Happy 4th!

I hope you're all having a lovely fourth of July; we're just kickin' back and chilling..er trying to stay cool in the 100 + degree temps here in Tennessee.

Last night we did a few fireworks, and tonight we're going to do a few more and we may venture out to the big fireworks show downtown if we want to brave the crowds and the heat. We'll see.

We hit up a local thrift store today that was having a half off everything sale and got some great things that I'll show you tomorrow or Friday. I have a few projects to make out of some of them that I'm really excited about!

Tonight, we're looking forward to great dinner of pork tacos, watermelon and grilled corn on the cob. Yum!

Here are a few pictures from last night.

We put little flags on either side of our front porch for some festive flair. :)

Do you remember these from when you were a kid? They are still just as much fun.

Ethan LOVED making them pop!

We tried using matches....but really you just need a lighter to light these bad boys. So we went and got one.

"Pre-firework" testing...gotta make sure they work, right? ;)

My patriotic outfit today :)

Sparklers!  

Eliana was kind of afraid of the sparklers, but she managed to still do a few of them.

Jammies and sparklers- what fun!

Tanks fighting each other- another childhood favorite.

My fine man, about to light a rocket.

Double rocket launch!! Yeah!!

Hope you all have a safe, wonderful holiday. :)

Food Waste Friday: I Surprised Myself!

Guess What??


This week I have...


No Food Waste!!


I'm SO excited- it's been quite a while. :)

Hooray!!!

I hope all of you in the States have a lovely Memorial Day Weekend- Hubby has Memorial Day off for the first time in FIVE years. (His new job is soooooooooooooooo much better than the last one!!) We're looking forward to working outside and going to a potluck with some friends.

Thanks to all of those who have given their lives for our country's freedom, and for the families who have lost loved ones in battle or service for our country; we are forever grateful for their sacrifice.
:)


This post is shared at The Frugal Girl, who is the brains behind all of this food waste declaration. :) And her blog is just plain awesome.

It's been too long!

Hi! It's been almost a week since I've written- Christmas just begs to be stretched out for a week or so, instead of being only a single day, so we've been busy eating chocolate, relaxing, and when we're tired of relaxing, we've been cleaning and decluttering and organizing for the new year.
More on that tomorrow!

I'll do a more lengthy post tomorrow, although not a Food Waste Friday one, because I didn't take pictures or account for it this week! (Sadly, there was a lot of waste though, since I didn't really care if we wasted food or not. oops.)

For now, here is a cute picture or three. This is what became of the gingerbread houses. :)

Gingerbread Houses - A New Tradition!

Hi and Merry Christmas Eve!
I hope you all are having a wonderful time relaxing with family, eating yummy food and hopefully remembering the reason we celebrate-  it's Jesus' birth!

Today we began a new tradition for our family- the first one that we've started that didn't come from either of our families, I think.
We made gingerbread houses.

Actually, they are graham cracker houses, since I didn't think about how much work it would be to make all of the real gingerbread and cut it into the right shapes. I also didn't want to buy a pre-made kit, so we decided to do graham cracker houses.

Let me tell you, it's a lot more work that I thought it would be! But it was so worth it. :)
I put the kid's houses together,

then once the icing had hardened a bit (after about 5-10 min.) they got to decorate them with whatever candy they wanted to. We had sixlets, chocolate covered raisins, peach gummy rings, sweet tarts, peppermints and sprinkles.

Eliana had lots of fun sprinkling the sprinkles...everywhere except onto her house. :)

They had SO much fun.
We all did!
It's gonna be fun to see how the gingerbread houses turn out every year- I'm already looking forward to taking pictures of next year's houses.

Tim working on his house

My house

More sprinkles

The kid's houses- Eliana's is in the foreground, Ethan's in the background

The finished products!

How cute is she??

Yep, pretty cute.

Love that smile!

After we were all done, our living room floor was completely covered in graham cracker crumbs, sprinkles and icing, along with the other candy that we had. Totally worth it. :) Messiness is always worth it when fun is involved!

