The Vine That Ate The South Is Now On My Blog!

Kudzu: The Vine that Ate the South!

As you may have noticed, Simply Diane has undergone a facelift (the blog, not the blogger unfortunately).  After two years of blogging under a name I didn’t really care for, I decided to revamp, refocus and rename my blog. 

I enlisted family and friends to help me come up with a catchy Southern name and in the end it was my dear hubby who won the naming contest.  Simply Diane is now Tangled in Kudzu – Musings of a Southern Mama!

On the new and, hopefully, improved blog, I will continue to share stories about my family, friends and life in general, but I will also share tales of growing up in the South and the colorful characters who helped mold me into the woman I am today. 

To kick things off, I will tell you I was born in a small town in central Florida (not so small anymore) and moved to the suburbs of Atlanta when I was 11.  My daddy’s side of the family was almost exclusively from Georgia, my mama’s from Florida and Georgia, so I consider myself a genuine GRITS (Girl Raised in the South) although I haven’t written or talked about it much on my blog. 

Why haven’t you written about your Southern upbringing, you may be asking yourself?  Oh, I don’t know, probably because I didn’t think you would find me as interesting as my family and friends.  After a few years of writing about other people, however, I have decided me and my Southern family might bring a new freshness to a blog that was feeling a bit lackluster.  Don’t worry, the kids, the dog and my funny hubby will still be here along with the new stuff.

I’m excited about sharing some Southern stories, history and Southern recipes with you.  Remember one thing…when you’re here, you’re family, but don’t let that stop you from visiting, reading and commenting.  Southern girls need love too!

Posted in Family, February 2012, Growing up in the South, Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

All About Love!

I’m over on The Eye Roll Diaries today talking about taking an unplanned trip!

It’s been a week filled with love, so I hope you’ll stop by and visit my friend Heidi as she climbs aboard the love train on Falling Down the Rabbit Hole and my friend Debbie as she tells us what love means to her on Hippie Chick Chronicles.

Posted in Family, February 2012, Life, Parenting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t Eat That! Hey, Where Is My Lung?

For the past week, I’ve had an upper respiratory infection (self-diagnosed), which has caused a great deal of coughing and overall feeling of yuck.  I have coughed so violently it feels like I might have pulled a muscle, broken a rib or worse!  My friend Beth Ann swears she found my lung outside her home in Iowa (I’m in Georgia).  The way I’ve been coughing I figured this could be a reality so I asked her to pack it in snow and mail it back to me.  At first Beth Ann said she would absolutely send it back but then later informed me her husband had backed his car over my lung before she could retrieve it. I have such nice friends, but I digress…back to the story.

I decided since I was feeling puny it might be beneficial to eat a nice warm bowl of oatmeal.  Since we were out of the handy individual microwave serving packs of creamy blueberry and strawberry, I used a box of Quaker Oats I found in my pantry.  After preparing the oatmeal and adding a banana and sugar to make it more appealing, I sat down and began to eat.  I noticed it tasted a bit off (kind of stale), but since I don’t eat plain oatmeal I figured that’s what it was supposed to taste like and though it was awful I finished the entire bowl. 

As I was putting my bowl in the sink, I noticed I left the Quaker Oats box on my kitchen counter, so I decided to see if it had an expiration date.  To my shock right there on the bottom was printed “BEST IF USED BY APRIL 08!”  April 2008?  It’s February 2012!!   Worried I might have given myself food poisoning, I posted this oatmeal expiration gem to facebook as a possible final status update. 

Again, enter my friend Beth Ann, who told me to “rotate my stock.”  Since I trust Beth Ann (except for the lung incident), I decided to go through my pantry, refrigerator and spice rack to toss out every expired item.  Thankfully, my pantry was clean of expired items as was my refrigerator, most likely because I tossed a lot of things during a recent move (yet somehow that oatmeal slipped through), but when I got to my spices…OMG!  When all was said and done, my spice rack was practically empty except for salt, pepper, Season All and chili powder!

As I sat the expired spices on my kitchen table I began to add up the cost in my mind.  In case you haven’t purchased any recently, those things are freaking expensive!  There must have been at least a hundred dollars worth of outdated spices ready to be tossed.  It was a disturbing sight.  My hubby tried to convince me spices, “don’t really expire,” but I ignored him and threw them away just to be on the safe side plus, I recall seeing him web surfing for life insurance policies recently…hum.    

There’s no moral to this story other than to say A) listen to Beth Ann and rotate your stock (just don’t ask her to return a lung), B) don’t listen to your husband who has been life insurance shopping when he says things don’t really expire, C) don’t eat oatmeal that expired four years ago – although, for the record it didn’t make me sick or kill me (obviously) since I’m writing this post – and D) go through your spice rack and let me know how many expired spices you need to throw away. 

Here’s what I tossed out:

What the heck is a caraway seed? Poultry seasoning? Ridiculous!!

Posted in February 2012, Friendship, Life, Ramblings, Randomness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments