Who Wants A Vitamix?

Who Wants A Vitamix?

Spring is right around the cor­ner and it’s already begin­ning to be gor­geous out­side. A new sea­son can be a time to start fresh, re-evaluate your dreams and goals, and get on the right track… again. It’s the per­fect time to renew the vision of your health jour­ney and get set for greatness.

We want to help! Any­thing we can do to make your whole fam­ily, real-food jour­ney eas­ier and smoother, we are all about it. We want you to be able to make healthy meals and snacks to feed to your fam­ily in the most effi­cient way… and what bet­ter way to do that but with a Vitamix. 

win a vitamix

A group of fab­u­lous blog­gers have got­ten together to offer your fam­ily a Vita­mix 5200, val­ued at $449, for FREE!

We know how impor­tant car­ing for your fam­ily is to you and that it’s not always easy to get your own top of the line blender, so we have brought one to you. This tough cookie can do it all and is a sta­ple in most pro­fes­sional kitchens. Now it can be a sta­ple in your kitchen as well. 

The give­away goes from Tues­day, March 4th to Fri­day, March 14th and is for any­one, no mat­ter where you live. If you are out­side of the U.S. you will receive an ama­zon gift card for the Vitamix.

Enter to win through the raf­fle­copter below and get to know some new and excit­ing bloggers. 

a Raf­fle­copter giveaway

 

Dis­claimer: No pur­chase nec­es­sary. Must be 18 to enter. Void where pro­hib­ited by law. This give­away is in no way spon­sored, endorsed, or asso­ci­ated by Face­book. By enter­ing this give­away, you agree to release Face­book, Whole Fam­ily Strong and all par­tic­i­pat­ing blogs of all lia­bil­ity. Con­test ends at 12:01am EST on March 14, 2014. Win­ner is ran­domly cho­sen by Raf­fle­copter and will be emailed.

Pinterest and Crockpots

Pinterest and Crockpots

Have you dis­cov­ered Pin­ter­est? It’s a won­der­ful place on the inter­net that keeps all your fab­u­lous ideas and thoughts orga­nized on cyber-bulletin boards. You “pin” web pages to one of your boards based on the cat­e­gory to help you find it later when you want it. I have boards for enter­tain­ing, beau­ti­ful spaces, chalk­board vinyl…Plus about 40 other things. You can have unlim­ited pub­lic boards, plus three secret boards that nobody can see but you. At least last time I checked that’s what they had.

It can be a time sink if you let it. Or the answer to your next baby shower or din­ner party.

A friend sent me a pin the other day in an email. I was stunned. Amazed. And dreamed about it, awake and asleep, until I decided to DO some­thing about it.

I painted my crockpot.

With chalk­board paint.

Oh, yes I did!

crockpot paintedAnd now I can take food to events with­out hav­ing to worry about a label falling off or get­ting lost. Peo­ple can know right away what is inside and if it meets their dietary needs.

Isn’t it fun?

It was pretty easy, although I’m sure it can be com­pli­cated quite nicely if you like it that way.

I’m one of those gotta-get-it-done-NOW kind of peo­ple. So, I fly through projects. I taped the parts I didn’t want to paint, roughed up the tex­ture of the shiny paint a bit, and put two coats of chalk­board paint on it. Waited 24 painful hours before I used the chalk­board mark­ers on it, as sug­gested on the paint can. And there you go!

What do you think? I wish the part around the knob was a lit­tle bit more exact. I thought I taped that part well, but a lit­tle bit of paint seeped through. And the cir­cle wasn’t exact. Hard with that knob on there, and work­ing with tape that is straight. I’m sure there is a bet­ter way.

But, I wanted to share my lit­tle project with you.

Now, I can’t wait for the church’s next potluck!

Photo credit

The British Are Coming!

The British Are Coming!

Oh, wait. They’re Irish.

Close enough!

