A while back when my husband and kids were off camping, I spent most of a rare weekend alone tackling a big project - several large Rubbermaid tubs worth of old photos, getting them organized to scan.

Normally, I would advise someone to tackle a project like this in stages, but I know myself and my schedule and I also know that with a tedious job like this, my best bet is to do it in one large chunk because otherwise I can let a project like this drag out for weeks, or months, or years...

It does help to know yourself and your work style and know what is a realistic way to tackle a large project like this.
In my house, photos and other personal mementos are probably my largest source of clutter. I'm pretty sentimental and we have lost pretty much all of our older relatives - grandparents, all four parents, and most of our aunts & uncles, so these items are the only things I have to remember them by, so they are precious to me.
But it is a LOT of stuff and it takes up a fair amount of space in my house. However, since it does have a lot of it has meaning to me, I am willing to forgo other types of clutter to make room for it. I keep it all in a large cedar chest and three large Rubbermaid tubs that fit neatly into the closets in several rooms. So, even though it is technically clutter, it is fairly neat and pretty organized clutter.

So, it's a big, ugly job, but I'm definitely off to a good start. First I got all of our oldest pictures out of those old-style magnetic albums that were ruining them. That was a heck of a job right there, I'll tell you!

I've also gotten all the old pictures out of their individual envelopes and gotten them all sorted by size which is required for scanning.

And I've weeded out all the negatives and thrown away all the paper envelopes that were taking up a lot of room. Yes, I hear you gasp, but I know perfectly well that I'd never go back and go to all the trouble of figuring out negatives to get reprints of anything made from them. And besides, the last thing I need is MORE pictures, so I felt comfortable in decluttering them.

Duplicates too! Lord in heaven, who ever came up with that particular marketing scheme? I had 4 or 5 copies of some pictures - ugh. And don't get me started on all those little wallet sized school pictures we'd amassed over 25 years of school pictures.

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OK, I haven't had a giveaway in a such a long time, so I think I'll have one for Easter. How 'bout some of our Sweet Cinnamon Sprinkle and a Season's Best Recipes Cookbook?


The Sweet Cinnamon Sprinkle is great for all your baking needs. It makes great cinnamon rolls, or you can sprinkle it over ice cream or apple pie - yum! You could even put a bit in your coffee instead of sugar.

The Season's Best Recipe Cookbook is a little booklet with some delicious and easy recipes for your family. There are some appetizers, main dishes, desserts, even a couple of great new drinks. (No the bunnies and duckie are not included - they are set dressing!)

My favorite recipe is the Nectarine Salsa Cups. Matt liked them so much, he called me from his girlfriend's house in St. George for instructions because he wanted to make it for her parents. It's that big "meet the parents" weekend for him, so I guess he wanted to make an extra-good impression by cooking them something delicious!

I also wanted to give you a great idea for Mother's Day. Our gorgeous Trifle Bowl is going to be on special for only $29 during the month of April. It is the perfect item for a Mother's Day gift. Naturally, it is perfect for serving trifles and other food dishes, but it's also a beautiful decorative item. You can fill it with candies, flowers, or seashells for a beautiful centerpiece. As you can see the pedestal is separate from the bowl, so you can use it several different ways for different looks.





How to win:

1. Leave me a comment telling me about your favorite Pampered Chef item and why you like it.

Extra entries
2. Send a tweet - @TwitAdrian is having a Pampered Chef giveaway at AdriansCrazyLife.com.

3. Do a blog post and link up to this post for your Followers

4. Become a Follower of my blog - Don't forget to stop by on Mondays and Fridays when I post my Clutterbugs posts every week. All about cleaning and organizing your house and even getting your family to help. Lord knows, we can all use some help in that area!

I will draw the winner next week on Easter Sunday.


OK, I ended up with 22 entries in my Pampered Chef giveaway. Apparently Pampered Chef is pretty popular. Being fat and lazy after a big Easter dinner, I decided to do the easy thing for picking a winner. I asked Matt to just pick a number between 1 and 22. He picked 7, so our winner is:


Carol M!


Congrats to Carol!

