Lots of Things Happening..

I cannot believe that it's been over a month now since the last time I posted an update on the happenings of my life!! Things have been so hectic! My family has gone through a whirlwind of emotions with different events that have taken place.

Probably the most life changing event to take place since my last personal post is the passing of my grandmother. She and my grandfather took custody of me when I was only a year old, and they raised me. Therefore my grandparents are essentially my "parents".  It was late night on May 11th when I received the phone call that she'd lost her battle with lung cancer.

Do you know how incredibly hard it was for my entire family?  My grandmother left behind 4 children, 6 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren. Non of us were much in the spirits for trying to celebrate Mother's Day that weekend. How could we be when many of us had just lost the primary mother figure in our lives!?

My husband I made the decision not to let our daughters know before school the next morning about my grandmother's passing. They're 6 and 8, and were SO happy that day about it being their school's field day, and we wanted them to be able to enjoy every moment of it without being sad!

There's my Kay right smack in the middle of the picture!! She truly had fun that day, and she was so happy to be wearing PINK!! As a side note, this picture proves why I love having an actual digital camera as opposed to the camera on my phone. I was standing VERY far away from her, and the zoom on this works beautifully!

Maddie (in the yellow, on the line) had fun too on field day, and she got first place in her sprint! The girls' school has a youth sports program that has just started offering track & field this summer, so I took them both to sign up the other day. They're both excited for it, and I can't wait to watch them excel at whichever events they're best at! I'm equally looking forward to the fact that they won't be bored this summer!


Aside from Field Day and the passing of my grandmother, the girls and I have been busy with all of that "End of the school year" fun and activities. We recently attended the school's Science Night/Book Fair and the girls had a blast! Maddie and Kay of course wanted to stop at the book fair before anything else. They LOVE books and reading, so I can't tell them no when they ask for new books!

I love this picture that I was able to get of the girls that night! They're both HAPPY in it, and it's so hard these days to get a truly good picture of them together!

The girls were mesmerized by all the animals! I loved seeing their faces as they explored alligators, parrots, chickens, lizards, snakes, and more!







Their happiness in this picture says it all!











There have been some hard curve balls thrown in our family's direction, but we're keeping faith, and keeping positive attitudes! We've got a few more days of school left after Memorial Day before we sail into summer vacation!!

Life Updates, Excitement, and New Adventures!

It's been a while since I've posted anything aside from the Sunday coupons found in the Houston Chronicle! Life has been busy and honestly? I've had a tremendous case of writer's block! I'm disappointed with myself about that, and I plan to get back on the blogging bandwagon.

On the home front, things have been relatively peaceful! Gail is currently on a 6 month break from cardiology appointments (though she goes back May 9). We still don't know when her surgery will be, we just know that they want her to get bigger before it takes place. She is thriving every day!! She's got an AMAZING grasp of all her colors, and she has a special love for animals. It melts my heart to see her learning new things all the time!

Maddie and Kay are doing well also! Their most current excitement is getting ready for the end of the school year. Kay is getting ready for a field trip to the Big Thicket, and her end of the year music program. Maddie is getting ready for her first year of STAAR testing (we are keeping her pumped and POSITIVE about it!). Maddie and Kay are BOTH getting excited for Field Day, and Aloha Day. There's just lots of that "Almost Summer" excitement going on around here!

I call these three my 3 Musketeers because everything they do, they do TOGETHER. It's amazing to see how much love they share for each other (even if they do fight like cats and dogs sometimes). They start their days together, and equally end them together! Maddie and Kay get sad if Gail doesn't wake up to see them before they go to school, and Gail refuses to fall asleep at night if she's not part of our regular mommy/daughter bedtime prayer routine. I'm telling you there's no separating these 3!

I have started some new adventures, so I'm excited as well! It's something I've been thinking about for a while now (a little over a year), but fear of the unknown kept me from taking the leap.

I made the decision to start selling AVON, y'all!! I've been an AVON gal since I was 12, and I've always loved their products. Their eyeliner really WORKS, and they've got a newly released line of makeup that I can't wait to personally try! Shoutout to my best friend for encouraging me to join her team!! Aside from dealing with writer's block, I'd also kind of been in a funk of depression, and I'm already noticing a dramatic improvement in how I feel about life since taking this leap! I really can't wait to see what the future holds in store for me with these new endeavors (and for my family as well).

There are other new exciting things happening for our family, but I will write about those at another time! I don't want to jynx things by telling too soon, because nothing is set in stone yet!

For now, I'm going to get back into posting regular updates about our family life, and I'll be posting great AVON deals with each campaign! If you love AVON, and don't want to wait for the posts, you can take a browse through my estore here.

So now you know what's going on over here on my end! For now though, I'm logging out to get back to the cleaning! The weekend wiped me out with a toothache, and I've got lots to do before the girls get in from school!

#CharmVoxBox Unboxing Video

So um, I'm really excited about this Vox Box! There will be a more detailed blog review up in coming days!



If you're not part of Influenster yet, what's stopping you!?

Day 25: Love Takes Responsibility

25 days ago, I started on a personal journey to help build a stronger relationship with my kids. Some of you may be familiar with it, and some of you may not. The journey I'm on is The Love Dare for Parents. My decision to start this journey was brought on by many things; the biggest being life's stresses.

