This year the family and I decided that we would save some money and not do traditional cards. We are going to take the money and make a donation to Toys for Tots!
So to all my blogging friends and family:
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Showing posts with label Joy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joy. Show all posts
December 9, 2013
Merry Christmas!
This year the family and I decided that we would save some money and not do traditional cards. We are going to take the money and make a donation to Toys for Tots!
So to all my blogging friends and family:
October 21, 2013
Fun Halloween Crafts from Pinterest
I thought I would take a moment to share a couple of fun Halloween projects that the little bear and I have been working on. Both of these were Pinterest-inspired crafts.
The Halloween Mummy Pops were a blast and so good! Can't go wrong with chocolate covered Oreos. I used the double stuffed ones to have more room for the stick and all. I also used the candy melting disks as opposed to white chocolate chips. I totally have the worst luck with the chocolate stuff, but the candy stuff is fool proof... at least for me. The rest is spelled out pretty good in the Pin!
Next up are the Spider Pops. My little bear is a huge Spiderman Fan, so when I saw these I knew I had to make them for his Pre-School friends. My son has been having the most fun helping me make these and playing with the pipe cleaners. Good thing I bought extras! The picture pretty much says everything on these... I cut the pipe cleaner in half, then just used Elmer's White Glue to put the eyes on.
My little bear says Halloween is all about being spooky. He says that both of the above are SPOOKY, SPOOKY, SPOOKY! So what Halloween fun have you all been up to?
The Halloween Mummy Pops were a blast and so good! Can't go wrong with chocolate covered Oreos. I used the double stuffed ones to have more room for the stick and all. I also used the candy melting disks as opposed to white chocolate chips. I totally have the worst luck with the chocolate stuff, but the candy stuff is fool proof... at least for me. The rest is spelled out pretty good in the Pin!
Next up are the Spider Pops. My little bear is a huge Spiderman Fan, so when I saw these I knew I had to make them for his Pre-School friends. My son has been having the most fun helping me make these and playing with the pipe cleaners. Good thing I bought extras! The picture pretty much says everything on these... I cut the pipe cleaner in half, then just used Elmer's White Glue to put the eyes on.
My little bear says Halloween is all about being spooky. He says that both of the above are SPOOKY, SPOOKY, SPOOKY! So what Halloween fun have you all been up to?
September 6, 2013
Simple Joys
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| Source |
Then one morning I decided that fighting with a three year over making a scrambled egg was kind of silly. I was spending more time and energy convincing him that cereal would be so much better than it would take to make the freaking egg.
Almost a year later, eggs for breakfast is our norm before school/work. I can make a scrambled egg in about 3 minutes. It has become routine and simple. All it took was a tiny shift in my perception.
Today as I gave my Little Bear his plate of eggs he said, "Mom you make me eggs in the morning because you love me!" And there it was, the simple joy of life. A wonderful smile because he knows I did it for him. The best part is, my simple joy was shining right back at me in his smile. Yes my dear, I make the eggs because I love you!
June 21, 2013
52 Weeks of Kindness
Happy Friday Everyone!
I am late in my post today. It has just been one of those days I guess. Nothing really serious, just could not seem to get to the computer and some quiet time to actually write this. Here's hoping for a calmer weekend! =)
This week my acts of kindness included a trip to Canada to see my Grandparents. Which sounds like a big trip, but being from the Metro Detroit area, it is not as extensive as it seems. Just a hop across the river really. Well for us it entailed a four hour drive to Detroit, and then the trip across the river.
It was a long day, my nerves were shot, but I still managed to work up the excitement for little bear as we went through the tunnel, and I explained the fact that we were no longer in America. He was less than impressed and asked if were not in America, with Captain America, who was the super hero in Canada. He did get a bit more excited when I told him that I was pretty sure Wolverine was Canadian. Such a screw ball.
My other act of kindness was to take little bear to the park after school one day. Again and easy kindness, but a fun one. We are also going to camp out in the back yard tonight... as long as it does not rain on our fun!
My kindness was all about my family this week. How about you?
