Want to WOW your family?

Make your very own granola!!

Yes that's right. I bought some yogurt a week ago and I was eating it at work, thinking how it would taste so much better with granola.

So.... I searched several sites looking for easy granola recipes. And.... I found one 

HERE

I was amazed. What's better is I didn't have to spend a fortune on granola from the store. I mean, really, does your store have simple, cheap, tasty granola?? If it does, count yourself very lucky!! My stores have fancy schmancy organic granola with weird seeds I've never even heard of. Or I have to buy the granola cereals which taste more like cereal and less like granola. All I wanted was the granola like you get from McDonalds with your fruit and yogurt parfait. But here, going to McDonalds is an all day adventure. It's the busiest MickeyDee's in the country!

My husband was a little hesitant, you see, "granola" to him has negative connotation. No offense to you Subaru driving folks! ;) just kidding! I love you all!! So to Wow him, I grabbed our last yogurt and put it in a bowl with granola and..... he was wowed!! I love surprising my hubby. He gave me a bite and Autumn a bite, then he wouldn't let us eat anymore...he was kinda being selfish (but I liked it because it meant he REALLY liked it! Success!)

Well my ramblings are finally coming to an end now folks. Go grab your oats, honey, oil, brown sugar, little cinnamon, little salt and you've got yourself some super easy and DELISH granola!

Sidenote: somehow when I was measuring out my cinnamon, and I seriously don't know how this happened, I dumped WAY more than it called for in the recipe.  It was very cinnamony, but not too bad. I would actually just put the 1/2 t. or t. that it calls for...not the 1/4 a cup I accidentally dumped in. :(  haha.

Well, I'm off to get my 9:45 snack...guess what it is???

Raspberry yogurt with...GRANOLA!

YUM!

Do you have a PUWYLO friend?

This is El Arco in Cabo, Mexico. It is where the Pacific ocean and the Sea of Cortez connect through land.  Keep that in mind as you read this post.

 

(I actually took this picture when I went there with one of my PUWYLO friends.)

Have I intrigued you yet?  Well, I must say, I just came up with this acronym last night as I lay in bed at 8:30 to go to sleep.  Yes, 8:30!  It's a regular occurence at our home, but it's because my sweetheart wakes up at 4:45am to go to work, to get a head start on the day!  Bless his soul! That's early.  So sometimes, it is hard for me to go to sleep that early and I think a lot as I lay and listen to him snooze.  (some nights his snooze is louder than others...ugh, I don't like snoring).  But last night was quiet and I thought about what I might post on my blog today. 

And this is what I came up with:

a PUWYLO friend

This stands for Pick Up Where You Left Off friend. 

I have to just say, I'm am SOOO thanful for all my PUWYLO friends out there.  You probably know who you are!  I have friends from years and years ago that I don't regularly keep in touch with, BUT we have such an awesome friendship that we can just...pick up right where we left off however many years ago it was.  I can't fully express in words how sweet it is to have friends like that.  They don't get mad at you because you never call or you never visit.  They just understand that life gets crazy busy and then about 4 years later, you randomly email them and then call them the next day and talk for like 2 hours and it is so great!  It literally feels like we had been hanging out and talking the whole time, but obviously it had been awhile.

I just want to say if you have some PUWYLO friends out there, pick up the phone, facebook message them, shoot them a text (or in my case, I didn't even have one's number because it had been so long) or email them saying your thinking about them (even if you only began to think about them because you read this blog).

I can seriously count several friends, I would need more than my two hands to count them all, that are my PUWYLO friends.  Okay okay, I'll stop using that acronym, but they are exactly that.  I miss them all dearly but love to just catch up with them when both our crazy lives meet in the middle somehow and we find an hour in our lives to visit.  Even if it takes 10 years.  Which is what I did this last winter, I met a friend for hot chocolate that I have literally not seen since we were walking out the high school door of our all night after graduation party.  I just LOVE re-connecting with old friends.  It's sure fun.  Makes me feel all good inside.

Kind of like this picture made me feel, I took this picture at a stoplight in Provo years ago.

You know what else makes me feel all good inside??

THESE donuts or THESE BAKED donuts

But it's a different feel good...it's the kind that makes my tummy feel good inside me and then makes me gain a few pounds!  I haven't tried this recipe yet, but I sure would like to! Mmmmm

Fall!! YAY!

THESE babies are the REASON for the SEASON.  Oh my YUM!

This is the View from my                        This is the view today!
window a few weeks ago.                      Getting a little more yellow
     

I made these! Cool huh!?! 

