world's worst blogger

Friends I have so many redo's I have done over the past few months and just have not had time to blog them. I re did my daughter's entire room, it's officially now a pre-teen room. I got some thrifted furniture pieces and have made them new. I created lots of beautiful homemade Christmas gifts. Lots of new food recipes. I really do plan to blog all if it .....soon. I need to spend a day taking good pictures and writing up the step by step tutorials.

And if I'm going to be really honest, Instagram has pretty much smothered my blog. Things I want to blog, I just Instagram. Here is a peak into my Instagram since the last time I blogged......

   

 

But mostly I write today because I finished a book over Christmas vacation that pretty much wrecked me!!! for life!!! I am praying about how to write to all my readers what our family has done and is doing to change this world one person at a time. It's kind of exciting. I'm now re-reading the book to my kids. They have open eyes now, praise God! So grateful for that. I want them to be much more aware of the world, Kingdom minded, and selfless human beings. I recommend "Kisses from Katie" to anyone who is ready for their life to be forever changed and flipped upside down for Jesus. Until next time.....and I have more than 10mins to write a post, I pray for God to make us all live a little more radical than we do today.

Pottery Barn DIY Christmas

 

I'm going to apologize ahead of time for the quality of my pics. For some reason blogger is not letting me add good quality photos to my blog, only small phone files :( so sad about that. I have had nothing but problems with blogger since buying my domain name. I wish so badly I would have stayed a blogspot. They now want me to pay $5 a month to add nice quality photos to my blog. OR I can delete old blog posts to make room for good quality photos......

 

 

On to the Christmas fun!!!! So a few years back, Pottery Barn was selling music note wide ribbon as a tree garland for a ridiculous amount of money, I think it was $25 a role. It looked so beautiful on the tree in the catalog and I never got it out of my mind. So this is what I came up with this year for a whole whoppin  $2 bucks!!

Found some old music books at a music store, he had a whole bin, they were $1 each. I bet these people on the cover had no clue how happy they would make a girl at Christmas 30 years later.....



Cut about 1 inch strands

staple together like you did in Kindergarten when we made paper chains...

and wala....

 

I heart them soooo much! They look perfect on my tree.

 

 

Here are some other peaks of Christmas around our house

 

I got a little obsessed with lights this year. I have them in every room.

 

 Our first package received, a Fresh Island Sea Wreath. (I guess I should have taken a picture of it out of the box....maybe on another post)

 

Placed my "Intentional December" jar next to the coffee pot so I will remember to pick one every day (you can read about what that is here)

 

 

this makes doing dishes much better.

Training up children to have a servants heart

Our family service board.

I have been meaning to do this post for almost a year now and kept putting it off. Every time I sat down at the computer to blog, I had something else I wanted to post and thought maybe it wasn't something anyone would have interest in anyway. Well Sunday night we had some friends over and they were really excited about our "family service board" and wanted to make one for their home. So here I am, finally posting about it. I think maybe my readers will enjoy it and now it has even more meaning because I have proof that it actually has worked for almost a whole year in our home.

We use a very large chalkboard because that's what I had. You could use anything really; a white board, a poster board, or whatever else you already have handy.
Write this verse (Rom 12:10-11) or any other verse that speaks to you and your family about serving others before yourself.

And under the verse I write each of our names (which I have blacked out in this photo for privacy reasons). Our goal is for each persons name to have other family members initials next to it by the end of the week. That means that every time my son serves my daughter with out being asked (like putting her clothes in the hamper that she has left in the bathroom) he gets to write his initials next to her name. Make sense???

*blacked out our names with hearts because I don't use my kids names on my blog anymore and if you are wondering what the sloppy writing is, that is our 5 year old writing initials for everyone. When I serve him, he runs and writes my initials next to his name...

 

LET ME JUST TELL YOU, this little silly chalkboard puts a fire under my kids butt. They are eager to help dad take out trash, clean up food from the floor, clean up after each other, help me with putting away dishes.. Of course in the long run I'm hoping that we our teaching our kids to step out of their selfish space and serve others before being asked. Praying this pours out of their lives in ministry work when they become adults......however for now, it's a huge blessing to me and keeping our home clean. I need all the help I can get these days.

So I pray and hope it works for your family the way it has for us. Have fun with it, change the verse once in a while and don't feel bad if there is some weeks you feel like they aren't into it anymore. We all have bad weeks! Just encourage them to use it again the following. week.

