Easter Ideas

Hello!  I can't begin to explain the craziness that is our life right now.  I'm still exercising with BodyRock (albeit it's only 3 times a week) and still combing Pinterest when I have a couple minutes to spare.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to post some pics of what we've done with our house because we're about to put it up for sale (one of the four things going on right now).  Remember the whole different carpet in every room thing when I posted about decorating the kids' rooms?  Well the rest of the house was just as bad.  But with some creative solutions and good choices we've been able to update it much more than I expected.

For now though I thought I'd share some great ideas I've found online or on Pinterest for Easter because it's only two and a bit weeks away.... yikes!

First, I'm obsessed with Subway Art.  When I post pics of our house, you'll see one I made for our living room that has important places and dates for our family.  Here are a couple cute Easter subway art printables.  Click on either image to go directly to the site where you can download them:

Source: Yeah, That's Macho & Tough

Source: Eighteen25

Last minute Valentine ideas

I just realized Valentine's day is on Tuesday.  I have Mason's class Valentines ready but I haven't thought about what to do for anyone at home!

I'm definitely going to create my own version of this card I saw on Pinterest for DH.   

source:  stylemepretty.com via Pinterest

I love the 'two halves make a whole' idea, but I'll use the red paper left over from my Superhero Valentines to create the half hearts and put them on a blank note card.  Then I'll write him a little love letter inside.  You could easily create something like this on your computer and then print it onto cardstock yourself.

BodyRockTV - 30 Day Challenge: Week 4... the verdict is in.

I'm completely sold on BodyRockTV.  It's an amazing way to add exercise to a busy day and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in getting in shape.  So... I'm going to share my before and after pics with you.  I'm doing it reluctantly, but I'm so impressed with the results after only four weeks that I think the pictures will tell a better story than anything I can write.

ECHOage - A great idea for making kids' birthdays more meaningful

This week I got an emailed invitation to a birthday party for one of Mason's classmates.  The email came via ECHOage, a website that was created by two moms who thought there was a better way to celebrate birthdays.

Here's what the site says about itself:

ECHOage is a online birthday party service where children learn the value of giving and receiving while celebrating. No matter what your child’s party theme or venue, you can easily ECHOage ANY party.

Step #1. Choose an invitation, select a cause and invite your guests.

Step #2. Guests RSVP and contribute [via online credit card payments] and you get to watch the giving grow on your ECHOage Tracker.

Step #3. When your party is over, you get half the funds in the mail from ECHOage to purchase any birthday gift you wish to have AND you donate the other half to a charity of your choice.

Easy on guests, meaningful for kids and fun for everyone!

There are lots of things I like about this idea.  First, it's super-environmentally friendly.  No invitations, no wrapping paper or toy packaging to throw away.  Second, as soon as I sent my RSVP and contributed to the party online I received a certificate for Mason via email thanking him for making a difference so I can explain, as well as I can to a 3 year old, that part of his present to Andreas is to help other people.  Third, a straight donation makes gift-giving easy and takes away the 'What should I get'? that I find plagues me every time I have to make the decision for a little person other than my own.  Lastly, and this is the most reason in my opinion, I throw birthdays for my kids to celebrate how special and important they are to me, not for them to get presents.  In fact, every invitation I've ever sent out requested 'Best Wishes Only' but we have unbelievably generous friends and family and they never come empty-handed.  Using ECHOage, we would be able to donate half of that generosity to a worthy cause and I love that, because I want birthdays to be about the celebration of the individual, not about what they get from people.

As for the other half of the contributions that are mailed to us, I think I would put it into a savings account either for university or to help my kids buy their first home.  But that's just me :)

Want to ECHOage your next birthday party, here's a link to their website.

Have a great weekend!

- Jacs

BodyRockTV - 30 Day Challenge: Week 1

In December I kept seeing images on Pinterest of ridiculously fit women watermarked with a bodyrock.tv logo.  When I clicked on a couple of these pins, the pinners' comments beneath the photos kept saying the site had quick but effective workouts. 

I know that when it comes to exercise you get out what you put in, but I also know that the workouts I was doing from my brother's site focused on quality rather than quantity and rarely took more than 30 minutes (....mind you, I told him anything more than 30 min probably wouldnt' happen so that may be why mine were short!).

