Vivienne

I'm the person who can be over-dramatic, and it usually involves illness.
I think the reason is because when illness comes to me or my family, it likes to come in a big, bad way.
Just like pretty much everything else that happens to us.
It's the black cloud of luck we cannot escape.
Vivienne is four months old and is struggling with pneumonia.
I hear her cough and cough and cough and wheeze and cry without sound and it hurts my soul.
It hurts because there isn't anything I can do to fix it.
I can't put a band-aid on her lungs or kiss it to make it feel better.
I know what it's like to struggle for air.  I was there.
Just one week after she was born.And it was killing me.  Literally, I was dying.
And now she's slowly having the life stolen from her as well.
Do I think she will be OK in the end?Of course.
But that doesn't stop me from being completely terrified in the same way I was when I struggled to breathe in a chaotic hospital room while dozens of doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with me.
I am not a person of faith, I admit that, but it is in times like this that I do pray, that I reach out for a little help in something I cannot control.
My baby girl.I love you Vivienne, feel better soon.

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Trying to Find Me.

Necklace: Lisa Leonard

I am an impatient person.  When I want something, I want it now.  When I want to do something, I want to do it now.  I used to be patient.  A good, patient person.

It’s been hard lately; we’ve been having a rough time financially.

And I’ve been trying to help.  I started an etsy shop and have worked to get my name and products out there.

Shirt: Macy's  Flares: NY&Company  Wedges:Payless

And now I’m impatient because I feel like I should be seeing better results by now.  And this impatience makes me feel like my work is crap, like I’M crap.  I can’t even help provide for my family, which makes me feel like a huge failure.

It’s hard when you used to be the bread-winner and could do whatever you wanted and help other people when they were down.  But now I sit here and try to take care of my kids without throwing them out a window, and I try to be creative and fun and interesting and excited about the prospect of what tomorrow will bring.

But I’m failing at even that.

And it sucks!  It really, really sucks!

Sometimes I think that maybe if I just keep smiling that one day it will turn into a real smile, kind of in the same way that if you keep telling the same lie over and over, one day you believe it yourself.

Life’s too short to be spending it so miserable.

So I need to make change, but I don’t know how.

To be continued…

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Ad Swap in October!

Oh Moses, it's that time again.

You can find all the info HERE, and remember, it's free!
My blog is quickly growing, and here are some stats for you:From Aug. 26-Sept. 25
78 Followers via GFC1211 Pageviews356 Unique Visitors35 Twitter Followers
45 Facebook "likes"6 Pinterest Followers


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Slipper Sock LOVE!

I am so excited that my Collégien slipper socks have arrived!
I won them in a giveaway on Jess’ blog IROCKSOWHAT.

Collégien is a French company, so I was like a kid waiting for a present every time I opened the mailbox, since my slippers were coming from abroad.

And since I was so excited, I immediately put them on and took pictures.
Like, immediately immediately.  Ha ha ha.

Fauvette in size 40-41

It really is perfect timing too, seeing as I’m dying of the common cold, these slipper socks are a wonderful comfort for my ailing self.

Go check out the Collégien site because they have some awesome slipper sock designs and sizes from babies to grown men, with an easy to read size conversion chart to aid in choosing the correct size (I wear a 9-9.5 women’s US, which converts to a 40-41 Collégien size).

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Meet My Sponsors!: Mallorie of Home is With You...

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Mallorie is the cutest chick EVER, and her husband is way super talented, so go check her out!

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To See Their Dreams Come True

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of UPromise. All opinions are 100% mine.

My mom had plenty of dreams for me as I grew up, in the same manner Grandma had for Mom, so it should come as no surprise that I have dreams for my girls as well.

Upromise is celebrating all our dreams with a sweepstakes worth $20,000!

As a child, I wanted to be a meteorologist and storm chaser; I wanted to be the person who discovered how to predict tornadoes and save lives.  Instead, I've gone from job to job, living paycheck to paycheck, so far away from the girl I used to be-the girl who dared to dream big.  Now with three girls of my own, I see myself in them, and for them I want better.  Not just to dream and dream big, but to find the spirit and drive to succeed and capture those dreams, whatever they may be.  I want to teach them to start young in finding what they love and pursue those desires to fruition, so that one day they don't wake up at almost 30 years of age, wishing they'd gone to school to be that meteorologist they dreamed of being as a kid.

This is just the beginning of my dreams for my children, and I shared this on Upromise's Dream Wall.

Do you have a dream for your child?

Share that dream on  Upromise's Dream Wall. for a chance to win one of their $1,000 weekly prizes as well as the $10,000 grand prize.  Have your friends and family share their dreams as well and "like" your dream to increase your chances of winning.

