Good Fajita Recipe??

Scott and I want to make steak fajitas some time this week. I am kind of wanting a new marinade for the meat. Any ideas?

Fun with Flowers

It feels like I really don't have much to say on here lately. Truly, I don't. I think I am becoming a boring person. I have been enjoying the product of all this rain we have had this summer so far (I think that we skipped Spring, really, and that's okay with me). Last year, I purchased some daylilies at the Growers Outlet and then when I got them home I divided them into 3-4 plants each, so I had six up front and seven out back. They apparently were not impressed with the division, so they never bloomed, so I wasn't 100% sure what they would look like. Well, they have thankfully come back this year and they just started blooming this year! Yay! Here they are:

The ones in the pictures are the ones in my back yard. Those tall things back there are gladiolus and behind that is the crepe myrtle that we planted a few years ago.

Last year, I went a little nuts with geraniums. The Growers Outlet had some beautiful pink ones and I had purchased a couple of reddish/pink ones from Lowes or Home Depot and they were so pretty, I hated the idea of them dying. So, in my Gardening Month-by-Month in Georgia book by Walter Reeves (and some other lady whose name I can never remember), it gave instructions on how to save plants like geraniums that are kind of hardy. So, I pulled them out of their pots and put them in paper bags and went out there once every month or so and sprayed them with some water during the winter. Lo and behold, they started turning a little green and one even put out a bloom before I could even get them back into pots. All but one of them has survived and they are all looking great (well, except the one that has not shown any signs of life that I need to replace). Here is are some pics of them right after I pulled them out and snipped off all the dead "limbs" and some pics I took various days in the last week:

Those are the ones out back. There is a geraniumin the middle of that rectangular pot, but it is really crowded in with the petunia's and daisies. I like to see a full pot of flowers. There's only one geranium out front that is from last year, you can see it in the first picture looking like a dead stick:

It's amazing to me how fast these flowers grow. Most of these pictures were taken last weekend and the flowers are already blooming more and getting bigger!

I was afraid that none of the geraniums would really be what they were last year (shame on me), so I bought two new ones to put in my hanging baskets because I feel like those should be really pretty since they are so visible from the street. They were just babies and they only cost a dollar (or maybe less) at the Growers Outlet. My hanging baskets are doing great! These pictures are from last weekend and they are even fuller (more full?) right now. You can see in the close up that the daisy I planted in one of them is starting to bloom. I planted them both with the exact same flowers, but the daisy in the other one has not started blooming yet.

You can see how tall the gladiolus I have in front of the shepherd's hook have gotten. There is a clematis climbing up the shepherd's hook, but it's really hard to see from the other side because the gladiolus are so tall. I guess I really didn't plan that out that well. Oh well.

I haven't really put anything new out by the mailbox or under the tree. I planted some Lantana by the mailbox last year as well as a clematis. One of the lantana and the clematis are coming back up, so I think I will just be patient and let them do their thing. I have planted some annuals in the front garden but they aren't really exploding like I would have liked. Hopefully they will start really getting huge like all the books say they will, but we shall see. The yellow flowers are called Melampodium and the furry red, orange, and yellow things in the very front are called Celosia. I don't have a picture of the mailbox area as it looks right now, and I am too lazy to run out and take one, so that will have to wait for another post.

That other pot is on our back porch in between the two chairs we have out there. There's another one sitting on the concrete right in front of it, but it's full of all my "leftovers" and a daisy that decided to come back up this year, so it's not as beautiful and carefully planned out. I may combine it into the large green pot that is sitting behing my long planter on the back porch so that they both look more full. It was kind of a last minute thing, too. The clematis and daisy that were in there from last year were started to come up sitting in the garage, so I just added some other stuff in there with it. The geranium I put in there is not doing anything and I had put two Melampodium in there, but they apparently didn't like it in there so they died. Sad times. It looks kind of sad if you look at it closely. I will put a picture so you can see. Please don't laugh.

Our vegetables are getting little babies on them, too, but that will also have to be for another post as this one has gotten kind of long. Sorry about that. I hope it isn't boring for you to read about my flowers. But, I am a big fan.

Have a great week!

Great Deal at Publix

So, yesterday Scott was running by the store for hamburger buns. So, of course he had to go to the store w/ the lowest price for good buns, which was Publix this week. Well, I noticed that they have their Taco Bell dinner kits B1G1 and there is a coupon on the Smart Source website (if you use zip 32801 and then search by brand for Taco Bell) for $1 off, so I asked him to print out 2 of those coupons and pick a couple up as well. I didn't know exactly how much it would be. He got 2 dinner kits for $.69 with those coupons! You can only print up to 2 from each computer, so we printed 2 from his, 2 from mine, and then 2 from mine here at work and I am going to the Publix over here close to work today and getting 6 dinner kits! I have a hard time passing up anything to do with tacos when they are on sale!

Biltmore House Visit

When we took our trip to Asheville a couple of weeks ago, we drove down Wednesday morning and had lunch at the Tupelo Honey Cafe once we had checked into our hotel. We then drove to the Biltmore and made sure we didn't go in before 2 pm. We did the outside stuff on that day. We checked out the gardens and the little sitting areas and then headed over to the winery to do a wine tasting (well, Scott did, I forgot my wallet in GA, so no luck for me) and inside the actual winery they had all kinds of samples out! They have all these cheeseball and dip mixes for sale as well as salad dressings and they have various samples of these things sitting out with a big bowl of pretzels next to it. We wandered around tasting for a while. We also sampled their Wassail mix to wash it down.

