Swap with friends

My friend Mary started this group on Facebook a couple years ago ... it's called Another Person's Treasure. So basically you post things you want to get rid of and your local friends can take them off your hands. One man's junk is another man's treasure! So this past week she organized a Swap event. It was held in the gym at our church and everyone brought all their unwanted items and laid them out - then you could go around and 'shop' for FREE among the items the other ladies had brought. It was AWESOME! Not only did I get rid of about 5 bins FULL of my unwanted stuff ... but I came home with some really nice items too! 

Here is all my stuff ready to go into my car ... 

And here are some of my treasures - a food processor! Something I have wanted for a LONG time!
A towel holder for my downstairs bathroom, and a toothbrush holder. 

I picked up 4 of these flip-flop jewelry boxes that I figured the girls would enjoy painting one day with friends. 

My daughter LOVES cupcakes, I got her this to put on her dresser to hold jewelry or treasures. 

{She LOVED it!} 

3 picture frames, I always need more frames!

This beautiful clock ... this is my Mom's life verse so I am going to see if she wants this, if not I will keep it - it needs a new clock function but that is easy enough to replace! 

BRAND NEW candles, never even used! I can always use more of those. 

I use these little bins all the time for office supplies or craft supplies. They fit perfectly into drawers for easy organization. 

 A hot pink suitcase for my daughter, she was super excited about this!

A new game for the family and a brand new 1000 pc puzzle - would be great for a snow day! 

Brand new box of Biscotti, these will be great for coffee with friends!

At first I passed these by, but finally came back to them ... they will hold candles and go on the wall in my bedroom - romantic, huh? ;) 

This is a covered chip/dip holder ... I have another one of these and use it ALL the time when going to parties with friends. They also hold muffins, cupcakes or cookies really well. 

A whole stack of new-to-me books ... I LOVE to read and there were SO many books to pick through at this swap. 

These are hard to see but they are green envelopes with a slightly sparkly finish to them, I can use these when I make cards. 

Wedding table place cards ... got these for my Mom, not sure if she'll need them but they were free so hopefully she can use them!

A beautiful LOFT coat for me ... 

A long comfy sweater for me ... or maybe even my girls. 

This sweater is for me, I love short sleeve sweaters. 

Two sort of fancy shirts for my daughter. 

And a little sweater for my daughter to wear over a dress. 

And SIX beautiful summery dresses that I am hoping will fit one or both of my girls. It's SO hard to afford to keep up with buying them clothes and at this age we never get 'hand-me'downs' anymore ... so I was SO happy that this Mom from church who has 3 college age daughters was giving away some of their clothes!

I think that's all ... so many wonderful treasures, I am SO thankful! If you have a place to do this I would highly recommend getting together with friends and doing one of these swaps! {Side note, they did another one in the fall OUTDOORS at a local park - so you don't need a large gym to do this, just load up your cars and have a tailgate swap in the warmer weather!} Thanks Mary for all your hard work!!! 

Ice Skating!

Over Christmas break we went Ice Skating twice. The casino near us has an outdoor skating rink for the season and even though it's not terribly big, it's FUN! The four of us went on Christmas Eve and we had such a good time ... the sun was shining, they had Christmas music playing and we just had a great time together. There was hardly anyone there that day so we practically had the rink to ourselves. 

Then we went again the following week with a bunch of our friends. 

We have such a great group of kids! We are so blessed! 

And I am so blessed to have these two special friends in my life! After skating we took the kids to get Gelato - it's so fun that the kids all hang out, talk and play together and the Moms can hang out and talk together. Fun for everyone!

As we were getting ready to leave it was starting to get dark and they were turning on all the Christmas lights around the rink .... so pretty! We are looking forward to going skating again, hopefully soon! 

Christmas Break FUN!

Since my girls are in public school I am always SUPER happy when school is out and we get time to be together at home. With Christmas break coming up I knew that I wanted to spend the time with them just having as much fun as possible. So I started a list of things we could do and set aside a little of my paycheck so we would have the funds to do it. 

The true blessing came when through a series of events they BOTH ended up with NO IPODS for the entire Christmas break ... I can't tell you how wonderful it was that they were not staring at those screens all the time! 

The other thing that I was pretty intentional about this Christmas was that they didn't get ANYthing for Christmas that had anything to do with technology ... no video games, no ipods, no phones, no computers, no tablets, nothing! They basically got clothes and creative/crafty items. Now we certainly did a lot of movie watching, most evenings snuggling up together for hours to watch movies ... and they also do sometimes play on the computer {their latest thing is Pinterest} ... but otherwise our break was such a nice, relaxing time of playing and being creative. 

Here are a few things we did:
They have always been wonderful artists thanks to my Father in law who gave them art lessons ... they received some new paints and brushes for Christmas so one day we stopped at Micheal's to get some new canvases and they spent most of that day painting.

