Trials of a Long Haired Girl

So sorry that I did not post last week, but with preparations for Thanksgiving and such, I did not get around to trying something new with my smoothies or anything else.  So my original plan was to continue with the smoothies, but today I tried something new and decided I would blog about it instead.  We purchased this macaroni and cheese from Costco.   Side note here, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE macaroni and cheese.  As a small child, I could tell if it wasn't Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  Honestly, I know it frustrated some of my family greatly.  After my son came along, we switched from the "blue box" to Velveeta Shells and Cheese.  I've tried some of the generics and they are not all bad.  But I have really been trying to move towards real food.   What first attracted this to me?  I would have to say the price and amount in the box.  I've bought the organic options before and they are expensive.  After looking at the ingred...

Today's memory of Mom is more recent.  I am so thankful that God blessed me with my sweet husband so that I could have this time with my Mom before she left us.  To honor traditions, we had lunch the Friday before our wedding and my husband did not see me again until I met him at the alter.  I spent the evening at my Mom's house preparing the centerpieces for our wedding reception with my cousin.  I would not trade that time for anything in the world!  One thing I recall Mom saying as we were nearing my wedding day was that if I really loved her, I'd have someone else do my hair.  Just a side note here, I had only had 5 other people besides my Mom do anything with my hair over my entire life.  I could not imagine anyone else taking charge of my hair on that day.  We went through several different ideas together and finally settled that my hair should be down.  Little did I know at that point that she knew I had a veil coming that I was not ...

Happy Monday!  This memory may be a rather mundane one, but it popped in my head this morning and I felt like it was necessary to share.  While my Mom didn't go to church when I was a youngster other than on holidays, she made sure that I made it there if I did not stay the night with my Nanny.  We had a ritual of sorts on those Sunday mornings.  We got up early enough that I could get ready for church and we would go by Jack in the Box and grab a Breakfast Jack and orange juice.  We would sit in the church parking lot and eat breakfast and talk until time for me to go in for church.  It may not seem like much, but those were some great mornings.  Honestly, I cannot seem to eat anything from Jack in the Box these days.  I suspect that as I have been trying to eat more real food, it seems that my tastes have changed so it no longer tastes good to me.   I was reminded again this weekend how much I enjoy spending time in the kitchen and cook...

I have decided to try something new, pun intended, and right now, I'm trying to find a way to decrease the amount of time that I am spending putting together my green smoothie each morning.  I am open for suggestions.   I am starting with a suggestion that I read in a blog about someone that freezes their smoothies.  I prepared 4 smoothies on Saturday.  Two were mixed antioxidant fruit green smoothies and two were cherry green smoothies.  The first thing that I figured out is that it generally takes longer for my frozen smoothies to thaw.  I have found that it has been taking about 2 days for them to thaw completely.  Things I noticed about the one I had this morning are that it was not as flavorful as the fresh ones.  It also had clumps in it.  I decided to run it through the blender again and added a couple of chocolate chips and a little more ginger.  It was still not as flavorful, but it was tolerable.  I will try a dif...

This journey learning to live without my Mom is not easy.  Today's memory isn't one of my own, but is a story that I heard my Mom tell numerous times.   I have always been a morning person.  Mom used to say that I would come to her bedside and pat her to wake her up telling her "I hungy" in the wee hours of the morning.  She would tell me that she and my dad would lower my baby bed to the lowest setting and they could never figure out how I managed to get out of my bed, but I would every night or very many nights anyway.  When I was old enough, Mom taught me to pull the drawers out so that I could climb up and get a bowl.  I would do this in order to make myself a bowl of cereal.  I remember climbing up those drawers to get my bowl.  I was so tiny back then.  In fact, not much bigger than I am in this picture.  I think it used to make Mom crazy because I was always a morning person.  I still am, although now I am not quite as brig...

On October 29, 2016, my life changed forever.  My Mom, Linda Dobbs Williams passed away at 8:24 p.m.  In an instant, I lost my best friend, my confidante and my biggest support/fan.  My Mom was so many things to me and for me and I will miss her dearly.  For some of you that have known my mom/me for awhile know that while my Mom had many pictures displayed, she had many snapshots that were placed into an old hard sided suitcase.  I found that it  helped a little bit to go back through her pictures.  There were many memories that I shared that were captured in those pictures.  There are so many memories in there, but also memories that are not captured in those snapshots.  I thought that I would take Mondays for the next few weeks and share some of those memories.  This serves two purposes for me.  The first is that it gives me a chance to share some wonderful memories of my Mom and allows others to share them as well, but the second...