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Monday, December 14, 2015

15 Reasons Why Being a Military Spouse is Awesome

                                       



This morning I was sitting at home after my husband left for pt. I always hate when he has to leave, even if it's just for the duty day. I got to thinking about the different aspects of the military lifestyle. We all have reason why we may not like our spouse being in the military, but no one can argue that there are definitely some great things that come from it.


  • The Benefits: Who can really complain about free healthcare? And of course, the housing allowance helps to keep a roof over your head, despite the not-so-good pay. 

  • Free Gym "Membership": People are always paying tons of money to get a gym membership. But as a military spouse, you get to go to the gym on post for free! 

  • The Commissary: It's great. Do I really need to explain this one?

  • Military Balls: I don't know about you, but I love the excuse to be able to dress up nice and go dancing with my husband. 

  • The PX: You can get name brand items such as Bath and Body Works, Marc Jacobs, Coach, and Michael Kors all in one place for pretty reasonable prices. 

  • Military Discounts: Can you really argue with this one?

  • You get to have friends all over the world

  • Travel: This is probably my favorite aspect of the military lifestyle. You get the opportunity to live in places you normally wouldn't. You get to experience so many new places. 

  • You learn to be very independent: When your spouse is gone for extended periods of time, what other choice do you have?

  • You get the opportunity to be super creative: You have all those care packages to decorate and letters to write. 

  • Road Trips! Every few years you get the opportunity to take a long road trip that you don't have to pay for! Cheers for PCS season. 

  • That uniform! I love to see my husband in his uniform. I think he looks so sexy!

  • The Pride: I feel so proud when I get to see my husband in his uniform. It's one of the best feelings in the world, knowing that he is willing to make sacrifices to keep our country safe. 

  • You learn to be Flexible thanks to the military's last minute planning and constant changes.

  • Tuition Assistance: This is definitely an awesome benefit of being a military spouse. Not only for me, but also my husband.
What are your favorite things about being a military spouse?

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

So Soon!

I'm really excited. In 9 days we will be heading home to see our family! I absolutely cannot wait. I've gotten almost everyone's gifts finished up. I'm really excited...Minus the 12+ hour drive. But on a happy note, we plan to geocache all the way home.

Monday, November 30, 2015

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with lots of food (of course!). That evening we went Black Friday shopping (it should be called Black Thursday). We grabbed a few Christmas gifts and new Fitbits for us. Our old Fitbits are falling apart. We got in and out and were home by 930.
Saturday we went to our friends' house for Friendsgiving. It was a lot of fun. There were about 12 people there. Instead of the traditional Thanksgiving meal, we had a taco bar. We spent the night playing games such as Concept and Cards Against Humanity. We had a lot of fun. Although, I got called white trash because I don't like the show Good Eats. It's just a very slow moving show  and isn't really my thing.
Now, the rest of the week  I will be finishing up the last of our gifts for our Homemade Christmas. I'm pretty excited about it. In two weeks, I get to see my family!

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

I'm Blessed

Throughout my entire life I’ve heard people talk about how God has financially blessed them, but I never understood how that made sense. That is, until yesterday. 
They took Cody’s BAS out to make up for when he was gone a few months ago. We didn’t know it came out Thanks to that, we had a check bounce for our car payment. We’ve never had that happen. That meant next month we’d have to pay $600 total (each month we pay $300). We wouldn’t have money to go home for Christmas, or to pay for food. We were devastated and absolutely terrified. 
I called the  credit union we have our loan through. I told them what had happened and that we’d make it up next month by paying double. But we’d have to separate it between paychecks. The woman asked if we were just trying to pay to get caught up. I said yes. She said “Oh, well in that case.. You’re car payment is only $289 a month. You all have been paying ahead every month and that goes towards the next month. So you only owe $72.98. That’ll get you until December 31st.” I was so happy. I knew we could afford that. I got off the phone with her and cried. It was such a relief. A huge weight had been lifted. 
We now didn’t have to worry about next month’s finances. We would be okay. But as I said, this month our account was wiped out because of bills and the BAS pay cut. We only had roughly $30 left in our account to buy food and get gas. 
Right after Cody got home, he started to change clothes. There was a knock at the door. It was a man from a local church. He handed us a huge bag of food and said “We’d like to help you with your Thanksgiving. Here’s a bag of food and a $25 Food Lion gift card.” We have never met this man, and for some reason he stopped by our house. In the bag was absolutely everything you’d need for Thanksgiving dinner. Plus, we now have enough money to last us until next paycheck. 
I honestly believe that God blessed us with all this. We were so scared we wouldn’t be able to afford our bills next month, but now we don’t have that fear.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Just An Afternoon Vent

Have you ever just hated the way your life is going? Or felt like no matter what you do, things just never seem to get better? Well, I'm at that point right now. It's been an awful week. I got some bad news and am currently waiting to see the outcome of it. Plus, I just got told Cody will be working on Thanksgiving. We had plans for the holiday and as well as Black Friday ( I was going to do some Christmas shopping). But now those have been thrown out the window.