There are so many dreams out there and even if you don't feel ready to share yours, please check out the Dream Wall and help encourage someone else's dream by clicking their "like" button.  Catch a spark and start a fire for the future.  Everyone deserves to see their dream come true!

Make sure to check out the Dream Wall Official Rules before you enter, then start sharing with the world!

 

 

www.upromisetodream.com

dream wall official rules


 

Memetastic

I wasn't going to do this, but I've seen it on...five blogs now, so I'll go ahead and be a follower.

A. Age: 28

B. Bed Size: King, and I'm freaking in love with the extra room.  I'm a flailer, kicker, and roller.

C. Chore that you hate: Cleaning the kitchen and cleaning the cat box. 

D. Dogs: I used to have a dog named Peanut.  I miss her and hope she is living in a good home.  Now I have  two, no eleven, no four, cats.

E. Essential start to your day: Peeing and weighing myself.

F. Favorite color: Red and blue and green and black and...

G. Gold or Silver: Silver

H. Height: 5'5", I've gained about 1/2" through my three pregnancies, but also 1.5 shoe sizes.  Lame.

I. Instruments you play: I've played the violin since 3rd grade, and I love it.

J. Job title: Work at Home Mom.

K. Kids: Afton 2yrs 9mo.; Delaney 1yr 4mo.; Vivienne 4mo.

L. Live: In the ghetto of Phoenix, AZ

M. Mother’s name: Teresa

N. Nicknames: Karls, Claire (hubs calls me that, it's my middle name), Karly Eclaire, Karly Claire the Chocolately Bear, Chica Blanca, Hey You

O. Overnight hospital stays: One week for Afton's birth, three days for Delaney's, three for Vivienne's, and another four the pneumonia I got after Vivienne's birth.

P. Pet peeves: People parking in my damn parking spot right in front of my door! And people who lack basic grammar and spelling capabilities.

Q. Quote from a movie: "I want to be on you." -Anchorman

R. Right or left handed: Right handed.

S. Siblings: Nick, younger brother by 14 months.

U. Underwear: Something that fits well and doesn't irritate my c-section scar.

V. Vegetable you hate: Mushrooms

W. What makes you run late: My husband. He's SLOW. 

X. X-Rays you’ve had: I've had tons of chest x-rays, an x-ray on my finger that I cut off (like you need an x-ray for that?) and of course dental x-rays.  And I've had abdominal CTs, chest CTs and an MRI of my head, which was super cool. 

Y. Yummy food that you make: Balsmic-glazed beef short ribs ala Campiello.

Z. Zoo animal: Lion! 

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Hey Owatonna!

I have some super exciting news for you!  My accessories are headed to town, and you can find them at Salon-e-Clips!

I’m talking about these items:

Made especially for Gwen’s shop, these are some very special pieces in trending fall/winter colors!
They will make their debut alongside the Cabi Fashion Show event at Salon-e-Clips on Tuesday, September 27^th, at 6:00pm so I would get down there quick before they are snatched up!

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Get Your MOO MiniCards!

My MOO MiniCards arrived!

Yay!

They are freaking awesome, because you can upload your own design or upload tons of photos (I ordered a pack of 100 and used nine photos, but I could have used 100 photos!).  You can even use their fabricated designs, of which they have many and are quite creative looking!

I uploaded my own photos and the cards turned out GREAT.

I will definitely order more MOO cards, and I recommend you do the same!

In fact, I have a link you can use to get 10% off your first order!

Go HERE!

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Sleeping Beauty

The girls have a nice fluffy bed to sleep in, but Delaney just likes to chill.

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Cream Cheese Muffin Recipe

I am always looking for new and interesting foods to serve up with breakfast, because the kids grow bored quite easily of the same things, such as eggs, or cereal or oatmeal.  I want to cultivate a love of breakfast in them, because breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day.  Maybe I’ll try the breakfast spaghetti on them sometime.  Anyways, here is a great recipe for some cream cheese muffins!

Gather up the following:

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
8 ounces cream cheese, softened

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease/spray a 12-cup muffin tin and set aside (or use muffin cups like I did).

Combine flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center.

Stir together milk, oil, and eggs. Pour into well in the dry ingredients. Stir just until dry ingredients are moistened.

Combine cream cheese and 1 cup sugar.
Fold about half of the cream cheese mixture into the muffin batter.

Spoon batter into greased muffin pans (or cups!), about 1/2 to 2/3 full. Spoon the remaining cream cheese mixture onto the muffins, pressing the mix into each muffin with a spoon handle.

