This Stop Willoughby

The Challenge Ever since I posted the challenge to find new and interesting blogs, I've been searching for new blogs to read. Whenever I have a few extra minutes I've searched using Google Blog search. I've found some good ones, several of which I shared with you a few days ago. When I used the other, simpler method of searching blogs (clicking Next Blog at the top of this page), I was amazed at how many blogs there are in other languages. I'm beginning to think that you are required to have a blog if you are a citizen of some countries. I'd tell you which countries those are, but since I can't read anything but English, I'm not really sure. I took French for three years in high school. I didn't keep up with it after that, so I don't remember much of it anymore. I understand more than I speak, though, so I thought I would test myself and try to to translate a French blog yesterday. I got "Hello and welcome to my blog" but I was lost after t...

A great big thank you to Lissaloo and Gracey for giving me this award! I'm having so much fun reading and writing blogs, but the awards are the icing on the cake. The rules for accepting this award are: Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with "Honest Scrap." List at least 10 honest things about yourself. Number 1 is the hardest part of accepting an award. I love all of my buddy's blogs, so I hate to choose only 7! But since I must follow the rules, I am awarding this honor to (in alphabetical order): A dash of life Muddy Runner My Tasty Treasures One Step at a Time Tattoos and Teething Rings The 5th Sister Tried and True Cooking With Heidi Walking Across America Who Has the Thyme? Yesterday's Tomorrow Ok, I cheated! I'm passing the award to 10 people and listing 7 honest things about myself. I can do that, can...

This is my second post of the day, so that tells you I've been pretty lazy and spending most of my time in front of the computer. I don't know why, but I'm really tired today so I don't feel like doing much else. I've been browsing through unknown blogs, hoping to find something interesting, thought provoking, or just plain funny. It hasn't all been for nothing because it gave me an idea for a great blogger challenge! There are untold millions of blogs in cyberspace. Some of them are great (like all of ours!) and some are not. Some are in English (the only language that I speak and read fluently) and some are not. You can find many of them by hitting "Next Blog" at the top of this page or you can use Google Blog Search. I've done both. If you use Google Blog Search you can narrow down your choices by keywords, language and URL. So here is my challenge. Find one blog worthy of following or commenting on (you must do one or the other) and share it on...

We were so busy with our son and his new car this weekend that I never got around to posting a Friday Night Drink Demo. But just because I care so much about my fellow blog buddies, I have one for you today. No, I didn't make them this morning, we made them last night. However, they are full of healthful berries so I suppose you could have them for/with breakfast. Hey, I'm not judging you..... I'm also going to share my recipe for delicious, roasted chicken. Unfortunately there are no pictures of it. After having my margarita, I forgot all about photographing our dinner! Ready to begin? Here we go! Mixed Berry Margaritas First you'll need some frozen, mixed berries and Tequila, Triple Sec, Whiskey Sour mix (you can sub sweet and sour mix or plain lemon or lime juice), sugar and ice (not pictured). We used our Magic Bullet for this, but you can use a blender instead (I'm honestly not that impressed with the Magic Bullet). For each drink, add 1/2 cup crushed ice, 1/...

I'd like to start this post by saying thank you for the kind words and expressions of sympathy regarding my brother in law's death. I appreciate it very much. Yesterday was a crazy day for awards, wasn't it? Thank you again to those of you who gave me an award. I think Lissaloo and I got the ball rolling in the morning thanks to Donna. By the afternoon, awards were flying all over the place! I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. Even though we've never met in person, I think of all of you as friends. What, too mushy? Let's just group hug and move on! And, finally, the search is over. I'm pleased to say that we finally found a car for our son! We found something that met our criteria and his. It had to be either 4 wheel or front wheel drive for us (snow, Michigan, you get the picture), it had to be sporty and fast for him. So here it is (drum roll, please)........ a 1993 Dodge Stealth! It's in great shape, it's just a little dirty. Unfortunately, we...

I have a mixed bag of emotions going on today. I'm sad, angry, guilty, frustrated and happy all at the same time. If you're interested in knowing why, I'll tell you. Let's take this one emotion at a time, shall we? Sad. I'm incredibly sad today. I heard from my father in law that the coroner has finally decided on a cause of death for my brother in law. He died in October, so we have been waiting all this time to find out what happened to him. The answer? Smoke inhalation. He died in a house fire, so you would think that this wouldn't come as much of a surprise, but it does. Initially we were led to believe that he had no smoke in his lungs and may have died before the fire started. Angry. I'm angry about the way the media, the police and the coroner handled this case. At the time my brother in law died, the media referred to him as a squatter. They portrayed him as an insignificant homeless drifter who wandered into a house and decided to live there illegal...

I was hoping to have a delicious recipe or fun project to share today, but sadly, I have neither. What I do have is another stupid story where you can laugh at me. I have plenty of them, in fact. And who doesn't enjoy a good laugh?! I should start by saying that my husband and I have lots of good ideas. Really, we do. We like to brainstorm on weekend mornings while we have our coffee. We've come up with some winners, but also a few losers. This one was a loser of an idea to the nth power. It really was. We were planning our vacation a few years ago and decided it would be a good idea to come up with a way to earn a little extra spending money. Maybe something the family could do together. A garage sale? No, doesn't sound like fun. Bake sale? Nah. A paper route? Great idea! Let's do it!! Mr. Willoughby called the local paper and found out there was an available route in the next town over. The circulation manager said this route could be done by one pe...