Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Faith Outside the Box

Do you put God inside a box? Do you think He can only do those things that are within that little box? Do you believe that He can do greater things outside "your" box that you have put Him in? My answers to these questions might surprise you if you know me well. These questions were presented to me a few months back, only a few weeks after my mom was rediagnosed with cancer. I believed that God could protect, care for and love my mom through this cancer, but just to be honest my faith was wavering on a true miracle. I was putting my God in that box thinking He can do this or that, but never trusting fully in that miracle. I pray daily for my mom and her healing, but today was different. Today she went in to get the results of a routine scan. As I was driving this morning going about my day I was struck convicted (presumably by the Holy Spirit) that I HAD been putting God inside my little box. I prayed and confessed that I KNEW God could work a miracle, that there could be a clean scan! Three hours later my phone rang and my heart pounded as I answered....CLEAN SCAN......NOTHING was "glowing"!!! The Doctor said there was NO ACTIVE CANCER! Praise the Lord!!

Now, I am not the only one who has been praying, many, many people have been praying. Our family is forever thankful for those prayers! Today has been a true testament to prayer and God's modern day miracles! Today I have relearned something I already knew...God LOVES us, God wants to talk to us, God is our healer, GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS!
1(A)Give ear to my words, O LORD,


"Consider my groaning. Heed the sound of my cry for help, my King and my God, For to You I pray. In the morning, O LORD, You will hear my voice; In the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch."
Psalm 5:1-3



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Monday, February 22, 2010

Houston We Have a Problem.....

YES! You counted right...8...the amount of boxes of Girl Scout Cookies Mr. Nice brought home! Not sure if I should be upset or excited about this?

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Saturday, February 20, 2010

Days Like These.....

I cherish, becuase I know they will not last forever.
Days we can do art in our PJs...

Have a yummy snack that makes us want to lick our fingers....

Play dress up until we get too tired of that and decide to play babydolls....

Then have a picnic lunch on beanbags....

Then end the afternoon with a madeup, fun drink we like to call the "tuti-fruti wazatuti"!

No, I did not get any laundry done on this day but I got more than enough hugs and kisses...at least enough to last until the next day!

"A joyful heart makes a cheerful face.." Proverbs 15:13a
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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Colorful Delight

My friend posted the other day about these cute little crayons they made from crayon scraps and we just had to try it out! First Sugar and I found all the broken crayons and peeled all the paper.  She enjoyed this a little too much, because when she finally caught on to what I was doing she started breaking more crayons! We put them in our 50 cent muffin tin we found half off in the $1 section at target and followed Amy Lauren's directions found HERE.

We had a great time coloring and drawing with our "New" crayons when we were through!

I may invest in one of these next....

You can find it HERE. Happy coloring!:)
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Random Acts of Kindness Week!

This week is the national "Random Acts of Kindness Week"! Each day our family is trying to do an act of kindness for someone else...something we should do EVERYDAY, not just during a particular week. There are TONS of ideas and if you need some help you can visit the Acts of Kindness website HERE.  Yesterday we were trying to think of what we would like to do.  I had planned on making us chili and a chocolate pie for dessert.  I had enough ingredients to make 2 pies, so we thought it would be nice to share one with an elderly couple that lives across the street from us.  Spice was super excited to help make the pie! This would make the 4th pie of its kind that I have made in the past week! It is SOOO easy, yet SOOO yummy!! You can find the recipe on one of my favorite blogs HERE. We had a great time together making the pies and then walking them over to our neighbor.  Spice was so proud!


Do you have an idea for a random act of kindness? Let me know your ideas and if you are joining in during Random Acts of Kindness Week!:)
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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Whats for Dinner? & "The Honesty Award"

So tonight I had to shop the pantry to come up with dinner. Usually this might turn into canned veggie night, PB&J night, soup or cereal night. Tonight I was lucky, for one thing I started thinking about this at 4:00 instead of 5:00, and I also had thawed out some ground beef that I was going to use in some form or fashion. The internet is a handy tool when it comes to serching for something like a last minute recipe! I also knew that I had some frozen hash brown potatoes I could do something with. Wala...I found a beef and hash brown casserole that looked easy enough. This does sound like something straight out of the school lunchroom, but it was EASY and YUMMY. I may be creative in some areas, but cooking not so much. Most likely you will find my sister-in-law making up something good in the kitchen. I like easy recipes that do not take too many tools or too much time. After being married about a month I was well over all the kitchen thingamabobs we got as gifts!


