my blessed life

Congrats to Marie of Martha-wannabe for winning the *bunnies & cabbages* pieces in my Spring Giveaway!! Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway!

I don't know about you, but I am SO excited that Fall is practically here! I enjoy all four seasons, but Fall is by far my personal fave. In honor of this wonderful change of the seasons I've been sprucing up my blog and am having a *GIVEAWAY* !! Whoo Hoo!! My sister, Kari, who blogs over at logorrhea , has recently opened her etsy shop, etc design . She is very creative and has some of fun goodies there, such as: jewelry and t-shirts, with more to come! Go check her out! I have decided to give away a pair of her fall themed earrings in honor of this lovely season! They are so cute, I wish I were getting them:) Exclusive design. One-of-a-kind item. Handmade. Sterling silver fishhooks. About 2-2.5" long To enter to win, click over and check out her designs , then come back and leave me a comment telling me your favorite and your name goes in *the hat*. :) If you post about this giveaway on your blog or you tweet it, let me know and I'll e...

Several months ago I won a copy of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. It is a wonderful cookbook and I have enjoyed reading through it, but I'm ashamed to admit that I've only just now made one of the recipes in it. Better late than never though, right?! As a child, snickerdoodles were my favorite cookie. My grandma would always make them at Christmastime and she would freeze extra so that whenever I visited throughout the year there would be some for me. So today when The Princess and I were discussing what kind of cookies to bake my mind wandered back to these. Now my grandma always used the recipe on the Gold Medal Flour bag--and I have one that she cut off of the bag. But after comparing recipes, I decided to try the one in my new cookbook. It was almost exactly the same, except it calls for all butter and the Gold Medal one called for a combination of butter and shortening (and you know me and my love affair with butter!). They turned out delicious!! I freely admit to eating...

According to Wikipedia , April 22nd marks the anniversary of the beginning of the modern environmental movement. I don't know how long it's been celebrated, although I've heard of it before I really always forget about it. However, lately I'm thinking more about taking responsibility for how I treat the environment--and setting an example for my family. Some things I'm doing are: recycling all my plastic shopping bags recycling plastic storage bags (like Ziplocs) changing all light bulbs to the compact fluorescent ones buying more organic foods switching to *green* cleaners My next thing is to start taking my own bags to the store with me. I was getting ready to invest in some of those canvas bags that you can get at Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart for 3/$5.85--then I found this awesome project. Being involved in student ministry insures that I have more t-shirts that I could ever possibly wear, so I'm making them into resuable shopping bags! Well, to be honest, I'...