Also, don't forget to head over to My Three Bittles to see how Amber did with her 52 Weeks project today!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
I am late in my post today. It has just been one of those days I guess. Nothing really serious, just could not seem to get to the computer and some quiet time to actually write this. Here's hoping for a calmer weekend! =)
This week my acts of kindness included a trip to Canada to see my Grandparents. Which sounds like a big trip, but being from the Metro Detroit area, it is not as extensive as it seems. Just a hop across the river really. Well for us it entailed a four hour drive to Detroit, and then the trip across the river. It was a long day, my nerves were shot, but I still managed to work up the excitement for little bear as we went through the tunnel, and I explained the fact that we were no longer in America. He was less than impressed and asked if were not in America, with Captain America, who was the super hero in Canada. He did get a bit more excited when I told him that I was pretty sure Wolverine was Canadian. Such a screw ball.
My other act of kindness was to take little bear to the park after school one day. Again and easy kindness, but a fun one. We are also going to camp out in the back yard tonight... as long as it does not rain on our fun!
My kindness was all about my family this week. How about you?
Also, don't forget to head over to My Three Bittles to see how Amber did with her 52 Weeks project today!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
June 6, 2013
Guest Posting over at Mary-andering Thoughts and Issues
I just wanted to let you all know about a great blog that I was lucky enough to do a guest post at this week.
Mary over at Mary-andering Thoughts and Issues read my June Charity of the Month post and asked right away if I would like to do a guest post! She loved the idea of helping out and promoting Feeding America as well.
If you have a moment, head on over and check out my guest post!
While you are there, make sure to stay awhile and see all the great things Mary has as well. She is a retired educator, journalist, and stay at home mom. Her point of view is varied and informed.
I am truly honored to be guest posting for Mary, and so thankful for her offer of help with the Charity of the Month. It is great ladies like Mary who make this world such a lovely place!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
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| Mary @ Mary-andering |
If you have a moment, head on over and check out my guest post!
While you are there, make sure to stay awhile and see all the great things Mary has as well. She is a retired educator, journalist, and stay at home mom. Her point of view is varied and informed.
I am truly honored to be guest posting for Mary, and so thankful for her offer of help with the Charity of the Month. It is great ladies like Mary who make this world such a lovely place!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
May 15, 2013
Oh What A HAPPY Day Party!
Welcome to the Oh What a HAPPY Day Link Party!
Time to celebrate what is giving us JOY and making us HAPPY this week. It is so easy to get bogged down and lost in the negative. Let's take a moment and celebrate the positive.
This week I am happy to be back home and even happier that my mom is back home recovering a bit. On top of that, my little blog here was featured on Be @ Home as part of their Best of the Web Series! Such a joy and an honor!
I'd also like to thank all the lovely bloggers who joined up with us here for Oh HAPPY Day last time. We had 52 in total! Congrats go out to Julia @ Saving Mummy for having the most views last week.
Now onto the party!
This week's awesome co-host is Georgina @ Craftulate. Georgina is a British mom living in America. She loves to do all sorts of great crafts with her son. Her only requirement is that they are fairly mess free! Gotta love that! After you link up, hop over and share the joy. She even has a great break down of her kid crafts by age group... seriously some good ideas here!The rules are pretty simple:
Have fun, say HI to our lovely co-host, and HI to as many other party goers as possible. =)
If you would like to spread the word, please grab a button and put it on your blog. If you are interested in being a co-host, then just let me know!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
May 3, 2013
TGIF & 52 Weeks!
Happy Happy Day Everyone! Man am I glad it is Friday. I don't know about you, but this week seemed to drag for me. In any case, I'm glad the weekend is here.
It is Friday so that means it is time again for my 52 Weeks update. This week my act of kindness was to pay for a stranger's lunch.
The new yoga studio that I am in love with is right next door to a Honey Baked Ham Shop and a frozen yogurt place. Both of which are my down fall. To make matters worse, the class I have been attending on Tuesday is from 11am to Noon. So I'm ready for lunch as I'm leaving.
This week, the smell of fresh bread was just too much for me. I headed over to pick up a boxed lunch. Yoga was good and I worked hard, so why not get a treat. Since I was splurging though, I decided that I would also spread some joy and treat the next person to come in.
My mind was centered and relaxed from the yoga, and my heart was lifted from the random act of kindness. All in all it was a good day!
Don't forget to head over to My Three Bittles to see what Amber and everyone else has done for their random acts of kindness this week.
Have you ever been the lucky recipient of a random act of kindness? If so, I'd love to hear what it was... drop a comment. I'm always looking for new ways to share my joy!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
It is Friday so that means it is time again for my 52 Weeks update. This week my act of kindness was to pay for a stranger's lunch.