Ethan helped out by mopping the floor after I swept everything up.

What a great start to Christmas!!
I hope you all have a very merry Christmas, see you next week!

Sweater Sleeves Made into Hand Warmers

Wow, it's almost Christmas.
I'm trying really hard not to jump headlong into the frenzied last minute shopping that is going on at every store around town, but when you have to wait til last minute to shop because you don't have any money until then, well it's hard not to get a little frazzled.

I decided to make some gifts this year though, and honestly I wish I'd have started earlier so I could make homemade gifts for everyone.
As it is, I made a few here and there and am mostly satisfied with the result.

I had a cute wool sweater that shrunk the first time I washed it, and have been saving it to make something out of for a while.
I needed a gift for my husbands' little sister, (hopefully she doesn't read this!!) and thought that hand warmers would be a cool, simple gift to make.

So, I hopped on Pinterest (the source of most of my 'inspiration' these days) and found this:

source

Then, I simply followed the instructions on the tutorial, and ended up with these!
(notice how much nicer her photo is? someday, maybe I'll take pretty photos..:)

I added a few cute flowers for extra embellishment.

I like them so much, I'm going to make myself some next time I have a minute to sew.
They'll keep my hands nice and toasty warm, and sister's hands too.

Hooray for easy, quick sewing projects!!
And for "little helpers"! :)

DIY Natvity Scene

" And the angel said to them (the shepherds),
 'Fear not!!  For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you: you will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger."
Luke 2:10,11


This morning the kids and I made our own Nativity Scene.
We've been talking with them a lot over the past week or so about baby Jesus being born in a stable which is like a barn where animals sleep, and when I asked Ethan if he wanted to make a Nativity, he was more than willing to help. Both of the kids are very interested in baby Jesus being born, and I think having an actual picture of something helps them understand a lot better. Not that our little Nativity Scene has anything on the real story.  ;)
But where to begin??

Christmas: Jesus, Sewing and Decorating

Happy Saturday!

Have you been doing anything special for Christmas yet this season?

 I know December has just begun, but I'm already thinking about it!

Our family has been trying to have family worship every day and read scripture about Jesus' birth, and I've been singing Christmas songs to the kids at nap time.  Ellie especially loves "Away in a Manger". She says, "Mommy winging 'bout beebee Deedus. " (singing about baby Jesus) :)
We want them to know the real reason for Christmas, that it IS about celebrating Jesus' birth and how without him being born and later dying on the cross for our sins and rising again, we couldn't have the relationship with God that we now have.
It's been cool, because in teaching our kids about Christmas, we've been learning and re-visiting the real reason too. It's so easy to get caught up in the other stuff and miss out on the true joy of Christmas- Jesus!

source

Of course, I still love to decorate and make our house pretty to celebrate Jesus' birth!
I did some decorating for Christmas today with the kids. It was a fun family activity, and I love the result!

But first; we're going to talk about those bird ornaments that I said I was going to make.
I actually had trouble with the ornaments at first. It took WAY longer than I thought it would to make the first one and I contemplated not even trying to do the other eleven I'd already cut out. But I really wanted to at least try a bit harder, so I kept on and the rest of them ended up going much faster. (Hallelujah!)


With the first several birds, I sewed the fabric  together wrong side out, leaving a hole at the bottom. Then I  turned them right side out, stuffed batting from an old pillow into them, and sewed wings and eyes and a string to hang them up on their backs. This was kind of hard though, because the darn ornaments were so stinkin small, my fingers couldn't really stuff the stuffing in very well. I had to use a pen to get to the tail, and then still it looked a little weird on a few.

Christmas Sewing Week

Hi!
How was everyone's Thanksgiving?
Ours was fantastic. We have some very close friends that we share almost every Thanksgiving and Christmas with, and we went over to their house for dinner.
Neither of us have family in town, or state, or anywhere near and we've become each other's family basically! We had a merry old time eating a proper Thanksgiving feast and then just enjoying each other's company while the kiddos all played together with no major mishaps. :) We're still working on finishing up all those leftovers! I have a feeling I may get very tired of eating stuffing in the near future.


