Top 10 Tuesday: Favorite Pins

I’m linking up with OhAmanda’s Top Ten Tuesday again this week with a list of my top pins that I’ve added on Pinterest since I joined the site. I really love how great it is for bookmarking ideas and things I find that I like. To have some variety, I’m going to choose one pin from 10 of my boards.

 

 

1. Dream Home - A beautiful breakfast nook by a nice big window – I have always had a thing for window seats & this looks like such a lovely place to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee or a good book!

 

2. Kids Room Ideas – A cute desk made by re-using an old crib

 

3. Yummy Food – Pie in a canning jar – how fabulous is that?? Now all I need is to find some cute little jars like that…

 

4. Art & Craft Ideas – I have a journal fetish and I especially love seeing the creative ways people decorate and create within their journals!

 

5. Photography – I love this maternity photo idea and loved that I was able to use it in our little maternity photo shoot we did this last weekend!

 

6. Party Ideas – I created this board to collect ideas for my 30th Birthday Party & this decoration was definitely one of the favorites of all my guests!

 

7. Quiet Book Ideas – I’m totally not a seamstress or super crafty person, but I love the idea of having quiet books for my kids. If only I had the time and ability to make some of these! This barn with animal finger puppets is especially cute!

 

8. Cute Boy Haircuts – I LOVE this shaggy mop of hair – if only my boy’s hair would lay down so nice and flat like that!

 

9. Beauty – I’m getting so bored with my hair – I wish I could pull off this cute and sleek asymmetrical bob with bangs!

 

10. Organize – I love all things about organizing!! For someone with two small and useless entrances, this boot room is a dream come true!

 

Are you on Pinterest? What are your favorite ideas or pictures that you’ve pinned lately?

Maternity Photo Shoot

Thank you so much to my lovely friend Steph who took these maternity photos for us and to my parents for hosting it in their beautiful home.

**Note: In case you were wondering, yes – I did airbrush my stomach – it is no where near that perfect in real life! **

Top 10 Tuesday: New Recipes

I’m linking up with OhAmanda’s Top Ten Tuesday once again with a list of new recipes that I am trying, which I have been pinning like crazy on Pinterest.com to my “Yummy Food” board as of late! I have found a couple of different food blogs that have been tempting me with many simple, healthy, and delicious-looking recipes and I just want to try them all! Here are my top ten recipes I want to try very soon or which I have already tried.

 

 

1. Tortellini Spinach Bake – I made this a couple weeks ago and it was a BIG HIT with the fam – they all loved it! I added some cooked chicken so that my man would get his meat quota, but I honestly don’t know that it really even needed it.

 

2. No-Bake Energy Bites – I tried the original recipe and really liked it, but then tried it again with some cocoa (and fewer chocolate chips) and loved it even more!!

 

3. Spinach Lasagna Roll Ups – I liked this one and so did my kids, but it wasn’t a big hit with the hubby, as it was meatless

 

4. Pizzadillas with Homemade Pizza/Dipping Sauce - while this is very simple and is just another variation of pizza, it was nice for something different. Joe really liked being able to control how much sauce he got for each bite and the kids had fun dipping their pizzadillas in the sauce too.

Source: budgetbytes.blogspot.com via Jacquie on Pinterest

Source: budgetbytes.blogspot.com via Jacquie on Pinterest

5. Chorizo Sausage & Sweet Potato Enchiladas – haven’t tried this one yet and I’m a little nervous about what the family will think, but it looks so interesting! However, I did discover that I couldn’t find Enchilada Sauce in Canadian grocery stores to save my life, so the blog author pointed me to some homemade recipes that you can try here or here.

 

6. Cheesey Shepherd’s Pie – a classic dish, but one I’d never made before. I think it was received well by hubby & kids, though Joe has an aversion to rosemary and thyme. I think I would also consider cooking the veggies a bit first, because they were crunchier than I like.

 

7. Chicken Taco Bowls – This one was okay. I’m not a huge fan of cumin, so I might not include that if I make it again. I actually liked it bit more when I put it in a soft tortilla, but the spiciness was also not agreeing with my heartburn that I’ve been having lately.

 

8. Baked Banana Bread Oatmeal – haven’t tried this one yet, but I did try an altered single serving of cooked oatmeal with half a mashed banana, some chopped walnuts, brown sugar, flaxseed, cinnamon and nutmeg and it was pretty good! If I were to try that again, I think I’d do a whole banana and perhaps eliminate the walnuts, but I still plan on trying the baked version as well.

 

9. Pizza Puffs – haven’t tried these yet, but don’t they look yummy?? I’m not sure this could pass for a meal, but it would be a great appetizer!

