The baby's coming!

No! Not another one for me! A friend of mine is due August 15 and a couple ladies at church have gotten together and planned a surprise shower for her! I'm super excited about it. She's having a boy and were doing the whole thing in Dinosaur themed decor. All that to say, I've been busy. I've made 8 bibs and I'm working on 9 onesies. My favorite part of what I'm doing are my appliques. See, check it out:
































I made these 4 with the dinos on them and I made 4 more from a button up shirt I go on sale for $0.50. I like them all! I just love the way that they all turned out.

Beach Party

Last night I put together a party for one of my girls. She told her mom that she wanted a beach themed party and so, that's what I did for her. I forgot my camera and I had to use my phone to take some pictures of the decor. I made some pom poms, like these, that I hung from the ceiling. I used this cupcake template to create the cupcake liners. And then I made the umbrellas that I was inspired to make after seeing this fabulous spread. The center piece uses mini pom poms and larger umbrellas.

Dance Baby Dance!!!

Anyone who knows Shiloh, or has spent any time with her, knows that she has a soul that is born from music. We recently were at a church activity where she ran out to the center of the room and just kept dancing to the music and didn't care that she was competing for floor space among many an adult. For weeks since then, we have heard multiple times that she was the life of the party. We have a wii. And for our wii, we have the game Just Dance. Which has become insanely fun in recent months as Shi has become more and more active. It's amazing to see a 15 month old have rhythm and timing with all her moves. And I mean moves. The others never had moves beyond a hip wiggle. But Shi really gets into it and every inch of her body moves to the music. Don't believe me? Just watch this... I was only able to get a few seconds before my camera was full and died, but it's enough....

Boy Scouts

Did you know that in high school I was an honorary Boy Scout? I bet you didn't... Any way, I was asked to help the scouts with their bake sale fundraiser since our girls fundraiser went so well. I ended up having to work the day they put it all to together, so all I could do was the posters and candied popcorn balls. I made caramel corn too, but it didn't set up well. I don't think I cooked it long enough. So, the kids ate it.

Springs

We took the kids to Ponce De Leon Springs yesterday. It was really fun. We meet some friends there and spent the afternoon, rain storm and all at the springs. Toward the end of the day, some of the kids there had found some crayfish and Ashton was beyond excited to tell me all about it. He said, "Mom, they have Crawtatters! They have Crawtatters! There's three big ones and a bunch of little ones! You need to see them! I'll even hold Shiloh so you can go see them! You've just got to see these crawtatters!" It made me laugh so hard! And it made me remember that when Ashton was about 1.5 years old, Randall was eating Craw-Tatters (they are spicy potatoe chips). Not thinking, he just handed one to Ash and he shoved it in his mouth and screamed for the longest time about it. I love my family.....

Air

Okay, so in order to save gig space and overage charges with our air card, I'm at the library checking my email and downloading somethings. The upside, this is nice for my budget. The downside, the library is closed so I'm sitting here in the car with the kids because it is waaay to HOT outside to sit out there. So, I've got the ac blasting and Jenna says:

"Mom, how cool is that the air smells like airplane air!" It's been at least a couple years since she's ridden on a plane. I can't believe she remembers that!?! Crazy.

In the kitchen...

Jenna: "What's for dinner?"

Me (shoving brownie in my mouth): "Broccoli Caffowo"

Jenna: "What?!? Broccoli Cat fart?"

Me (trying not to choke while laughing and swallowing): "No! Broccoli Cassarole!"

Jenna: "Oh. So, leftovers?"

Oi! I live with a tiny comedienne!

Bubbles!

This is what Jenna and Shiloh were doing on the front porch this morning and my hubby was sweet enough to tape it for me!

Spa Night!

For our Young Women’s activity last night we had a Spa Night. It was super fun! We invited the Relief Society sisters for manicures and pedicures and goodies. (As a way to transition the Young Women to Relief Society, we have joined forces and are planning joint activities with the Relief Society once a quarter. Last night was the first.) It was so fun!

We had a station set up for pedicures...

And we had a station set up for manicures...