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As you probably read last week, we lost one of our darling cats due to a medical problem. We still miss her like crazy, but we had already been thinking about getting a new kitty before she got sick and we decided not to wait very long before getting the new one.

Being the impulsive type that I am, I decided that I needed to get Blake a kitten for St. Patrick's Day. However, there was just one problem - no kittens. Apparently cats are very particular about when they breed and "kitten season" isn't for about another month. However, I am not only impulsive, I am persistent! I called two animal shelters, several pet shops, and three vets.

Finally, I found ONE single kitten in the whole city! It was way on the other side of town and they would only guarantee to hold him for an hour, so I got in my car and drove like mad!

People laugh at me for believing in the Secret and all that mystic mumbo jumbo, but I think this is a case where it really did help. I was very specific about what I wanted - I wanted a kitten 8 to 10 weeks old, I definitely wanted a male (they are usually friendlier than females), I love grey cats - all my most favorite cats have been grey or grey striped cats. But most of all, after Miss Touch-Me-Not that we just lost, I wanted one with a very cuddly and outgoing personality.

So what are the odds that the ONLY kitten I could find in the whole city would be a grey male, 8 weeks old that is the friendliest kitten I've ever seen? I'm serious, you pick him up and he just snuggles right up into your neck and starts purring his little head off! Think what you want because I believe!




Naturally, since we were getting him on St. Patrick's Day, we had to have a specifically Irish name for him. I pulled up a website of Irish baby names and started putting together different combinations. I narrowed it down to either Liam McMurphy or Shamus O'Sullivan, but I decided I liked the second one because we could either call him Shamus or Sully and I like both of those.

(It's hard to get a picture of him because he's so darn quick. He jumps around here like a little jumping bean!)

I hadn't breathed a word to Blake because I wanted to surprise him. I waited until he got home from school and then I acted like I was going to the restroom, but instead I brought out our little Shamus. I wish I'd gotten a picture of his face - he was SO delighted. So far everyone has just loved Shamus - he's such a little snuggle bug.



He did end up having his first visit to the vet a little earlier than we had planned. He had a bit of a sniffle when we brought him home so we got a little concerned about him and rushed him to the vet this afternoon. They said it was just a mild respiratory infection and gave him some antibiotics and he's already sounding a lot better. Nothing like a $50 vet bill to get your relationship off to a great start (sigh). Hopefully Shamus will be with us for a good long time!

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Well, it finally happened, Matt got a tattoo. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later and actually we've been working together on the design for several months. Since it's something permanent on his body, I wanted to make sure it was going to be exactly right.

I think it's kind of cool that he is doing his own original artwork, and that it is a symbol of his faith and not a skull or a dragon or any of the other things he might have chosen. I was a little mad that the tattoo guy changed up the design so much, but I think it still looks pretty darn good. He is going back in a few weeks to get the shading done and get the color added to it. We decided that the ring around the cross is going to be in shades of blue with white highlights, and the shading around the edge of the cross and the scroll is going to be in shades of grey, so it will look like granite. It's ironic that his name is Matthew and Matthew 5:3-11 is his favorite bible verse. I think it's the "Blessed are the...." series.

All in all, I'm pretty proud of him.



PS:  After I posted this, I saw in one of the comments that they were questioning the spelling of his name - Mathew instead of Matthew.  What the ????   I went and looked and sure enough, they had spelled his NAME wrong.  Can  you believe that?  And nothing can be done about it.  As you can see, it's large block letters - no room at all to squeeze another letter in there anywhere.  He did get some work done on it (by another guy!) to clean it up and make the letters a little more clear and finish up the coloring.  From some angles, it looked more like "Mother".  That is so messed up!

This is my cautionary tale about tattoos - it is such a huge trust issue to trust a total stranger to put a piece of custom artwork on your body permanently.  I had about 3 appointments with my tattoo artist to preview my tiny little tattoo because I was so freaked out about the possibility of getting a bad tattoo.  I can't believe that I even went with him and I didn't even notice because I was so upset about him messing up the original design that I didn't even think to review the spelling.  You'd think they'd make them have the customer sign off on anything containing lettering.

