Sooo… the past two Sunday’s I was on a cruise with my husband (I’ll tell you about it soon!), so I won’t be able to give you my regular church report. BUT, I have been thinking about a little something this week that I wanted to share and found a really special video. So, we’ll call that our Sunday Sunshine for the week and next week, I’ll be back on track. I’m so happy to be back at church tomorrow!
I live in the Rocky Mountains – the part of the Rocky Mountains that is usually snowed in from Thanksgiving to Easter. Not this year, though. We had an especially long Fall, and Spring is already on it’s way. We had one huge snowfall on Christmas day, and it’s been melting ever since. Are we the only ones with a super mild winter this year?
Part of me wants to enjoy this. The other part is wondering how we will water our crops this year. As for the rest of my family – well they are kind of bummed about all the enjoyable winter activities they missed out on this year. So while the birds chirped outside, I decided to bring winter indoors for a day, and we had a BLAST creating a winter wonderland right inside our living room. We had so much fun, I had to share these 5 indoor winter activities to enjoy, when winter doesn’t happen outside.
A little over 3 years ago, I had (what I hope to be) my last baby. It was always hard for me to stay motivated and lose all my baby weight after each baby when I was planning to get pregnant again. But after our last baby, it was go-time. And by “go-time” I mean 8 months after I had him I was finally motivated and ready to get back in shape. For the record, I didn’t exercise while pregnant with my last baby (unless you count chasing around 3 other kids as exercise, and it should probably count) nor was I a healthy eater while pregnant. I ate anything and everything all day long and put on a good 50+ pounds. And I was as out-of-shape as I had ever been in my life. I had my work cut out for me.
During this process, I started getting a lot of questions about what I was doing to lose the weight and get back in shape. I learned a LOT during the next year as I literally worked my butt off to get healthy and thought I’d share some of the lessons from getting healthy that I learned.
Last weekend, one of my new contributors took me to breakfast. It was awesome, for several reasons. One of them being because SHE is awesome. (Check out her blog, Lindsay Ross Blog!) The other reason is because I got to have the yummiest pancakes that I’ve been thinking/drooling about ever since. And, so I made some. Bad, bad girl. I can’t stop eating them and I’m going to gain a million pounds! Aghhh! We’re leaving on a cruise this weekend, and here I am splurging already.
So, these are mega-easy. (Mega is my new word-of-choice, just so you know.) Oh, maybe I should tell you what they are first…
Banana Pecan Pancakes with Buttermilk Syrup … a.k.a. Heaven, On Your Plate.
I often get asked how I get my kids to pose for pictures, especially when they are often for my blog. Children don’t generally love being asked to sit still and smile, or stand just a certain way while we snap picture after picture in their face. They would much rather be off playing, I assure you. The thing is, for general life capturing moments – it really is best to take pictures that represent the moment as best as we can. However, being a blogger, I am often after a certain shot and trying to showcase an item as best as I can on a wiggly, impatient child. Photographing kids like this can bring many challenges for the mommy behind the camera.
Hi OSSS readers! Anne here, back with a printable Valentine tag for ya.
I think that I am with almost all other crafters out there when I scream, from the mountain tops, how much I love the Target Dollar Spot. I mean, can you ever make it 20 yards in before getting sucked in, regardless of what you went in there for in the first place? They always have such cute, seasonal things to create with. A couple of weeks ago I was in there, and how on Earth I was even thinking about Valentine’s Day ideas at that moment is beyond me. But I saw all of those cute post-it notes and the mini pens, and it just happened.
Ok. So how easy is this little Valentine? A post-it pad. A mini gel pen. Some bakers twine. And this sweet and simple Valentine’s Day tag you can download.
Christina from FoodApparel back to visit! I am such a sucker when it comes to breakfast. Seriously, you start talking about breakfast and you have my full attention. I just love everything from a good hash to a smoothie to omelet to french toast. You name it! And I will definitely eat it any time of day. In fact, my family used to have Sunday Waffle Night when I was growing up. We would just cook mounds of waffles and find whatever we could in the fridge for topping- jams, whipped cream, lots and lots of syrup, fruit, yogurt…… This was a good day at my home.
Well, keeping in the tradition, I still enjoyed lots of good breakfast even after I left home. And I would visit my brother often who lived in the same city as me when I was attending college. He and his wife never disappointed with the meal spread. He introduced me to the idea of Coconut Cinnamon Waffles.
Hello, hello! My name is Aimee and I blog craft projects for kids, my home, and holidays over at The Elephant of Surprise. I’m super excited to be part of Mariel’s fabulous team this year here at Or So She Says . . .
Valentine’s Day is a favorite holiday of mine, for sure. It’s a bright, fun, and girly holiday, and I think it’s what helps get me through the rest of winter! So today I’m sharing a really easy Valentine wreath to brighten up your door or any corner of your home. This conversation heart inspired wreath is very straightforward and you can even get the kids involved.
Read on to see how to put this together!
Sore throats have been rampant at my house. The minute we think it’s clearing up, it’s back and worse than ever. Bleh. I recently stumbled across a recipe for Russian Tea. I had never tried it before, but it sounded nice, hot, and maybe even soothing for our sore throats. But, most of the recipes I found had Tang in it and that sounded kinda icky, but I loved the idea of a citrus cider, as opposed to apple cider, which I had been drinking daily. I finally found a recipe that didn’t use Tang and I was so excited… but, I didn’t love it. So, I did what I usually do… call my gourmet-chef-mother and beg her for help. She had just the recipe for me and I love it.
Hey Everyone! It’s Adelle from Packed with Fun, the official blog for Get Away Today. I hope you’ve been having a great New Year! Over the holidays we put together a Not-Quite-Midnight Ball for my little princesses and their friends so that they could celebrate New Years Eve without staying up all hours of the night. You can read all about it here. It was a perfect princess party and one of the highlights was the Wish-Come-True Surprise Cupcakes. They were so easy and so much fun to make, plus the girls all loved them. If you have a princess party coming up, or just want to surprise your princess, try out this princess cupcake tutorial.
A few weeks before I had my little boy, one of my good friends and I got together to have a little “freezer meal-making” party. With our husbands happily playing the Playstation in the basement, we got busy. We went to the grocery store to buy all of the ingredients we would need and then came home and started throwing stuff in freezer bags. In just a couple hours we had 8 different freezer meals each, all ready to go. It was so quick, easy, and fun! Plus, now I had 8 meals that I could make for my family that literally took no more effort than dumping the contents of a Ziploc bag in a crock pot and turning a knob!
Hi all! It’s Sharon back again for another fun year with ‘Or so she says…’ I’m looking forward to visiting with you all each month and sharing ideas I hope you’ll be able to put to use in your own home, family and life.
I’ve had this on-going goal of compiling a list of questions and answers from my kids around each of their birthdays so I could remember all the cute little quirks they have. Well now that I have three birthdays to remember…this never happens. So to solve my little problem, I decided that just once a year I would ask them questions, and this way I’m much more likely to remember to do it. So, starting this year, every January I’m going to fill out this year in review printable I created for each of my kids. I tried to make almost all the questions apply to most ages, it works for my 10, 4, and 1 year old twins.