The Sewing Mom

It’s such a lazy day around our house today.  I got some cleaning done this morning and we went to the craft fair for a little bit of shopping, but other than that, it’s just a lazy day.  It give me time to think about other places I might like to be.  Places I wouldn’t mind traveling to and sites I wouldn’t mind seeing.  One such place that I dream of going is Italy.

 Besides airfare, I’d need to consider Italy hotels and I would definitely want to choose a hotel based on what monuments and attractions I would want to see. There are so many to choose from because there is so much history, including ancient history, in Italy. I would definitely want to check out several Rome hotels because I would definitely want to visit The Colosseum and The Sistene Chapel.

Outside of Rome, I would want to check out Venice hotels because I’ve always thought it would be fun to take a gondola ride on the canals of Venice. Then there would be Milan hotels because after all, who wouldn’t want to learn more about Leonardo Da Vinci by visiting the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum? The Cathedral of Milan is supposed to be just breathtaking and worth a visit also.

My daughter was studying Rome in school a few weeks ago and I know she’d enjoy visiting the Catacombs as well as The Colosseum and The Vatican, so back to Rome we go. Hey, I can always dream can’t I?

My daughter and I just got back from attending a local [tag]craft show[/tag].  It was nice, but sort of small.  We were in and out in a little over an hour.  I did find one booth that I really liked her stuff.  I bought a couple of holiday decor items.  I would have bought more but they didn’t want to give me a quantity discount so I didn’t.  I’m actually looking forward to unpacking all of our holiday decorations and setting things up here in our new house.  We have so much more space and our tree will finally be back in our family room.  Our previous home, the tree would only fit in the entry hallway, next to the dining room because of its height.  So, the last seven Christmas mornings we’ve opened presents sitting on the hardwood floor near the front door.  This year we’ll be able to get comfy and sit in front of the fireplace while opening presents.  I’m looking forward to it.

 Today I bought a square snowman that I plan to wrap some lights around and a cowboy Santa, remember we are in Texas.

When we bought our house here in Texas my biggest requirement was that it had a pool, a way for me to deal with the heat here. We found exactly what we were looking for and the house does indeed have a pool with beautiful landscaping around it. Someday down the road I would very much like to add to that landscaping by creating an outdoor kitchen with a a built in bbq grill and cabinets.

When I take my walks through the subdivision I see homes that have [tag]outdoor kitchens[/tag] in their back yards and they are awesome. I look forward to the day when we can do the same thing. We spent quite a bit of time outside this summer and even more now that it is cooler. Our back yard is perfect for entertaining too and with an outdoor kitchen there would be less going in and out of the house, everything we need would be right outside with us. Having high quality, weather resistant product would stand up to the harsh heat here in Texas.

Not that we plan to move or sell, but I’m always thinking ahead and I’m sure that a nicely laid out outside space would add value to our home if we were ever to put it on the market. Now that we have our dream house, I’m looking forward to the day we can have our dream space in our back yard!

There has been quite a bit of discussion around the blogosphere regarding a certain company and it’s control of everyone’s P_R. It seems to me that this particular company has become too big for its own good and needs to come down a few pegs itself. One way to achieve this is through the use of a new and improved product being touted as Goo Gone by those who are developing it. This product is planned to be released within the week.

In the mean time, there are several things we as bloggers can do to try to stop the bleeding. Kate at I Think Therefore I Blog has written an excellent post on this very topic and has given some great advice on changes we can make right now. The whole point is that we as bloggers own our blogs, not some company that is wanting to tell us how good/bad we are by ranking us. They have tried to control our content, our links, and our opportunities and it’s time for it to stop.

I myself have removed a certain company’s ads from my sidebar as well as the P_R checker and have replace the checker with the [tag]Yahoo Badge[/tag] which shows incoming links which you can see in my left sidebar. I have also asked my family to no longer use a certain search engine, rather use Yahoo or anything else when they want to do a search.

While we may feel bruised, we are not broken and remember, help is on the way in the form of [tag]Goo Gone[/tag].