Our Honor Board

You may recall the parenting book I reviewed back in March, Say Goodbye to Whining,Complaining, and Bad Attitudes in You and Your Kids. What I enjoyed most about this book was its focus on honor. Since reading it, we've worked as a family to show honor to each other. I can't say we are there all the time, and we continue to make plenty of mistakes, so I was trying to think of a way to help encourage my children to encourage, praise, and appreciate one another. I remembered a MOPS craft project I once saw on pinterest. Unfortunately, I didn't pin it because I didn't need to go back to it for instructions. Now I realize I need to just pin everything. It's not that I needed the instructions, but I would have liked to give credit to the blogger who inspired this idea.

Chocolate Mint Cake

Due to my mom's lung cancer, she hasn't been able to cook and bake like she used to. However, our family still congregates at my parents' house every Sunday afternoon and evening. While Mom no longer does much of the cooking or baking, we three daughters have stepped up. Usually I end up with the responsibility of desserts, mainly because I'm the only daughter who enjoys baking. 

Photography Technique: Pinterest Success or Fail?

I discovered what seems like a super cool (yes, I said "super cool") tutorial through pinterest that allows you to take amazing photos of items for your blog. Check it out here: handmadespark.com. 

As you can see on that blog, there is simply no background shown. It looks like the image has been cut out and pasted directly onto the blog page. However, I tried it out several times, adjusting various features on my DSLR, but I never achieved this exact result. 

I tried out the technique another day with about the same results. 

My Favorite Banana Bread

When my husband and I were first married and living in our first house, our next door neighbor was an elderly lady who loved baking. Her favorite treat to bring over was freshly baked banana bread. I loved not just the treat but the idea that she cared enough for us to bake us goodies. 

After we moved to a new neighborhood, I decided that I would always bake a fresh loaf of banana bread for any family who moved in on our street; however, the next two streets we lived on rarely got new neighbors until we moved to our current house where the street was only half-way finished. Over the first year we lived there, we welcomed lots of new neighbors. I can't say I've baked banana bread for all of them. Sometimes I opt for cookies, but I love welcoming families to our street this way, and they seem to like it too. I also add a note with our names and our home phone number on it. I've made a few friends this way and feel closer to these neighbors than any others. 

Creating Your Own Family Rules Painting

I've seen a lot of those "Family Rules" signs on Pinterest lately, so I decided it was time I made one for our family. However, I soon discovered that the signs I really liked were either (a) for sale or (b) made with vinyl letters that required owning a Cricut or Silhouette. Well, since I have yet to win one of those, I was out of luck. (I'm hoping Santa thinks I've been a really good year in 2013 though.)

I didn't want to buy a sign because I wanted it to be totally personalized for our family with every rule being ideal to our values we are trying to instill in our children. And, let's face it, I'm cheap. I figured if I was going to make my own, I had better look at all the possible rules various signs list and compile my own list. Here are fifty. Yup, fifty. I narrowed our list down to nine based on priorities and space. I then headed to Hobby Lobby to purchase a canvas, some black and antique white paint, and more stencils. I figured I'd do the lettering the same why I did for my Trick or Feet sign. 

I guess the most challenging part of this sign is the layout. Once I selected the rules I wanted represented, I had to make sure they would all fit on the designated canvas. To do this, I decided on the layout and size of each rule, whether it would be painted with one of the two one-inch fonts or the two-inch font. I then typed them onto word using Word Art with font as similar to my stencils as possible and tried out various options until I found one I liked. This just seemed easier than doing it by hand. It wasn't to scale, of course, but it gave me a good idea of how it would work.

Next, I painted my entire canvas black and let that dry as I prepared my stencils. It would have been smarter to paint the canvas first and let it dry while I was playing around with my lettering on my computer.   
 

The Christian Parenting Handbook Review and Launch Party

After reading and writing a review of Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller's book Say Good-Bye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes in You and Your Kids, I was invited to be a part of The Christian Parenting Handbook's launch team. Since their first book provided me with useful tools to encourage our family to focus on honor, I was excited about their second book. After all, in just two months of practicing what I've learned in their first book, I've seen noticeable differences in how my children treat each other and my husband and me. I feel like I'm a much more positive parent, which makes for a happier home! I will be sharing more on those differences in future posts along with some activities we've done to help our family stay focused on what we've learned, but right now, I want to share with you a little about what I've learned from their new book.

Blogiversary Celebration

Now that I've been blogging for over a year, I know I'm certainly a full year older and hopefully, I'm a bit wiser too, about blogging at least. Over this past month, I've shared with you much of what I've learned during my first twelve months thanks mostly due to the generosity of fellow bloggers, so I will end my month-long celebration with one last tip: Make fellow blog friends. While your non-blogging friends may follow your blog and offer up some moral support, they can't relate to what you are going through in Bloggy Land. Finding and growing relationships in the blogisphere is incredibly important in providing you with the support you need because they've either been there and done that or are going through it right along with you. It makes the whole blogging process a little less intimidating and a lot more fun!

Pipe Cleaners and Felt Fun

I am excited about two easy and inexpensive activities to make for your toddler or preschooler!