We had amazing food (scratch brownies, fried pickles and mushrooms, tuna salad, artichoke and crab dip with crustinies, cucumber sandwiches, and raspberry punch)

And we even had a make and take table where everyone could take home some Mexican Chocolate Body Scrub and Coconut Vanilla Brown Sugar Body Buff.

I had fun decorating and the best part was that it cost me only $4 for the whole room! I was inspired by this tutorial to make all the white tissue paper flowers. And then I used this tutorial and some paper bags we had in the closet to create the brown flowers. My 2 in. punch isn’t scalloped, but I think it still turned out super cute! I added an extra circle that I punched out to create the leaves by just twisting the center of the circle. For the chairs, I raided our Relief Society closet and got 6 table cloths, draped them over the chairs and tied raffia and tulle in a knot around the chairs. The food table center piece is filled with sea shells that my kids have collected when we go to the beach. The cost was less than $25 for the whole night!

Girl's Camp- Project Secret Sister

Last Wednesday, at young women's, we made all the secret sister gifts for the girls for the whole week of camp and it was super fun! Thanks to all my virtual friends, it was easy to put together these ideas and to pull it off in one night. (BTW: Secret Sisters are something fun that creates unity and a bit of happiness in life and especially during camp. Each girl gets assigned another girl at camp. You know who you have, but not who has you. Then each day you give your sister a gift in secret. At the end of the week you find out you had you and you share who you had.)

At camp, we will be there from Tuesday to Friday and we have 5 girls going. In years past it has always been that the girls came up with their own, but this year we have a whole bunch of brand new beehives coming and they wanted to do it all together.

So this is what we decided to create:

Journals and pens: For the journals, I chose 4 images of animals (owl, flamingo, giraffe, and bear). Using Photoshop, I changed the images to black and white and then increased the contrast and brightness until it was just the black outline of the image and save them and printed them on colored card stock so that I could get 2 journals out of 1 sheet of letter sized paper. I cut them apart and fold them in half. for the paper on the inside, I did the same thing and used a hole punch to punch two holes in the top of the cover and pages and tide them with a ribbon. The girls did the punching and the tying and then stamped whatever words they wanted on the front. For the pens, we unscrewed the end and took it apart and cut a small piece of scrapbook paper, rolled it and put it in the pen tube, put it all back together and those were done.

Bracelets: For the bracelets, we used memory wire, which you can get at the bead section at any craft store or at wal-mart. Just curl one end of a piece (I cut the wire to get 3 out of 1 pkg.) of wire and string on your beads and curl the other end. And your done!

Flower Hair-bows: Flower hair pieces are hugely popular right now and I love them! We made ours by following this tutorial and sewed the flower to a hair band--I found hair bands at the Dollar Tree for 29/$1, plus they had all the flowers, too! Which makes this super cheap! Instead of hot gluing, we sewed the beads on to the petals.

Coconut Vanilla Brown Sugar Body Scrub: I have this book and I have used it many times. It has the recipe that I used for this. If you love cookie batter, you'll love the smell of this stuff! I made a double batch and put a couple tablespoons in baby food jars that I had been saving for this. I then made my own labels for them and we hade the girls use packing tape to put the labels on and make them sort of water proof. For the lid we punched out a 2in circle of matching scrapbook paper and hot glued it to the top then wrapped the edge with some ribbon and put a dot a glue at the back. I think they turned out super cute!

And now the girls have gifts for their secret sisters for another year! YEAH!

oh. wow.

  Well, i was wrong.  Jenna actually had a yeast infection that got infected.  At least that's how it was explained to me at the doctor's office today.  So hopefully in ten days it will all be cleared up.  And by the way, I found this cool site for creating your own menu.  I'm sure that there are others online elsewhere, but I found this one and thought it was so fun and neat.  It helps that i have watched Food Nanny many times before and i love her.  She's super cute.  Any way, i'm using this to organize myself a little bit better.

The Joys....

  The joy of living in the woods is that the kids have 40 acres to traipse all over.  The downside of living in the woods is that the kids have 40 acres to traipse all over.  Jenna has some bizarre rash all over in a very private area.  I'm convinced that it's poison ivy, but I'm taking her to the doctor to make sure.  Poor things been scratching like a demon for 2 days even with calamine lotion so thick she's turned pink.  Ahh, Ce la vive!

It's a Good Day after all!