Here's the final version:

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We had a sad day at our house this week. My son's little kitty Sassy ended up having to be put to sleep. We got these two about three years ago from an animal shelter and they have been the cutest, most aggravating pair ever since. We think their mother was feral because they are both semi-wild and very skittery. But also very smart and endlessly amusing.



Sass was always Blake's cat. She would go to any length to keep one of us from petting her (which was sad because she had the SOFTEST fur), but she would climb all over him and slept in his bed every night. In a lot of ways, she was like his best friend. I just LOVE this picture!



She was such a weird little kitty in so many ways. We taught both the kittens to sit up and beg for treats. Buster's way of begging is to stretch clear up and grab with both paws, but her way was to sit up on her butt like a little Meerkat. I so wish I'd gotten a picture of her doing this, it was so cute. But then half the time, she would refuse to eat the treat and would scratch at it like she was burying poo until Buster would generously come over and eat it for her (there's a reason why he's twice her size).

She was also our little techno-kitty. She loved to sit on top of our computer monitor and watch us work and came running every time she heard the printer start up. She also had a sniff obsession - she literally had to sniff everything that came into the house. And if she didn't like the smell of it, she would give it what we called her "ick face" with her jaw dropped and her nose crinkled up - another thing I wish I'd gotten a picture of.




But sadly, she had another weird habit, which lead to her downfall. She liked to carry stuff around in her mouth - cellophane, string, pennies, pieces from the Sorry game, balls of tinfoil, raffia and Lord only knows what. Apparently she swallowed something she shouldn't have and it caused an intestinal blockage. $300 worth of vet bills later, she wasn't able to pass it. We could have paid the $800 for the surgery to fix it, but who can say if she would just turn around and do it again next week? You just can't explain to a silly little kitty that eating stuff like that is bad for you.


Poor sweet little Sassy, we'll sure miss you.




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I promised you another installation in my Personal Style series. I've been reading a book called "Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management" by Mark Forester. This is a very interesting book and I'm only partway through it. I really recommend you read it. So far, he's got some really unique and interesting ideas.

He talks about our two types of brains - the rational and reactive minds. The reactive brain is basically our human version of animal instincts. This is what allows us to react quickly when we sense danger, or when we spot an opportunity that would be helpful to us, such as a great sale item, or the last donut in the breakroom.

This mind has some advantages and some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that we may see certain things as a threat that aren't really a threat.

For instance, I don't much like exercise and my reactive brain sees it as a threat to me, even though my rational brain knows it is good for me. The rational brain is the other side of the coin. It's a lot smarter, but it's just not fast enough for some situations, particularly survival situations.

So there is this constant battle going on between the two minds and that is what makes it so difficult for me to exercise and lose the weight I want to.

This is why willpower doesn't usually work to help us change the habits we want to fix, such as cleaning and organizing our house because we've got this constant tug-of-war going on between the two parts of our brain.

So, what's a girl to do? Well, the nice thing about the reactive brain is that it isn't very smart. So you have to think of some ways to outwit it and those are some of the strategies he talks about in the book.

One strategy would be to just bring it out into the open. When you find yourself being resistant to doing something, by avoiding it or procrastinating on starting a task, you need to call yourself on it.

Realize what you are doing and take a moment to really think about it. Reiterate why this task is important to you and why it needs to be done, then think about why you might feel it would be a threat to you. Most of the time you'll find that there really isn't any serious threat to what you want to accomplish and you'll be able to talk yourself into doing it.

Another way to do it would be to kind of "sneak up on it". Tell yourself that you have no intention of starting this task, but that you want to get the materials ready just in case you might need them.

For example - tell yourself that you have no intention whatsoever of doing the dishes, but you just feel like running a sink full of hot soapy water. Then tell yourself that you'll just put one pot in to soak, maybe two, but no more. Then tell yourself that it's a shame to waste that nice soapy water, so you'll put the rest of the dishes in just to soak. By then, you've probably shut down the alarm bell in your reactive mind and you can get in there and finish washing the dishes with no more resistance.

