I've lived in this house for 7 1/2 years and today Cindy and I finally hung curtains in the living room. This winter has had some particularly cold days and those giant windows in the living room have really kept that room much cooler than the rest of the house. Cindy got so fed up one day that she taped blankets over the windows. The difference in temperature was stagering, and we realized we needed to get off our lazy duffs and hang some curtains. A sale at JCPenny, $200, and a few hanging frustrations later and we have curtains in the living room. The colors of the curtains match the walls almost too well, we're really not sure how the heck that happened, but they look good to us. Cindy's still going to get some tie-backs for when we want to open them up, but the hard part is done. Take a look to see what you think.

Well, I have to say I was a bit surprised that my phone survived the incident yesterday, but it seems to be okay so far. Okay, here's the story...

I left work around 5:30 yesterday and of course I texted Cindy to let her know I was on my way. Due to the rain and traffic the commute from Las Colinas took over hour. I had just arrived at the house and was going to check the mail since I already had my umbrella out and was already in the rain. As I'm bending over to check in the mailbox my phone starts ringing. I assumed it was Cindy and didn't plan to answer since I would be walking into the house as soon as I finished getting the mail. Well I guess I was bent over a bit too far, because my phone fell out of my jacket pocket and into the stream of water running down the street. Let me tell you, if you've never seen an LCD screen lit up with a phone call being carried away from you by a stream of water in front of your house, it really was a sight to see. Well the phone was completely submerged for a good 10-15 seconds before I was able to retreive it. As soon as I got inside I pulled the battery, wiped it down, and proceded to dry it with Cindy's hair dryer. So far its worked okay today, I guess time will tell for sure.

Over the last few months I've been helping my Mom get her business web site up and running and just today we decided to let it go live. Her business is called Beauty In The Beads and the new web site is www.beautyinthebeads.net. Lori (my sister) came up with the name which is obvously a play on the name of the fairy tale Beauty And The Beast. But it was changed around to reflect that she finds the beauty IN the beads by designing and creating all sorts of beaded neclaces, earings, and bracelets with Swarovski crystal and other glass beads, gemstones, pearls, and a variety of different types of necklace pendants. I've also convinced her to create a page for Beauty In The Beads on Facebook so that she can help spread the word about her site that way too. Hopefully she can get enough "Fans" of her Facebook page so she sign up for a page "username" (67 fans so far, so I think she only needs 33 more).

If your still reading this and your thinking that all of this is just a shameless plug for my Mom's website, then you'd be absolutely right. I'm excited to see if this takes off or not. I've definitely learned more than I ever thought I would about how to opperate an ecommerce website. And I'm certain that I still have a LOT to learn.

When I initially imported all of the recipes to this site from its previous home, I accidentally coppied from my test website and not from the actuall website. I've just finished importing the recipes from the correct location, and it all appears to be working fine. Now the real recipes are up and they aren't all just a bunch of "blah blah blah".