It irritates me because they chose him to do it, instead of a single soldier. None of the single soldier's have plans for Thanksgiving, but they choose a married soldier who does. This kinda thing always happens to us. Always. Cody always gets screwed over, thanks to his stupid, spiteful chain of command.

It's times like this that I wish he had never reenlisted. Work will always come before anything, while he's in. And that is a super crappy feeling. I know we'll never be able to have a normal, happy life until we are no longer military affiliated. That's still so far away.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

How to Make Cute Washcloth Reindeer

Christmas is approaching quickly. If you're like me, you're trying to find the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Why not make some cute gifts, that are super easy and quick to make?

I think these washcloth reindeer are absolutely adorable. And I'll teach you how to make you're very own!

I think these reindeer are absolutely adorable! And I'll teach you how to make you're very own! So grab a cup of hot chocolate or eggnog, turn on some Christmas music and get crafting!



You will Need: 

  • A washcloth
  • Brown pipe cleaners
  • Pom poms (I chose red. You can do brown or black)
  • A rubber band
  • Ribbon
  • A bar of your favorite soap
  • Googly eyes
  • A hot glue gun
How to make it: 

Lay your washcloth down so that it's in the shape of a diamond. 


Place the bar of soap near the center of the washcloth, but not quite in the middle. Like this 


Next you will fold the bottom corner up to the middle, covering the bar of soap. 




Fold the top corner down and around the back of the soap. You should see the corner at the top again, but on the back.




Now, fold up the sides so they meet in the middle. Tuck the top corner underneath. Tie with a rubber band, making ears.


Fold a pipe cleaner in half and set it aside. Fold another pipe cleaner in half, and cut it in the middle. Fold one of the halves in half and cut it again. Twist the two small pieces around each side of the pipe cleaner you have set aside, making antlers.


Put hot glue on the bottome of one side of the antlers. Secure them between the two ears.


Now glue on two eyes and a nose and use ribbon to tie a bow, hiding the rubber band. 



You now have an adorable reindeer that you can give someone or keep for yourself! 

Thursday, November 5, 2015

A Handmade Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner. It's my favorite time of year. We've already started listening to Christmas music.

We decided this year we're having a homemade Christmas. So we're making all the gifts we're giving this year. I've spent the day working on my sister's big gift. I'm pretty excited about it. It's completely handmade and it's definitely going to take days to complete. But it'll be worth it! I'll post what I made her after Christmas. I don't want to take the chance of her seeing it beforehand.

I've also been working on my dad's big gift. His isn't exactly handmade, but it is hand assembled. I'm pretty stoked to see what he thinks of it.

Over the upcoming weeks, I'll be spending most of everyday working on gifts for everyone. I honestly think a handmade Christmas, was a great idea.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

At Home Date Night Ideas

It can be expensive to go out on dates every week. $20 for the movies, not including popcorn. Another $20-40 for dinner. That adds up, and quick.

So as a way to save money, especially with our PCS coming up, we started to have some at home date nights. But that doesn't mean that they have to be boring nights at home watching the evening news on TV.

I've put together a list of some of our favorite things to do when we have a date night at home.


  • Dinner and a Movie- Dress up (or not) and fix a nice dinner. I usually make a steak dinner, it's cheaper than getting one at a restaurant. Then pop some popcorn, rent a movie, turn on netflix, or watch your all time favorite movie.

  • Game Night- Grab your favorite board games and spend the night playing, with no tv, no distractions. Just enjoying each other's company. 

  • Paint Fight- Grab some bottles of washable paint, go outside and throw it all over each other. It's so much fun and will keep you laughing the whole time. 

  • Gone Dancing- Put on some music and enjoy an evening of dancing around your living room.

  • Cooking Date- Pick out a new recipe to try. Spend the evening cooking the meal together and then sit down and enjoy your creation. 