Our friends from Eng­land, who actu­ally hail from Ire­land (stay with me here), are arriv­ing tomor­row for a quick and fab­u­lous hol­i­day. And they are bring­ing their chil­dren! My kids haven’t seen them since we lived in Eng­land 9 years ago. Well, except for the two who came and vis­ited us a few years ago. We are over the moon and mak­ing final preps for their visit. I can’t wait to see my dear friend, Angela. I look for­ward to the rein­tro­duc­tion of Pey­ton and “lit­tle Daniel” who is a year older and twice as big as her. {Side note: when we lived in Eng­land, Daniel was the youngest of their fam­ily. Pey­ton called him “Lit­tle Daniel” even though he wasn’t. She was 4. And they were best friends.} I’m sure that we will all have a  snicker or two about those memories.

and there was great joy design

 

Okay, so this verse is taken {way} out of con­text. But this is how I feel.

So, I have been rac­ing around get­ting things caught up and ready for the British Inva­sion. With a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

Next week, I hope to write about my Haz­ardous Jour­ney, which is not to be con­fused with my Husband’s Haz­ardous Jour­ney.

grizzlyAnd hope­fully, I will be drink­ing my favorite tea while I do so.

Have a fab­u­lous weekend!!

Many Lord’s bless­ings be on you and your family.

 

Maybe I’m Not The Only One With Dust Bunnies

Maybe I’m Not The Only One With Dust Bunnies

Remem­ber when I wrote about dust bun­nies and my fan­tasy of hav­ing a blog ded­i­cated to home décor? I’m still work­ing on my issues.

But, I came across two blog posts from The Nester which dis­cusses this very topic. Do you know The Nester? She has one of those great blogs that shows won­der­ful dec­o­rat­ing ideas, but stresses that “It doesn’t have to be per­fect to be beau­ti­ful.” I love her. She speaks my language.

Any­way, I thought I would share the links here so that you can read some of her sim­ple ideas to help your house look even better.

One of her ideas that I par­tic­u­larly loved was the idea that you can take your screens off your win­dows. Okay, I should know this one already. When we lived in Eng­land, we had no screens. I adored not hav­ing screens. Every­thing looked so clear and beau­ti­ful look­ing out. You didn’t have to look through that dark screen to the out­side. It just adds so much more light. But for some rea­son, I never brought the idea back home to the US. Where we live, we don’t really have bugs. Oh, except dur­ing moth sea­son. Hmmm. I’ll have to rethink that one. Think “The Birds” only in minia­ture. Scary. Not that I have actu­ally ever seen “The Birds,” but I can imag­ine. Any­way, if you don’t have a moth sea­son like we do, it might work for you. It’s glorious.

nester windowsthe nester

The first blog post is Three Weird Rea­sons My House Looks Decent Online. I couldn’t help but won­der if she was talk­ing to me. Like she knows I exist. Yeah, prob­a­bly not.

The sec­ond one is actu­ally my favorite of the two: 3 Ways My House Looks Worse In Real Life. Maybe she just makes me feel bet­ter about where I’m at.

nester messythe nester

Oh, and did you see the idea about the fire­place? It points out one impor­tant thing to me: I am a rule fol­lower. Who knew you could take the glass out of the gas fire­place? Seri­ously? I would never have con­sid­ered doing that! But I have always hated that glass. I scowl at it often. It just takes away so much from the effect of the fire­place. I have dreamed of mak­ing that fire­place pretty when not in use. Which is about 6 weeks in the sum­mer, on good years. Assum­ing win­ter ended early and starts late. Yes, I exag­ger­ate. But not by much. I thought I was stretch­ing things when I took all the brass accents and painted them black. I am not a fan of brass. But I love black accents. It made a huge dif­fer­ence. After the fact, we won­dered if we used the right paint, was it going to melt and get paint all over the floor…So far, 6 years later, it is still black and no paint on the floor. I guess we did okay.

So, in addi­tion to learn­ing some great ideas for improv­ing the way my home looks, I also learned that I need to think out­side of the box more.

Which is the cat­a­lyst for another post com­ing soon. I went to Good­will and found some­thing cool. And I am try­ing to think out­side of the box about it. More details to fol­low soon!

