Favor, please...

Remember my absolutely adorable pink & green monogrammed tennis key chain??? (can you get any preppier than that?) Well, my blog friend Hazel, the wonderfully creative and talented artist who custom designed that little gem among many other delightful pieces, needs our help to win a great prize in Girl Indie Blog's Designer Chick Contest. If you can spare a second just click here and vote for Hazel's adorable custom kid's key chain which is #17. The grand prize includes a lot of wonderful items to help Hazel take her business to the next step. After you vote for her, visit Hazel's blog Just Add Dots and leave a comment that you voted for her. You'll then have a chance to win your very own custom key chain. Just look at some of Hazel's creativity at work. I would just love to help her take her talents to the next level.

Thanks for helping Hazel out. I know she appreciates it.

There's No Place Like Home

I could not agree with Dorothy more...We got back from our 15-day, 3,000 mile road trip on Sunday and I'm soooooooo glad to be home. While I love my family, I'd have to say this vacation included a little too much togetherness...

• 3,000 miles through mid-America in the middle of summer with a 4-year old constantly asking to watch "The Polar Express" (her all-time favorite movie) while the 11 year old wants to watch Napoleon Dynamite for the umpteenth time and whines how unfair it is that Bonus Baby "always gets her way." (Her whining is just a little more annoying than his so she wins) Meanwhile, Big Sis just puts on her iPod and all I want to do is play a family game of License Plate Bingo, which never happened.



• A 3,000-mile road trip means LOTS of public bathroom visits with Bonus Baby...I HATE public restrooms, particularly the hot, steamy, crowded, unclean ones at the ever-interesting interstate rest stops. To add to my disgust, is the fact that I am the only one that can take her "potty" at all of these places...Mr. Madras says how much he wishes he could help out, but he wouldn't dare take her into the men's restroom...(Another reason I love WDW is the very clean FAMILY restrooms they have, where dads can take their precious little baby girls). In all fairness to Big Sis, she does make a few trips to the potty with BB and I do appreciate the break.



• Luckily, the long miles were broken up a bit by our visits to our family lake house in Wisconsin; another visit to my brother-in-law's island farmhouse and yet another stop to visit family in Minnesota. Mind you, all of these visits are with Mr. Madras' family (whom I dearly love, but once again a lot of togetherness!!!) It's hard to really relax with your in-laws everywhere. I wanted the kids to be so well-behaved, look cute and all while making it look so natural. That's a lot of stress on a mom!!!



• Add to the stress the fact that the 5 of us shared one bedroom..bunks, air mattresses, etc. The best part of all is sharing one bathroom with the 11 of us that were there. The lake house is so cute and everything a cottage should be except for the whole bathroom thing. I spent most of my time there brainstorming how in the heck we could add a second bathroom...



• Fortunately, the weather was great!!! I was able to run 5-6 miles in relatively cool, and wonderfully unhumid weather. Boy, that makes a huge difference... I think 3 miles in hot, humid Texas is equal to 5 miles in the upper Midwest.



• Other trip highlights included Big Sis conquering water skiing; BB "swimming" with no life vest; Big Bro driving the boat; trip to the American Girl store in Chicago and the American Girl OUTLET (yes, it's true there's an outlet) in Oshkosh, WI which is also where the Land's End Outlet is.

All in all, a fun trip but I really do yearn for a relaxing vacation one of these days. Right now, I have to conquer Mount Washmore...I cannot believe the amount of laundry we have. I am really beginning to think that less is more...the less clothes we have, the less laundry we have to do.

Off To The Lake

We're headed on our annual trip "up north" to spend time at our family lake house in Wisconsin. Think "On Golden Pond." We'll be gone two weeks so I'll catch up when we return. Have a great Fourth of July!!!

Lilly, Lilly, Everywhere....

Look at these classics that are getting decked out in their "Lilly-finest" to celebrate Lilly's Jubilee Year.

A Steinway Piano

A Lilly Jeep Wrangler~ I really want this.

Lilly is also partnering with some other companies who will be incorporating traditional Lilly prints and themes: Hasbro will introduce a Palm Beach version of its Monopoly game called "Lilly-opoly." Florida Natural Orange Juice containers will be decked out in Pulitzer prints. How cool is that?!?!

For anyone who's headed for a hospital stay anytime soon, might as well do it in Lilly style with these custom made patient gowns in Lilly Pulitzer prints. I stumbled upon this website Raspberry Bee and thought, "what a great idea."