Another strategy is to acknowledge that this task is hard for you for some reason. I have a devil of a time making phone calls -to anyone and for any reason, including businesses and close family members. I just lost a close friend of the family this week and I am feeling terrible because I only managed to call her just once this year. It's really a serious limitation in my life.

This is a classic example of my reactive brain seeing this action as a threat and doing everything possible to prevent me from doing it, regardless of what my rational brain is telling me about why I need to do it.

One way to get around this might be to promise myself a treat of some kind every time I manage to pick up the phone. Hey it works for dogs and dolphins, why not me?

Another strategy might be to put some kind of penalty on not doing it. For instance, I tell my husband that I need to make a phone call today and then I have to pay him $1 if I haven't made it by the end of the day.

I do this with my kids sometimes. If they don't make their beds, their brother has the right to go in and make it for them and charge them a $1 fee.

But you have to pick a family member who is willing to follow through on this and apply the penalty consistently if you don't do the task.

This is what Mark calls restructuring your life to support good habits. It's like putting your credit cards in the freezer. It makes it just difficult enough to use them that you likely won't bother to do it.

He even suggested a new idea of setting up a credit card with a built-in "tattletale" feature. Every time you spend more than XX dollars, an E-mail is sent to your husband - or your Mom! Boy, that would sure make me think twice about overspending!

Start thinking about some ways you can work this into your own life to overcome your own difficult habits.

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In working with my personal style, one of the things I struggle with the most is consistency. There is just something in me that rebels against doing anything the same way every time. I never get up at the same time, eat at the same time, I don't do things in the same order, I basically never do the same thing any two days in a row or do anything the same way as anyone else.

On the one hand, this gives me a sense of individuality and personal freedom, but on the other hand, it really interferes with my productivity.

Sometimes I really envy people who can do this. Women who always serve chicken on Mondays, spaghetti on Tuesdays, etc. People who can remember to water plants twice a week, people who can schedule their lives with complete regularity and know they'll be able to stick to the same routine week after week. They just fascinate me.

My in-laws were like that and it really baffled me that they could remember to rotate tires, change furnace filters, and set the coffee maker every single night before bed.

I envy people like that, but on the other hand, I also have a mild contempt for them. Routine seems appealing to me, but on the other hand, it seems very boring and predictable and robotic to me and I think that's why I reject it so completely.

Which leaves me stuck with a problem. There are just certain things that need to be done on a schedule and housework is definitely best when done in some kind of a routine manner So, how to integrate my personal style into this process?

As you can see, I'm a computer gal. I spend large chunks of my time on the computer, both at work and at home. I probably have a computer screen in my face for 12 to 15 hours a day, every day. And computers are fabulous at routines. Sounds like a win-win to me!

So what I've started to do is to use my E-mail and my calendar to help me along. So now, I've set up all kinds of reminders for all those pesky things I need to do. And the nice thing is that I can include my family in this too. I've gone through and set appointments with reminders for myself to tidy the kitchen every night, fold laundry, and a bunch of other things.

My husband and kids have E-mail too, so I literally set up appointments with them so they get these reminders as well. There are weekly appointments to take out the trash, mop the floors, and cook dinner one night a week. There is even a monthly reminder to my older son and husband to check the fluids in the cars.

The reminders pop up in their E-mail boxes and for my son, as a text on his cell phone. I even have penalties written right into them. When the task is sent out, it says, this task must be done by bedtime, or you will need to do this and this tomorrow. I think this qualifies as a brilliant idea and I think it will go a long ways towards keeping me on track with my life.

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That's so me! I started a new feature for my blog and then conveniently forgot all about it. Anyway, it's still technically Wednesday, so I guess we're OK.

It's been a busy week, so I haven't cooked a lot, but I've made a few new things. I made a Three Cheese Veggie pizza for lunch on Sunday. Matt's girlfriend was over and she is a vegetarian, so I decided to make her a veggie pizza. It came out just delicious. I used my old reliable refrigerated pizza crust on my baking stone with a bit of olive oil. You pre-bake the crust, so the moisture from the veggies doesn't make it soggy.

