Feel Good Friday – Thanks, CSN Stores!

Check out Feel Good Friday
created by The Girl Next Door Grows Up
 hosted at Lia Sophia Tomgirl

I love blogging. I love it. I love everything about it. I love writing. I love connecting with others. It makes me happy. The added bonus? Occasionally asked to do a sponsored post.

Like when CSN Stores asked me to do a post about their website. Do you remember when I talked about the awesome website, CSN? I was feeling all bluesy about winter and felt a bit perky when I could do some retail therapy with them. Well, they gave me a $35 credit to get anything I wanted. So guess what I got? A toaster oven. WIN! (Win as in yea! Not as in Charlie Sheen WINNING). No more smushed bagels! No more rubbery pizza crust!

And the customer service with CSN is awesome. First of all the website was super easy to use. Next, they upgraded my shipping right away. WIN! Also, their prices are awesome. I saw the same Black and Decker toaster oven at Target for $15 more (Please don’t be mad, Target. My heart still belongs to you).

Like I said yesterday, I don’t know where this blogging and writing is going to take me. But if I get to enjoy a few perks every once in a while, I say that's Feel Good Friday worthy.

I will leave you with a few photos taken by Marie documenting the CSN experience

Have a great weekend!

OOoo!  Check it out!  CSN delivered this
fine toaster oven in a jiffy!

Me taking it out of the box, looking very intense.



Where the hell does the tray go?
How do I toast stuff?
And there's Marie's foot.







Oh, the tray goes IN the toaster over. 
Yes, I see.  Good thing I read the directions.

Oooh, doesn't it look shiny and beautiful!
Also, please note me in the glass reflection.
Because it will never be this clean again.

My Life Plan Take 2! And Big Thank You to Aunt Becky

You know what I thought was missing from this post?
Me.  Dressed up as an angel.

My dear Aunt Becky from Mommy Wants Vodka (and Mushroom Printing and We Know Awesome and Band Back Together) is awesome. If you don’t know who she is, you must go check her out, like right now. Go ahead. Click on some of those links. I’ll wait.

Awesome, right?

Well, when I first got started with this whole blogging thing, I was pretty clueless. I didn’t know where I was going with all this writing and blogging. I really thought that I was going to teach and have babies. End. Of. Story.

But it wasn’t the end of the story. Because as it turns out, 32 is kinda young to end the story of one’s life, don’t you think? I did. I mean back in the colonial ages 32 was considered elderly. I’m pretty sure that bout of pneumonia last year would have been the end of me back then. But we’ve come a long way since then.

Yea for penicillin and computers!

So I really enjoy blogging and writing. And then I ran into Aunt Becky’s blog and her whole campaign for Bringing Aunt Becky Back. She really inspired me to keep on finding my happy even though I wasn’t quite sure how or why or how.

Recently she wrote these two posts about the whole dilemma with What To Do With The Rest of Your Life here, here, and here.

So it got me thinking and this is what I came up for me.

I stay home with The Babes, and I blog on the side. I am not sure where writing and blogging will take me, but I know right now, with both home all. the. time., I can’t give it my full, undivided attention. But the Babes are not going to be young like this forever, and I don’t want to look back and wish I would’ve been there for them more.

But on the flip side, they are not going to be young like this forever, so I have to have some sort of plan and direction so I don’t park my ass in front of the TV all day with my friends at The Today Show.

So I am treating this window of time as my internship for The Next Stage. By the time Thomas is in school full time (in 3 years), I will have hopefully figured out enough about blogging and writing to have A Plan. But right now, I am just going to keep on writing and learning and raising these Babes to be awesome little people. I find if I put too much pressure on myself it have all the answers, I get a tad bit totally crazy anxious. And then I get frustrated that I am not where I “should” be.

And that’s just not where I want to live. I felt when I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to be in college. And when I was in college, I couldn’t wait to be working. And when I was working, I couldn’t wait to be home with kids. I basically wished my first 27 years away.

And now that I’m here, I don’t want to wish this time away. Living in the present is hard, at least for me. But I think that’s a lesson for me in all of this, too.

So thank you Aunt Becky, for another post of inspiration. I *heart* you. Big time.