  • Gettin' Artsy- Buy some canvases, pick a picture and paint. It's so much  fun to see what the other person's looks like. You could even paint, or draw each other. It'd bring some laughs.

  • Blanket Fort - Build a blanket fort in the middle of your living room, just like when you were a kid. Fill the inside with pillows and blankets and cuddle or play board games. You could even get a small constellation light and shine it on the roof of the fort to do some indoor stargazing. 

  • Karaoke Night- Turn your living room into a concert! 

  • DIY Photoshoot- How many pictures do you have with both of you in them? Set up a tripod and take pictures of both of you. You could even create your own backdrops.

  • At Home Wine Bar- Buy a few bottles of wine, have a plate of meats and cheeses, light some candles, and play some music. 

  • Stargazing- Lay a blanket out in your backyard and spend the evening looking up at the beautiful night sky and talking. 

Monday, November 2, 2015

Halloween Adventures


Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. So it's no surprise that we decided to spend our Halloween out on the town with some friends. We went bar hopping along River Street in Savannah. It was a lot of fun. Towards the end of the night, we decided to go to a bar that we always call the nerd bar. It's basically a bar that has a menu with food items named after videogames and movies. Plus they have two big projector screens and three or four tvs that you can play videogames on. They also have like 200 board games you can play.

While we were at this bar, a friend (the one dressed as Louise) and I started singing Bohemian Rhapsody. The entire bar started joining in. It was awesome.


Our little family. I was trying to be super serious like Wednesday Addams is... 

Obviously that didn't work.




  
                                    
                                                 Our Ace Ventura, Scarecrow and Lumberjack

Louise, Ace Ventura, A Scarecrow, A Lumberjack and Wednesday Addams
 








We had a ton of fun. It's sad to say, this will be our last Halloween together. PCS season is coming upon us. But we made a lot of memories.


Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Seeds

Fall is my favorite time of year.The leaves are changing colors, the air is nice and cool (most of the time) and Halloween has arrived! If your family is like mine, you carve pumpkins each year. In the process you probably throw all the pumpkin "guts" away. Doesn't that seem like a bit of a waste?

Well, my husband and I love to roast our pumpkin seeds after we finish carving. They're a great snack and taste delicious. Here's our favorite way to eat them.


Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients: 

  • 1 cup of pumpkin seeds, cleaned off and dried
  • 1 Tbs of melted butter
  • 1 Tbs sugar
  • 3/4 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg























Directions: 

  1. Toss the pumpkin seeds in the ingredients. Be sure they are all covered in the mixture.
  2. Line a greased baking sheet with the seeds. Be sure to space the seeds out as much as you can.
  3. Bake at 300 degrees for about 50 minutes. Be sure to take them out and turn them so they don't burn. Bake until browned, but not burned.
  4. Enjoy

All the ingredients in a bowl

The pumpkin seeds mixed with the ingredients

 
Line a greased baking sheet with seeds


Enjoy!





Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Weekend Adventures

If you've been following my blog for a while now, you know that I absolutely love to go geocaching. We usually go every weekend. If you're not sure what geocaching is you can find more information about it on my blog post here.

Well, Georgia, as a state, is very supportive of geocaching. In fact, many of the state parks here place their own caches for people to find. We decided we wanted to do part of the history trail, the forts.

So we got up bright and early on Saturday and hit the road. Our first stop, Fort King George. Structure wise, this was my favorite of the three forts.

It had a pond in front of the actual fort. It was super pretty.



The main structure of the fort as three stories tall and had a basement also. You could go inside the building to see how the people lived inside it.


                                                                 It had ladders inside.

And a bed.

On the top floor you could look out at the nearby islands. Personally, I loved the view.



                                                       In the basement, there was brig.


This is what the buildings and "town" surrounding the main structure looked like.



Next we made our way to Fort McAllister. This was probably my least favorite of the forts. It was a Civil War fort. Essentially the structure itself is mounds that have been built into. The history was  pretty cool though. 



Our final stop of our Geocaching History Trail was Fort Morris. Fort Morris was absolutely gorgeous and the history of the surrounding town of Sunbury was amazing.  

Sunbury was a hub of activity prior to the Revolutionary War. It was basically the wealthiest town in the Midway district. The British took over the town, most likely burning down and destroying all the buildings in the town. Sunbury was the last town taken by the British, in Georgia. 

This was a lookout point along the trail at Fort Morris. 