Then I sliced up my veggies with my Ultimate Mandolin. Or I should say that Blake sliced them up. He begged to use the serrated blade so they would come out looking like pickles. We used that for the zuchini and the yellow squash, then I cut up the mushrooms with my lovely Santoku knife. I love that knife. It's so sharp and perfectly balanced.

Then I just tossed on some mozzarella cheese and some alfredo sauce (it actually called for some plum toatoes, but I didn't have any and really I wanted to use up the rest of my alfredo sauce). We invited some other friends over from church and they liked it as well.

Last night was my stamp class and I always try to put together a little nibble for the ladies. Last night I made our Peach Salsa Quesadilla Cups. Sounds good doesn't it? They were really tasty and super easy to make. OK, I cheated a little bit, so they were actually REALLY easy to make.

All I did was take some tortillas, used my silicone basting brush to brush olive oil on both sides of them, then used my pizza cutter (well, Blake did - that kid loves to cook now!) to cut them into 1/8ths. Then I mushed them down into the cups of my Mini Muffin Tin with my Tart Shaper. I think I used tortillas that were a little too thick because they didn't "mush" very well, but I got them in there and then added a little cheese to each cup. Should have been a Mexican blend, but all I had in the house was my good all-purpose Mozzarella, so I just sprinkled it with a little of our Chipotle Rub to give it a little Mexican flavor.

Then since I was too short on time to make the Peach Salsa, I just grabbed some salsa in a jar (forgive me, it was an insanely busy day!) and spooned a little bit into each cup. Probably would have been better with the fancy Peach Salsa, but it was pretty darn good!

Oh, I almost forgot about my quick and easy dinner on Friday. We were starving and I'd worked late, so we needed a quickie dinner. I had a turkey breast in the fridge and some Rice-a-roni in the pantry, so I tossed it into my Deep Covered Baker with some Cream of Mushroom Soup and some green beans and voila!

We cut the turkey breast into chunks so it would cook faster and did it for 30 minutes in the microwave and 30 minutes in the oven. That's what's so great about the DCB - it's small enough to fit in the microwave, but you can just as easily pop it into the oven and the lid keeps all the juices in, so everything comes out nice & juicy.

Did I mention that I've got 50 great recipes for the Deep Covered Baker? You could cook a different dinner every night in it for almost two months and never repeat one. Your family would love that. These recipes are a free gift to anyone who purchases the Deep Covered Baker from me. If you're interested, leave me a comment and I'll send you some info.

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OK, I made another executive decision for my blog. I've decided to add a new feature called What's Cooking Wednesday where I'll share some of the great Pampered Chef dishes I've been making for my family.

I made such a fun dinner last night and my family just gobbled it up. I used our Cut 'n Seal tool to make chicken alfredo pizza pockets.

What I did was take refrigerated pizza dough. I laid it out and took some pre-grilled chicken strips I had picked up at the store. I sliced them up into little pieces and tossed in some jarred alfredo sauce and some mozzarella cheese. I put the chicken mixture on half the pizza dough and folded it in half. Then I used the Cut 'n Seal which is like a big cookie cutter with an inner ring that seals the edges, to make little pockets. Then I brushed them with some butter and cooked them on my pizza stone for 20 minutes at 375 degrees
so the crust came out nice and crispy.

This is so cool because you could do it with just about anything, regular pizza sauce, pepperoni, ham & pineapple, you could even do it with just plain bread and kids just love it. I even gathered up all the leftover scraps and made one big pocket for my hubby.

Next time I'm going to try stuffed french toast like they have at Dennys, or is it Ihop? You take bread and put a mixture of cream cheese & fruit pie filling in it, then dust with powdered sugar, but I'm not sure if you bake it or fry it.  We'd probably fry it, 'cuz we like stuff like that.

You can even do PB&J's with it for kid's lunches! And the best part - you can have the Cut 'n Seal for the princely sum of nine whole dollars! Yup, big bucks for such a cool little gadget!

Now that I've got your mouth watering, what are you making for dinner?

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