Since I've started this, my eyes have really been opened a lot, and I've been put into some uncomfortable positions, but it's all been well worth it!

Today is day 25. Today's challenge makes me nervous.

Today, when my children get home, I'll take them individually to the side and sit them down to really talk with them. Today? I'll ask them if I've ever hurt or wronged them in any way.

As a parent, I worry that the answer may be YES. Do you know how horrible that's going to make me feel if they say yes!? Today, I'm truly going to give them a genuine apology for ANYTHING I may have ever done that they might see as hurtful. It doesn't stop there though.

I haven't even gotten to the "action" part of today's challenge yet, and it has already internally opened my eyes that I need to strive harder at making sure my kids really and truly KNOW that I love them, and that I'd do literally anything on this Earth for them!

This is a journey that I'm very thankful to have started, and I'm going to make the very most of it...especially today.

Our Most Recent Gardening Adventures!

Gardening is a hobby that my husband and I started when we first bought our home almost 5 years ago. There are many reasons why we initially started this hobby!

For starters, gardening provides a way to cut down costs at the grocery store! This is why we try to keep it going year-round with fall/winter crops, and spring/summer crops. Additionally, it's nice to know what's used (and what isn't) in the process of growing our food!







So what's currently growing in our garden? Well, we've got as follows below:

• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Peas
• Cabbage
• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Radishes

We had black eyed peas as well, but the frost got those a few weeks ago... We also had accidental cantaloupe (no joke) that started growing from our compost pile, but I'm pretty sure the frost squashed those out too!

I'm very happy with the last two weeks though because we got our first pickings for broccoli and cauliflower! 

 We used the broccoli to make a chicken broccoli cheese & rice bake in the oven, and it was delicious!

We haven't used the cauliflower yet, being as it was just picked today, but I'm actively browsing Pinterest for ideas! Probably the BEST part about gardening is the reward you get in the end, and being able to create anything you want with it!

If you have a garden of your own, what do you like to grow in yours!?

#MakeItYours Christmas Cookies!

This post is sponsored by Country Crock, who sent me a coupon to get a tub of Country Crock free, in exchange for creating my own "Make It Yours" recipe. I love creating things in my kitchen, so I was really super excited about this!

Country Crock's "Make it Yours" recipe is as follows below!


Ingredients:

1 Cup Country Crock
1 to 2 Cups of your choice of mix-ins
3/4 Cup packed brown sugar
3/4 Cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 Cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375. Mix brown sugar, granulated sugar, Country Crock, egg, egg yolk, and vanilla in large bowl until well mixed.

Stir in flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda until blended (dough will be soft and creamy).

Add mix-ins (such as chocolate chips, sprinkles, nuts, dried fruit, etc.) into the dough until every spoonful of dough has some of the delicious mix-ins.

I personally used semi-sweet morsels, and white chocolate morsels for mine!

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets 3 inches apart. 

Even though it says to drop the dough by rounded tablespoonfuls, I decided to get creative, in the spirit of "Make it Yours," and the spirit of Christmas!

Bake 10 to 12 minutes until edges are golden. Cool 1 minute on wire rack. Remove from rack and allow to cool completely. 

Our cookies came out big and puffy, and CHRISTMAS-Y!!!

If you're using Country Crock's Make it Yours recipe, how do YOU plan on making it yours? I'd love to know!

Homemade Orange Jelly (My Happy Week of Canning)

I've been very busy in my kitchen since last weekend!! To give a little background info, I absolutely LOVE orange jelly! I'd found a recipe a little over a year ago that I tried, and was very pleased with the results...I actually almost cried when I used up my last jar of jelly!

Never Fear....ORANGES are Here!!!!!

One of my husband's friends has orange and lemon trees on his property. It came up in conversation one day that I'd made orange jelly last year. Well, on Thanksgiving morning, he brought a big basket full of oranges to our house! 

I immediately hopped on over to Farm Girl Tails, which is where I'd originally found the recipe that follows below.

Ingredients:

3 and 1/2 cups of fresh squeezed orange juice (I personally use my Hamilton Juicer)

1 box of pectin (1 and 3/4 oz.)

5 cups of sugar

1. Juice the oranges (around 8-10 medium to large oranges)
2. Pour the juice into a large pot, and then add the pectin and 1/4 cup of sugar. Bring to a rolling boil, and then add the remaining sugar. Return to a rolling boil again, stirring constantly for 1 minute (I usually do mine for between 3-5 minutes).
3. Ladle the jelly into sterilized jars. Clean the rims, and place the sterilized lids on the jars, followed by the rings.
4. Process the cans in boiling water for 5 minutes. 
5. Remove the jelly from the boiling water and let it set on a towel or wire rack for 24 hours to allow the jelly to set.

Below are pictures of the finished product from round 1 of my canning this week!

 

I ended up with 18 jars total from the oranges that were brought to us!!

A few days later, we were brought MORE oranges!!

I got a good 20 jars out of the 2nd batch of oranges! Not all of them are pictured, however, being as we've given some away to different friends and family.

The basket pictured above was only HALF oranges. The bottom half of the basket was filled with lemons. I've found a few recipes for THOSE that I'm super excited about, and hope to be able to share some canning adventures for those very soon!