Today Randall and I went around shopping for the best deals on business attire.  And boy did we luck out!  For $11.50 Randall found 2, not 1 but 2, suits.  For about $60 I found 1 suit, 6 shirts, 2 blazers, a pair of slacks and a skirt.  So, I didn't luck out as much as Randall, but I did pretty good!

Before we went shopping I cut every ones hair.  I started out with all intention of just trimming Jenna's hair.  She and I go back and forth about it.  She wants a boy cut and I want her to look girly.  The last 2 years I've won because I've pulled the "I'm the momma and I say so" card.  But recently, Randall got me thinking about the way I was when I was younger.  I remember having long hair when I was about 7 maybe 8.  I begged my mom forever about cutting my own hair.  And then, she caved in and let me cut it to my shoulders.  And to be honest, it's been that length or shorter ever since.  Barring the once or twice it got down to mid chest level with I was in the throughs of pregnancy.  I thought about when I was in high school and I cut it so short.  I was really only about an inch and a half long.  I have proof, too!  All my senior pictures were taken when I had that do!  So, today, when she asked my if I'd give her a boy cut, I through caution to the wind and cut it all off.  And now, she's completely my daughter.  And the best part is that she's now wearing girly clothes!  Maybe I should have done it a long time ago!

Hummmmm.....

I have to say, I wish I understood HTML code better.  My eyes have become bleary.  And I have not much to show for it.  What seems like it will work is not working...I just want the cutest blog on the block Megan style!

Shiny and New

Yeah! I finally got around to updating our title! What do you think? Of course, now that we have a camera again, I'll be able to update photos here regularly! Life is goood.....

Life and all that stuff...

I can't describe it. Lately I've seen how truly blessed I am and I can't describe how cool it is. As you know Randall and I decided to put all our eggs in one basket and start our own business. I have to tell you that I felt great when we first started, but now, I'm over the moon! The top leaders of our company say,"ACN is a self-improvement course with a compensation plan." And I for one have to second that! I have grown so much as a person since we started this business. We have made it our daily goal to follow the wise words of Darin Hardy, editor of Success Magazine, and be constantly focused on positive things. We've also turned our van into a rolling university. Every time we are in there, we are listening to presentations from some of the greatest minds of success. Because I'm always listening to positive things, I find myself thinking and saying positive things.

Through a series of unforeseen events and circumstances beyond our control, Randall is now home full-time. While at first it was a bit scary with him being unemployed and all, now I can't remember what it was like to not have him around. Now, we get to work full-time on our fortune and making our dreams into reality. I just can not believe how truly fortunate we are! God has blessed our family in huge, huge ways.

As a side note, I've got a tons of great ideas and fun things to share with you over the coming months also. Tomorrow night at Young Women's we'll be working on our secret sister gifts for Girl's Camp. Don't worry, I'll do a through post with pics and links on Thursday. I'm also putting together a baby shower for a friend of mine. She's having a boy in August. His name is Liam. And thanks to my handy sewing machine, he's going to be super studdly in some awesomely cute things I making for him. Again, all will be revealed in due time. Plus, I've recently been on an organizing rampage. I've gone through all my yarn and donated 3 large storage bags full of yarn. And I'm creating a wonderful space for me to actually feel inspired to create beautiful things; to include shelves, hooks, and a spiffed up sewing table. And last but certainly not least, a new blog design. I have much in the works grasshopper...we shall have much to learn...

Summer time...

Every Tuesday, the most wonderful lady does an awesome job doing the story time at the library in Freeport. After that we get together with our Homeschool group and go to the park with the kids for lunch and play. The kids have loved every minute of it. But, today was the last day of story time for the summer. My kids are definitely going to miss it. But, we have other things going on this summer. And we're still going to be getting together with our homeschooling buddies. Thanks Missy for a great time!

On the home front, I finally got a camera. It still can't touch the awesomeness of the previous one, but it takes pictures and they're decent and it's easy to use. I spent the day using it, getting to know all the features and how to get the thing to take pictures continuously. (which it doesn't actually do, by the way...) Any way here are some pictures from our day at the library and the park.

















I used the photo ShaZAM technique I found here to make them look better than straight from the camera. What do you think?