 

10. Butternut Squash Gratin – haven’t tried this one yet, but it does look very tasty! It’s suggested as a side dish to a baked turkey, so not sure what I would serve it with?

 

Have you discovered any new recipes lately that you’ve loved??

Top 10 Tuesday: Books To Read

I’ve been reading OhAmanda’s blog for a while now (she’s the author of Truth in the Tinsel that I recently reviewed) and reading her Top Ten list each Tuesday, but this week I finally decided to join in, since I wanted to share with you all the books that are waiting for me on my to-read list. Some of these have been sitting on my night table for months already, while others are new ones I just discovered and are waiting for me on my iPhone in electronic form. So, without further ado, here are my Top 10 Books to Read in the near future, in no particular order…

 

1. One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler by Tsh Oxenreider ($5 e-book)

2. Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian by John Piper (free download)

3. Bringing the Gospel Home: Witnessing to Family Members, Close Friends, and Others Who Know You Well by Randy Newman (free download)

4. The No Brainer Wardrobe: Get Dressed With More Confidence and Less Fuss by Hayley Morgan ($7.99 e-book)

5. Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living by Tsh Oxenreider ($6.88 – $11.55 on Amazon.com for Hardcover-spiral or free Kindle download for a limited time)

6. The Spirit of Adoption: Winning the Battle for the Children by Randy & Kelsey Bohlender ($12)

7. The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell ($10 on Amazon.com)

8. The Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian ($3.84-$10.98 on Amazon.com)

9. Any of the Books on Prayer by E. M. Bounds (free downloads – public domain)

    

10. A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards by John Piper and Justin Taylor (free download)

Since it’s going to take me a LONG time to read all of these, let me know if you have read any of them or if you decide to read any of them and how you liked them!

 

365 Project – September & October

Again, since I sort of fell of the wagon with my picture-taking, here is my update for both the months of September and October. Admittedly, there are several pictures in this bunch not actually taken by myself (mostly by my mom), but I included them anyway, because this 365 Photography Project has been more about capturing daily memories for me than about honing my own photography skills – which should be obvious, considering the majority of them were taken with my iPhone. This fall included memorable moments such as making homemade tomato soup with my mom, a visit from Joe’s parents and sister, a trip to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, seeing the ultrasound of our baby, a weekend family gathering in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and celebrating Rayah’s 2nd birthday!

To view larger images of my photos, you can visit my 365 Project blog at echoinghim.tumblr.com.

This month, I think my favorite picture simply has to be one of the many I took in my photo shoot of my daughter Rayah, but I couldn’t possibly choose just one – I love them all! However, I do also love the one of me reading a Bible story to both my kids in bed.

Do you have a favorite?

365 Project – July & August

As I mentioned in my last post on my 365 Photography Project, I fell off the wagon in the month of July, which turned into the months of August, September, October and you guessed it – November. I’ve still been taking pictures, but definitely not every day. However, I decided to still give you an update on the pictures that I did end up taking and here are the ones from July and August. It was a great summer playing outside with my kids, announcing to our friends and family our new pregnancy, celebrating my 30th birthday and feeling baby’s first movements!

To view larger images of my photos, you can visit my 365 Project blog at echoinghim.tumblr.com.

This month, I think my favorite picture is the one of Rayah’s bedhead or the one of me and Justice having Starbucks.

Do you have a favorite?

My Prince Charming

After doing a photo shoot for my daughter’s second birthday, I just couldn’t resist doing one with my son as well. Since he’ll be turning four in March, the weather at that time isn’t exactly the nicest for taking pictures outside, so even though we got our first snow, I managed to sneak in a photo shoot on what may have been the last really nice day of the year. I took 110 pictures, which I narrowed down to my favorite 30, which I was then able to cut in half once more for this post.

I love my son! He is handsome, silly, full of life, joyful, adventurous, mischievious and oh-so-charming! I think I was able to capture many of these traits in these pictures…

My 30th Birthday – Part 5 (The People)

All right folks, this is the last post in this series on my 30th Birthday.

So, obviously any birthday party wouldn’t be fun without all the people that make it special. You saw some of them already in the photo booth pictures in my previous post, but here are some candids of the friends and family who came to celebrate with me. Thank you to everyone who came and contributed and made me feel loved – I am blessed to have so many great friends and family!! (Most pictures below were taken by my friend Byanka Holder – thanks again!)

