Checking in...plus some fun homemade holiday gift ideas!

Another week has flown by since I last blogged. How does that happen?  I left off sharing how I joined in on the Happy Day project, Day 1 and sadly, that's as far as I got.  :( I wanted to do more, and in fact, I did do Day 2, which was send a card to a friend, but I decided to not just do one but a few. Then I got stuck at the part where I had to put their addresses on them and that required digging for a couple of them SOMEWHERE in all my stuff and well...right now there's a little stack of cards that still need addresses put on them sitting right then on my kitchen counter!  I told myself that I will finish those up and get them mailed out TODAY, so that's my goal and I'm sticking to it! :)

In addition to life being the usual crazy busy, last week my girls were also sick.  And then I started to feel like I was coming down with something too and it was days of loading up on Emergen-C, like I'd shared on here being a help for me to not get sick...and several days later, I am finally starting to feel better!  Thank the Lord! My tummy started feeling weird this morning and on my way back home from dropping off Alyssa at school I was telling the Lord, "please Lord, make my body line up with your Word. I do not have time to not feel good!" I was so thankful that he heard my prayer and answered immediately because this busy Momma has stuff to do and cannot afford to be sick!

Because the girls hadn't been well for a good two weeks, we'd been missing church. I was really bummed about it and was determined the second they got better, we were headed back to church.  And guess what?  We made it back on Sunday! For the past couple of months, we've been going back to the church we attended for years up til around the time we had Alyssa and it feels so good to be back "home."  It's a bit of a drive but we felt it was thing to do after a couple failed attempts at attending church here in our town.  The drive is about 35-40 minutes away and the girls always look forward to getting McDonald's on our way home! We stopped for gas before we grabbed lunch and I thought it would be fun to snap a pic of me and the girls!  My car is tiny but I managed to fit Alyssa and Audrey in the picture!

Well, this week has gotten off to a fast start and I can't believe we're nearly to the middle!  I keep wishing that there was just a little more time in the day to get everything done around here, or even that there was just one more of me around here so I could get it all done!  This week has been full of fun things and we've been on the go a lot! Yesterday was MOPS and we had a fun time making the neatest craft ever.  I thought I'd share it on here just in case you haven't seen it.  It's simple and a fun little idea for home made holiday gift giving.

It's pie in a jar!

All you need to know about making these fun treats can be found HERE on this blog.  These single serve pies is simply made by pressing your pie crust in the jar and then filling it up with the filling of your choice.  You can refrigerate or freeze them and then bake them right up in jar. How awesome is that?

Another great homemade gift idea I decided to try out was cookie mix in a jar.  You all know how much I loved making cupcakes in a jar, so when my friend Kirstin from MOPS suggested us making some cookie mix in a jar as part of a fundraising effort for our friend Wren, I was in!  I searched around Pinterest and the one recipe everyone kept "pinning" was Bakerella's idea for Cowgirl Cookies.  We modified the recipe to be made with Christmas M&M's to make it holiday friendly.  I happened on a site by chance yesterday that made them the Christmas way and even had the labels made up for "Cookies for Santa!" I was so excited to find them so we could use those instead of having to make some new labels from scratch.  I still need to get those printed up and attached, but if you like this idea and want the link to printing the labels, then go HERE! :)

My friend Sonia came over this morning and we worked on assembling the cookie mix.  We had a fun time chatting while our kids played (and mine fight, lol) and we put the jars together. We ran out of chocolate chips and M&M's, so I have to get some more, but we were able to get most of them done!  I found some cute snowman fabric on sale ( I love sales!) at Joann the other day to make them look pretty, and there ya go! Fun and cute!  I'm hoping they'll be a great seller at the Holiday bazaar we'll be selling them at!

Okay...I think that's it for today! I am determined to blog more from now and going forward.  I used to be so good at keeping up with this thing and lately it's become one of those things I just can't fit in.  I keep saying to myself that I want to sit and share that or the other and then time gets away from me!  And speaking of time, Thanksgiving is only a week away.  Can you believe it?!?!