Now, I didn’t make the topping because I usually do not prefer nuts in my baked goods, but I really just now realized that it would still be delicious without the nuts, so I suggest adding the topping either way!

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans

Combine ingredients. Sprinkle generously over muffins. Bake 24 to 30 minutes until golden brown.

I made a half batch of these muffins, which yielded 10 nicely sized muffins, so I believe the full batch should get you between 20-24 muffins, depending on how you fill those cups (I went for 2/3).  If you’d like to go a little more exotic, you could add ¼ to ½ tsp of your favorite preserves to the top of the muffin, pressing down lightly, before adding the topping and baking.  Extra delish!

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I Swear I'm Here!

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks since my last post!  OK, I can believe it.

It takes FOREVER to get online since I’m hopping onto a super weak unsecured signal.
I have to position my laptop perfectly or the signal drops, and it usually requires me to lie down in an awkward position on the bed, which then results in a sore back/neck/side/arm or leg.
ANNOYING.

So posting has been on the back-burner.  Everything has been on the back-burner really.  I’ve barely taken any photos or worked on my shop or new recipes.

And yet, with the little I’ve done, I still feel like I can’t catch up.  It’s so lame.
But that’s the depression talking.  It’s been a terrible month.  The kind of month I probably won’t ever talk about.  THAT bad.

We’re going to move on, though.

Woo!

I started my newest round of the hcg diet and today was Day One of the VLCD.
We may remember my last round of the diet.
And the before and after pics:

I didn’t take a before pic this time, because I’d recently taken photos for the Insanity workout, which we’ll use for measurement purposes:

I am quite excited, because this round will get me to a weight I haven’t seen in over FIVE YEARS!
I have two super cute dresses calling out my name in the closet…it’ll be great to wear them.
Also, it will be great to shrink these crazy boobs of mine.

Too much information?  Nah, it’s MY blog, afterall!
So here’s to another three weeks of eating the exact same meals every single day, and this time I got smart and made a HUGE batch of the tomato soup so I’m not destroying my kitchen every three damn days!
Yay for smart!

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An Unexpected Houseguest

I walked into the kitchen this early afternoon and reached up to the ceiling fan to turn off the light, when I suddenly recoiled and gave a little shout, because there was a creature on the light cord.
That creature was a little lizard!
So I captured him in a wine glass and took some pictures, because little lizards are awesome.

No lizards were harmed in the making of this meal. Ha! Just kidding.

See, he's tiny, wouldn't have made a good meal.

I released him back into the wild, in hopes he will destroy bug species that are bent on getting into my home and ruining my day.

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Totally Random Me!

The challenge this week over at The Shine Project is to show off a little of our random selves.
This. is not hard for me.Anyone who knows me, knows I am the Queen of Random.

So here is a fun little listy of Random Goodness!1. Three days before I started middle school I managed to cut off a finger. How? On a hide-a-bed.
2. My brother still makes fun of me because I will never admit that Geraldo's hair is anything but WHITE.
3. When I was a kid, I used to tell my family that they weren't my REAL family, and that my real family was going to come get me and take me back to New York to live in our big house with 1000 bedrooms and 3000 bathrooms. Every time I told the story, the numbers grew larger.
4. Obviously, the bathroom is my favorite room in a house.
5. My husband and I went skydiving on our honeymoon. He and his Best Man were terrified, but I was too cool for school. We want to do it again.
6. I've also bungee-jumped on more than once occasion.
7. I once had nine piercings, but now I only have three. I also have four tattoos.
8. I have a scar that runs down the side of my face from my first cat, Willy. It was well-deserved...I bit him in the stomach, and not very gently.
9. I have electrocuted myself on an electric fence more than once. More than twice, too.
10. One year, Mom spent all day baking dozens of cookie-cutter sugar cookies for my brother and I to decorate the next day. The next morning, Mom went into the kitchen to discover that every head and tree top had been bitten off. Yes, that was me.
11. Being in the Air Force was the best experience of my life, and where I met my best friend, Chronic. It is also indirectly because of being in the Air Force that I met my husband. Awesome.
12. I love chocolate and candy, but when I eat most kinds, my face breaks out in something like having a menopausal hot flash. It's weird, and annoying, but doesn't stop me from eating yum-yums.
So, there ya have it.  Feel like you know me a little bit better?
Linkin' it up with The Shine Project!




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Meet My Sponsors! : Lish of Imprintalish

September is here and it's time to meet my first sponsor, Lish, of Imprintalish!

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You can find all sorts of fun stuff on Lish's blog; I personally enjoy her Frivolous Friday posts!So stop by and say Hi! Tell her Karly sent ya!

Don't forget to take a peek at my other sponsors on the right side of my blog!  You'll be hearing all about them very soon as well!

