CEIVA Giveaway at Our Ordinary Life

I have loved the idea of having a digital picture frame since having kids. I would love a way to display all the thousands of photos that I take and would enjoy seeing each day...not just when I happen to go through my pics on my camera. Right now Kristen, at Our Ordinary Life, is giving away a Ceiva Digital Picture frame to one very lucky winner and I'm trying my best to get as many entries as I can! ;-) I know this is an amazing frame because my parents have one and have really enjoyed it. Plus their costumer support is awesome! They actually call you to make sure your frame is okay if it's been turned off for any length of time!! How neat is that?!

So make sure to stop by Our Ordinary Life to enter this giveaway if you've been loving the idea of a digital picture frame as much I have! :-)

Halloween 2010

We've been busy with all the fun surrounding Halloween this year....as you'll see! :-)

We made this Curled Paper Pumpkin that we saw on the Frugal Family Fun Blog.

We also went to our first Lowe's Build & Grow clinic to make these flapping bats! I was awed at how well Blake did for his age and it was exciting that they got to keep the aprons, got badges (like in girl/boy scouts) to sew on the aprons for finishing, as well as a certificate! How awesome is all that for FREE!?! We came home, took the apart, painted them black and put them back together. The albino bats were neat, but we like them black better :-)

Morgan participated in the newspaper's coloring contest...plus she tried on her Halloween costume....on multiple occasions! :-)

We made these ghost kites that we saw on the Frugal Family Fun Blog.

Morgan's preschool class isn't allowed to celebrate ANY holidays (I doubt Morgan will notice, but I was bummed!), so we made these pumpkin shaped popcorn balls to take in...just because ;-) No harm in pumpkins, right?

This next craft was a simple one that we saw on Trendy Treehouse. It's a Candy Corn Banner made from a paper plate! Super easy!! :-)

Of course, we had to get our REAL pumpkins out of our garden. Here Morgan and Blake were trying to carry the pumpkin together since they're kinda heavy :-)


Leine even got in on the fun!

Posing for a picture with all the pumpkins from the garden.

Once we had the pumpkin, we had to make something yummy with it, so we tried these Pumpkin Swirl Brownies. I also made some Pumpkin Fluff Dip and Ginger Snap Strips to put the dip on-YUM! (It was good on cinnamon graham crackers too!)

The night before Halloween a local church did a trunk-or-treat. The kiddos got all dressed up, Blake as a firefighter and Morgan as Snow White, to go to their first trunk-or treat.

I thought a couple of the trunks were pretty neat! This one made Blake forget all about candy! LOL!

Gotta LOVE the Beverly Hillbillies! Not really a trunk, but it was still really neat!! :-)

On Halloween we finally got around to carving a pumpkin. The kiddos weren't too anxious to touch the insides though...

I did the drawing depending on what the kiddos said they'd like and Rich did the carving while I cleaned some seeds to make some Sugared Pumpkin Seeds that I saw on Gooseberry Patch's facebook page.

In the afternoon we went to the nursing home that Rich's great-grandma is at for the kids to trick-or-treat. She is in her 90's and doing great! :-)

After that we did our regular trick-or-treating and then some! Instead of just going to family this year, we made it to friends of the family too! I think we made it to 10 places all together and were able to visit a little at most of them, which was nice :-)

Today, the kids are going to go through some of their candy and give it to our dentist office. I'll be taking in all the candy we bought for trick-or-treaters too, since we didn't get any again this year living out in the country. The dentist is buying candy off of kids to send to local soldiers! I thought it was really neat and I'm going to see if they'll just keep the money to use for shipping. :-)

The Halo Shirt Review

Did you know that cleft lip and cleft palate are the most common birth defects of the head and face for children worldwide? These children suffer from multitude of health issues like difficulty breathing and hearing loss and not to mention have to endure several surgeries to help fix the defect.

Unfortunately, many parents worldwide cannot afford to have their child's cleft lip/palate treated, which means those children then endure being an outcast in their communities. Although being at outcast is mostly known by children with cleft defects in developing countries, I remember my neighbor, who had a cleft lip (which had been treated) and stuttered, being made fun of on the bus. I don't remember a lot from back then, but that stuck with me because I knew how much that must have hurt him and I wish I had the guts to stick up for him.

Thankfully, we do live here in the U.S. and my neighbor had the opportunity to go to college, get a good job and is doing great now. But knowing not everyone has opportunities my neighbor did, it's nice to know that people like those at Little Lamb Kidz Properties, LLC. are doing what they can to help.