As I mentioned in my first post of 2012, I completely fell off the fitness wagon last year and have been feeling pretty blob-ey.  Since my New Year's goal is to focus on doing things that make me feel happy with who I am, getting myself moving and strong again was at the top of my to do list.

One Bite at a Time: how to simplify & organize your everyday

I was browsing through Pinterest the other day and stumbled upon a healthy living site that recommended an e-book called One Bite At A Time.  It touted the book as a great resource for simplifying and organising your life and at only $4.00 (after entering the HAPPYNEWYEAR promo code), I thought it might be a good way to get started on my New Year's Goal.

This may have been one the best $4.00 I've ever spent.  I've read the first 25 pages and I love the way the book is laid out as a series of projects (52 in total) as well as its straightforward advice.  It feels like it was written just for me because it addresses so many areas that I want to improve and the format is perfect for my task-based personality (it has checklists!).

My Pinterest obsession

I love Pinterest.  It's true.  For the first two weeks after I got my invitation I probably spent 4-6 hours a day on the site.  It was so exciting to see a community of women (although it isn't only for women) accumulating beautiful ideas, projects, and above all else, inspiration on one site.

For anyone who hasn't heard of or understand what Pinterest is, it's a place where you create virtual clipboards that categorise information by topic (ie. fashion, diy projects, recipes etc.).  So when you come across something amazing online, like your next DIY project or a fabulous workout routine, you pin it!  For me, it allowed me to clear out my bookmarked pages and put all the information I had accumulated into a place that made it easier to catalogue and then find the wonderful things that I ran across online.  Each PIN on your clipboard is a link to the site you found with a picture (from the original site) that gives you a visual reminder of what you pinned to a specific board, which is SO much better than the descriptions I used to type into my bookmarks!

This is my collection of boards on Pinterest.  I have 15 boards.  The ones shown are Design, I want to do that!, love it, Food, Organization, Style.   Each thumbnail is something I've pinned onto the different boards and links back to the site where it came from.

2012 here I come.

I am surrounded by incredibly intelligent, motivated and talented people.  It can be a little daunting at times but mostly it's just inspiring and I find it drives me to be a better person.

Today I came across one of my sister's blog postings on Facebook.  It's about New Year's resolutions and how she would prefer to set goals for herself.  Her goals for the year made me pause and think about the things that I wanted for myself.

2011 proved to be an interesting year with many challenges, the most difficult of which was mourning the loss of my father who passed away unexpectedly near the end of 2010.  It took me over 4 months to not cry into my pillow every night before I went to sleep.  After that, it was another couple months of thinking about him every day and feeling the loss.  Then as the anniversary of his death came soon after Mason's 3rd birthday I fell into a dark time where the very idea that he no longer existed was something that I couldn't comprehend (this was also around the time that my blogging took an unexpected hiatus, my exercising came to a halt and everything other than my family and DH's work simply stopped happening).  In fact, one day I was driving and a man in a truck bore so many physical similarities to my Dad that it took me a couple minutes to stop seeing my father behind the windshield and recognize that it was someone else.  I can't fully explain how odd and difficult a time it was, but I worked very hard to not fall into a deep depression at that point.

I think for the most part of the last year I kept myself busy and focused on my little ones to keep the sadness from consuming my days.  In part this ended up being a blessing but I think it also prolongated the grieving process.

On the flip side, the need to keep myself busy led me to create this blog which opened my eyes to something I love to do.  Create, share, and (hopefully) inspire.

I love that this blog has given my projects a purpose (not that why I was doing things in the first place wasn't pupose enough!) and has motivated me to really delve into my creative self.  It's a part of me that I hadn't given much time to in the last ten years or so and it's nice to have it back.

My goal for this year is simple, to focus on what makes me feel happy with who I am. 

I have a feeling that 2012 is going to be a very good year.

Happy New Year!

- Jacs

Printing on Chocolate & Cookies?!

I was on Facebook for a couple minutes while the kiddies were having lunch and one of the ads caught my eye for The Designer Cookie Boutique & Bakeshop. 

I've seen photos printed onto cakes, but I've never seen graphics like these printed onto cookies and chocolate!  There are a number of ideas on their site that are wonderful.