Thursday, we toured the house in the morning, had lunch at the Stable Cafe, and then checked out the Farm and the petting zoo-type area they have. We then went on a Behind-the-Scenes tour of the winery, which was very interesting. We really don't like wine much at all, but it is still interesting to see how they make it.

Here are pictures we took at the Biltmore House. We have other pictures from our trip, but that is for another slide show and another post.

Savings Galore!

Sunday evening Scott and I went to Publix armed with our list and a baggie full of coupons. We bought a ton of stuff. Our menu is for two weeks, but with the stuff we already had at home that wasn't included in our menu and the stuff we bought because it was on sale and we know we'll eat it, we probably have enough food in our house to live for at least a month! Scary! I think we need to pause on the shopping for a while. But, we had some good savings. We saved 47% on our trip at Publix! We bought several "big price" items like 3 things of ground turkey breast, 6 things of litter and 4 NY Strip steaks! The cat litter was B1G1 and I had my little $1 off coupon thinking I would buy 1 and get it for $2.50. Well, we start looking at it and there are those little pull off coupons for $2 off on all of them! I was super excited. We got Wheat Thins for $0.63 each, brownie mixes for $0.85 each, bagel-fuls for $1 per box. The cheapest thing we got was our Kraft salad dressing, which was B1G1, which made it $1.50 each and then we had $1.50 coupons (2 of them) so they were free! Between the B1G1 and our coupons (including doubled ones), we saved $97.96.

Scott went to Kroger on Monday to get the things that were on the best sale there (plus their produce always seems to be cheaper) and saved 40% between sales, coupons! We got 6 tubes of Colgate toothpaste for free! It was 10/$10 and we had 2 $1 coupons from previous weeks' papers and were able to print 4 of coupon.com. We also got a thing of Weber Grill Creations seasoning for free. They were 10/$10 and we had a $0.50 coupon, which gets doubled! Yay!

Oh the excitement...

Have I mentioned that I have become a pro at packing food into our fridge and freezer?

Have you found any exceptional deals lately?

Shana's Shower Pictures

As promised, here are the pictures from Shana's Shower. It was a lot of fun and Shana got lots of good baby stuff!

We're Back!

We are back from our much-needed get-away. We enjoyed Asheville and the Biltmore House. There really isn't much to do in Asheville, so if you want to take a 5-day trip, I suggest you plan two stops, maybe 2 days in Asheville and then the rest somewhere else close by with not much to do. But, we still made the most of it. We thought we were going to have an indoor pool, but as it turns out, there are 2 Country Inn and Suites in Asheville. We ate at the Tupelo Honey Cafe that Lindsay suggested and it was really good. We at breakfast and dinner at the Moose Cafe next to the Farmers' Market close to our hotel. All the restaurants in Asheville are all about fresh food from the farm and stuff like that. The Biltmore House was fun to go through and they had even recently reopened one of the important rooms in the house. All the flowers were really pretty. We ate at the Stable Cafe on Thursday for lunch and it was really good.

While we were in Asheville, we also played a round out Putt-Putt and saw two movies: Monsters vs Aliens (in 3D) and Star Trek. I had never watched an entire show or movie of Star Trek. I am not sure how I avoided them growing up as they were on a lot since my dad and sister were big fans. I thought that the Star Trek movie was really good. I would definitely like to own that one once it comes out.

We have downloaded our pictures, but I haven't finished editing them and I need to create a slide show to share on here.

Also, we threw a baby shower for Shana on May 3 and I have those pictures downloaded but not posted yet either, so sorry.

While we were away, it rained a good bit, so everything grew a lot! Our neighbor Nan was also sweet enough to check on the boys and water my pots on days that it didn't rain.

I will post a slide show or two later this evening, hopefully.

TTFN (ta-ta for now!)

Flowers and Cats

While we are away, I want you to have something to look at on our blog. So, I am leaving you with some pictures of our flowers for so far this year. I planted some things in our front bed called celosia. They look pretty cool, but I don't think they like all the wet soil from the rain. I really hope they don't die. I am pretty sure I am done with planting pots and baskets for the summer. I planted just a few...ahem. We have also planted 2 tomato plants, a bell pepper, and a jalapeno plant. So, we'll see how those turn out. I saved all my geraniums from last year and have incorporated them into this year's pots. They are already getting some pretty green leaves. I really hope they bloom as well as they did last year.

I have also adding in some pictures of what the cats do while I am working on the gardening. I usually open the windows to air out the house and the boys sit right in the window and watch me. They like to sniff the air, which is what Sampson is doing in one of the pictures where he is making a funny face. We've been getting a lot of bird activity lately, too. The boys love it. The birds and the cats are eating us out of house and home.

DVD Giveaway @ A Full Heart

My sweet friend Erin at A Full Heart is giving away some DVDs from the Vision Forum. Check out her post here and enter to win! The deadline is May 14! Erin's blog is always an encouragement to me, so be sure to read some of her posts while you are over there.

Wolverine

We went to see the movie Wolverine on Saturday. It was really good! I enjoyed the action and it also explains a lot of the mystery surrounding Logan in the X-Men movies. Also, it definitely left room for another movie between when this one ends and the first X-Men movie began.

There are a lot of movies coming out this summer that we want to see. Harry Potter, Transformers, GI Joe, and I am sure there are a few more that Scott mentioned last night. Are there any movies out there this summer that you just have to see?

We leave on Wednesday morning for our trip. I can't wait!