my blessed life

Are you enjoying some Spring sunshine where you live? We sure have been here in Arkansas! I've even had the windows open, enjoying the fresh air. I love this time of year! So in honor of Spring and Easter, the seasonal decor had to come out:) This is actually MY Easter bunny. I really haven't gotten her out in years, but this year out she came and she even got all freshened up with a bath. My aunt crochet her for me (and many, many more boy and girl bunnies for all of my cousins) as a child. Here's the Spring coffee table decor. I just added bunnies. These are a pair my mom gave the kiddos a couple of years ago. They take them off and play with them, but when they're not playing they park themselves on my table. Here are some of my vintage Easter postcards. They're so pretty! Here's my other Easter bunny. I adore him! He was a gift as a child, too, from a lady in our church. She's the same one who painted my beautiful nativity. Here are the *fab...

Remember this is the next-to-last day to enter my SPRING GIVEAWAY !! Go here to enter!! ******************************** I hope you had a fun St. Patrick's day~we sure did! We created some great memories and fun traditions this year. We gave the kiddos some {chocolate} gold coins to start the day:) Then we did a little study on St. Patrick himself. Veggie Tales has a great short video about him on The Sumo of the Opera video. We also checked out a few more videos online. We enjoyed some coloring pages to celebrate the day, while listening to some Irish music. I dug through my cd's and found some Enya and also a great worship cd from Hosanna that was recorded in Belfast with Robin Mark. We enjoyed corned beef with veggies and Irish soda bread for dinner. It was very good! It was the first time I've ever cooked corned beef, although I'm a big fan of Ruben sandwiches. Mr. B especially loved the beef! The soda bread was interesting, sort of like a big ...

Isn't this the prettiest cake?! I just love it!! The kids and I made this for St. Patrick's Day and had a lot of fun doing it. My sister sent me a link to this great idea here and I sort of modified the recipe a bit for us. First, start with a couple of white cake mixes. Or in our case, a *classic white* and a *French vanilla*, since that was what I had:) Just make the mixes as directed on the box, combining them in one bowl. Next, divide your cake batter evenly into 6 smaller bowls. You're going to put {approximately} 1-1/2 cups of batter per bowl. Then dye each bowl a different color. I suppose you could get crazy with the colors, but we went with the traditional rainbow colors. I used gel food colors for the first time and really liked them. They were easy for the kids to use, too. Then you start pouring your batter into your cake pans. WAIT! Don't forget to grease and flour your cake pans (like I did!). This is important, even if you're u...

May the road rise to meet you. May the sun shine warm on your face. May the rains fall softly upon your fields. Until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of His hand. ~An Irish Blessing Have a great St. Patrick's Day ! {Drop by here to enter my SPRING GIVEAWAY }

Don't forget to enter my SPRING GIVEAWAY !! Go here for all the details. **************************************************** I don't know about you, but the month of February totally wiped me out this year. Here it is the middle of March and I am still trying to get caught up. I'm not sure how it happened. There just seemed to be a lot going on in that short month this year! And the winter felt sooooo loooooonnnngggg. I fell totally behind in housekeeping, laundry, paperwork, exercise, cooking...I basically just hung in there to stay on track with homeschool. And some days didn't seem like I was succeeding in that even..ha! It's so much harder to get back on the organizational bandwagon that it is to fall off, isn't it?! But this week finally feels like I'm bouncing back. Thank goodness! I don't cope well when everything is out of order~just ask my husband:) So far this week, we are more than on track with school (and enjoying it, to boot)...

0101. enjoying God's creatures great... 0102. and small 0103. enjoying having my family over for dinner 0104. that good feeling you get when your house is clean 0105. listening through the open windows to my children playing outside 0106. seeing the first buds on the trees 0107. friendly competition on the Wii 0108. the fun of making new friends 0109. the wonder in the eyes of a child 0110. the anticipation of change P.S. Don't forget to enter my Spring Giveaway this week!!

Ahh...I feel much better now after cleaning out my refrigerator. I was quite chagrined at the forgotten leftovers in there. I'm usually a little better about *recycling* them, but the past couple (or three or four) weeks have really overwhelmed me. Not sure why. I just feel behind on everything! But I'm getting back on track this week~I have to! So...this week is St. Patrick's Day !! Do you celebrate that day? I must admit that growing up the only celebrating I ever did was to wear something green in order to avoid getting pinched at school...haha. I'm not sure that counts as celebrating. More like survival:) This year is going to be a little different. Now, folks in Arkansas really don't go all out for St. Paddy's day or anything~at least, not like the East Coast. But we are going to have our very own family celebration. Maybe we'll create some new traditions. We actually have Irish ancestry on both sides of our families, plus...