Yowzas.

Oh HI!! Remember me? Been awhile apparently. :) I will get back to posting soon I guess...have a book review to finish and would like to show off some of my recent projects but I kinda have to wait to give them as gifts first.:)

So in the meantime...happy Friday! May the joy of your heavenly father surround you today as you go!

No-whine-zone

So I enjoy being on Facebook and Twitter as much as the next person, but I am really, REALLY done with all the negative comments, status updates, etc. So, I'm ready to institute a new rule...the "no whiney-whiney" rule.

Basically, if a person has only negative, pessimistic, whiney tweets/status updates, then I am instituting the "no whiney-whiney" rule and they will either be unfollowed on Twitter or hidden on Facebook (or deleted if it gets REALLY bad). Of course there is some grace involved and if I can tell it is just a bad day or tongue in cheek, no rule action will be taken. On the other hand, the constant "ugh" and "sigh" and "woe-is-me-my-life-is-terrible" has to STOP!!!

There is so much negativity in the world already and if someone's life is perpetually THAT bad, well then DO something about it!! Don't just post (constantly) about all the bad and never even look for something good to come out of it. Also, I'm not talking about personal tragedy. This is more the stupid stuff...the post's like "ugh...my kid just drew on the wall AGAIN!" My thought? Then maybe you shouldn't have tweeted 15 times in the last 15 minutes...

Ok, enough of the rant, just wanted to make others aware that it is ok to announce that the "no whiney-whiney" rule in now in effect.

And yes, I completely get the irony of my whining here in this post. :)

Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball by Donita Paul

Yet another book review. :)  I received the book Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball by Donita K. Paul to review for Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers.  I was actually looking forward to reading the book because I thought the premise was kind of cute: "Mischievous matchmakers. Two special tickets. One unlikely couple."  I'm a sucker for a good, clean romance novel and thought this would fit the bill.  It even had a cute cover (yes, I judge books by their cover!).  Yes, it was a romance, but it also involved wizards and "oddities" that I just wasn't fond of.

If you like magic or things of that sort, then you may enjoy the book, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone.  Even removing the wizards, the story itself dragged a little for me.  I did finish the book but if it weren't for the review, I would probably have put it down and not picked it back up again.  SO, you probably want to rush right out and buy this one then, don't you? ;)

Wish I had a better review of the book, but I do not.  The story line was too unbelievable for me, and I'm really not into the whole fantasy genre.


This book was provided to me by the Waterbrook Multnomah Blogging for Books program but all opinions are my own.  (really, do you think THEY would want me to say this!?!?)

Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half by Steve and Annette Economides

Through the Booksneeze program of Thomas Nelson, I received the book Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half by Steve and Annette Economides.  If you know me, you know that over the past year and a half or so I have become quite the coupon/deal junkie, so I was excited to read this and see how much further I could take my grocery shopping adventures (I still have a LONG way to go...).

The book is an easy read and does go fairly quickly.  They discuss how they as a family do monthly grocery shopping (including monthly meal planning) and use coupons.  Their ides are quite simple and are really nothing other than I've already seen.  I have to say if you are interested in cutting your grocery bills while still eating a healthy diet, I don't think you need to buy a book to tell you how to do it.  There are NUMEROUS resources available through the web, one of my favorite being Money Saving Mom.  The book itself isn't bad per se I just know there are other resources and it would not be worth it (for me) to actually purchase the book.  However, if you are looking for a resource to keep at your fingertips and get you started down the path of lowering your grocery bill?  This book would be a good resource.

I did decide to try their idea of monthly meal planning.  Once again, this was not a new idea for me (my mom has been telling me about this for quite some time...) but I finally decided to give it a try.  I've been good about planning one or two weeks at a time, but maybe with a monthly plan I will get better about having ALL ingredients on hand. :)

This book was provided to me through the Booksneeze program in exchange for my review.  All opinions are my own.

Shutterfly Christmas!

I am a Shutterfly girl...I adore their photobooks (so cute and colorful and EASY) and their good quality photo prints, but even more than that??  REALLY like the personalized photo cards!!  A friend of mine introduced me to them last year and I have to say...easy-peasy.

My favorite designs are the ones where you can include more than one photo because, really?  If your family is anything like mine, getting all five of us in a photo at the same time all looking at the camera and smiling pretty (without food stained shirts or mouths or crazy hair) is VERY rare.  I think the last family photo I have is from little Caleb's first day of pre-K...last year.  So anyway, here are a few of my faves:

With Love Blue is super very cute and I almost wish I had some black and white photos to do this myself (hmmmm...photo shoot anyone?!?)

Joy Love Story is a 5X7 photo card...nice and simple!

And last, but certainly not least...Top Ten Moments is a GREAT idea to personalize the card!  Who needs a Christmas letter!

If you are not already a Shutterfly user, you are eligible for 50 free prints when you first sign up!  They also have great promotions throughout the year!  Also, if you're a blogger, you might want to check this out...you could get some free holiday cards yourself!!

So, if you're on my Christmas card list, you just *might* see on of those adorable cards coming to a mailbox near you. :)

Testing...

This is just a test... Wanted to see how easy it is to post from something other than my computer.

I DO actually plan to post something of substance in the very near future, and if anything, Halloween is this weekend so of COURSE there will be pictures of the kids. Then again at the rate I post pics, you *might* see them by Christmas.

Praying for everyone this morning to have a wonderful day and if you are in the Midwest? Try not to blow away. :)

Baby It's Cold Outside...

Brrrrrr.  It's only October 4th, but I'm COLD.  And if you know me at all, you know I RARELY am cold.  I prefer cooler temps (not frigid) and being curled up under a soft blanket year-round (yet one more reason the A/C is set to 68 or 69 generally and the heat is about the same.) :)  But for some reason, today I am COLD!!

Little Caleb has been in school for almost 9 full weeks now (I only know that because the little calendar from his school says the end of the 1st 9-weeks is this Friday.  Yes, I are smart.) and we have YET to wait for the bus in the rain.  That's right, I said almost NINE weeks and no rain.  (Ok, it finally rained on Saturday, but not a ton...)  Not that I'm complaining about standing waiting for the bus in the sun, but still...until today we hadn't experienced any poor weather.  But today??  It's COLD!!  We could see our breath as we stood waiting (which of course helped entertain the kids waiting for the bus...)  Sadly it was probably only 45 or something this morning, but it just made me realize that in a month or so, we'll have to be bundled up just to wait for the bus.  Not looking forward to that...

This week is spirit week at Little Caleb's school and today is Rock Star day.  Being the conservative little family that we are, we don't have a lot of rock star gear.  AND since picture day was less than 2 weeks ago, he just had a hair cut and his hair is too short to spike (sorry Uncle Chris...).  SO, all we had was this shirt that he got to wear (thanks for Amber for the inspiration!!):

This totally cracks me up.  So my little rock star is wearing this in addition to his shades, jeans with a hole in the knee and his sister's microphone.  Her *pink* microphone.  Ah well, here's hoping we can be a little more creative as he gets older....

And to answer your question...yes it's cold, but no, the heat is not on yet.  The heat will not be turned on until AT LEAST November, hopefully later. :)  Happy Random Monday!!