This Is Us

We really enjoy having fun and celebrating all the fun holidays. For St. Patrick’s Day we like to have green food, wear green and watch Darby O’Gill and the Little People. This year I made our food a rainbow.  Red - Spaghetti Meat Sauce Orange - Cupcakes Yellow - Mt. Dew Green - Cookies Blue - Noodles Purple - Bread I got gold plates for the “gold” at the end of the rainbow. 🌈 

  We get so many seed catalogs. After we are done they usually end up in the recycle because we don’t know what to do with them. Well, we figured 1 thing out... We made magnets with them! They are listed in our Etsy Store . They come in a group of 5 magnets. They are so cute, if we do say so ourselves. Here are all the groups. No, we can’t separate them and mix them. What you see is what you get! These were really fun to make. We hope you like them!

At the beginning of February we participated in a homestead picture challenge on Instagram. We got to meet some new friends. One of which is  Home To Roost Co   They have so many awesome things in their Etsy shop! You should definitely check them out! We bought a chicken cutting board and a wood sign for spring. We put the cutting board behind our jars. And the sign on our piano. Doesn’t it look great?! We think so!

How would you like matching recipe cards? How would you like to not have to fill them out? The new item we just listed in our Etsy Shop:  Laminated Recipe Cards  we do all the work for you! Here is how it works: Go to our Etsy shop and buy laminated recipe cards. Email us your recipes. We type them up. Laminate them. Mail them to you. How awesome is that? We save you so much time and you get matching laminated recipe cards that will last for awhile. If they get wet, dirty, just wipe them off.  No more ruined recipe cards because you spill on them. YAY!! Here is an example of them. Can you read the ingredients?  HAHA!

So... Have you thought about the title of this post? Do you think they cost to much? How about we break this down... Lets take the scrubbies that we sell in our Etsy Shop... TIME: The round ones take JoElla about an hour to make. The shape ones about an hour and forty-five minutes. Driving to the store to get the material. Waiting in line to buy the material. Driving back home. Cutting the material into the strips so she can crochet them. It takes me about half an hour to get it listed on Etsy. Manage the Etsy shop. Then if any are bought, another forty-five minutes to get the package together (print shipping label, print packing slip, attach the shipping label to the outside, check to make sure everything is in there, then seal it up), drive to the post office, walk in to drop it off, walk back out to the car, and then drive back home. MATERIALS AND FEES: JoElla buys the material to make the scrubbies.   Any crochet hooks or yarn needles she needs. Her gas and wear on her car...

  So I have always washed our socks with all our other clothes. Our whites wouldn’t stay white for long and I wasn’t sure why... Then I was talking to a friend a couple years ago and she said she washes their socks separately. At first I was like... another load to wash. I don’t have time. But then I decided to try it. Holy Moly... it is a game changer! Our whites stay white and it’s not to big of a deal to wash another load once a week. If you aren’t washing your socks separately... you totally should start! I bought this hamper at Harmon’s. It stays in the laundry room, so when I’m separating clothes I just throw all the socks in it. When it’s full (about once a week. Remember we have 7 people in our house, and some wear more then one pair a day) I throw them in the washer, with the Biz, Laundry Detergent, and Fabric Softener. Then just dry them on high! It does take some time to sort through them and fold them, but it’s worth it. To make it easier, I have an order to where each ...

  I wanted to practice making a vinyl and getting it out together. So I made a vinyl for Lydia’s wall. It’s nothing to fancy, and was something that was free from cricut. Lydia really love it! Here are a couple videos of how I put it together... How do you like it? Would you want to buy a personal name one? If so, let me know!

  We just added these simple blank recipe cards to our Etsy shop.  You get a set of 10 for the price listed.

I am having so much fun with our cricut joy! I made a flower and now I’ve made this beehive and 5 bees (for my kids) for my planner! I love it so much and I love this new toy!

  So we bought this Vevor vinyl plotter from Amazon. It’s 53” and will be great for cutting big vinyls.  However I can’t get it to work. The software they sent with it won’t hook up to it. I spent most of yesterday trying to get it to work. I installed the software on our computer 4 times and it never asked for which plotter/cutter we are using. I try to add it, and it won’t let me. I can’t type in anything and there is nothing in the drop down menu. Then on the actual machine the language is in Chinese. I push the buttons the instructions tell me to, and it says password and does two digits. I emailed the company, but haven’t heard back. It’s very frustrated and even more so that they won’t answer. I told Nick how frustrated I was and he ended up buying me a Cricut Joy. It came today! It was so easy! I downloaded the app, created a login, synced my phone to it, and was able to start cutting all within 15 minutes! Here is our first one: I put it on one of our seeds organizatio...

  Here are my nails for St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️ I put white under the green sparkles on my thumb. The shamrocks didn’t turn out as good as I hoped and wanted, but they are okay. I used this  Nail Tool  for the shamrocks.

  In August 2018 (after our 20th anniversary trip to Germany & France) we took the kids to Moab. We decided to stop in Price first and stay the night (Nick got rooms online before we even left) and then stayed in Moab for several days. We went to Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. It was hot, but we had lots of water.  It was a really nice trip and fun to get away with the kids before school started.