Homemade Christmas Gifts!

One thing our family does at get together to cut costs is to do a Homemade Gift Exchange. I love it it is super fun! Here is what I came up with this year!

Cinnamon Applesauce ornaments that the kids made for Grandma Kathy! We found the recipe on this blog

I also made this adorable car caddy that I found on this blog!

Here it is all opened up! And Little David volunteered to give away 6 cars with the gift. 

I made this run around bag! No pattern just traced a bag !

And it is reversible!

A Sword and Shield! Totally from my own pattern! I made the sword with hot glue and old packing foam. The shield of course is stuffed like a pillow.

I can't take credit for these adorable houses. I got the idea on Pinterest  from this  blog but the full tutorial is here .  I did however make the bed and chair all on my own!.
 

and they close up and you can carry them with the pretty ribbon handles.

Beauty in the Midst of Chaos

Our country has had so much horror happen in the last month that it is so hard to remember that there is still beauty here.  I was reminded of some beauty this week and I wanted to share with you. 

 Beauty for me was my kids all dressed up for their Christmas Program at church sitting in front of Grandma Patty's Christmas tree, it was the children at church singing in their program, it was the dad in front of us looking at his son with so much love that you could never capture it in a photo, it was the girl a few rows ahead worshiping through sign language, it was the precious time spent with my husband assembling a Christmas gift, it was the preciousness of my husband rocking the baby to sleep for his afternoon nap, it was the preciousness of my girls cuddled up with Granddad to watch a movie, it was the beauty of the pair of cardinals in our back yard, it was the uncommon visit from my Great Grandpa, and it was the sweet newborn that visited my house this week.

So many times we seem to be blinded by the ugliness and Chaos that we forget to see the beauty.  What Beauty have you seen lately?  Leave me a comment, help someone else see beauty today. 

I captured a few glimpses of how beauty appeared to me. I hope you  enjoy the pictures. 

Getting Ready For Christmas, A Family Tradition

Every year shortly after Thanksgiving we decorate our Christmas tree and we make it a party!! So here are a few of the fun things we did! Finger foods, Air 1 Christmas music and of course Christmas decorations. What do you do special in the Christmas season?

Politics!- I don't know where I stand!

As you know yesterday was election day! Yay we got to vote! I believe everyone should vote but I do wonder sometimes if my little vote really matters. I am far from political.  I wish I understood more about our country and our governments decisions. But how do you learn??? Everything I research is so biased!  I have the republicans saying that democrats are lazy, homosexual baby killers and then I have the democrats saying the republicans are  selfish, uneducated, hate mongering homophobes.  So where do you go from there!!! I don't even know who to vote for because of all of the negativity  and bashing from both sides.  

I woke up this morning to a Facebook news feed flooded with hatred! People talking about losing friends due to their comments. I find this to be horribly saddening  What kind of country do we live in?  What kind of people are we?  

Here are a few of the negative comments I saw today.

• Sad day in America when for four years you can't get done what you say you will and then we reelect you
• Wow....this is a really sad night for America...
• I wonder how awkward it feels for Obama to realize half of our country did not vote for him?
• Judging by the electoral vote map the Midwest has again shown to have common sense. Can't say so much for the east and west coast.
• Don't worry guys the democrats put in their vote but most of the republicans are off work now so it will change soon.

and I think one of the most hurtful ones to me was this

I am just going to go back to helping those who want to be helped and make our own future, withOUT the help of the government.


This was hurtful to me because of my circumstances of life right now. As you have seen in earlier posts my family is on food stamps. My husband works 50 hours a week normally and 80-90 hours a week during harvest and we struggle to feed our family. I am building a business from home and working hard to get us into a better life where we font need assistance. but sometimes it is necessary and not because people are lazy.  I have heard numerous people say that we shouldn't go to the government for help we should go to the church(which in my opinion is the entire body of Christ not just one establishment) and well the church is failing and people are starving, and until you see your sweet children hungry you will never understand why people accept assistance.