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Kids and TV; a Lesson in I Told You So.

You remember growing up, right?  Back in the day a television was a luxury staple, and we had an old 21 inch-er with two dials and an analog antenna to grab the local stations.  It sat in the living room and we would watch it in the evening, and occasionally during the day we viewed VHS copies of classic Disney films.  It was simple, it was life.
Fast-forward twenty years later and technology is everything, everywhere, all the time.  It almost seems impossible to exist without our cell phones, computers, internet and television, and I'm sure many have wondered how they ever could have lived back in our childhood times without all these marvelous things.
I always knew that when I had kids that I would not make it easy for them to have technology.  I didn't have my own computer, and I certainly did not have my own TV.  Hell, I didn't even have a CD player until I was in high school and a cell phone until college!  I wanted things to be the same for my kids; I didn't want them getting killed in Technology's Siren Song.
Rudy had a different take on it.  He wanted them to have technology to make things easier and more accessible.  He wanted them to have computers so they could do school work, cell phones so we could keep in touch with them...and television so they could be entertained in their room while he watched his own shows in the living room.  I was not down with this idea, not remotely, not even at all.  Nonono.
But after awhile, you really just get sick of hearing the complaining.  So I finally said OK, give them a damn TV.
And really, at first, it was exactly that: OK.  The kids would watch Spongebob, Dora, and their learning DVDs, and it didn't seem to distract from anything.  They would play and the TV would be like background noise to their creativity.  But then, all of a sudden, it changed.
Afton has become completely obsessed with the TV.  If one of her shows isn't on, she flips out.  If we turn off the TV for nap or bedtime, she flips out.  She even wakes up in the middle of the night screaming because the TV is off.  She has even figured out how to turn on the TV and DVD player and even switch her DVDs, which has led to me unplugging the machines when it's time for sleep.
But that didn't help.  At first it did.  She knew there was no way she could sneak some TV time if it was unplugged and she would go to sleep.  But then came the screaming in the middle of the night, which eventually turned into screaming at bedtime, which eventually turned into not going to sleep until 2am nonsense.
Seriously.  I was over it.  SO OVER IT.
So you know what I did?
I flippin' stormed into their room and removed the whole damn lot.After that, Afton cried for about five minutes and then all was quiet.
Guess who isn't getting a TV back, ever?Yes, that's correct.
And when I told Rudy that there was no way in hell they were getting that TV back, I think he could tell by my voice that it was best not to attempt to disagree in any way, shape, or form.
Good boy.I told him so many times that giving them a television would be bad news, and I was right.
I was right!
I freaking told you so!
Karly: 1; Rudy: 0Huzzah!


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Craft Explosion...And Not in a Good Way.

How does a 2 second mistake turn into a 45 minute ordeal?
This is how:

You may be inclined to think that one of my angelic children was responsible for this, but oh no, you'd be wrong!

This time it is ALL ON ME.
Ha!

This is what happens when you leave an open container filled to the brim with beads and findings and jump rings and clasps on top of a stereo and then turn said stereo up really loud during a bass-heavy song.
It vibrates itself right onto the floor.

This took forever to clean up.  And it certainly didn't help that four cats and two kids wanted to play in the mess/eat all my beads.

And on that note, I should expect to find a large glass pearl in Delaney's poo in the next few days.


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Is This a Hitchcock Film?

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For a few months now we've had ants.  Not too many, and for a good minute we thought we had it under control.
But now our home is completely overrun with them.  They are EVERYWHERE.  You can see them crawling in the carpets, across the oley, on the walls and even in our beds and on the couches.  They aren't sugar ants, either.  They are evil, biting, black ants of doom, and we are finding ourselves covered with tiny, itchy, painful welts from ant bites.
Aaaaaaaaand, our apartment complex doesn't give a damn about it.
I investigated the other day around the perimeter of our apartment and there are over 40 heavily active anthills within two feet of walls of our house. 
There are also two extremely large yellow jacket nests within five feet of our apartment.  We've had three in our home so far.
I feel like I am going to wake up in the middle of the night sometime soon and find myself crawling with biting, stinging bugs of pure evilness.  And all I really want to do is punch the bitch manager who took over the complex and acts like she's better than everyone else and that we all deserve nothing.  She didn't even give a damn that we'd paid six months worth of rent in advance on two occasions; to her we're still part of the trashy population that occupies this place.
Can't.wait.to.move.
Tomorrow I have to go pay to get a sticker for parking, otherwise I can't park IN FRONT OF MY OWN DOOR without being towed.  Seriously, these people are idiots.
Thus ends my rant.  I'm going to go slather myself with hydrocortisone. 



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