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Candi

books

The Fault in Our Stars

If I had a ounce of the writing capability of John Green I would be overjoyed. The Fault in Our Stars was one of the best books I’ve ever read. There is no way I could even put into words the amazingness of this book. But I’ll try… Hazel, who has thyroid cancer and wheels an oxygen tank with her everywhere she goes, meets Augustus at a cancer support group. Their relationship makes Edward and Bella’s story seem childish. They talk to one another in a very sweet, but intellectual language and it is so honest and real I found myself tearing up just by the littlest things they would say to each other. They don’t seem like typical teenagers, but then really they aren’t because of all they have been through battling cancer. The relationships that Hazel and Augustus have with their parents is very touching as well. The most heart wrenching part of the story is how Hazel is more worried about leaving her parents childless than she is about dying. The same reason why she won’t allow herself to get romantically involved with Augustus is she doesn’t want to hurt him when she dies.

For me every chapter had such significance, not just for the story, but for my own personal thoughts and feelings. It took me awhile to finish the book because I did stop reading many times just to gather my thoughts and clear my head before moving on. I couldn’t tell you how many times I caught myself having to reread a page because I couldn’t stop focusing on just a single sentence from the previous page. Life is such a privilege and there is so many things we take for granted. You can’t help but ask yourself what you might do differently in your own life if you knew your time was limited. The scary thought is our time is limited, whether it be tomorrow, next year, or 30 years…it’s never going to be enough.

I’m thinking I might reread the book before I take it back to the library, at least some of my favorite parts. It was that good. One of my favorite lines “You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world…but you do have some say who hurts you.”

Daily Nuggets

–> Going to my 4th Zumba class tonight…loving it so far!

–> Wednesdays are my best days to film videos but right now this is what I have going on in my family room. Trying to get my kids sports books updated!

January 24, 2013 by Candi

blog

Getting organized

The kids bathroom turned out well- girly, as the boys say. I choose a deep dark plum and I thought it wasn’t all that girly, but the boys all said “PURPLE!?” Oh well, I love it. And what do boys know about paint anyways. I haven’t repainted the boys room yet either, ugh!

It was difficult to get a photo that showed the true color without any natural light, but this one looks fairly close. I bought the white cabinet on Amazon which had to be put together. In the reviews some people said it took them like 2 hours to put it together. It only took Ken about 30 minutes and it’s pretty sturdy and nice quality.

A couple of other organizational things I have done this month that I am proud of:

My nail polish organizer. Andrew got me this over the door shoe organizer for Christmas. He had asked me for some affordable ideas and I had been wanting to pick one of these up after seeing the idea on a YouTube video. I absolutely love it. TIP: If you decide to do this on a closet door that you open often, use a few pieces of masking tape along the bottom to hold it in place so it doesn’t clank every time you open the door. I hung this on our linen closet that is in our bedroom.

This closet houses a bunch of things, none of which are linens. One shelf has all of our medicines. It drove me crazy trying to find things in there so I found these mesh organizers on Amazon. I bought 4 of the 4″ x 12″ and filled them all. I guess I should have bought one more. I have them organized by children’s medicine verses adult and then the adult ones also organized a bit by type. I also bought this drawer organizer for my top bathroom drawer that contains our toothbrushes, toothpaste, Q-tips, nail care items, scissors, etc. I just love opening a drawer and having everything in its place.

Now I’m not so proud of the following spaces in my bedroom/bathroom:

My makeup is out of control. I need to find a new way to organize my makeup. I don’t want it sitting out on top of my countertop, but this drawer thing is not working too well anymore. The drawer underneath this is full of hair products and some more face products that could use some organizing as well.

These photos need to be put in books and have been sitting here for awhile now I’m sad to say. I ordered these prints a long, long time ago and they are somewhat in order, but need to be double checked because the kids have messed with them a few times. This looks like a good project for Karli and I for tomorrow – no school on Monday! And yes, I have a fan on my nightstand and it runs every night when I’m sleeping. Gotta have that white noise to sleep!

Daily Nuggets

–> I finished The Fault in Our Stars today. O.M.G! What an amazing book. I think it is one of the best books I have read ever. Top 10 for sure. I’m going to elaborate on this in a future blog post. 5 stars for sure!

–> I watched Honey Boo Boo with Karli for a little bit today and I have mixed feelings. When you watch the family and Alana talk it makes me cringe. How is this family worthy of getting PAID to be on television? Is this what the world has come to? I won’t be adding it to my DVR that’s for sure. On the other hand, Alana is ADORABLE when she is all made up for the pageants.

