In the Country...

How was your Mother's Day everyone? I trust it was spectacular! It went by too quickly for me but oh well it was nice none-the-less. My sweet little Roman got me this pretty lil donut with his own money <3 p="">

On our way to the Mother's Day festivities, we spotted a yard sale just  outside of our town out in the country and we stopped to take a gander and ended up meeting some of the sweetest people ever. It was on a farm and even though we came to browse the farm, the owner and his daughter showed my kids the animals and toured the HUGE property! I could not believe how genuine and wonderful this family was, and after 1 hour of visiting, we were invited over again soon. Isn't it amazing how you meet people at random and they end up taking a special place in your heart? That's why I love about living where I do. So many people complain about the negatives, but me? I choose to focus on the positives, of which there are always many.

I am a big reader, always have been. In fact, my cousins always joke that whenever we were playing together, I was always reading a book that was bigger than I was. This has never changed and never will but a love of reading has been passed onto my children as well. One thing that is a MUST in our house is reading together every night for at least 20 minutes but usually goes on a bit longer. My tip for parents to make this time even more special is to read with coordinating plush characters. They don't have to be the exact one, just something to let the kids visualize the story more and to let them know you put a little bit more thought into it as well!

Spending time with your children as part of a routine gives everyone something to look forward to daily and even gets them to calm down right before bed. It's amazing how the years have sailed by, but our routine has stayed the course...

Remember dear readers, to enjoy every single minute!

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Come on in...

Monday, how did you get here so fast? I hope the weekend treated you all very well! We have been busy, busy, busy but also very happy! Our weekend was full of fun but busy activities. We spent Saturday morning painting doors in our house. The front door got the RED treatment! The frame will eventually be painted black, but one thing at a time right now! Hahaha!!! The hardware is going to be spray painted black ASAP...well ASAP for me and for my husband it's pretty low priority! I also want to completely re-do this front porch. Planters, new mail box and hopefully a new screen door is on the list!

The other exterior doors were painted black and we plan on doing the same with the interior doors! This was definitely a time consuming project but let me tell you, the price of a couple cans of paint made a HUGE HUGE difference in this house!!! I love, love, love how the black looks!

We have begun our family hikes again. We plan on trying out different forest preserves and parks in the area and this is proving to be so fun! We are aiming to do at least 2 a week after dinner. Here the kids are learning how a water pump works and it got everyone pretty excited! It's a good thing we came across this AFTER our hike or this could have easily taken up the entire evening.

We trekked down into swampy areas to see if there were any signs of different animals around. Roman took a water sample here to check out under the microscope and YIIIKKEESSS!!!

The kids followed dog tracks down to the beach, but they suddenly stopped! It was fun watching all the different things they encountered and what they chose to take small samples of.

The first mini golf of the season was AWESOME and quite interesting! We were all incredibly rusty but it was sooo fun! (Pssst....I came in second place!). The interesting part came when we turned our clubs in and the skies opened up and suddenly a lightning storm began with pouring rain! It was incredible to watch from our car.

We spent much of the weekend at Home Depot and Lowes just picking up things for around the house. The kids love riding on these flat bed cars whether it is at Sam's Club or a home store, if it's on wheels, they are trying to hop on!

I spent the entire weekend fueling on this fantastic Iced Mint Green Tea that I made myself at home with MINT FROM OUR GARDEN!!! Even the kids absolutely fell in love with it!!
How to:

1. Boil 4 cups of water in a pan
2. After water is boiling, turn off and add 20 fresh mint leaves and 1 bag of green tea if desired.
3. Let steep for 6 minutes.
4. Remove leaves and Bag
5. Serve over ice! 

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In The Moment...

The weekend is upon us and I am just enjoying it all with my family.

Life is all about moments that we log away and these moments are what we look back upon when we relive our life. Do you live in the moment? 