 ...then i did see a few more positive posts like these

• No matter who wins this election, we as Christians are to continue to pray for the leaders of our country, we are to continue to be salt and light, we are to continue to disciple believers, we are to continue to allow our beliefs to govern what we think, say and do and we are to continue to evangelize this world.....Time to read II Timothy 3:1-17 especially verses 14-17.....
  Bad mouthing our leaders is not a part of our DNA as believers - it's time believers need to start acting like we read our Bibles and understand the times we live in. --Doug Jones
• I am so disappointed and my heart feels so heavy. :( Yet my God is so much bigger!
• This is our President and as a country that believes "One Nation Under God" we must pray over him and not persecute him.
  Pray that he will make the best decisions for our country and not him alone government as a whole.
• PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!

So regardless of how you voted and how the election turned out it is our responsibility as a country and as an American to show respect to our president and one another.  I am appalled at the stories I hear Republicans flipping off democrats, stealing bumper stickers, ect.  and I am appalled at the Democrats for stating that republicans are uneducated hate mongers.  But more than anything I am appalled at the people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ yet look just like everyone else.  I believe that God had a hand in choosing our president and I believe no matter what he deserves our respect.  I also think that we need to step it up as Christians and show our respect for others.  I have friends of both parties and they know me as a conservative. but we agree to disagree.  We have freedom of speech but that doesn't make it ok to disrespect your fellow Americans or your president.

We are Done celebrating Halloween!!!(maybe)

Does your family go trick or treating??

Mine does and I am not going to lie it is STRESSFUL!!  Every year we say We are never doing it again and then we do!

 Sometime we wonder if it is really worth the time and stress.  Then we watch our kids and their enjoyment out of their costumes and just the fun of the trick or treating that we know it is worth it. Here are a few pictures of this year.  

Here we have a Ninja(5 minute costume) a Sock Monkey (hour long costume) Lady Bug, Fancy Nancy!

How do you handle the candy? My kids ate two pieces the day after Halloween and they were CRAZY!!! So we limit them a lot and we only go to a few houses. I think if we lived in a town where you could walk around your neighborhood it would be easier to go trick or treating   We have to drive every where because people are so spread out. We went to 4 houses this year and we trick or treated for 2 hours!!! Yep 2 hours for 4 houses!


So what do I do with all the candy! Well this year I did very bad and ate way to much of it!! Whoops.

So I am still trying to decide what to do with this mass of candy!! I distribute it very slowly to my kids and i cant decide what would be better. give it all to them at once or give it to them slowly over the weeks?  So what would you do?? All at once or slowly?

David the Ninja

Malachi the Sock Monkey

Evanny as Fancy Nancy

Alexis the Lady Bug

Wardrobes, Time Management, and Insanity!!

Hmm Clothes, Time management and Insanity!? How in the world can those 3 topics be crammed into one blog post.  Well they can because in my life they all cram together so why cant they all cram together on My blog?  No Really I will tell you how it all crams into one!

It all started when I began to workout! This is a picture of me and my oldest after an Insanity workout!
Never did I think I would do Insanity!
When I started down my Fitness journey I weighed 230 pounds!!  I have lost 60 Whoo Hoo!!! Which leads me to the wardrobe part of my post!

Once I started working out I began to lose weight! Lots of weight!  This  picture is of all of the clothes that were TOO BIG!! Yipee!! I am doing a happy dance right now. :)  and that leads to Time Management? WHAT??? give me a second I am getting to how they go together. :) 

Once I started losing weight I  became more confident! and I decided I wanted to help others get results like I had gotten! so I was trying to do everything!!and getting nothing done! So I listened to Craig Holidays 90 days to excellence and he taught me how to manage my time!  so here is my beautiful Rainbow calendar and in one day of following this time management program My life has already been more at peach and I already have more accomplished in a  day than I thought possible!! 

A Fit Family!

