My Mini Blockbuster...

That is what I've been up to! I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before but we have over 800 movies in our collection, not counting what I bought recently and the TV season we own as well. I know how crazy that sounds, and how we must look like a mini block buster, but before you can ask... yes, we really do watch them all... at some point LOL! In my house alone we have dedicated 1 full bookshelf, 1 half bookshelf, and two cabinets above our entertainment center to dvds, tv series and blu ray dvds. That's a lot of space! And a lot of wasted space taken up by the bulk of the cases!

We've been living like this for over 5 years now and it has been slowly driving me up the wall, everything is so cluttered up and it take a while to find any particular dvd. I try my best to keep it organized and labeled but its hard, with that many dvd's if one or two get out of order chaos will soon take over; and then of course once that happens... no one wants to spend all day correcting it right?!

Until now...! I have stumbled upon my ultimate "get organized" tool for my colossal dvd collection, while shopping around at target! They now make these cool "movie sleeves". You just take out the dvd cover (if you want it, I did!) put it in the sleeve and take out your dvd and slid it in the extra sleeve insert and whala! Then take that big, black, bulky case and shooov.... ok... chuck it in the trash! ;)

It's as easy as that... you can go from this...

and this...
and this...
and *gasp* this...
(and BTW... those are stacked 3 deep)

To this...

There are 25 sleeves of dvd's there in the pile compared to the 25 big, black, bulky, empty cases.
And as you can tell from the picture, 25 sleeves take up as much space as about 4 cases. Yes folks, I think we have a miracle! I plan on putting the new dvd's in really cute bins, once I get the chance to get all the dvd's organized into the sleeves and I find some material to cuteify
(yes, I totally made that word up) the bins. I then want to store the bins in our new storage coffee table that I just bought last week. This is going to be a project and a half when considering the extent of our collection but it's something to keep me busy with from now till vacation! :)

What do you think?

This is a close up of what the sleeves actually look like. I put the cover (because I just couldn't talk myself into getting rid of the covers) to face the back of the sleeve and then the dvd's toward the flap. There is an extra plastic insert inside the sleeve so that you can put your dvd's in there and the wont become scratched; and as you can see it holds more than one dvd. You could probably even get three in there if you needed to; 2 in the sleeves and one loose. :)

Around Town...

Hi there!!! Have you missed me? LOL! Sorry we've been kinda busy lately... which of course is a good thing while the hubby is away. My In-Laws came from Florida for Easter weekend, they drove in on that Thursday and stayed till the following Monday and we've been busy ever since! Hope you all had a good Easter! It was my first Easter NOT cooking and man, I'll tell you... I could get used to that! I never understood why people ended up going out to eat for the big holidays but I TOTALLY get it!!! Think about it... you don't have to cook and you didn't have to plan, you didn't have to spend extra money on food that might go to waste, there's no mess to clean up and everyone still gets to be together and have a nice meal! It was just the four of us... me, munchkin and momma-in-law and daddy-in-law and we decided (and by we, I mean I) to go to the Beau Rivage Casino Buffet. It was awesome! They had all our usual regular favorite foods (I LOVE the pasta station) and roasted Turkey, Glazed Ham, Prime Rib and Snow Crab!!! All for $29.99 you can't beat that folks!

We also went to the Easter Egg parade & egg hunt, which I have to say I was a bit disappointed in... The parade was almost non-existent (and whoo, they threw old mardi gras beads... like we don't have a ton of those already at home) The egg hunt was small and the kiddo didn't get a whole lot of eggs and all they had inside were cheap candy like tootsie rolls and smarties. I guess its better than nothing, but next time I will know better and just skip it to do my own at home.

We went a few days to the beach and lounged in the sun and flew our kites which was awesome since we've had alot of wind from the weather system that moved over Texas a week or so ago, ya know... the one that caused all those Tornados... Which by the way... the kiddo has been eating up the news on that stuff lately LOL! She is still very much on her "tornado kick" ;)

I also took my in-laws around to the local spots while they were here, and I think they really enjoyed seeing the "off the beaten path" not so touristy spots. We have a small beach community down here that is just over the bridge from Biloxi and its called "Ocean Springs" (ya might have heard me mention it before... I used to work over there). I have always loved it, and thought it was a charming little town with a beautiful historical center. They have cute boutiques and shops, amazing restaurants, cafes and bistros and its just beautiful to stroll down the cobblestone streets under the shad of the magnolia trees, when they are in bloom. It's really like page right out of Southern Hospitality magazine... they even have a old fashioned salt water taffy store and a 50's five & dime soda shoppe!

I know we've done a ton of other stuff but this is all I can think of at the moment, time seems to be flying by and there are days where I struggle to keep up with it, but I am grateful! We have offically 36 more days of school left (and until we are Florida bound) and about 90 days left till we go on our vacation to North Carolina! Woohoo! I can't wait!!!

Here's some of the pics I took while strolling around town... I just love the vintage look of everything... hope you like them. :)

This one is from inside the five & dime and soda shoppe and its probably my favorite.

It reminds me of the place that my grandparents used to work at.

They also brew and bottle their own cream soda! Its still the same family recipe from 1943!