One of the days we were blessed to celebrate Christmas with my Mom, her fiance {just engaged on Christmas Day!!}, and my brother Matt and his family ... the girls had fun playing with their cousins and we opened gifts and had lunch together and just enjoyed visiting and catching up. 

{Mom and Wayne}

{Stacy and Matt} 

Jilly also got a MARKER Maker for Christmas, something she had on her list and she was so excited, making markers several different times throughout the break. A couple of the other creative things they got were those LOOM band bracelet things - which they both spent HOURS working on. And Jilly also got a notebook thing where there are stencils and you create outfits and fashion ideas {hard to explain but it's cute}

 One day we needed to make some exchanges so we headed out of the house for a few hours, my hubby was sick that day and although it sounds mean we all wanted to avoid getting his sickness, so off we went. We went to a few stores, stocked up on some crafts at Micheal's, had lunch at Panera and stopped in to drool at Pier One - Haley commented that when she grows up she wants to furnish her whole house from Pier One - sure Haley, don't we all?! 

We also went out to lunch, then bowling with some good friends -- lots of fun with this group!! 

And another day we went Roller Skating with these lovely friends. 

We also went Ice Skating twice, once with family on Christmas Eve and once with friends - those pics will be in a separate post. 

And since the girls had some gift cards we did a little shopping ... after walking around Target for about an hour not knowing how she should spend hers, Jilly finally decided on a scooter! I was so happy she chose it because it was one item I had thought about getting her for Christmas, but just never did. With the cold, nasty weather lately she has been using it to scooter around inside the house for now. =) 

I am so thankful for this Christmas break ... we really had a great time together!! I was sad to see them go when it was time to go back to school. 

January Meal Planning

One way I want to be more Intentional this year is eating well, and that means I need to be prepared more! I find that when I make a menu plan for the week and buy the needed groceries we not only eat healthier, but we also spend less on eating out. 

I decided to pencil in the whole month of January from simple family favorite meals. Nothing fancy here folks, that's for sure! 

If you have any questions about a recipe or meal please shoot me a message and I'll get back to you. I tried to mix things up with one soup, one pasta dish, one chicken dish, one breakfast dish, etc for each week - some weeks it worked out great, other weeks we may have back to back chicken meals but oh well. =) 

January 
2 - Taco Soup
3 - Chicken Pot Pies
4 - Lasagna 
5 - Pot Roast
6 - Salsa Chicken
7 - Spagetti with Meat Sauce
8 - Pancakes
9 - Chicken Soup
10 - Chili and cornbread
11 - Chicken Chimichangas
12 - Stuffed Peppers
13 - Mozzarella Chicken
14 - Turkey Meatloaf
15 - Eggs and Toast
16 - Broccoli Cheddar Soup
17 - Chicken Parmesan
18 - Order out for Pizza
19 - Chicken and Stuffing Casserole
20 - Shrimp Scampi
21 - Whole Chicken
22 - Sandwiches
23 - Corn Chowder
24 - Sweet and Sour Chicken with Fried Rice
25 - Tacos
26 - Lasagna Soup
27 - Round steak
28 - Swedish Meatballs w/ Egg Noodles
29 - French Toast
30 - Spicy Chicken Soup
31 - Rotini Casserole 

Intentional in 2014

I know I haven't been the best blogger this year. Many times life has just been so busy that it's too hard to try to catch up on the blog. 

I've been thinking about the New Year and resolutions and changes and all that stuff. Most years I LOVE to make resolutions and some years I even make progress with them. 

This year I want things to be different. So instead of making a list of resolutions I'm simply choosing ONE WORD to describe the year. That word is INTENTIONAL. 

What does that look like as far as resolutions go? 

~~It means I want to be more intentional in my relationship with God and the amount of time I spend with Him. 

~~It means I want to be more intentional in the time I spend with my husband. Making time for him and time for US. 

~~It means I want to be more intentional with my girls - they are growing WAY too fast and I fear the time when they will be grown up and gone from our home. I want to enjoy the time I have them here. 

~~It means I want to be more intentional with my friends - spending time with them, keeping up with their lives, praying for them and encouraging them. 

~~It means I want to be more intentional with my health - not trying to fit in a certain size or get down to a certain weight - but making healthier choices each day. 

~~It means I want to be more intentional about the internet - I have so many hobbies I love {scrapbooking, reading, etc} that I never make time for - yet I waste so many hours on Facebook. I want to change that this year. 

So that is just a small summary of what I mean. I know it sounds like these things are just like resolutions but instead of setting myself up for goals that may or may not be attained, I feel it's better to just continually remind myself to be INTENTIONAL in everything I do. 

Happy New Year friends!!