When David and I were first married we always said
that we were going to have a healthy and active family. Well 4 babies later we were neither healthy or active, so we decided to make a change in our lives. Here is a photo of our family before we started this journey and before baby number 4.

And here is a more recent photo of our family after we started down our fitness journey!!

After I had lost around 50 pounds! and David had lost around 20! 

And now Fitness and nutrition is a part of out daily life! I workout every morning and am teaching my kids that working out should be a part of your everyday life!  and today for recess we had a push up contest!! It was fun! (I was going to upload the video but it will not upload so here is my most recent before and afters!!)

Want to know how I did it? send me an e-mail at livebetterdaily@beachbodycoach.com

A Day

Well I have been MIA from blogging lately. So I decided to update you on what we have been up to!

Here is a quick break down of our days

5:00 am Mommy works out!
6:00 am  mommy showers and reads her devotions
7:00 am Breakfast
8:00am School
11:30 am Room Checkpoint(which means the kids clean their room while I cook lunch)
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Quiet time and time for me to work my Beachbody Business
3:00 Snack Time
3:30 Chores
4:30 free time
5:00 start supper
6:00 eat supper
7:00 Evening chores/free time
7:30 family Devotions and jammy time
8:00 Bed Time for kiddos! Sometimes it is mommy's work time again. :)
10:00 Bed time

So we keep busy!!! No time for laziness in our days. :) and Since Daddy's job is demanding this time of year we don't see him much. :(   But I love my family and we are so blessed that David has a job!! Here a few pictures of our day!

Alexis doing some preschool work. :)

David reading me a book!

Evanny learning Spanish with Rosetta Stone!

Malachi Stealing the school supplies!

and stealing my shoes!

We have been learning a lot about our country this year. We have learned the Pledge of Allegiance, when it started why it started, ect. We have also been learning about Leif Ericsson,Christopher Columbus, Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, Squanto and are now studying the American Indians. With our American Indian study today we made WigWams.

What A Cute Jacket!-Re-purposed from a skirt!

Ok so I wasn't going to share this until the dress that goes to it is finished but I couldn't wait because I am so happy with how it turned out! I couldn't find a free pattern that I liked so I just decided to make my own! I am so glad I did and I so wish Alexis was up right now so she could model it for you but she is in bed and I want to post these pictures. :) I will have her model it when the dress is finished. 

I Started with this skirt that was in a bag of clothes someone gave us.

I used one of the girls shirts to make the pieces!

And this is what I came up with! Isn't it adorable!!

This picture has terrible coloring but, it shows the detail really well! 

Winter Ward Robe- A few more dresses done!

This Saturday My husband worked half a day and spent the rest doign school and my oldest son was gone to visit Aunt Mary! So I had some time to make a few more dresses!  I am up to 7 now!  Yay! I am over half way done I think! 

These were also some old sweaters. I made leggings or baby legs to match each dress!

 
 

and since I have lost 60 pounds since last winter I cant fit in to this blue long sleeve t-shirt anymore! So I made it into a t-shirt dress! So far I have made them 7 dresses (I will get a picture of the other one soon. Alexis wanted to wear it after it was made and then spilled chocolate on it so it is being washed!) So what was my total cost of their wardrobe so far? $3.00 !!!! Yeah this is my kind of back to school shopping!  The only thing I purchased was a bag full of sweaters from the thrift store which is always $3.00 for a Walmart sack full!
 

Summer activities!

 Here area a few activities we did on a Saturday when David was done with school for the week and not working!! It was amazing!

Shaving with daddy!

putting the shaving cream on!

Isn't this the cutest picture? I think every little boy should shave with their daddy using Popsicle sticks!

Then while they played outside we got to work on an obstacle course! 

He made it! it was much easier than we planned for it to be. :)

on the way back!

They got a treat at the end of the course! Fruit Roll-ups that Grandma gave Alexis for her birthday

She is coming back out!

She was the most excited about getting through!

They played with this obstacle course the rest of the day! making it different each time. They had so much fun they even saved the strigns and did again the next day!