Old fashioned hard candy... and one oogling kiddo LOL! Only .20 cents!
See! You still can get "some" things for less than a quarter ;)

My favorite donut shop ever! Hands down they have the best donuts ever... why?
Because they are made with potato flour! And the potato flour makes them light and fluffy!
Plus everyone in there is nice as peach pie... don't believe me?... come see for yourself any day of the week the counter inside is packed wall to wall ;)

The Military Child

Just in case some of you didn't know... April is month of the military child. All across our nation every branch of service is celebrating our little hero's and things are no different around here. I'd like to take a minute to thank my child for being a little hero as well. Her courage, understanding, patients and resilience never cease to amaze me. She is six years old, and in those six years she has had to move four times to four different house, four different states, had to be the new kid on the block four different times. She has made new friends from moving and had to learn how to say goodbye to those same friends. She has endured over 10 different TDY's with various time frames as to when her dad comes home and most recently a deployment which she will have to endure for quite some time. She has learned to use a computer, send e-mail and skype since she was four years old. She has attended 3 different schools and she had the pledge of alligence memorized before any of her other classmates. She knows what it means to salute someone and why we do it. She understands that daddy leaves because duty calls and she might not always know where he is, but that he loves her and will come home as soon as he can. Yes, my child is amazing; she never asked for this kind of life, and was never given the choice to choose it, no... she was born into it. She never got a say so, yet she endures the hard times with a smile and knows how to make the best of every situation. She is part of amazing group of children that will one day undoublty grow up to be some of the best adults, she is a military child and this time it's me who is saluting her! I love my amazing Air Force brat and she makes her daddy and I very proud! :)

Daddy Came In The Mail Yesterday

Ha! Don't I wish... If that title were true to the exact words I would be ecstatic! If only it were really that easy LOL! What I really meant was... our daddy doll came in the mail yesterday. When hubby had gone in to have his deployment breifing sometime before he left, I also had a briefing with the Airman & Family Readiness Center on base, they gave me LOTS of good tips, signed me up with their monthly newsletter of free stuff for us deployed spouses and families to do on and off base, they even gave us "Play Passes" which are a new and GREAT concept! --I'll get to that part in a little bit. Among all the great info was a pamphlet about "Daddy Dolls" and the "Operation Hug a Hero" project. These dolls are AMAZING! I went online the week that hubby left and ordered one for munchkin straight away... all I had to do was upload a full length picture of hubby and they take care of the rest! It takes a while for them to make it and then it take a bit to make it through the mail system but after that, its instant smiles! We got ours in the mail last night and she hasn't left "daddy" out of her sight since! I'd let her take it to school with her today but sadly I don't think school would let her keep it with her. She doesn't go to a DoD school which is a shame... because this public school doesn't understand what its like to be a military child, despite being in a big enough military town. Alas, I told her "daddy" will be right here waiting for her when she gets home from school and ready for lots of love and hugs. I can tell already just within the last 12 hours that having this little piece of her dad has raised her morale 100% and made deployment that much easier to get through. So, if you have a little one and your hubby is or will be deploying soon... I HIGHLY recommend getting one of these dolls. Check our your A&FRC or FRG and see if they offer a voucher coupon to get one for free first, but if they don't have no fear... they are really easy to order and not all that expensive. So far, it's been worth every penny to have a little bit of "homeland security" for her.

She started to tear up just a little when I took him out of the box.

But then started to cheer up a little when she thought of all the cool places we can take "daddy", woohoo! Can you say road trip?! lol! :)

Dino-rific Weekend!

What have we been up to? Paleontology of course! LOL! And another of our magic tree house books/craft/project. I have noticed how we've been reading them a little out of order but honestly it doesn't matter to me, I'm just glad shes been taking an interest in reading and, learning about new things like dinosaurs such. We finished reading "Dinosaurs After Dark"and she has been craving to learn more about dinosaurs... so we borrowed a few books from the base library and discussed how dinosaurs lived and what fossils are. I found a few great craft/projects about dinosaurs through google and pinterest.com and well... we went a little nuts LOL!


I decided to whip up a batch of salt dough and I found some plastic dinosaurs at Walmart... I laid out our "rocks" and then smashed down a dinosaur in the middle of each of them, hence making an imprint or what I like to think looks like a fossil. ;) Then we baked them for quite a while, after they finished baking and cooling we painted them and then let them dry.


We "burried" them in sand and dirt from the back yard and then "dug" them back up to dust them off and pretend we were excavating them! It was AWESOME! And if you have a kid who's into dinosaurs... I highly recommend partaking in your own dinosaur dig! Oh so much fun! And your kids will love it!


I then glued a make shift dino of my own on some heavy stock paper and let her paint over it so she could see the "bones" of the dinosaur... she thought it was pretty neat how the paint didn't stick to the bones...


We also made a hand print dinosaur and her very own dinosaur necklace! The necklace she LOVES and I probably will have to pry it off of her at some point LOL! Best of all... soooo easy to make! I just took the left over plastic dinosaurs and screwed a frame clasp screw at the top and then threaded it through a ball chain. And wha-la! Instant dinosaur necklace and instant fun! For hours!