Valentine’s Day For Grandparents

Valentine’s Day is a special holiday for sweethearts, friends, lovers, spouses etc and that includes grandparents, on February 14 of each year. Valentine’s Day for us this year will be spent visiting with our grandchildren and grown children, out of town. There will likely be the Valentine’s Day cards and small gift-giving, even if the gifts are very cheap from stores like Walmart or Target.

Valentine’s Day gifts for lovers or wives typically mean sending flowers of one kind or another, but considering how overpriced flowers are during the Valentine’s holiday, flowers just never cross our minds to give as a gift to each other. I don’t mind at all either because there is really no good reason I can think of to spend so much money on Valentine’s Day flower bouquets that are just going to die in a few days.
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New Year’s Eve Songs, Traditions and Celebrations

New year’s eve celebrations around the world traditionally include dinner parties, firework shows, singing songs, watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest on ABC, plus the New Year’s kiss at the stroke of midnight. Year’s ago, celebrating New Year’s Eve may have meant getting all dressed up and heading out to a number of New Year’s Eve parties, but this year we’ll celebrate the holiday at home.

In year’s past, looking for things to do on New Year’s Eve was fun and exciting. Maybe we’ve just gotten too old for extravagant parties where everyone is drinking to excess and then stupidly driving while they are clearly intoxicated.

We will still prepare a New Year’s Eve dinner with all the traditional fixings, but to tell you the truth, I do not like black-eyed peas so we’re going to have to come up with a new recipe if I am going to eat any of those.
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Kids In The Kitchen Gooseberry Patch Cookbook Recipes

The Gooseberry Patch cookbook for kids called Kids in the Kitchen includes recipes that kids of all ages, including preschoolers, toddlers and older kids can enjoy the fun of cooking in the kitchen with mom or dad, or even Grandma and Grandpa.

Kids need to be in the kitchen rather than being shooed away, so children can learn the basics of nutrition, healthy food choices, correct portion sizes and much more. Gooseberry Patch cookbooks are not just for adults, and as a Grandma who raised 6 kids and now has two grandchildren, I love the great ideas found in these cookbooks for kids.

Cooking with kids in the kitchen is a fun activity that should be encouraged rather than discouraged. The Kids in the Kitchen: Recipes for Fun cookbook was designed exclusively with little kids in mind, and the list of recipes found in this cookbook will help little chefs want to learn how to cook lots of good food!
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Repairing Drywall Cracks in Textured Drywall

Repairing drywall cracks in drywall, due to foundation settling from the extreme heat we get in Texas, started before my husband fell through the ceiling and we had to learn about repairing large ceiling holes in a textured ceiling. If you have ever had cracks in your foundation and needed to know how to fix or repair cracks in drywall, let me tell you right now, doing these repairs yourself is a pain in the butt.

Having to fix foundation cracks is a costly project, plus the cost of repairing or replacing broken brick on the exterior of the house, and replacing shrubs or bushes that were destroyed in the process. Getting our green grass to grow back again isn’t a big deal at all, and we’re not the least bit worried about regrowing grass right now. I know people who decided to fix their cracked foundation themselves, rather than hiring a foundation specialist to do the repairs, but that is one do-it-yourself project that has “Hell No” written all over it.
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Grandma’s Cooking Ham Roll Ups in Grandma’s Kitchen

What’s cooking Grandma? Grandma’s kitchen is a favorite place to be at Grandma’s house when the kids and grandchildren are in town, and one of Grandma’s recipes that continues to be popular is Grandma’s ham roll ups recipe with broccoli.

Being a Grandma is wonderful, and passing along to my children and grandchildren many of their favorite recipes that have been prepared for them over the years is an added perk. People that haven’t learned how to make ham roll ups, or broccoli ham roll ups, are really missing out on a great recipe.

I would guess that many of the recipes given to me over the years originally came from my Grandma or great grandmother, but I can’t be sure of that. Cooking in the kitchen with my mother as I was growing up usually meant we were baking cookies or other sweet treats, as she preferred to be cooking in the kitchen by herself when preparing or cooking dinner meals for a family of eight, and that was ok.
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Bad Gift Emporium – When It’s The Thought That Counts is Bad Gifts

Heard of the Bad Gift Emporium? The Bad Gift Emporium is a site dedicated to re-gifting a gift received that are unwanted gifts. Bad Gift Emporium is the online version of people standing in those long return lines and gift exchange lines at stores to return bad gifts, since the belief of it’s the thought that counts is just a lie.

A bad gift may be both radiant or repulsive to the gift recipient, depending on the eye of the beholder. If you’ve ever stood in the gift returns line to return or exchange a bad gift, or a White Elephant gift you don’t want, check out Bad Gift Emporium at badgiftemporium.com

The day after Christmas is always a popular day for people to go to Bad Gift Emporium, which makes the bad gift site show up on the list of trending topics at Google Trends. Remember, it’s the thought that counts…..right? Wrong.
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Top 10 Children’s Books of 2009

One of the best activities grandparents can do with their grandchildren is to read children’s books to them. Of course, as children get older and are able to read books on their own, Grandma and Grandpa can still help teach the importance of reading by having some of the best children’s books of all time available for kids to read.

The New York Times has released a list of what it believes to be the top ten children’s books of 2009, and there are a couple kids books listed here that even I had never heard of, but will definitely take a close look at adding some of these children’s books to our library.

Here is the top 10 children’s books list from the NY Times:
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Do It Yourself Ceiling Fix to Repair Large Ceiling Holes

What do you do when there is a hole in your ceiling needing to be fixed? Not just any ceiling fix either. No, I’m talking about fixing a large hole in the ceiling. A verrrry large hole. See, my husband fell through the ceiling and we now have a large ceiling hole above our living room/den and we have to patch the hole. Yes really.

My husband fell through the ceiling while working in the attic recently, because air-conditioning men we hired to replace one of our air-conditioning units left loose air ducts, so my husband was in the attic trying to tighten them when he slipped and fell through the ceiling.

Thankfully he wasn’t seriously hurt, no cracked or broken bones to speak of, but he did get some pretty nasty scratches and bruises. Oh, the curse words were flying everywhere for sure, but at least he was ok.
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