Little Lamb Kidz Properties introduced The Halo tee shirt- "a trend-setting symbol of compassion and support for a widespread pediatric problem." The Halo tee shirt is made of 100% pre-shrunk cotton and has an image of a glowing halo, an encouraging symbol, on the front.

This tee with the halo image will help those with cleft defects because:

"Little Lamb Kidz will donate 10% of all sales of the shirts to Smile Train, an organization which provides free cleft-related surgery for millions of poor children in developing countries. The Halo™ tee shirt makes it possible for people who have a passion for this important cause to not only donate money but also raise awareness for it in their daily life. The Halo™ tee shirt can be purchased at http://thehalo.littlelambkidz.com/. It is available in both adult and children sizes."

I was sent a t-shirt for Blake to wear and he seems to like it. He REALLY likes that it glows in the dark!! It's definitely a nice quality shirt and it seems like it is going to hold up to my rough 'n tough little guy. I'm proud that he is wearing it, so we can help spread the word about the children with cleft defects to whoever inquires about it. Even though I wasn't able to stick up for my neighbor way back when, maybe this will help me do a little something for a child somewhere now. :-)

Buy It!: The Halo tee adult size costs $19.95, while the child size shirts run $14.95. Please click here if you are interested in purchasing The Halo tee.

*All quotes and cleft palate information came from The Halo tee shirt press release.

*Disclosure: I was provided a t-shirt and asked to help spread the word about Little Lamb Kidz efforts with The Halo tee. All opinions about The Halo tee are my own.

'State' Door Mat Review from CSN Stores

When CSN Stores contacted me to with another review opportunity, I had a REALLY hard time deciding what I was going to get to review. I'm sure there were things that we could use or would want, but then I thought it was a great opportunity to get a Christmas gift. So I looked for gifts for the kids and came up with all sorts of toys...that they don't need....so then I looked for others and still could not make up my mind. I ended up just giving the responsibility to my sister and she chose her Christmas present! LOL! She had liked the idea for a while to decorate their outdoor space with creations made with our Alma maters' logos. I knew she was interested in lawn/garden ornaments, but it never struck me that she would like this 'State' Door Mat!


It came UPS a couple days ago and I have to say it is one TOUGH door mat! I, of course, have not used it being that it's a gift, but it's "crafted in coir fiber and pressed rubber" and weighs 16 lbs! It is easy to tell that it will last through being walked on, stomped on, scraped...possibly even chewed on by the dogs...for years! Although my sister already knows what she is getting, I still think she will be pleasantly surprised by the durability of this mat and will be happy to have a start to her 'State' themed outdoor decor! :-)

Thank you to Sean at CSN Stores for this review opportunity.

*Disclosure: I was given a gift code in exchange for a teaser post and the review post. All opinions expressed in this post are my own.

Our 5th Anniversary

It's been quite a week leading up to today. Starting early Wednesday morning, about 3:00 am, I came down with the flu. Rich took the kids to my mom's, then came down with the flu himself at work, so my parents ended up taking the kids to Rich's parents' (because my mom had to work the following morning). Thursday morning Rich felt good enough to go to work and Rich's parents were leaving for a 12 hour drive to see my brother-in-law, so the kids then ended up at Rich's grandma's to give me time to recover. Then, when they all made it back home last night, Rich noticed he left the water on to the cattle ALL day and a couple hours later we didn't have ANY water! This morning things are almost normal....only its 56 degrees in here because we are refusing to turn on our heat until November and my stomach still doesn't feel quite right, but we have water...so far...

So this week hasn't been anything like what we expected, but after 5 years and 2 unexpected little ones (and countless other unexpected things), we've come to expect the unexpected. We may not make it out to our anniversary dinner tonight due to a funky stomach and using up our babysitters already this week, but going out for dinner isn't important. It's the little things that are important....like knowing we're there for each other when we're sick....and laughing about leaving the water on to the cattle just like my grandpa used to do....and cuddling up under blankets and enjoying being cozy because we're being cheap...those are the things that we can enjoy today on our 5th anniversary. Happy Anniversary Rich! I love you!! :-)

* Rich is not dirty in the pic above-it just scanned funny....kinda goes along with our week I guess ;-)

UPDATE: So we really didn't have water this morning, but the well guy already came out and changed the switch, pressure gage and control box on our pump and we're back in business! Thankfully no work needed to be done on the actual well like we were fearing (that would have been even more pricey!)