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| Honey Baked Ham |
The new yoga studio that I am in love with is right next door to a Honey Baked Ham Shop and a frozen yogurt place. Both of which are my down fall. To make matters worse, the class I have been attending on Tuesday is from 11am to Noon. So I'm ready for lunch as I'm leaving.
This week, the smell of fresh bread was just too much for me. I headed over to pick up a boxed lunch. Yoga was good and I worked hard, so why not get a treat. Since I was splurging though, I decided that I would also spread some joy and treat the next person to come in.
My mind was centered and relaxed from the yoga, and my heart was lifted from the random act of kindness. All in all it was a good day!
Don't forget to head over to My Three Bittles to see what Amber and everyone else has done for their random acts of kindness this week.
Have you ever been the lucky recipient of a random act of kindness? If so, I'd love to hear what it was... drop a comment. I'm always looking for new ways to share my joy!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
April 19, 2013
52 Weeks - Soggy Basement, Goodwill, Ribs and Cold Stone! OH MY!
It is time again to recap my random acts of kindness for the week. Yesterday was the hubs birthday. We woke up to a water logged yard and a wet basement. He had planned on working on his Bronco all day, in stead he got to spend half the day trying to fix the leak in the wall. Thankfully the water in the basement was manageable, also way less stressful of an event when you rent and do not own. Our gypsy life style does have some perks. The water in the basement also led to me cleaning out more stuff and taking another car full of goods to Goodwill. Plus we loaded up some toys and dropped those off at little bear's day care.
The hubs birthday did not start as he had planned, but I made sure that it finished right. The little bear decided that Daddy wanted an Angry Bird party, so we decorated the house for dinner. Then I made the hub's favorite meal of ribs and more ribs. Seriously I did not even bother with veggies for him because I knew he was not going to eat them. There I was grilling out in the rain for the man I love. Doesn't get any more kind than that! haha 
All in all it was a pretty good day.
Don't forget to stop by My Three Bittles and see what everyone else is doing to spread kindness this week. I'd love to hear how your acts of kindness are going, or if you've been blessed with a kindness recently!Did you also know that in honor of Autism Awareness month, Charity Miles is sponsoring Autism Speaks? Simply download the Charity Miles app and go for a walk or run! Your miles will be added to their donation total.
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
April 9, 2013
Do you like the new custom header and sidebar?
I know this will come to a surprise to all, but the other day I was happily surfing on Pinterest. I happened to stumble upon this:
At first I thought, oh another picture tutorial... but then I clicked over to the source. Ashton at Something Swanky has put together the best tutorial on making your own header and navbars!
Her walk though is easy to follow and great! I was not even planning to do a re-design, but just reading her post inspired me to try. I put all of this together in about an hour using My Memories Suite as my photo editor.
I have always seen these great headers and wondered how they did it. Seriously, maybe it's just the newbie coming out, but I have been wanting to do something like this since I pretty much started Not Done Growing.
I'm loving the new design. It is simple and clean. I like that my social media buttons are now front and center too.
Which brings me to another great tip from Something Swanky: the use of Image Map to embed links in your pictures! Check off another one of those blog things that I have wanted to figure out. I found the Image Map site to be pretty easy to figure out, but if you need help, Ashton has a tutorial for that too!
I really cannot say enough great things about Something Swanky, and encourage you all to check it out sometimes!
So, what do you think about the new look?
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
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| Something Swanky |
At first I thought, oh another picture tutorial... but then I clicked over to the source. Ashton at Something Swanky has put together the best tutorial on making your own header and navbars!
Her walk though is easy to follow and great! I was not even planning to do a re-design, but just reading her post inspired me to try. I put all of this together in about an hour using My Memories Suite as my photo editor.
I have always seen these great headers and wondered how they did it. Seriously, maybe it's just the newbie coming out, but I have been wanting to do something like this since I pretty much started Not Done Growing.
I'm loving the new design. It is simple and clean. I like that my social media buttons are now front and center too.
Which brings me to another great tip from Something Swanky: the use of Image Map to embed links in your pictures! Check off another one of those blog things that I have wanted to figure out. I found the Image Map site to be pretty easy to figure out, but if you need help, Ashton has a tutorial for that too!
I really cannot say enough great things about Something Swanky, and encourage you all to check it out sometimes!
So, what do you think about the new look?