Have you seen any neat Lilly stuff lately???

Sweet Treats

I just love all the fun stuff at Swoozie's. I absolutely adore it when it's on sale!! Thought these bargains were worth passing along. These would make great hostess gifts. I've stocked up on several things for the Madras house, as well as for gifts. The Initial Guest Towels are only $3.97; the Initial Cocktail Napkins in a lucite holder a mere $7.47; Initial Notes in a lucite holder just $7.47; and the Initial Soap Sets are only $7.47. Just too good to pass up.

Speaking of too good to pass up...I've fallen in love with these yummy Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites. Basically, these little treats are a Sara Lee cheesecake cut into small bite-size cubes. Each cube has only 20 calories, and, truly, two or three satisfy my sweet tooth . They're on sale right now at Kroger for $2.20 instead of the usual $3.79. Needless to say, I stocked up. As that old jingle goes... "Nobody, doesn't like Sara Lee..."

Did I Mess Up?

OK everyone, just have to vent a little. So please excuse my little rant here. As I've mentioned before I like to visit Kristin Armstrong's blog, Mile Markers. She's a creative writer, and I can relate to so many of her posts. Well, several weeks ago she had a great post Orange Shorts. As I was reading through the comments that readers had left, I was particularly annoyed by one reader, CGT, who had commented several times on a grammatical mistake in Kristin's post. Mind you, this blog is written by a mom and runner and gives readers a little inspiration when it comes to balancing all the stuff that comes with being a parent who has interests and a life. Well, I thought it was a little odd that someone would take the time to be fairly "ugly" in her comments when they really had nothing to do with the spirit of the post. (Thanks to all of you for never pointing out any of my writing errors...I try to use spellcheck when I remember and double check my posts before I publish...stuff surely slips by...blogging, for many of us, is like a journal or that quick note you would jot to a friend...all things that we don't worry about being scrutinized for grammatical errors) Anyway, it just irked me to see all of the real negative comments that this particular blogger continued to make about this post.

Fast forward to yesterday evening, when I was reading Kristin's latest post Some Like It Hot, Hot, Hot, all about running in this awful Texas heat and humidity. As usual, I browsed through the comments and found it quite ironic that the infamous CGT had posted not once but twice with the very common grammatical mistake of writing "alot" as one word instead of the correct "a lot." Since she had done it in two different posts, I figured it wasn't just a typo and since it was midnight and I was a bit tired and perhaps not thinking straight, I typed a comment on Kristin's blog addressing the mistake. I thought if CGT was going to take the time to point out the grammatical errors of others (and not in a very kind way) I thought I would inform her of the mistake. Since I had just reviewed this with the sixth-grade students I had volunteered to tutor, the lesson was fresh in my mind.

Well, she didn't seem to take the helpful information very well and decided to poke a little fun at my blog and question what I was doing teaching sixth-grade students in Houston during the middle of June. I had actually volunteered to work with a group of students who had struggled in the writing portion of our state assessment (TAKS). These kids have a lot going on in their lives that isn't so great, so I felt this was a way I might be able to help. I'm having a blast working with them, and I'm probably learning as much from them as I hope they are learning from me.

In a way, I'm mad at myself for even writing the comment to CGT. It's just that she was so unkind in her comments. The comments weren't just about the grammatical error in Kristin's post but about Kristin herself. While I didn't make a comment during her initial criticisms, I couldn't help myself yesterday. Did I mess up? Should I just let stuff like that go? Now, CGT seems to have decided to make a little fun of me. This has just really irked me so I had to vent. Thanks for letting me let it out. I promise my next post will be much lighter and fun.

(No doubt, this post probably has some grammatical errors...let's make a pact that our posts don't have to be grammatically perfect and that if we can't say anything kind in our blog comments, we won't say anything at all.)

Cute Bargains

An email I got yesterday from CWD Kids led me to some incredibly cute bargains that I had to pass along. Here are just a few of the deals I put into my shopping cart.what a cute pink and green seersucker skirt only 9.99!!

pink and green flip flops embroidered with little starfish only 9.99!!

Sweet Potatoes bathing suit in fun Marimeko design ~ 19.99

Matching Sweet Potatoes dress ~ 19.99

pink and green seersucker dress ~ 19.99

There were lots more great deals. Cute Sara's Prints pjs and Mulberribush t-shirts. Some really fun patriotic outfits, too, that would look adorable for the Fourth. Hope you'll discover some great finds, too!