 I somehow forgot all my Halloween Decor at my mom's in Idaho. Boo! (pun intended!)
So I had to make something Halloweeny.  I love them!

Driving Home...I know shouldn't be Taking pics and driving...but I LOVE the trees changing colors!

This is what "having a cough at work" looks like.

I got a cold last Friday that lasted a short time but now I'm dealing with this wretched Cough!! I have been living off cough drops to settle down the coughing fits. You know when you get a tickle in your throat and you can't stop coughing??? Yup, that's how it's been for five days straight. I try numbing it with the spray. I try breathing the vapor rub. I suck on the strongest, grossest cough drops known to man. And I drink water like crazy. The Nasty fisherman's friend cough drops help a little. I'm just annoyed with it now. It's to the point where everyone in my office knows when I'm here and they come to see if I'm okay. On the up side, one coworker did come in and now I think, after talking to her, that I need to be sipping on warm stuff. Off to get honey and lemon juice for my hot water.

Well, after writing this post...I went down to the mail room (on my way to get the honey and lemon juice) and one of our nurses was there.  She diagnosed me with "take a day off, your sick" sickness.

So...I went home, after going to the pharmacy and having the nice pharmacist load me up on the goods.

I took Nyquil, Extra strength Mucinex and Vitamin C and slept from 10:30am-1:30pm, ate a banana and went back to sleep till 4pm. 

Just what I needed! 

Today I'm at work with JUST cough drops, took a Claritin D, have gatorade and water...I'm feeling good.

Much better day.

Although it was raining today and I SO just wanted to stay in bed.  I took Autumn to school right after a crazy DOWNPOUR.  And we were literally driving in a foot of water.  She was kinda freaking out and kept saying, "are we going to SINK??"  It was funny.  But the road was a river, one of the houses had the water flowing up onto the front lawn and there were wakes in the water hitting my car and the passing minivans.  It was a little wild.  So I pulled up to the curb and told Autumn to jump!  She stood in the car and lept for the sidewalk.  :) 

Good times in ND!

And thankful that I am not coughing my brains out today!

You break it, you buy it.

My husband's been wanting something to hold his "cards" in, but did NOT want a bulky wallet. I don't blame him, those big wallets are annoying. So instead he grabs his driver's license, credit card, cash and his CDL something or other card and puts them in his pocket....a loss waiting to happen.

Well, I found some front pocket, slim wallets online but didn't want to hassle with shipping and waiting....not as patient as I used to be. Then I was at the evil walmart ( I say evil, because we usually try to avoid it like we avoid sin....it's dirty, poor service and overall a bad experience when we go, stand ye in holy places right?) and I was looking for men's front wallets/card holder thingies. Of course they have NO men's accessories except ties. Those won't work.

I head to look at the ladies wallets. I was trying to be resourceful, which I feel I'm pretty good at, and I opened the wallet you see below. Now, in the picture there are two pieces, in the store they were one. Oopsy.

I thought that the middle flap was not connected and being of the determined type....I yanked that thing right out thinking it was just stuck in there real good. In fact it was in there good, sewn in actually. But walmart quality=easy for me to rip out. And I've gotta be honest with you, I put it back together and slipped it back on the shelf thinking "whoops" then circled the men's clothing only to come right back, guilt stricken, pick it up and think "well, $7 is cheaper than the $17 I was going to pay AND I broke it so I need to buy it".

So I'm hoping Wade likes his new front wallet. And I feel good knowing I didn't damage merchandise then leave it for some girl to buy. Conscience is clear. Guilt is gone. Phew. :)

Popcorn perks at work

Why do I love the Old Maids so much?? Someone would make a killin if they just sold these yummy, crunchy, half popped Old women! ;)
Although I love those old maids, I love the popcorn just the same. Definitely a perk of working on the 3rd floor is having this glorious machine in our break-room!
Nothing quite like movie theatre popcorn at work! Yummy!

My bathroom REMODEL is done!

My favorite bathroom accessory: the toilet paper holder! Thanks to hobby Lobby for all the cute decor on the walls. My awesome husband did the tile in the shower and the floor. Check out this post for the before pics of the bathroom, it was tiny and cramped and yucky. This is 100 times better in my opinion. I just love it so much, the new white paneling/wanescoat/whatever it's called. And the grecian ivory paint (chosen by Wade...I couldn't for the life of me decide on a color and this is what he got...I LOVE IT). Basically it's all new with a cute new vanity that Wade brought home with him from Idaho (home depot special). Thanks to the hubs...he did it again! Made the old new again! Love him!!