Cody and I at the beautiful lookout point at Fort Morris

So if you're ever in Georgia, I highly recommend hitting these three forts. The history is so cool. And if you're a geocacher, you get a pathtag for getting the multicache at each place! 

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Pumpkin Carving

The past few weeks we have been crazy bust. Between Cody working and me preparing Christmas gifts, blogging and our weekend adventures, we just haven't had time to get prepared for the upcoming holiday. So with Halloween just around the corner, we decided to carve pumpkins this evening.

So we went to the store, picked out the perfect pumpkins, came home, turned on some mood music (Halloween Classics of course) and set to work.

Of course it got a little messy, but that's the fun part.





Even our dog Edmond got in the spirit of Halloween!

                                  

Well, I hope everyone is doing well. Either tomorrow or sometime this week, I'll be posting about our adventures Geocaching that led us to three forts. So keep an eye out!

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

I'm pretty addicted to my sewing machine. I may not be an expert at sewing, but I sure do enjoy it. I've been working on some new projects and I'll be posting them here soon! So keep an eye out.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Geocaching Adventures

For the long weekend, we decided to take a trip to North Carolina to do some geocaching. What should've been a five hour drive, turned into almost ten hours due to all the flooding in South Carolina. But that's okay. We still had a ton of fun.

We went to Topsail Beach. It was a pretty place. We mainly went to geocache, but we still got to enjoy the area. There's a little diner called Island Delights. It's a 50s style diner. The interior is covered in antiques. Even the women's bathroom has a perfume dispenser. If you're ever in the area, I totally recommend trying it out. 

We also went to the beach. It wasn't super crowded, although that may be because of the off season. Every time we go to the beach, we search for shark teeth. So of course, we did here as well. We found 57! It was awesome!

Anywho, while there, we found quite a few geocaches. 

This one was fun, but a pain in the butt. There was a bag of 800 keys we had to go through. Only one key would unlock the ammo can. We noticed the pattern right away but none of the keys unlocked it. After going through all 800 keys, with none working. We tried one that we had previously tried 5 times. It finally worked. The lock just stuck. 



This was a travel bug hotel we went to. It was really cool. it had a "welcome desk" that was a tape recording you listen to. It even had a "room key" that had codes to unlock the locks for the hotel. It was really neat. 




This cache was right down the road from the travel bug hotel. It looked like a mailbox.

Needless to say, we had a lot of fun on our mini vacation.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Our Trip to St. Augustine

We all like a little adventure every now and then. Sometimes there are really beautiful places near where you live! Luckily for us, we have St. Augustine Florida in  our own back yard. Okay, well maybe not our back yard, but pretty darn close! Only a couple of hours away.

St. Augustine is one of our favorite places to visit. It has such a rich history and is absolutely gorgeous!

Even the welcome center has cool stuff! Such as this fountain and monument.





Then, of course, there is Castillo de San Marcos.  The old spanish fort that is located in the historic section of St. Augustine.



There are also some really delicious places to eat. In fact, there's a place called Pizza Time. It was listed as #2 in TripAdvisor top places to get pizza in the US. While I really liked the pizza, there are a few things that I didn't enjoy. The pizza was super super greasy. I actually had to use napkins to get as much of the grease off as I could. Also, you have to pay cash when ordering there. They do not accept cards. This usually holds the line up for quite a while.

But, if you're ever in the area, or just want a new place to visit, I totally recommend going to St. Augustine. You won't regret it!

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Well, Cody's been home for a few days now. It's been amazing. I missed having him home. It's nice to see his uniforms and gear laying around the house. I guess it's a comfort.

We had originally planned on going to St. Augustine for the first weekend he was home. But he didn't get a 4 day. So instead we just spent the weekend being lazy around the house and going out and Geocaching. I can't complain. It was fun :)

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Cody's been gone for a while now and I miss him like crazy. But I know he'll be home soon and honestly I can't wait.

I've been working on a cross stitch for him. It has Darth Vader and says "I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing." I know he'll love it! I'm also gonna make him pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

I just can't wait!

Monday, August 31, 2015

I'm really excited! My mom and grandma are on their way down to visit from Kentucky! They're going to keep my company while Cody is away.They'll be here for almost a week! My grandma has never been to Georgia before, so I'm pretty excited to show her around here.

