A bazaar, a new Etsy shop, a fun photo shoot!

Once again, it's been a week since I last blogged! I know, I know, I totally said in my last post that I'd be posting more but it was such a busy week that I had not a single minute to stop and document it!

Last week was all about getting ready for a Christmas bazaar I was a part of at the church where I attend MOPS.  I've been telling everyone that First Christian Church is like my second home because it's really true! I attend MOPS there, go to Bible study there, and Alyssa goes to Awana there!

On Friday night and Saturday during the day, our MOPS group had a booth of our own that we put together to help raise money for Wren. Several of us crafty girls made some different things to sell in the hopes that we could  bless Wren in a big way.  Like I mentioned last week, my friend Sonia helped me assemble some cookie mixes in a jar.  Alongside those, I also made some red velvet cupcakes in a jar, and some hair clippies and headbands to sell and I was so excited that people actually liked and bought them!  My friends Kirstin, Michelle and Jennifer also made several amazing things, like handmade cards, jewelry, ornaments,coffee cozies and and so much more!  They also made these awesome scrabble tile pendants!

I love how Kirstin displayed them and was not shocked at how well they sold!  The girls made around 200 of them, can you believe it?

The Lord totally showed up and blessed our event in a way that we couldn't have even have imagined!  I wish I could share with you just how much, but I want it to be a surprise to a certain someone who may be reading this, so I won't! :)  All I can say is that God is GOOD!

In all my excitement earlier in the week, I decided to start making my hair clippies again. It's been a year since I closed down my crocheted hat business but something inside of me has been wanting to get back into crocheting and selling what I make again.  It always seems like an issue for time, but when making the hair clippies, they're so fun and they don't take a lot of time to work up a bunch of them!  After seeing just how well they sold this weekend, I decided to officially and finally open up an Etsy shop that I opened a couple months back that I had just sitting there waiting for me to something with. Here's my new cute little logo my friend Crystal made...

I spent some time today working on setting that up and now I'm the proud owner of a new little shop I renamed "Hooked On Baby!"  I will hopefully be adding some hats to the shop in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, you can check out my new and improved hair clippies and brand new headbands!  I am really excited about having a little something just for me again!

I went ahead and put the little widget for my shop on my sidebar so you can see a sampling of what I've been making!  To go to my shop, you can also go HERE!  I have a sale running right now on my holiday clippies that will be running all week.  You can also go HERE to my business Facebook page!

And finally, the other exciting part of the post is that we went and had our family pictures taken over the weekend by our friend Nightingale!  I posted at the beginning of the year HERE about how she'd come over to our house for a "Day in the Life" type photo shoot. I had such a fun time with that, and just knew that I wanted her to take our family photos as well!  She does such an amazing job and I was so excited to get to spend Saturday morning with her and her husband, who helped out as her assistant!

Nightie, as we all call her, blogged tonight about our photo shoot HERE! I was so, so excited to see how the pictures turned and and my hubby and I cracked up together while looking at the pictures!  

 Be sure to check it out and please be sure to leave her a comment letting her know you were there! 

P.S. Thanks so much Nightie for putting up with us and for capturing my AAA girls (as you call them, lol) exactly as I want to remember them!  You are amazing!

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?!?!

Staying Busy!

I've managed to disappear from Blogland again and this time you can blame it on my phone. :)  Over the past week since getting my new iPhone, I've found that pretty much anything I need to do can be done on my phone! Days go by without me even opening up my computer and I've been loving the ease and convenience of this new phone!

Aside from being in iPhoneville, I've been staying pretty busy with an assortment of different things. On Friday, I went to play Bunco with some friends. It was my first time ever, playing Bunco and it was a lot of fun!  I guess I had a stroke of beginner's luck because I walked away that night as the winner with the most buncos and $25 in my pocket.  So cool!

Getting paid, lol!

I even was able to make and take some Halloween decorated cupcakes too, which was fun because it had been a long while since I'd made cupcakes.

Over the weekend, we made it to Alyssa's school Fall Festival.  What I thought would be a super fun day for the girls turned out to be a big bust. It was crazy hot that day and they were all in bad moods.  I bought wristbands for carnival games the girls refused to play and I was almost wishing we'd have stayed home. I took along my good camera and managed to get literally only one good picture....

The girls had fun playing with their cousin Natalya that day and the highlight of their day was getting to go swimming at the pool in my sister's new house!

The other highlight of my weekend was making some cupcakes in a jar for MOPS.  I volunteered to make cupcakes to celebrate birthdays and yesterday was my first time on cupcake duty.  The cupcakes turned out so fun and I was glad I gave them a try!

