Living Life Beautifully

Ok....So you probably have a stack of cards from this Christmas and maybe even a Christmas or two back. I was so tired of having to throw away beautiful cards with well wishes and stories of what family and friends have been up to. So I thought it would be fun to scrapbook them. The trick here is that it costs nothing, is fun to do and doesn't look bad. Each card you get has something to work with. The envelope might look cool. It might have stickers, stamps or some cool print to it. The card itself has a front a back and the inside to work with. You can use gift tags, scraps of wrapping paper, tissue paper, ribbon, stickers, and even bits and pieces of boxes and gift bags. The first thing you want to do is decided what your going to scrapbook your cards into. You will need your scrap book of choice, your cards, glue, a glue stick, scissors, a ruler, and a pen to start. All other things are optional. You can use an old or new book that your not going to read again. This is called a...

Some days I wish I had no outside responsibilities. I think life would be so much easier. Dealing with others can make us nuts because we are all human and made differently. Between worrying if I upset someone, or what to do when someone upsets me.......I'd like to just run away. I guess it's what we must do, but sometimes I wish I could take a break. This year has been a difficult one. It's funny when I look back at my almost 21 years of married life and count up the huge mountains we've had to climb. Between, financial struggles, a difficult twin pregnancy, financial struggles, raising those twins, a remodel of our former home in which we had to do most of the work ourselves and live in the mess, financial struggles, a miscarriage, our home flooding when I was 6 months pregnant, did I mention financial struggles, two years of my mother in law being incredibly sick, taking on our current house project, my parents divorce, and church issues, not to mention all the lit...

The Christmas season is here. I love it!!! I love the music, the food, the decorations, the shopping, and the celebration of it all. I absolutely LOVE tradition. I guess the only thing I don't care for about Christmas is the business. It's going by so fast because I'm always running from one thing to another. I don't like being busy. I love my home and time vegging out with my family. I try to make the house look as nice as I can, though it's unfinished. I put on the Christmas music and light up the decorations. I have the wood stove going if it's cold. I love when it's cold. I light the candles to try and make it smell nice. I have Christmas tea to drink, egg nog and ice cream to eat and spiced cider. We have st nick bring treats on the night of the 5 th of december so the stockings are filled on the morning of the 6 th . We open one gift on Christmas eve and the rest Christmas morning. We usually have Bruce's family on Christmas eve, ou...

Wow, what a day! Alex is home sick. He's had a fever for two days and sleeps all the time. I'm having to really work to get some fluids down him. I don't want to end up in the hospital again for dehydration. I put him in the living room so I could check on him easily. His bedroom is on the other side of the house. Because I put him in the living room, and because he was sleeping, I had to find something quiet to do. So I decided to work in the kitchen. I thought it would be pretty cool if I could take the oven door apart and clean the drip lines from inside. It was a long chore but it looks great. Yay me!!! During the week I got a call from a friend. After the call I spent a good part of the day thinking about the conversation and wondering if I said something wrong. I beat myself up about it all day. I hate that. Sometimes I wish I didn't care. I will torture myself with what others think about me, and here they probably don't think about me at all. ...

Last night I had the job of dealing with the kids on my own, since my husband was playing the country music show in town. It was a smooth evening, if I do say so myself. :) The funny part of the evening is when I told the youngest to go take his shower. With the reply "Oh man". A little later I came across this same child in his pajamas and slightly wet hair. The hair was wet only at the top of his head. The Mom instinct kicked in. I bent down to smell his hair and....low and behold.....it didn't smell like shampoo. Hmmm...... I said, "Nice try. Now go take a shower". Don't ya just love kids? After his shower he decided he wanted to hang out with me in my room for the evening. He came in, now smelling of soap and shampoo, dressed in his flannel pants and an over sized cartoon shirt down past his knees, hair sticking up from being towel dried. We decided to watch loony tunes, recorded from earlier in the day. He asked me if I wanted eggnog and ice cream in a ...

I've been listening and reading about a new fad in Christianity that has become very heart breaking for me personally . It seems there is a growing number of people who don't like what they call the "institution" of the church. You know what? Church is not perfect and never was. That's why there are so many letters in the bible to churches telling them what they need to change. It's not going to be perfect but that doesn't mean we walk away. What concerns me about great Christian people who give up on the church experience, is that, in giving up and only gathering with a small group of Christians, they are losing the experience of fellowship with people that have no other place to go. Christians who need loving people around them on that Sunday morning, to help get them through the week. What I LOVE about church is that I am accepted even though I'm not perfect, wealthy, popular or whatever. I LOVE that when my children come to church, they are...

The last few years I've been obsessed with recycling. I love nature. This morning I walked outside in my pj's and went looking around the garden. I have to go out and pull all the caterpillars off the plants so they don't look like swiss cheese. I throw them in the pond for the fish to eat. YUM! :P While I was out there I went looking for worms for my worm farm. I know what your thinking, (crazy lady). But you know, even when I was little I would wait til the rain stopped and go looking for worms in the puddles and save their little wormy lives. I've been trying to raise worms for a year with no great success. When I thought I was doing really well, they all died, or so I thought. I'm now thinking they escaped. Anyway... What I've found really interesting is that worms collect under a rabbit cage. So if you have a fascination with worms, get a rabbit, or go find a friend who has a rabbit. I've been composting for a year also. It's very cool. ...