On an unrelated note, I bought some more cookbooks today. I think I'm addicted, but oh well. I'm so ready to try a bunch of these recipes. I even bought an Amish cookbook. The recipes look sooooo good!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Sunday, August 30, 2015

I'm So Proud of Myself

I’m officially down to my first goal weight! I just weighed myself and honestly, I teared up. I’ve worked so hard to get to this point. I felt like I wasn’t making any progress, but I have! I’m not sure if you can see the difference when you look at me, but I know and that’s what matters. I feel so much happier and much more energetic since my journey began (again). I’m beyond happy with my progress! And I know I still have a way to go, but that’s okay.  I’ll make it there one step at a time.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

I'm pretty excited! This week I'll be getting together with a few women to start a book club! It'll be so nice to have some social interaction. Especially since our new FRG leader isn't the greatest. She never coordinates spouse get togethers and we go months withou t having an FRG meeting. So I don't really associate with the wives of the men Cody works with.

But oh well. I get to meet new people later on this week :)

Friday, August 21, 2015

I woke up this morning with a message from Cody. It's a great feeling. He may not be physically with me, but he sure knows how to make me smile.

Today I have a lot to do. I'm gonna clean our house, do laundry, try a new recipe and work out!!

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Today's Adventures

Our town just got a new bargain store. I decided to go today. I wasn't expecting much, but boy was I surprised. The place is HUGE and the prices are amazing! I bought 4 cookbooks, plus a novel and some KCups for my husband.  The retail value of everything I bought today is over $120 but I only paid $19! I'm so ridiculously excited about this amazing deal!

Two of the books I bought have DIY Christmas gifts in it. So I'm totally using them this year to make gifts for my friends and family!

One of the books I got is a Home Distillers book. It's a bunch of homemade alcohol recipes. I got it for Cody and I know he'll absolutely love it!

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Sausage Balls Recipe

My husband and I sometimes have breakfast for dinner. We love sausage, but sometimes we like to shake things up a bit. So we make sausage balls! They're perfect appetizers if you're having a party or a side to complete your dinner.

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb of hot sausage
  • 1 c grated Cheddar Cheese
  • 2 c Bisquick
Directions:
  • Combine all ingredients using hands.
  • Shape into 1 inch balls and place in baking dish
  • Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. 
  • Enjoy!

Monday, August 17, 2015

Just Some Afternoon Thoughts

It doesn't matter how many times you've had to say goodbye, it never gets any easier. It doesn't matter if it's for a few days, a week long FTX, a month of JRTC or a deployment, watching my husband pack his things and walk away is one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with. I usually do fine during the day. Of course there are things that remind me of him, which makes me sad, but I can usually hold myself together. But when nighttime comes, it's really hard on me. I can't stand to sleep alone. I know it may sound stupid, but it's true. I feel safe knowing my husband is laying right next to me.

I absolutely cannot stand when people are rude towards those who have their SO gone for "just" a week or month. So what if they miss their husband? Let them. People handle things differently. No need to be hateful or rude towards them.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

For the past couple of weeks I've been dreaming about what it'll be like when we are no longer military affiliated. It's not that I don't love the opportunity the Army has given us, but I can't wait to have the freedom that comes with a civilian lifestyle. I can't wait to finally be able to settle down, buy a nice house in a small town up north and finally have a normal life. I want to open my own coffee shop/bakery. I just can't wait.

Monday, August 3, 2015

Grandma's Pecan Tarts

Just like any family, my grandmother has always made the best sweets. I remember being a kid and going to her house after school. She'd always have some kind of goodies made and sitting on the counter.

One of my favorites that she makes is her pecan tarts. When I got married, I got super into cooking and baking, so I asked her for some of her recipes. I was lucky enough to get the recipe for her tarts and I couldn't be happier!

Ingredients: 

       For crust:

  • 1 3oz package of cream cheese
  • 1/4 cup of butter
  • 1 cup of flour
       For Filling:
  • 1 3/4 cups packed light brown sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 Tbs melted butter
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup of pecans
Directions:
  • Cream together cream cheese and butter. Add in flour and mix well.



  • Roll into balls and press into tart pans.


  • Chop or grind nuts coarsely. 

  • Put some in the bottom of each crust in the tart pans.

  • Beat eggs slightly with a fork. 
  • Add sugar, melted butter , salt and vanilla. It should have the thickness of honey 

  • Put mixture in each tart, filling it about 2/3 of the way full. 

  • Sprinkle more nuts on top. 
  • Bake in oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. 


Makes about 24 tarts.