I made red velvet cupcakes (care of Duncan Hines, lol) and then made some yummy cream cheese frosting to go in between each layer.  You can find the recipe for the frosting HERE.  I'd been doing so well with not sinning in the sweets department these last three months, but I could not help myself. I gave in and had a cupcake and they were SO good!

I'm working on making more of these with a friend really soon for a fundraiser we'll be doing for Wren.  I have a feeling these will sell really well! :)

While at MOPS, I asked my friend Sonia to take my picture with Liv. It's been a year now since joining MOPS and my baby has grown so much since then.  Gone is that little (or not so little) baby girl and here is my growing girl!  I can't believe how big she's getting!

And speaking of babies....I cannot believe that my very best friend, Kristin is due to have baby Matthew anytime now.  As of tomorrow, she will be 38 weeks already!  I'm so, so excited, and pretty soon here, I get to do my very first "guest post" on Kristin's blog announcing Matthew's arrival.  I can't wait! :)

A MOPS kinda Monday

I know I said my next post would be about my trip coming home from TX, but today was a MOPS day for me so I thought I'd switch gears a little. :)

I always look forward to MOPS days so much because it's a chance for me to get to hang out with friends and get a little break from the busyness of motherhood.

This morning I left the house feeling super anxious due to some things we've been experiencing with Audrey lately.  Among a bunch of other things, she's been having some issues with me leaving her with non-family members lately and yesterday was a challenge for us when it came time to dropping her off at her class at church. I was so thankful this morning, having my girlfriends there just to talk things out.  Nothing big was solved and I was still left with some concerns and questions, but I'm feeling a lot more hopeful now.  I'm just gonna keep on praying for wisdom and also that I can be the mom that Audrey (and my other girls) need me to be.  This age has been so challenging for all of us!

While at MOPS today, I was so excited to get to meet a new addition to our little MOPS family.  My friend Melissa, who had her baby last month was able to come back today with her new little guy.  I got to hold him and was just amazed at how tiny he is.  It feels like my life with babies was so far away from where I am now considering my "baby" is now almost 19 months old!

On any given MOPS day, we either have a craft or a guest speaker and today was a craft day.  We made these fun pumpkin lanterns.

This is mine after I added another layer of mod podge to the outside.

If you're interested in seeing the how to's on making these yourself, you can go HERE.  Our lovely craft gal Kirstin always comes up with fun projects for us to work on and at our last meeting, someone even told her how crafty she is. Her reply to that totally made me giggle because she said, "No, not really. I just read blogs."  Lol, that may be true but Kirstin totally works so hard at putting together all of our fun projects!

Today I also got to bring a breakfast casserole and decided to use my friend Wren's recipe for this easy sausage casserole. Here's the only pic I have of what it looked like from the leftovers from this morning. I got to have some for lunch with a little salad and it was good!

As I was preparing the casserole last night, my thoughts went to Wren. I don't know if you've read it on her support page already, but they found out that the cancer has spread to her lungs and they changed her status from stage 3 to 4.  I find myself lost in thought about her a lot these days and each time she comes to mind, I say another prayer.  She starts a new round of chemo treatments this week and today was Day 1 for that.  Please continue to keep her in your prayers and remember that you can still read updates on her church's site HERE.

Thanks so much again to everyone for praying!

P.S.  I also wanted to share another prayer request.  Our cousin just delivered her second baby, a little girl last week and has been having some complications. I can't really go into all the details but the latest is that they've discovered a murmur in her heart and are talking about the possibility of heart surgery if the murmur doesn't close up with the help of medication.  Please keep little Brooklyn in your prayers as we are believing for a complete healing to her body in the name of Jesus!

Bake Sale Fun!

We're only two weeks away from our first MOPS meeting of the semester and I'm so excited!

On Sunday morning, I was able to help out with our first fundraiser of the year and it was so much fun!

We held a bake sale ( my first ever) at the church where we meet for MOPS every other Monday of the month. I had a great time getting to hang out with the girls while we sold a ton of yummy goodies that all of us worked hard to bake.  I spend a good part of Saturday making roughly five dozen cupcakes and had fun using my new french piping tip to ice the cupcakes with my all time favorite buttercream frosting!  I made both chocolate and vanilla cupcakes in and colored the frosting with four different colors.

We had a great assortment of goodies ranging from cookies, to baklava (made by my friend Michelle, which sold out so fast!)...

 My friend Kirstin made the most adorable marshmallow pops and I'm so mad I don't have a close up pic to show you.  They were adorable!

We were able to sell our goodies before and after both services which worked out so well .  When it was all said and done, I was completely blown away by the success of our sale.  We made it by donation and we hoped that would be the best way to do it and can you just guess how much we were able to raise?

$425! So awesome, right?  I was thrilled and amazed at the kindness and generosity of the church. God is so good! :)

I can't wait to start our new semester and I'm so excited to see what the Lord's going to do in each of our lives as we continue building friendships!