As we all know, after Thanksgiving our thoughts tend to turn straight to Christmastime.
(image from Pinterest)

We have a fake white Christmas tree like this, that we put up on Friday. It doesn't look anywhere nearly as nice as this one though, with a 2 and  4 year old constantly 'rearranging' the ornaments on it!

 (Black Friday craziness, anyone? Not me this year!!!)
 I stayed home and didn't do a wink of shopping. Mostly because we have no money to do so right now.
Also because I'm becoming more and more content with what we already have, and beginning to value the simple things in life that can't be bought, like sweet moments with my children and husband, friends. And I like the idea of more creative, handmade gifts.

Which brings me to...

Christmas Sewing.

Are you making anything for anyone this year, instead of buying it?

Remember when Kid's Week Clothing Challenge was going on, back a couple months ago?
Well, afterwards my awesome childhood friend Laura asked me if I wanted to do a Christmas sew along the same lines, but sewing Christmas gifts or decorations for an hour each day, for a week. I said I'd love to!

Tomorrow is the beginning of that week! I'm excited!
This is what I have lined up to make for tomorrow:
( image from Pinterest)

How cute are these little birdies?!
I can't wait to see how mine turn out. :)

I'm going to make a bunch, out of my scrap fabric from my stash and give them as gifts, I think. And probably keep a few for our tree as well; they're so cute I can't just give them all away!
The kids are going to help me stuff them with batting, which Ethan in particular is excited about. He likes helping me do crafty stuff, and I love spending that time with him. :)

I'm not sure what all else I'm going to make, other than some jammy pants for our family and maybe a few more gifts. We'll see.


So. The Christmas Sew is on!

Join in, if you wish! Make some homemade handicrafts for yourself, or a friend, or your house. Have fun! I'd love to hear about what you make!

Right now, I am:

Things are always crazy the day after you get back from vacation, but I wanted to write just a quick post.
I'm mixing in a few pictures from our trip for you too. :)

So, right now, I am....



About to get Eliana down for a nap or at least a "quiet time" and then going to try to decide what I will try to accomplish with the rest of the day. I'm sure I have too much planned in my mind, so I'm going to be realistic and re-set a few goals for the day.

Hello From Oklahoma!!

Happy Saturday, everybody!

I haven't written a lot this week because we were getting ready to go to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Oklahoma...and now we are there, enjoying the company of family, the gorgeous countryside and small town charm. :)

We've just been exploring and relaxing; after all isn't that what you're supposed to do on vacation??
In case you're wondering; this is what the Oklahoma countryside looks like:

Beautiful. I love the big, open sky. Where we're at is called "Green Country" but it's not very green right now since all of the trees are losing their leaves and the grass is beginning to hibernate for the winter. I think it's still beautiful. I can only imagine how gorgeous it is when everything is green!

I hope you all are having a great weekend!
We're hitting up a wildlife preserve later today, so stay tuned for pictures of buffalo and zebra tomorrow or Monday. :)

DIY Simple Fall Wreath Tutorial

Hi!
It is fall, the season of decorating and cozying things up for the colder weather. It is a time of celebrating; being thankful and preparing for the cold (or cold-ish, depending on where you live) winter, and Christmas. (but that's another post.)
What better way to get festive than make your own cute wreath?

Happy 5th of July!

Its Tuesday, which means that people are back to work today, all refreshed (or worn out) from their long weekend celebrating the 4th of July.
Is it just me, or has the "real" holiday become the 3rd of July?
All of the bigger firework shows are on the 3rd, there are parades on the 3rd, bbq's on the 3rd...whatever happened to the 4th??
I find it kind of silly myself.
There's not really a point to that rambling, its just something I observed. :)