–> Karli had been wanting this stuffed animal unicorn from the dollar store for several months. She finally earned it and I was shocked when we went to the store on Saturday and it was still there. Today she told me that since her “dream” finally came true and she has her unicorn, she needs a new dream. She then tells me her dream is to have a baby sister. Awww, too sweet. Not going to make that dream come true though babe, sorry.

January 21, 2013 by Candi

videos

Karli does my makeup…again!

Little Miss Karli constantly talks about our first “Daughter Does My Makeup” video. I swear she would do my makeup everyday if I let her. Recently she came up with the idea of making another video of her doing my makeup because she thinks she is so much better at putting makeup on now. Mostly because she is 8 now…and we all know how grown up 8 years old is, right? I was going to let her put my makeup on the other day just for fun anyways and then I thought I may as well just record it. Funny thing the video took 25 minutes! I had to edit a lot of her tinkering with all of my makeup out and jabbering about each thing she was using. Hope you enjoy the end result. Thanks for watching and please subscribe. I’m going to have some sort of giveaway once we reach 1,000 subscribers!

January 18, 2013 by Candi

books

January Bookshelf

I am seriously addicted to the library again. I go through spurts because I do love reading on my ipad, but every since I went on vacation and bought a bunch of paperbacks to take with me, I have loved picking out books. Honestly I have checked out quite a few book since December that I ended up not reading and taking back. Kind of like when you go to the grocery store when you are hungry and get too much junk food. When I am in the mood to read I tend to bring home more books than I have time for.

Currently reading: My latest trip included the John Green novel that so many people have read – The Fault in Our Stars. It’s about a teenage girl that has cancer and she meets a boy at a cancer support group and they fall in love. I’m really wondering if there is something to me enjoying young adult books? I’m not sure if it’s because the books have more interesting topics to me most of the time of what. Also, if you don’t know who John Green is – he is not only an author, but a YouTuber, one of the famous Vlog Brothers.

To read list:
Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick – book #2 of the Hush, Hush series.
Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick – book #3 of the Hush, Hush series.
The Beach House by Jane Green – one of those books that was propped up on a top of a shelf and I just picked it up.

What are you reading this month?
If you post books reviews/recommendations on your blog, please let me know!

Daily Nuggets

–> I got my iMac back already, so posting some more videos soon…so excited! I was able to watch a movie today while working instead of Gossip Girl on my iPad.

–> Two weeks of no caffeine (again!) and some days I am still so tired during the day. It’s hard to get going so early without the extra push. But I’m doing it!

January 16, 2013 by Candi

recipes & crafts

Good old crafting days

If you watched my last video on YouTube– this goes right along with my problem of not being able to stick with things that I start.

As I was cleaning and organizing my bedroom the other day I ran into all sorts of goodies. I keep trying to remember how in the world I ever had time for these sort of time consuming hobbies. Then I remembered these were the days before I had to run 4 kids to activities, help them with their homework, and let’s be honest – reality television has too many darn good shows on TV these days.

I discovered my yarn stash and a few projects I started and never finished. Ever since Chase and Karli seen them they haven’t stopped bugging me to finish them. Karli wants the scarf finished and the pink and purple blanket was supposed to be a small one for her dolls. The other piece was supposed to be a blanket for Chase that I honestly don’t think I would ever finish, but I do like the colors so maybe I will make I will make him a different blanket instead.

Then I found a big Rubbermaid container of sewing supplies and a bunch of toddler sized clothing. I almost started laughing because I can barely remember back when I first bought my sewing machine and I had all these aspirations to make all these pieces for Karli. It was back when people would take plain jeans and shirts and decorate them with pieces of fabric and create the cutest outfits. I remember saving photo after photo on my computer for design ideas.

This was an outfit that I made for Karli for her first birthday. It was a plain jean dress and I added all the fabric.

I sewed this dress for Karli for Easter. It ended up being the only thing I sewed from scratch after buying all those patterns. I can remember being so proud of myself for being able to sew pleats! I knitted this sweater for Karli as well.

This turquoise dress was horrible, it hung all wrong. Fail! This red and white striped dress was one of my favorites. She wore it for her 2nd birthday.

I’m not sure what even happened to this hat and scarf, but the poncho is in Karli’s bin of dress up clothes and she has worn it as a skirt many times.

And lastly, the corny looking hat I made for myself, which is also somewhere in Karli’s dress up clothes.

I guess all I am saying is why did I stop knitting and how can I find time to do it again? There are not enough hours in the day to do all the fun stuff I enjoy. Not only that, but I totally forgot how to knit and crochet so I will have to learn all over again. Bummer.