I absolutely adore watching my children play together, those are moments that truly warm my heart and leave me smiling as I listen to them, watch them and sometimes even join them (if I am invited!). To see siblings get along is something a parent will always treasure. 

Homeschooling is a family affair. I love when I am busy helping out one child, another will step in and help their sibling. It makes a huge difference when you know you are not alone in this adventure. Even if my children are young, they can still learn so much by helping out mom and their brother or sister.

Field trips and outings are moments that not only will I remember but the children will as well. The Littles remember all the fun they had and Mom will remember how much they enjoyed examining every little thing that they came across. As a child, the world is all something of extreme amazement and I wish that we did not lose that when we got older, I wish we too could see it all just as a child does. Why are we in such a hurry to get into a store, why can't we stop to look at that ant, that crayon that was run over in the parking lot, that balloon someone let go as it flies up, up and away?  

Whenever I catch my antsy, active boy stopping to take a moment and draw, is always HUGE! He loves to always be on the go and coloring is very rare for him. New supplies is always a large draw and I know I can lure him in that way. He loved the opportunity to create a masterpiece.

Enjoy every minute friends!

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Wordless Wednesday...In this Moment...

In this moment, I felt the love going through all of them.

As we sat working on a puzzle of Sweden, they worked together and made my heart soar.

YES!

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December to Remember

Family Fun in December! I put together a tray and jar with some sparkly bells at the center of our dining room table last night for dinner. I handed everyone a marker, 5 notecards and instructions to write 5 activities they would like to do in December. I told them it could be anything the would like to do in Winter. With 5 in our family, this gave us 25 activities to do in December (1 each day). I explained that at times some activities would not happen as they were written but we would get creative with them if we had to. For example: Someone wrote Build a Snowman. If there is no snow, we will make some out of paper!

Do you like my Facebook Page?

Check-In with Charlie & see what this is all about!

Right Now....Sugar Shock!

We are having a family movie night with a sweet dessert spread!

Fresh Squeezed Strawberry Lemonade

Raspberry Cookies & Chocolate Graham Crackers

Blueberries and Strawberries

Vanilla Yogurt Dip, Watermelon and Applesauce

Mini PB&J sandwiches and raisins

Apples, York Peppermint Patties and Grapes

Forks and Pink Straws!

What are you up to tonight???

I'm Late...I'm Late...For a Very Important Date!

Morning readers! Today the Eclectic Artisans Team blog ring is exploring time management. The question posed this week, was How do you find time to Create, be on an Active Street Team & have a life offline? It took some thinking, but what I realized is that I work best with a schedule. I'm talking large posterboard Super Nanny Style schedule. I use it for life in general, not just shop related tasks. I print out small copies daily so I can check stuff off. Checking off a task makes a feeling of accomplishment. I only work early morning and late night into early morning. Other than that, my laptop is open when I am in the house and whenever I pass it I check in on my Team (I am team lead), my Facebook pages, Twitter, etc. If I do this each time I pass the computer it's only 5 minutes of my time. I manage to answer convos, relist, renew, tweet etc. Whenever I get a chance. When we head out to run errands, my laptop is in the car in case we hit a hot spot. At th elibrary story time? I pop online while the kids are doing activities and listening. I'm only a step away from them and still able to work. If we hit up fast food for dinner, while they are in the play place after we all have eaten, I'm checking information.

Right now, we're headed out to school in a bit, so while everyone is locating their backpacks, shoes, hats and such I am checking in and posting things. It helps to do blog posts and write descriptions for Etsy listing at night. I save all my posts here on blogspot and just click publish when the time comes. For etsy, I do the full out listing and just save the URL and don't click FINISH. Then I put all the URLS with the title of the item in a WORD document and this way I just copy, paste and FINISH when I want to list something new. I easily am up until 330 am every day, but this is the only time I have to fully dedicate myself to where I need to be online and still manage to have all the time I need for my family. (3 kids ages 4,3,2). Read about how IndigoOrchid manages her day to day tasks!