My 30th Birthday – Part 4 (The Fun)

If you missed them, you can catch up with Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

For me, most of the fun of my party was just having so many friends and family show up and getting to mingle with them all. But I did plan one activity that I wanted, which was a car rally/scavenger hunt which I got my brother Derek to create for me! Whoever wanted to participate showed up earlier and I think there were about 6 teams who joined in. We were all given a set of directions that would lead us on a designated route. Sometimes these directions were something like “turn right at this sign” or “drive until you have to turn left”, etc. Along the way, there were blanks to fill in of street names or other pieces of information that we had to look for on signs. There were also bonus items for certain things to look for that we had to take pictures of or questions to answer like, “how many garage doors on the house at the second driveway on the left after you make this turn”. Also, a couple times during the rally we had to record our time and our mileage so that my brother could make sure we hadn’t taken a detour or that we weren’t speeding! It wasn’t a race, but it was more about being the most accurate and getting the most points. Joe and I went with our kids, with Joe driving and me navigating and calling out the bonus items we needed to be on the lookout for. Having my iPhone was definitely helpful, but I think we had an advantage since it was our home turf and we were very familiar with the area. In the end, we did win first place and my son Justice was pumped that we were the winners! Here is my brother announcing the placings – I was really proud that he did such a great job at creating the game!

Later in the evening, my husband surprised me with a fun poem that he wrote in my honor. He got some good laughs and I felt really loved and special!

The only other “activity” that I planned was having a photobooth set up outside where I demanded that everyone go get their picture taken, using the bin of silly props that I provided. This was a great thing for people to be creative and have fun with and the kids especially enjoyed it! Here are just a few of my favorites…

Daughter and Father enact a miraculous healing!

Hubby with the kids & me with my little girl

My parents smooching & my brother & sister-in-law

Crazy kids & my silly son

My goofy friends

Me & my friend, Me with my sister & the little guy

More silliness

A friend’s family & me and my hubby

All right folks, we’re almost to the end of this marathon. I think one more post and we’ll be done documenting this milestone in my life. Thanks for hanging in there!

My 30th Birthday – Part 3 (The Decorations)

Read Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them!

I’m probably going to make all of you sick and tired of hearing about my 30th Birthday by the time I’m done blogging about it, so I will apologize in advance. This post is about one of the things that was really a lot of fun for me though – the decorations! While I definitely don’t do a lot of crafty things, I think it is something that is in my bones, because I had a blast doing them. I think one of the things that intimidates me the most is the pressure to “be creative”, but with Pinterest, I felt like everyone else did the creative thinking for me and all I had to do was copy them, which is totally fine with me! It was a little scary at times, tedious, messy, and required me to do some problem-solving and pull some strings to find crafty equipment (I don’t have much of any) – but in the end, it was all worth it! The decorations is also where I got to take my rainbow theme to the max.

Where to start? I think one of the definite favorites was the yarn balloons. After finding my initial inspiration, I went hunting on the Internet for tutorials and found that all of the instructions were slightly different & super vague on the ratio of glue to other stuff that you dip the yarn in, so this one was scary, because I wasn’t really sure it was going to actually turn out! My wonderful friend Lanney also came over to help out & in one of the tutorials I read, it told you to first wrap your balloon with the dry yarn to get an idea of how much you’d need – this was a BAD IDEA!!! After cutting our lengths of yarn, we spent HOURS trying to untangle it all – it would definitely be better to just wing it & pull the yarn directly from the ball. This was also the messiest craft I did, since I first covered my balloons with Vaseline before wrapping them in the wet & gluey yarn. But I LOVED the final product – they were so cute!

Combined with the yarn balloons was my circular paper garland. The tutorial mentioned that they used old second-hand books for some of their circles, so in addition to the solid colored rainbow circles I used, I cut up a colorfully illustrated kids book that my son had conveniently ripped to pieces – at least it wasn’t going completely to waste! I think I cut out around 300 circles – thanks to being able to borrow a special cutter from one of my mom’s friends & then using my mom’s sewing machine, sewed them all together to create the garland. I really liked how they turned out!

 

My next crafty decoration was some paper strip lanterns, which I sadly had to hang inside, because they didn’t like the wind so much. But they still looked cute hanging in our large front bay window and were quite easy to make.

Next, I made some paper strip mobiles, which were similar to the garland, just paper strips sewn together and hung up!

Lastly, I made some paper fan star/flower thingiesand these were probably the most tedious to make because of all the folding! I spent hours folding forty 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper and my pec and armpit muscles were sore the next day – lol. Also, I couldn’t actually find a tutorial anywhere on the Internet for how to make these, so I had to do some problem solving and figure it out on my own. I then had to finagle a heavy-duty stapler from my mom’s work place to put these things together, but the end result was quite fun and dramatic!

 

One more crafty item was a photo guest book which my mom and sister Nicole put together for me! There was about one photo for each of the 30 years of my life coupled with a pretty piece of scrap paper that guests could pull out and sign. It was fun for them to see old pictures of me and definitely a really fun keepsake for me to have afterwards!

 
 

All right – I think that about covers it! Stay tuned for Part 4…

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