Thanksgiving Blessings

I am thankful for many things this year. I am thankful for God's grace, love & mercy. I am thankful for my husband and son. I am thankful for my family and friends. There truely are so many things to be thankful for.

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I am thankful for this guy right here. Bingo is a new addition to our family and we all just love him. He has a slight problem with jumping up but it is because he is just so in love with us as well. He gets incredibily excited when he sees Alex. They are amazing together!

Love this picture! Yes....that tongue landed...right in Alex's mouth! He loved it though. Ewww..
I love my little tree climbing man! Alex was playing in the front yard with Bingo. We looked out to check on him and found him like this.


Super funny boy!
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Our prayer is that all of our loved ones and friends have a Thanksgiving that is blessed beyond belief! Happy Turkey Day!

Trina's Shower Cake

Oh...the ways I love this cake! I am so pleased with how it turned out. I can not even begin to share all of the lessons I learned while making this cake! I will share one that I learned the hard way though:
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I thought it would be super smart of me to order the cakes premade from Brookshires and then just decorate them myself. I thought this would guarantee me a cake that tasted good as opposed to one I might make myself. I have never made a cake from scratch before and I doubted using a box mix so I figured this to be the next best thing to conserve time. BIG MISTAKE!
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While the cake did taste good, I learned a very interesting fact. Did you know that Brookshires charges the same price for a cake whether they decorate it or not? Yeppers, they sure do. What that translates to is about $47 smackers in UN-decorated cakes! Not gonna lie...I just about fainted. Not to be too caught up on the money aspect of it or anything but I had already spent $18.00 on colored M&M's and rock candy alone so another $50 made an impact on me.
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Moral of this short story...Trina & Baby Kenze are soooo worth it! Trina was super happy with her cake and I gained some experience...win win situation!

Homemade Apothecary Jars

Recently, I came across a super cute blog, Shanty2Chic, that I am obsessed with. One day, hopefully in the near future, I will learn how to link from my blog to another but for now, all I can do is give their website {A HUGE thank you goes out to Joy for teaching me how to link. You can not imagine my level of excitement over this!! Whoooo Hooo!} They are incredibly talented and use alot of the same stuff that I like to work with.

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Needless to say, I have been inspired. So much so that I kinda sorta in a way copied one of their projects. I just love apothecary jars but there is no way I can pay the kind of money people ask for them. I can however make some like the Shanty Sisters did. I made the 3 shown below and I love how they turned out! I made them using unfinished wood candlestick, wood rounds, wood finials and mason jars. Ok, one is an old olive jar I had in the cabinet...but you get the point) Again I say....TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH THEM!

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I have been letting my mind wander and come up with all sorts of seasonal things to fill them with. Whooo hooo! So excited!

David & Goliath

When your child has about a trillion things that he could be for Halloween, as a parent, you get pretty excited when they decide on something sweet. Alex literally wanted to be *everything* and *everyone* this year.

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For a while, the most consistent option was Jonah. This was wonderful in my book! My mind went wild thinking of all of the cute ways to make his costume. He threw me for a loop when he said that he only wanted to be Jonah if he could be inside the whale's belly.

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Excuse me?

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How in the heck am I supposed to do that??

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Oh no! You are serious!?

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Time for Plan B! Operation Let's Change His Mind & Talk Him Into Something Do-able officially began!

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Enter David, the Shepherd boy. Alex loves David. He is one of his favorite people from the Bible. Countless hours have been spent pretending to be David and using Tripp as his Goliath. This could work! All I had to do was convince Alex that he wanted to be David for Halloween.

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Here is what I did: I came home with the material for his costume and made a REALLY.BIG.DEAL.ABOUT.IT. Like, a big deal! So did Tripp.

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Worked like a charm! Leave it to our wonderful son to come up with the best 'prop' ever....his very own Goliath....Tripp! He asked in his oh so sweet voice if his Daddy could be Goliath and if I could make his Goliath a costume. Naturally, we both obliged. See below for proof....

No, I did not make Tripp do this. He did it totally on his own for his little boy. BIG KUDOS TO TRIPP!!! He really got into it too. It was so precious!

We took Alex to a sweet festival at ETBU in Marshall and had a blast! The boys were so cute together! So cute in fact, that a worker for ETBU at the festival asked to take their picture! Talk about making a momma smile!! Alex was sure to tell everyone who he was that night and to tell David's story. He said numerous times that he was not afraid because he had the Lord on his side. Awh!!! How amazing that his sweet spirit was able to shine for Christ even though he was surrounded by all of the worldly costumes of today's time.

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We made some wonderful memories as a family that night. Thank you Jesus for giving our son a heart for you. Thank you allowing us to raise him and teach him to love you with all of his heart! As you love us....with all of your heart!

It's the Most...

Wonderful time of the year!

I love this time of year! I just makes my heart soo full of joy! Thanksgiving & Christmas are filled with such wonderful times with family and friends. As Alex gets older, he gets more "in" to holidays like most other kids and it is so amazing to watch him evolve with it. Though he is fully aware that Santa Clause is just pretend, he loves to talk about him and play imaginary games with him. So Precious!!

On our rides to school in the morning we have been talking about all that we are thankful for. It is so amazing to listen to the heart of a child as they describe all that they are thankful for. Things that as an adult we take for granted....at least I do anyway. For example, when was the last time I actually showed thanks to my car tires? Pretty important items don't you think? I can honestly say that I have never said thank you to my tires. Alex did. He even gave them a sweet little pat and tried to kiss them before I intervened. (being thankful is one thing...but a nasty tire kiss? I had to draw the line!) I learn something from my sweetie everyday!

I am so excited about Christmas and the true reason for the season. God has been so amazing to me and in my life that I just find tremedous joy in being able to celebrate him and praise him. I am even moreso excited to share this love with Alex.

So....here's to the Christmas season....yes, before Thanksgiving has arrived!