TST/Wedding Dress Story

This week, I'm doing a two-fer:

Who Put Me In Charge of these People?

and Once Upon A Miracle

Texan MaMa has a fun little linky going on this week, and Rachel's TST is always a lot of fun.  After reading Texan MaMa's write up about her lovely wedding dress, it made me think of mine, which was well...we had a redneck weddin'.

RockCrawlinChef and I decided that we were going to have a totally low-key wedding.  And I mean, low-key.  I swore I was going to wear jeans and boots to the wedding.  How much more low-key can you get than jeans and boots?

About a week before the wedding, though, I started having second thoughts.  I didn't want to look at our wedding album in twenty years and regret not wearing a dress, so off we went.  I was actually looking for a sundress to wear at our reception BBQ (yep, we threw us a big ol' BBQ - as laid back as you can get), so we went to Old Navy, where I found the sundress for super cheap.  Ashinator wanted a dress to wear to the wedding, so we went to Ross.

Yes, I did.  I found my wedding dress at Ross for about $20.  Now it's not a traditional wedding dress by any means, but it was a white dressy-thing that would suffice.  And I could still wear my boots with it.

Now, like a true cowgirl who got married in her boots, the redneck wedding wouldn't be complete without climbing into the horse pen and getting a picture with the equine love of my life.

And as a little bonus, in case my $20 wedding dress from Ross and my cowboys weren't enough, here's our cake topper.

Which, by the way, cost more than my dress!

I Found It!

Way back in July, when I brought my Soda Stream home from filming Horse Master with Julie Goodnight, I said that I wanted to find some Coca-Cola syrup for it.  I hadn't been able to until a week or so ago, when a fellow WriMo saw my bottle and asked if we had a carbonation system of our own.  We got to talking, and it turns out that she and her husband have a Mr. BreakMate carbonation system and that Coke syrup is available through the website and that they just had ordered a case of syrup.  For $10, I procured my own liter of syrup and set about making my own Coke.

The syrup isn't as concentrate as the syrups from Soda Stream, so it took some playing around to make the perfect Coke.  I finally got it figured out; five shots of syrup per bottle of water.  It's a lot, but it's worth it.  Even if I only get ten bottles of Coke out of the deal (which makes it $1.00/bottle), I've saved money.

Not to mention the fact that I'm thrilled to death to be able to make my own Coke!

Holy Cow!

The CSN Stores promotional team has graced me with $100 to review their stores/products.  I've done reviews for them in the past and loved it.  If you've never visited their website, you should do so.  They've got so much stuff to choose from, I had a hard time deciding what to spend my money on.  One "big" thing or a few "small" things?  I opted for a few small things.

After much discussion with RockCrawlinChef, we decided to choose:

• The Hamilton Beach "Stay or Go" slow cooker.  We passed on our old faithful crock-pot to Digger last week and were in need of a new one.  What I think I'm going to like about this one is that it seals, so it won't spill all over Ripley when we take food places.
• Fox Run Craftsman's 3-piece Pizza Stone set.  Monster unfortunately broke our last pizza stone.  I loved using the pizza stone because it kept the kids from putting their frozen pizzas straight on the rack (okay, I'm guilty of that, too).  While I don't mind the straight on the rack thing, I did just clean the oven and it was disgusting.  Anything to prevent me having to do that again!
• Soda Stream carbonating bottles.  We love our Soda Stream and I was thrilled to see that CSN stores carried it and all of the accessories.  The one drawback to the Soda Stream is that it only comes with two bottles, so if you want a variety of sodas in the fridge, you're kinda screwed.  For $14.99, they are less expensive than buying from a brick-and-mortar store.
• Soda Stream grape soda.  Well, why not?  It's a flavor we haven't tried yet.  The drawback is that I couldn't order just one bottle, it came in a set of five.  We'll be drinking grape soda for the next year.

I placed my order today and everything I ordered, in addition to free shipping, is guaranteed to be here before Christmas Eve.

We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Whew!  I did it.  50,000 words in 27 days, ten days longer than it took me to finish last year.  At times, I doubted I'd be able to make it this year.  Being the competitive critter I am, I really need someone to push me. 

Last year, it was Molly.  I beat her to 50k by ten minutes.

This year, it was Dan who stepped up to push me.  We both updated 50k at the same time; it was too close to call.  I thought I had him.  I put my numbers in to update, pushed the button and both of our bars came back green (meaning we finished).  Only the Office of Letters and Light (who runs NaNoWriMo) will know who finished first.

I'll be back with my usual drivel in a day or so.

Of course, if any of you are interested in what's kept me so busy this month, head on over to my NaNo blog, HUNTED LYON.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone has a fabulous day surrounded by family and friends.

'Cause I'm The Cool Aunt

Autobot asked me to join her for her sheet sheep (thanks Rach) heart dissection at school last week, and because I'm the cool aunt, of course I went.  And because I'm a blogger at heart, I took the camera.

The first tentative touch - eeewww

Finding the aorta - the opening goes all the way to the bottom of the left ventricle.

Where do we cut?

Apparently, sixth graders are not trustworthy with scalpels, but they're allowed dull scissors to cut their hearts with.

The left ventricle, bicuspid (mitral) valve and the left atrium.

Those stringy-things?  Yeah, those are your chordae tendonae - your heartstrings - so next time something tugs on your heartstrings, you know what they look like.

(Sorry, sometimes my science nerd comes out.)

My Sister...

...Cracks me right. the. hell. up.

Here's her FB status for today:

Nebalee: "You know it's bad when you're sick and you wake from a 3 hr nap feeling WORSE than when you went down. Shoot...I just gave that virus 3hrs of uninterrupted multiplying time. I must have the Motaba virus! If my eyeballs start bleeding in an hour, evacuate the town."

GunDiva: "Woohoo for Motaba! If it was Motaba-Zaire, you'd be dead already :)"

Nebalee:  "I'm hoping someone finds the monkey for the anti-serum."

GunDiva:  "Me too! I don't want to have to see you bleeding out of all of your orifices or have to call in the big bombers to set your house on fire."

There were random comments in there from her friends about "hope you feel better" and all that crap.  Yup, that's our family.  Just crackin' each other up, while the rest of the world can't figure us out.