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
March 14, 2013
Craft Day - Bunny Banner
While flipping through my Pottery Barn catalog the other day, I saw this adorable Easter Banner:
I was instantly inspired, so off to my craft room I went. After digging through my pile of fabric, and a little bit of work; here is what I came up with:
I think it turned out pretty well, and since I already had all the supplies I even save myself some money! In fact, when I copied the link above I noticed that this flag is no longer available for sale... good thing I also have a tutorial to share! So you can have one of these cute banners too.
I made the bunny template from a free coloring page that I found online. Here is my template, sized correctly to fit the above banner dimensions.
I'd love to hear what everyone else is crafting these days? Where do most of your inspirations come from?
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| Pottery Barn |
I think it turned out pretty well, and since I already had all the supplies I even save myself some money! In fact, when I copied the link above I noticed that this flag is no longer available for sale... good thing I also have a tutorial to share! So you can have one of these cute banners too.
I made the bunny template from a free coloring page that I found online. Here is my template, sized correctly to fit the above banner dimensions.
I'd love to hear what everyone else is crafting these days? Where do most of your inspirations come from?
March 8, 2013
52 Weeks of Kindness
Happy Friday Everyone! This week has flown by for me... not sure why, but I'm not going to complain about it!
My random act of kindness this week was to host a birthday party for my father-in-law's girlfriend - aka Mimi to my little bear. Mimi has been around as long as I have in the family. She has always welcomed us and treated us as she does her own kids. In fact her grandkids are the ones who started the Mimi thing, and she was only thrilled when we picked it up too. She is a great lady and I was more than happy to throw together a little party for her.
Thrown together is the perfect phrase to. We were in town visiting my mom and were going to spend the afternoon with the in-laws. I was expecting just cake and the 5 of us, but turns out Mimi was expecting a bit more. I literally planned out the party and food for the 8 more people as the hubs drove us to their house. A quick stop at the grocery store and at the local BBQ joint and the party was set.
Mimi was thrilled and impressed that I had done so much. I kept telling her it was not that much, but I could not convince her that it really was not that much. The key is the impromptu party was fun and Mimi was overjoyed! Which in turn made me and my father-in-law happy too!
Don't forget to check out the other great acts of kindness @ the 52 Weeks link up hosted by Amber at My Three Bittles.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
My random act of kindness this week was to host a birthday party for my father-in-law's girlfriend - aka Mimi to my little bear. Mimi has been around as long as I have in the family. She has always welcomed us and treated us as she does her own kids. In fact her grandkids are the ones who started the Mimi thing, and she was only thrilled when we picked it up too. She is a great lady and I was more than happy to throw together a little party for her.Thrown together is the perfect phrase to. We were in town visiting my mom and were going to spend the afternoon with the in-laws. I was expecting just cake and the 5 of us, but turns out Mimi was expecting a bit more. I literally planned out the party and food for the 8 more people as the hubs drove us to their house. A quick stop at the grocery store and at the local BBQ joint and the party was set.
Mimi was thrilled and impressed that I had done so much. I kept telling her it was not that much, but I could not convince her that it really was not that much. The key is the impromptu party was fun and Mimi was overjoyed! Which in turn made me and my father-in-law happy too!
Don't forget to check out the other great acts of kindness @ the 52 Weeks link up hosted by Amber at My Three Bittles.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
March 6, 2013
Oh What a HAPPY Day Link Party
Welcome back to the Oh HAPPY Day Link Party!
Time to celebrate what is giving us JOY and making us HAPPY this week. It is so easy to get bogged down and lost in the negative. Let's take a moment and celebrate the positive.
Today I am honored and extremely happy to be featured by Dedicated 2 Life in their Passions Segment. Irish Carter runs Dedicated 2 Life and is passionate about finding happiness, enjoying life, and helping others reach their potential. Her passions and kind words have my little cup of happiness running over today! I'd also like to once again thank all the lovely bloggers who joined up with us here for Oh HAPPY Day last week. We had 22 in total! Congrats go out to Stephanie @ Crazy Little Love Birds for having the most views last week.
Now onto the party!
The "rules" are pretty simple:
Have fun and say HI to as many other party goers as possible. =)
If you would like to spread the word, please grab a button and put it on your blog.
Looking to grow your blog? I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
March 4, 2013
Meditation Monday
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| Pinterest Source |
May this week find you full of excitement. Ready to face each day with a sense of awe and gratitude. This week, let us carry a consciousness of how precious each moment is - rejoice in the highs and the lows both, knowing that each is simply a new step towards our life's destination.
As a side note, I have Sponsor Spots open this week - priced to fit any budget, including FREE! Hop over to my sponsor page for more details.
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