Pioneer Woman Cookbook

Who doesn't love the Pioneer Woman??!!! If you don't know all about Ree Drummond and one of the coolest blogs on the planet then you'd better jump on the band wagon and educate yourself now. I must have been living under a log this summer because I had no idea that she was finally putting out a cookbook. Her recipes are awesome and better yet, for people like me, she has great PICTURES to go along with the instructions! The book will be released October 27 but is available for pre-order at various retailers now. If you are as lucky to live in Salt Lake City you can even show up at her "tour" location and have her sign it. How cool would that be??? Click here for more info. This is a MUST HAVE! Possibly an early gift from Santa??? :0)

Fall is in the air!

There's one thing that means fall is near . . . . the beginning of all my favorite reality tv shows!!! Biggest Loser started last night and Survivor starts tomorrow. Hooray! Once they all wrap up for the summer I wonder how I will ever live without them but this summer went by quickly and here they are again. Happy watching! :0)

Awesomeness!

When we were in Utah we had some new family pictures taken by my friend Mindy of none other than Mindy Black Photography (check out her website here http://mindyblackphotography.blogspot.com/). I LOVE LOVE LOVE how they turned out! Thanks again Mindy!!! Here is just a sampling.

Dumpster Diving

Yesterday I had my first experience dumpster diving! Because I really dislike the term "dumpster diving" let's call it "coupon hunting."

Everyone okay with that? :0)

I am super spoiled to have a friend who sends her husband out "coupon hunting" and passes coupons on to me. So I have never had to really look for any coupons on my own. Well, yesterday I had some errands to run that just so happened to put me near 2 great newspaper recycle bins. Alice (the aforementioned friend) convinced me that I should stop and see what I could find. I figured it wouldn't hurt so I found my way to recycle bin #1. When I got there I had to sit and stare for a minute. I guess I never realized how large they were AND how they are all enclosed except for the small doors you slide open to throw your stuff in. I climbed up on the side and stood there a minute debating on whether or not I was actually going to get in. In the meantime a lady pulled up to drop some stuff off. She asked me if I had dropped something in there that I shouldn't have. I chuckled and told her that I was actually looking for coupons from the Sunday paper. She then proceeded to hand me her stash of newspaper and told me that I was welcome to look through her paper. :0) After I snatched the coupon booklets from her paper I got into the dumpster to begin my "hunting." It was a lot cleaner that I had anticipated which was good. I found quite a few coupon booklets. The whole time I was sifting through papers I couldn't help but be paraniod that someone was going to come along and shut the little door on me and lock me in the dumpster! Looking back, it's probably not a good idea to go "coupon hunting" all alone.

Dumpster #2 was even larger than #1 and had multiple sliding windows. It was difficult to get in to and even more difficult to get out. At one point when I was looking for coupons I heard a noise so I looked out the 2 windows that I had opened (both on the same side of the dumpster) but didn't see anything. About 30 seconds later one of the windows on the other side of the dumpster flew open and there was a man standing there. It scared the crap out of me and him!!! (I can laugh at it now.) I was the last thing he expected to see inside of a recycle bin. I apologized for the scare. He asked me the same question as the lady from the 1st bin. "Did you throw away something that you weren't supposed to?" Again, I had to explain myself and he was nice by telling me that there were no Sunday papers in the pile that he was dropping off. :0) All in all I ended up with about a 3-inch pile of coupon booklets. Hooray! It was fun to go "coupon hunting" and get such a big stash but next time I won't go alone and will definitely be a little more precautious.

What to do???

So, we are back from our month long visit to Utah. It was great times and always hard to leave. Upon returning home we now have a "situation" to deal with and we're not quite sure what to do. Let me just start by saying that I have not had my feelings hurt like this as an adult for a VERY LONG time. Here's the story . . . .

During the week that Scott joined us in Utah we had asked both of our next door neighbors to help feed our dog Boots. One would feed in the morning, one in the evening. This one would also walk him. After 2 days we found out that Boot's dog house was moved over to one neighbors because she felt sorry for Boots being left all alone. Fine . . . whatever. BUT . . . then we find out that this neighbor did not keep him outside at her house, she kept him inside. Inside for the entire time, day and night. This would have been fine if we wanted Boots as an indoor dog but we do not and did not purchase him with that intention. So when we arrived home, every outside manner we had managed to teach him in 3 months had gone out the window and he tried to come in the come in the house every chance he got. Not only did the neighbor leave us with a messed up dog but she also left a letter in which she proceeded to tell us that our dog is "pitiful" because we leave it outside and refuse to let it be a part of our family by bringing it inside. How we don't spend enough time with it (which according to her anything less than 24/7 is not enough), and how dogs don't use dog houses (even though Boots sleeps in his every night), and how if we're not going to let him in we need to get ANOTHER dog!!! In a nutshell . . .we are horrible dog owners! Scott was very upset over the whole thing and my feelings were very hurt. We take care of our dog and were doing just fine until she went and messed things up. Now every time we see him outside we feel this huge "guilt" that he is out there. He's reverted back to digging holes all over and chewing everything up (all of which we had under control before we left). If we keep him around we'll get crap from our neighbor all the time about not having him inside. We'd get to start all over on the training. If we sold him we wouldn't have to worry about it and our neighbor wouldn't be on our case. What happened to the days when dogs were animals and could live outside without getting crap from your PITA neighbor???? What happened to the days where people minded thier own dang business???? At this point we are leaning towards selling Boots to hopefully eliminate the problem for all parties. Not sure. What would you do???