January 14, 2013 by Candi

weight loss

Video #5 of Can Fat People do the Insanity Workout – Final Thoughts

Some sort of miracle occurred and I was able to get the iMac running long enough this morning to save the videos files I had made. I thought I had saved the actual iMovie file and I had borrowed my neighbors MacBook to try and extract the video, but I didn’t save it correctly. My only option was to use Windows Movie Maker, which OMG- come on Windows, you can do better than this. It’s time to change this software up a bit, don’t you think? You can’t do any type of fancy picture-in-picture or edit the voiceovers or anything extra. At least I am able to share my latest video. Just ignore that it looks like the coloring is from the 1970’s. Pretend it’s just the retro version or something.

So yea, here are all mclosing remarks on the series – Can Fat People do the Insanity Workout? It’s the end of the series, at least for now, I may try to start it back up again in a month or so. First I plan on getting on the treadmill and elliptical and build some endurance back up again. Starting over stinks, but I’m not getting any results by doing nothing that is for sure.

I have created 4 more videos in this series-
See all of the videos in the playlist here at YouTube. Thanks for watching :)
Subscribe for future weight loss and fitness videos and blog posts!

Daily Nuggets

–> Dropped off the iMac at the shop, only $75 for them to install the hard drive + the cost of the hard drive. Totally worth it.

–> The first DLC maps come out for Black Ops II on January 29th! Woo hoo! Even though I hardly every play and still don’t know my way around the current maps. Maybe I should make some gaming videos on how NOT to play, because I’m not that great. My KD is like .60 or something like that.

–> FYI – I write all of my blog posts and such very late at night and set them up to post in the morning and then I share on Facebook whenever I get around to it during the day. I DO WORK during the day despite what some may think!

January 11, 2013 by Candi

technology

iHate iMac

There have been many new subscribers to my YouTube Channel this month and some have left comments telling me to keep at it or to please update them on my progress. All of these are on the series I made called “Can Fat People Do the Insanity Workout?” The guilt finally set in and I figured it was time I hang my head in shame and admit that I never did finish the second month of Insanity. Today I had recorded a video (several times, ugh – it’s hard getting back into talking to a camera again) and just got done with editing and our iMac started acting up again. The spinning beach ball from hell is what I call it. Of course I had already deleted the video clips on my Flip camera so now I can’t upload the video. After doing some research (sometimes I just hate Google- it’s a never ending vortex of information- some of it conflicting) I feel pretty confident in saying that the hard drive needs replaced. After all of the reformatting and crap that I did several months ago resulting in the same issues, it’s just gotta happen. I am going to call our local Mac repair shop and see how much it will cost for them to install the new hard drive for me. If it’s more than a few hundred dollars I will do it myself since I can get a new hard drive for about $150. I have never taken apart an iMac before and it doesn’t look to hard. But this does not work into all of the things that I have to do right now. PLUS I can not upload my video now and the footage is lost. This was me about an hour ago when I was slowly accepting I now have to rerecord the video and then figure out how to use Windows Movie Maker on my PC to edit it instead.

And did I mention how I use the iMac to watch tv shows or movies while I am working!? Now I have to work in silence until I get it fixed. The horror!!

Daily Nuggets (something new I am going to do at the end of my posts, you should do it too!)

-> We took all four dogs to the vet today, there was a lot of bleeding going on. I think the vet used too large of a needle to test for heartworm. Then he clipped one of Tori’s nails too short. It was a mess.

-> The snow is almost all melted!! What if it didn’t snow again all winter? That would be AMAZING!

-> Ken is resigning from being head of our youth football organization. He still wants to coach, but we just can’t be in charge anymore. It takes too much time away from us during the day (in the fall) and when you run your own business, that just doesn’t work out very well. Two years was enough. Still kinda sad though.

January 10, 2013 by Candi

blog

Growing like weeds

When did this happen? Proof of how time flies. Love Andrew’s buzz cut, his souvenir from going to football camp over the summer- a buzz cut for his school picture! It’s tradition for all of the football players to shave their heads at camp. I can’t say that I like Andrew’s hair that short either. He looks like he wants to kill someone. And let’s not even get into how Andrew wore the same shirt for school photos this year as last year. It seems like he wants everyone to be clear that he is an American. All the kids look so old. And who agrees that if Karli and Chase could easily pass for twins? I tell Karli all the time if she chopped her hair off she would look exactly like Chase.

I also never shared these photos from the football season. January appears to be the month of organization for me, literally. So don’t mind me while I catch up on some posts. I love Chase in his football photo, what a little stud.

(Sports Photos taken by GSK Creations)

January 8, 2013 by Candi

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