Catching Up

Here are a few things to catch up on what we've been up to in my blogging absence, in no particular order!

Here are the little E's on Easter this year.

Their Easter baskets.

Emily collects Ever After High dolls and I found one she didn't have. Ethan's love language is pretty much sugar. His basket had a lot of goodies and he was super excited.

Here is the wreath I made for Easter, thank you Pinterest!

Emily had to get glasses.

Ethan played basketball this year. The practices nearly killed me. 8pm on Monday & Tuesday nights! Who does that? After 8pm I have no filter or patience. My bedtime is usually right after the kids. Theirs is 8:30, so this was a labor of love. But, they finished #1.

Ethan turned 12.

He started middle school this school year and he plays percussion in the band. That's him in the back looking away from the camera. He was playing the cowbell for this song. I told him he did great, but I could have used some more cowbell. #igotafever

If you have no clue what I just said about the cowbell, you have to google it. Trust me. Hilarity.

Mark's grandma turned 90 and we partied hardy.

For Halloween Emily was a crazy cat lady.

Speaking of cats, we still have Tazzycat.

She is really a good cat. In fact, we enjoy her so much that we were considering a second cat. I started looking around at different shelters and such.

But in December, our house was burglarized. Yeppers, that was fun. They smashed our back window with a cinder block, took the tv, laptops, ALL my jewelry, and used my pillowcases to hold it all. They also stole my camera, so all these pictures are from my tablet. And in true Grinch fashion, they took the presents under the tree.

So after that, and talking about added security measures, we thought maybe we needed a dog. One that when people come to the door would bark. I thought this would be another added thing to scare off potential or would be burglars.

But I didn't want a puppy with all the training they would need and I really didn't want one that would shed badly.

 Anyway, one day in January Mark came home with this little girl.

Haha! She was probably about 3 lbs! And she's full grown. We named her Poppie. And she has a fierce bite. Ask my husband! She was laying next to me and he was getting into bed. Jealousy ensued. Their friends now, so it's worked out.

Ok, I normally wouldn't blog about this, but it's my blog and I'm going to blog about it anyway.

This was me in June of last year.

I found out my thyroid wasn't working, started meds for that,  joined Weight Watchers and then just started eating better.

Here's a picture of my and my mom at Easter.

It's not a full body shot, but I'm 67 lbs lighter. I'm still not done. I have about 20 lbs left to go until I reach my first goal.

Lastly, I decided to get this dresser out of our closet and do something with it.

After doing some major research on what to do with it, I decided to use chalk paint and paint it, I spray painted the hardware a metallic silver and it has turned out beautifully.

Here's the after.

It's Friday, peeps! I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Jennifer

This last week has been a busy, trying one. If you read my last post, you know that we've been having lots of trouble with Ethan lately and his behavior stinks to high heaven. The Hub called me yesterday at work to tell me he got a call from Ethan's school and that Ethan hit a girl (really hard) in class yesterday and that he was in ISS. After that call, I felt that I was the one that was slapped! Ethan is just so impulsive and just doesn't think. He's worse at home. No matter what we try, nothing seems to work.

So, please keep our family (especially Ethan) in your prayers.  I would really, really appreciate it.

Moving on, I made this little beauty the other day.

It's a cupcake liner holder. I found two candle holders from the dollar store and a drawer pull, add some glue and ta-daaaa!

I think it's stinkin' adorable. I just need to get more liners.

This afternoon, I made pretzel bites from Rhodes frozen yeast roll dough.

First, you thaw the rolls. Then I cut them in fourths. Boiled some water and gave them about a 45 second bath (I did 10 at a time.)

Then I placed them on some paper towels to dry. Baked them on a greased cookie sheet at 375 for 15 minutes.

I brushed them with butter and sprinkled kosher salt on half and cinnamon and sugar on the other half.  They were so yummy!

Last, I found a blog that showed me how to make homemade makeup remover pads. You can read about it here.

But bascially, I used baby shampoo, baby oil, water and some round pads.

I hope they work well. I'm anxious to try them.

Last, but not least, I'm linking up to one of my favorite blogs, Kellyskornerblog.com. Her Show Us Your Life this week is for Ministry Wives. Since my husband is a pastor, I thought I'd link up!

Pretty Crafty

OK, let me start out by saying that I am not a crafty-artsy person. The desire is there, I want to, but I just don't really know how. Like it states in the Bible, "The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." I want to learn to sew, can jams & jellies & craft my little heart out.

So I came across a new blog that really gave me some good ideas for some cute & easy crafts. Even the title of the blog sounds like something I'd say. Check it out here. 

I found a couple of crafts I couldn't wait to try. So, the next day I headed out to my local craft store. I started with this.

And ended with this.

Not too shabby, huh?

I also found a different craft that I spent a whole whopping $2 on at my local Dollar Tree. I found a patriotic platter and bowl, a little super glue and...

Taaaaaadaaaaaa! A new patriotic cake/cupcake stand.

It takes so little to make me happy.

On the Stinkbug side, it looks like Ethan is going to get lots of great help next year in 3rd grade. We had his ARD meeting last Wednesday and we made some plans for Ethan that includes speech & occupational therapy, as well as pulling him out of class for reading and math in order to pre-teach him ahead of time so he can keep up with his class. According to all the testing the school did with Ethan, that is how he will learn best.  SIGH OF RELIEF!!!!

It came to me today in church, while I was giving a praise of thanksgiving for the awesome ARD meeting we had this week, and I SUDDENLY remembered. Last summer before Ethan started the 2nd grade, I prayed for Ethan's 2nd grade teacher. I didn't know who he was going to get at that time, but I prayed for that teacher to be patient, kind, loving and have a heart for Stinkbug. He got that and more with Ms. Watts. She loved on him all year, tried different things, kept us informed and most importantly, she advocated for him all the way. She believed in him. God gave me such peace today and reminded me of my prayer for her before I knew her. God has His great hand in everything.