We are just a family trying our best to raise up children with a servants heart. That is the one character trait I KNOW will help my children in the future;as spouses,employees,followers of Jesus and pretty mush every other area of their life. We need less selfish people in our world. I pray pray pray for this quality in my children.

Nicole's Day in My Life Series

Good morning friends. So my sweet blogging friend Nicole, who I hope to some day meet in real life, asked me to participate in her Day in My Life Series. I feel totally honored to be taking over her amazing blog today. Please go check it out and leave her some sweet comments and of course follow her because she writes some pretty beautiful words and takes some really beautiful pictures.
I heart Nicole.

And I can't post something with no pictures so here is an iphone shot of  the families I got to take Christmas pictures for last night. I feel blessed to have a nice camera so I like to share my blessings with others, this is why I take pictures for free for anyone who asks. I'm no photographer but I love to make people have happy hearts........and to be real, most families can't afford a professional photographer, but it doesn't mean they don't deserve to have nice Christmas pictures taken with a nice camera.

Marriage

Marriage................can be a beautiful thing if you wake up every morning and make that choice.

My husband and I both come from broken homes. Both have no clue what a real marriage looks like. We have been married almost 10 years, and this year we decided to treat ourselves to a 3 day weekend at Hume Lake's marriage retreat. It was so beautiful and such an awesome time away. No TV, no radio, no computer, no phones, no social media, no kids....just the two of us enjoying God's beauty and some really really good speakers on the topic of marriage.

Love is a choice and an action. The more I choose to love my husband and show him how much I love him with my actions, the more beautiful our relationship is. I feel really really blessed to have him in my life and I am committed to showing him how much I love and appreciate him for the rest of my life, no matter how hard or tough things get! No marriage is perfect. Marriage takes a whole lot of commitment to be as beautiful as God created it to be, that doesn't happen just naturally on it's own. If you want a husband that loves to be around you and treasures you, you must love, adore and treasure him first.

So here are some of the beautiful shots of Hume Lake and the Sequoias. If you live in California, I recommend this camp to everyone. Ahh-mazing.

 

 

  

 

off roading in a samurai

 

 

 

 

 

 

the roots of a fallen sequoia

 I spy with my eye a mini me

Kings Canyon, the deepest Canyon in North America, deeper than the Grand Canyon.

 

I know this post is a picture overload and this isn't even half of all the pictures I took but everywhere I turned was a beautiful site and I had to share it with you.

 

I have been spending the last few days making some awesome homemade Christmas gifts, I can't wait to share with you so you can make them for everyone you know. Stay tuned.

 

The Just Simply Live Halloween Round-up

Thought it would be fun to share all my old Halloween DIY ideas for Halloween on one post!

I love Pottery Barn but would never pay their prices. Here is one of my most favorite Halloween knock-offs that you can do for almost free. Check out the tutorial here.

If your looking for a super easy and fast, yet festive dish to serve at your Halloween party, here you can find this super simple graveyard veggie pizza recipe. It's always a hit!!!

And of course my most favorite fall baking day includes making these adorable apple pies in a jar for teacher gifts and neighbor gifts or as a take home party favor for your Halloween party guests. Here you can find a step by step tutorial on how to make them.

Looking for a quick easy muffin tin meal for the kids before they head out the door for some trick or treating fun? Here was some of the items I made last year for our muffin tin meal.

I share this poem every year on Halloween, it's so perfect to recite with your kids while carving pumpkins, just a simple way to bring Christ into this fun holiday.

Open my mind so I can learn about You (cut off the top of the pumpkin)
Take away all my sin and forgive me for the wrong things I do (Clean out the inside of pumpkin)
Open my eyes so Your love I will see (cut out eyes)
I'm so sorry for turning up my nose to all you have given me (cut the nose)
Open my ears so your word I will hear(cut out ears)
Open my mouth so that I can tell others You are near (cut out mouth)
Let your light shine in all I say and Do! AMEN (place candle inside)


And who doesn't love chocolate covered strawberries?! Use white chocolate and some orange food coloring to turn them into pumpkins for Halloween. So.Simple.

Have fun and be safe! Peace out.

Just another trash to treasure

Remember HERE I told you about my side of the road trash haul?!

 

And how much fun I had re-doing this piece.

 

 

Well, this was another one of the pieces I picked up that day.

Before

 

After

Just adding pops of color to my house.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week. Hoping to get back into blogging soon. Did you notice my blog is now officially a dot com?? So happy to not have my last name attached to the blog, trying to keep things a little private now that my kids are getting older, don't want strangers knowing their full names. So PS, if you are thinking of starting a blog and your kids are young now, don't use your name in your blog url....