawaii!

Aloha and Mahalo for stopping by!

Valentines & Friends

For Valentines Day this year S had to work (yea & ugh...) so Bay and I went to H's house and met up with B and the kids to make sugar cookies and cupcakes. It was lots of fun and a little too much sugar cookie dough was added to my waistline but what the heck!

Holy Sugar Cookies Batman but my child is almost as white as the flour on the counter! She definately takes after her mama in that department. Sad thing is that she is actually tanner than me. :c)

After the baking festivites H was kind enough to entertain my offspring for me for a little while so I could go run some errands before my big trip this week. I was able to get some shopping done and then I had to pick up Bay so we could head off to a Birthday party for one of her friends from school at Chuckie Cheese.

It never ceases to amaze me how loud that place is! Just thinking about it now is making my head hurt. Luckily for me I have several amazing friends and Haydee and Bernard came to join me there so I would have some adult interaction to save my sanity. It turned out to be a little more fun than I thought. I got a boatload of tokens and we all set out to get tons of tickets for Bay! She had so much fun and came home with a Pink rubbery Iguanaesque lizard toy that she loves. Sadly she broke it 2 days later because she would not put it down for a minute. Oh well...it happens!

So that is the quick and dirty on how we spent Valentines Day. Now I am off to get ready to drive to Cali and then fly to Hawaii. Aloha!

New Books on my list...

I thought I would share with you all the new book series I am reading. The author is Sherrilyn Keynon and I really like her writing. You can check out the list of books at http://www.dailyinquisitor.com/hunter/excerpt.htm

Here are the books and the order in which you should read them for the best experience in the series...I have bounced around a bit but am trying to get on track with the order. It took me a while to get into Fantasy Lover but I was happy by the end. What sold me was Night Pleasures and what hooked me completely on the series was Night Play.

1. Fantasy Lover
2. Dragonswan
3. Night Pleasures
4. Night Embrace
5. "Phantom Lover", in the anthology Midnight Pleasures
6. Dance with the Devil
7. Kiss of the Night
8. Night Play
9. "Winter Born", in the anthology Stroke of Midnight
10. Seize the Night
11. Sins of the Night
12. "Second Chances", included in the Dark-Hunter Companion!
13. Unleash the Night
14. Dark Side of the Moon
15. "A Hard Day's Night-Searcher", in the anthology My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding
16. "Until Death We Do Part", in the anthology Love At First Bite
17. Fear the Darkness (free e-book)
18. The Dream-Hunter
19. Devil May Cry
20. Upon the Midnight Clear
21. Dream Chaser
22. Acheron
23. One Silent Night
24. "Shadow of the Moon" in the anthology Dead After Dark
25. Dream Warrior

I hope you get a chance to check them out. They are fantasy based on real mythology. I am really enjoying them. :c)

ALOHA

Can you guess where I am going at the end of the month? :c)

Half way to 70 and still having a blast!

Me and the girls all went out to celebrate the big 3*5 on Saturday. Benihana is so much fun and I even got my Budha who I have lovingly named "Boo" because he is my boo! Look at him raising the roof...he is an animal! Of course if I was filled to the back of my head with alcohol I would be raising the roof as well. ;c)

I just wanted to take a minute to thank Pat, Kristina, Becky, Stephanie, Heather and Haydee for coming out to hang with me on my Birthday! I love you guys...err girls! Next up is Stephanie for the big 2*1! Get your party hats ready.

Quick catch up...

It has been a while since my last post and I certainly need to get some pictures up here. I really am sorry! I will work on it in the next few days and see what I can come up with.

Just a quick update and then I am back to business...

Movie News: Twilight is just a few days away! Eeeeeepppppp! I am so excited. If you have not picked up the books yet be sure to get on it and then go see the movie. Also, I highly recommend the soundtrack. It has some great artists on it. I am really looking forward to the score as well and can't wait for that to come out. I am a big fan of Carter Burwell so I am excited to see what he has come up with for this movie.

Books: I have been reading the Dark Series by Christine Feehan. There are 19 books in the series so far and I have managed to get through 12 of them in the last 13 days. They are about 360-400 pages each so they are fast reads. I love them. It is the series that was able to pull me out of my Twilight obsession and back into some sort of functioning reality. If you want to give them a read, and I would recommend them, I feel I must warn you that they are much more adult in nature than my standard fare. Consider yourself warned! Now go pick up Dark Prince and enjoy!

Health: Everyone has been doing well and we are all healthy overall. Scott and Bailey have been battling slight colds but nothing major. I have been seeing a chiropractor for a few weeks now since I managed to trip over a small chair and face plant into the wall in the dark and knocked some ribs out of place in the process. It hurt but it is not the worst thing I have done so I am moving on! I am still losing weight and feeling better about myself so that is good.

Life in general: All is well on the homefront. Bay is doing good in school. Scott and I are just working as usual. Nothing really new to report here.