My Stint with Comfort Services

My Stint with Comfort Services

My hus­band and I help a tiny bit with our state’s home­school­ing con­fer­ence. We used to be on the con­fer­ence com­mit­tee, but when Mike took over as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, we stepped down from our Vol­un­teer Chair­per­sons posi­tion. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

This year, the Black For­est Fire hap­pened the same week as the con­fer­ence. The sweet woman who runs the Com­fort Ser­vices posi­tion had to evac­u­ate her home because of the fire. So, since I had noth­ing offi­cial to do, I offered to step in and help out.

I ought to men­tion that a dar­ling 14 year old home­school­ing girl was already on the mis­sion, and was shin­ing ever so brightly in the role. But, it was decided that per­haps I might be of some help.

What impressed me about this par­tic­u­lar posi­tion on our con­fer­ence com­mit­tee is that it is all bonus stuff. It is the fluff, the extra spe­cial things that are intended to make peo­ple feel wel­come and spe­cial. It’s all about hospitality.

Com­fort Ser­vices is respon­si­ble for the Speak­ers’ Lounge, the Ven­dors’ Lounge, the Infant Care room, and the Com­mit­tee Lounge. Each of these rooms has a focus of pro­vid­ing a sort of haven away from the crowds, the noise, the hus­tle and bus­tle of the conference.

So much thought and con­sid­er­a­tion goes into the decor of each room. We have lamps so that our guests {speak­ers, ven­dors, and nurs­ing mamas} don’t have to rest under the harsh flu­o­res­cent light­ing that is every­where else in the con­fer­ence hall. We have real fur­ni­ture, to include soft chairs, rock­ing chairs, and tables that have style.

And we even include cots with blan­kets in the speaker and ven­dor lounges, in small dimly lit rooms off of the main lounges. Con­fer­ences can really take a toll on a per­son, so we like to pro­vide a place where they can rest comfortably.

So, why am I telling you all of this? I’m sure other con­fer­ences do the exact same thing. Surely the ideas didn’t orig­i­nate in Colorado.

I’m men­tion­ing it because it really struck me that these lit­tle things really mat­ter when you are try­ing to con­vey love and care to peo­ple. The money that we spend on these lit­tle niceties could be saved in our pock­ets for some other lofty use. But, then we’d all be labor­ing under flu­o­res­cent light­ing with­out a place to be revived and encour­aged. When peo­ple come to work with our orga­ni­za­tion, we want them to know we appre­ci­ate them, care for them, and will go that extra mile to com­mu­ni­cate this to them.

The same thing goes on in our homes, I would guess. We may not set up cots in a lit­tle dark room {that sounds a bit creepy in this con­text}, but we try to make them com­fort­able, cared for, with their needs met.

I don’t know about you, but when some­one goes out of their way to show that I am appre­ci­ated and loved, even in a very small way, I get all mushy inside and just glow with appre­ci­a­tion. Don’t you?

The folks who run Com­fort Ser­vices sel­dom get a chance to rest. Seems like the cof­fee runs out, the sugar and creamer run out, the cups run out…all day long but never at the same time. The lit­tle snacks must be refreshed and swapped out con­tin­u­ally through­out the day to keep them fresh. It’s a busy job, but one that makes a great impact. My hope, and I am sure the hope of that vision­ary so many years ago, is that those who are blessed by the tiny ges­ture of hos­pi­tal­ity that we showed them will see it as Christ’s grace being extended to them in just a tiny way. I hope that they were refreshed and encour­aged. Not for any glory for our con­fer­ence com­mit­tee, but com­pletely for the glory of God.

As I checked on the var­i­ous rooms that were our respon­si­bil­ity last week­end, I loved walk­ing into the lit­tle infant care rooms. The room always had a cou­ple of moth­ers with their babies, car­ry­ing on con­ver­sa­tions as they met the needs of their babies. Oh, how pre­cious that sight was to me every time I went in. As we were min­is­ter­ing to them, they were min­is­ter­ing to their pre­cious chil­dren. Makes me smile to think about it.

I’m so glad dar­ling 14 year old home­school­ing girls have a lot of energy. And lots of friends. They made such a beau­ti­ful impact on so many lives that weekend.

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