Ok so here is what you need:
1 1/2 lbs of ground beef
1/2 envelope of dry onion soup mix
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp of pepper
1 lb of frozen hasbrown potatoes
2 tbsp. soy sauce
3/4 c shredded cheddar cheese
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 soup can water
(after typing this out I see I made a mistake tonight...I only used 1 lb of meat and the whole envelope of onion soup....it still tasted fine...otherwise I would not be posting this)

Brown meat and drain the fat. Put into large greased casserole and sprinkle dry onion soup mix over meat. Top with frozen potatoes. Mix soup, water, salt, pepper and soy sauce together until well blended. Pour over meat and potatoes. Cover with foil or lid and bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Remove lid and top with shredded cheddar cheese. Bake for 15 minutes longer. Serves 6.



On to the honesty award.....
Rules for this Award
1. Must thank the person who gave you the award and list their blog and link it.
2. Share "10 honest things" about yourself.
3. Present this award to others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.
4. Tell those people they've been awarded HONESTY AWARD and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

1. THANK YOU Lauren .... you must checkout her cutie pie little boy! Lauren is a sweet girl that I went to high school with.
2. HONESTY...

1. I am a bad procrastinator!! I know that I have a million and one things to do, but I seem to always wait until the last minute to do them. I tend to think I work best under pressure, but this stresses Mr. Nice out to the max. I am TRYING to do better!

2. I have caught the baby bug! I am not sure if it is because a few friends have recently had a baby and a few are expecting very soon or maybe it is because I just went through all the baby clothes sorting out want I did and did not want to keep? Seeing those teeny tiny 0-3 month onesies just make me want to melt! I am praying hard about this and asking for God's will in this.

3. Some days I want to get in the car and take a long drive.....alone...yes I know I just said I have caught the baby bug, but some days my 21 month old and 3 1/2 year old really do a number on me!

4. I wish I were more fashionable! I love cute and fun clothes, but when it comes down to it I am totally in a mommy slump! I see no purpose in wearing something around the house that is uncomfortable or hurts my feet!

5. Eggs from restaurants freak me out! I am ok with Craker Barrel or some other type of home cooked breakfast place, but I WILL NOT order an egg from McDonalds or any fast food place. Really! I think they are fake! My father-in-law likes to give me a hard time about this; he loves to bring it up about once a month.

6. My sister-in-law talked about on her blog how she used to collect stamps and now she is collecting quarters. When I was a kid I collected pigs...yes pigs! We did not live on a farm or anything like that, but I had all sorts of pigs. My mom recently gave Spice a little glass one I had, she like to carry it around the house.

7. I love catching Spice sing or pretend play when she does not know I'm listening. I just think it is so cute and I love hearing the things she says. She cracks me up on a daily basis!

8. I love the words Sugar tries to say, they always come out so cute. I also love the fact that Spice has to translate for me a lot, and she seems to know exactly what Sugar is saying!

9. My car is usually a WRECK! I really think I could win some sort of game show if they called out any random item, I would for sure be able to find it in my car! You can see more on that HERE.

10. I have recently been learning so much through reading my one year chronological Bible than I ever dreamed possible. I feel dumb sometimes when I read a small passage, thinking to myself what in the world does that mean?? Reading the Bible in the order it was written everyday has opened my eyes to things I had not seen before.

3. I now present this to WREN at the ROBBINS NEST and my friend at Ali and Lo!:)


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Monday, February 8, 2010

It's Back....

This morning we woke up to another white wonderland.  This time it was a surprise because we had not watched the news and had NO CLUE that it was going to snow.  This time it was beautiful and powdery, and perfect for playing in! The girls lasted a long time outside having fun.  Sugar would have been happy to go in after about 10 minutes (sounds like her mama).  Spice was content until she started getting cold and requested a hot bath (also sounds like her mama). 

Action shots down the slide...this tickled Spice the most!
Not too afraid to get wet and make snow angels...
Snowman Making 101....Daddy was at work, so we did not have him to help :(
waala..the finished product!
After a few bites of snow Sugar was ready to call it a day!



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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Burlap...the New Black

If you surf the blog world any you have probably come across dozens of burlap projects for home decor'! I had never thought of decorating with burlap until I read some of these ideas.  They all seemed fun, easy, and cheap! One of the most recents that I have stumbled across was the burlap wreath.  I had all the necessary items on hand so I whiped one up the other afternoon.  Let me tell you it WAS easy, and for me I had to buy NO supplies!
Here is my version:


Other Burlap Tutorials I Love:




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