Trying to figure things out

Well, if you've hopped over to this blog at different times over the last few weeks, you'll see that I've been fiddling with my blog design.  For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to make things look the way I'd like around here now that it's not our family journal any more. I was able to play around a little bit more today and settled on what you see now.  I'm definitely not a blog designer, so we'll see what else I can do to spruce things up around here without having to hire somebody! :)

To add to all the changes, I've really been feeling like the blog is going through an identity crisis of sorts.  I know since moving, my goal was really to take the focus off of personal stuff while still continuing to share things that were important to me.  At the end of the day, what I really want this blog to be is just a space where I can share whatever I feel like sharing. Whether it be projects I'm working on, a recipe, or a book I'm reading, I want this to be a place where I get do that.  I also want it to be a place I can share the needs of friends, just like I did the other day about my friend Wren, and know I will have people that care about what I share and are willing to help or pray when I share that need.

That being said, I just want to thank the people that stepped up to say that they'd be willing to help.  I know that this isn't a huge blog, but I do know that there are people that come here from all over.  I've been blessed by this community of friends that I can't see yet know are always there!  So...thank you so much again for saying yes to helping pray for Wren and her sweet family.

Also...for those of you who are still interested in sending anything to Wren, please email me or leave a comment and I'll be sure to get back to you with her contact info.  I also wanted to share with all of you a place where you can go to for updates on Wren and baby girl. Earlier in the week, her church set up an updates page on their website where anyone can go to read about the latest news on Wren's health.  You can go HERE to see that.  The latest updates were just posted yesterday and will give us all more specific ways on how to pray.

Well, I think that's it for now and again, I  just want to say thanks so much for sticking around through all the changes. You guys are awesome! :)

A winner!

I was totally supposed to announce the winner of my "Show Your Helping Hand" giveaway earlier today but hadn't been able to get to the computer til now.  Anyhow....congrats to...

Caroline from The Croley Gang!  Caroline, when you get the chance, please email me with your address so I can send that along to MyBlogSpark!  Thanks so much to everyone who entered!  More giveaways will be coming soon!

A FIND!

Okay, so I have a confession to make.  I.am.spoiled.  You can blame it on my Hubby starting back in 1997 when we were boyfriend and girlfriend and he used to give me almost anything I wanted. :)  A lot has changed since we had kids, but for the most part, my Hubby still lets me be a baby.  His baby, anyway!

In less than a month, it will be my birthday and I'm already starting to get excited!  Every year, I'm seriously like a little girl anxiously awaiting my birthday, only around here, we don't celebrate just the one day of my actual birthday.  We celebrate if for pretty much an entire week!  It all started several years ago when I would get so excited about my birthday, only to get the birthday blues after my birthday came and went.  My family teases me about me and my birthday week obsession but I know I can't be the only one out there who loves birthdays.  Please tell me I'm not the only one!!!

Anyhow...I've been working on my birthday/Christmas wishlist over the last few weeks and I've been shocked to find that for the first time in all of my adult life, I'm actually asking for things I can use in the kitchen!  It's so funny to me how not long ago, I would have died if someone wanted to buy me something to cook or bake with!  This year, I'm asking for things like stainless steel bowls, cookie sheets and accessories to go onto my KitchenAide mixer.  Boy how times have changed!

On Saturday, while at Costco, I made the find of all finds and I just had to share it on here!  The second I saw it, I told my Hubby I had to have it!  I even told him he could save it and give it to me for my birthday but he said no and to just get it.  I thought I'd share what it was so that in case any of you might be interested in picking one up too, you can get down to your Costco and scoop one up!

I've never actually seen anything like this before but here's what it's called...

It's really the perfect item for girls like me who love to bake cupcakes or anything sweet for that matter and need to transport them from one place to the other.  I've been hoping to find something like for a while now and I was just SO excited when I spotted it!

Basically, it's three rows of stackable cupcake receptacles.  If you want to use it to take maybe a pie or some cookies, it also comes with trays that go over the cupcake holes so that you can use it for other things.  Isn't it awesome?!?

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Today ended up being a blast at my MOPS meeting!   We made apple pies to take home in time for Thansgiving and that was so much fun!  I was also on breakfast assignment and I decided to bring some homemade peach french toast and this yummy pumpkin bread as well....

Both items were from a recipe book that my blog friend Sue sent me ages ago when I first started the blog!  I've loved making several of the things in that recipe book and I think this is by far my favorite recipe for pumpkin bread.  I'll definitely have to share the recipe on here soon!

Well, let's see what else I can get to posting this week!  I have a house that needs cleaning before we have Thanksgiving here and a pile of laundry that's calling my name! :)