Scentsy Layers Give Away + a Mother’s Day Printable…

Karen from Scentsy has been SO generous & sweet, she has offered to host another give away on my blog, just for Mother’s Day!!

Leave a comment with your name and which body butter + lotion scent you want!

Give away will end Monday May 14. Go HERE to view the different scents. I am totally in love with the coconut lemon grass scent. Mmm! Good luck!

I put together a little basket of Favorite Things for Mother’s Day gifts. It was pretty quick, I’ll post pics later, but wanted to share this printable with you in case you want to whip your own basket together. :) Happy Mother’s Day to all you beautiful Mom’s, birth mom’s, grandma’s, aunts, sisters. All the wonderful women out there! You are the ones that make life SO sweet!!!!

{Click image, save to desktop + print}

Just another post...

I'm in some kind of Spring Time funk. I have lots to blog about, I just don't want to make the time to do it. I figured I better since I do want to share with you a couple of fun links for

General Conference.

If you are looking for something to keep your older kids busy with try THIS.

I'm planning on printing it out and just letting Brooklyn use the coloring pages on it. I can't wait, I think I need some uplifting messages to get me out of this little rut I'm in!

We also had a great family home evening on Monday night. I got the idea from

Shelly. Take a peek at her post HERE.

Lately it seems like quality not quantity is what we are aiming for in our FHE lessons. We've got about a 15 minute time span to get the message in before we need to play some games and have a treat! haha. So after reading Shelly's post I thought, perfect! I can do that. We talked to Brooklyn about work ethic. What would happen if daddy didn't go to work? Or what if mommy stopped making dinners and cleaning the house? We also told her how rewarding and fun work can be. I downloaded THIS cute chore chart, took pictures of Brooklyn making her bed, reading books & brushing her teeth and attached them to her chore chart. Now each day when she does her "chores" she gets to put a sticker by it. So far it's been a huge hit!

Last week my friend Shaela came to visit. ( She drove all the way from WA a 9 hour drive alone with two kids!) Shaela & I became friends while our husbands were going to college and we were neighbors. I also got to meet Kim,

we became friends through blogging, and finally got to meet up! It was a fun filled day. The kids had fun playing together and we had fun visiting too! Thanks Kim & Shaela for stopping by! :)

I also took a day and replenished my stash of homemade cards (I ♥ having cards on hand). My friend Kristeen, let me borrow her stamp set, and I went crazy with it, SO fun to have a few more to pick from when I'm sending them out. Made me feel productive and got a little creativity flowing through my veins. Felt good! I still need to stitch a little on each one with my sewing machine, but haven't yet got around to it. Great way for me to use some of those paper scraps!

I picked a new book to read, I decided on Tuesday's with Morrie.

I'm excited. I think I'll love it. It's a short read and then I'm going to move on to Angels & Demons,

I've heard alot about this book, heard it's better than the Davinci Code, so I'm excited about it too! Thanks Angie, for letting me borrow it!

I had the opportunity to go to the General Young Women's Broadcast and it was awesome!

It was pitch black so I couldn't take very good notes, but a few things that stood out to me:

President Monson quoted Mother Teresa: "If you are too busy judging people, you have no time to love them." He challenged the girls to have the courage not to judge others.

Sister Ann M. Dibb said "We must unite and help one another to become virtuous. "Virtue is dying in this world around us.

Sister Elaine Dalton said, " One virtuous woman can and will change the world."

"You are not common, you are not ordinary , You are a daughter of God."

She asked us what our personal banner would be or what our one message to the world might be? I loved that!

All of the talks were amazing. It spurred up some great emotions for me. Last night at 10:30 pm I wrote this letter to my sweet Brooklyn.

Dear Brooklyn,

I am sitting here tonight after you fell asleep in my arms. I carried you to bed and paused to look at your angelic face. I knelt in prayer and thanked my Heavenly Father for you. You are so precious to me & to your Heavenly Father. As I look at the world around us I often wonder about the trials you may face. I wonder how your life will turn out and what your future holds. As I look back at my own life I realize that there is much of my past that I would wish to change, however I also understand that I have learned and grown from my mistakes as well as my tests & trials, as I hope you will. I know that you are not common, you are anything but ordinary, You are a daughter of God. I just pray that you will rise to the occasions in your life where you will be required to have much courage- courage to choose the right-the courage to be a virtuous young woman, if you can do this I have no doubt that you will change the world! As you grow and become a beautiful young woman, I challenge you to ask yourself: What your personal banner or motto is? What will your message to the world be? I have no doubt that you will do great things. I love you so much that sometimes I think my heart might burst with gratitude and joy. You are so perfect. You already want to do good and at such a young age. I am truly grateful for you Brooklyn. Always know that I love you.

Love, Mom

Big Week...

We have a big week here at our house! We had a family reunion over the weekend, and I'm still trying to track down my camera, so I'll share more on that later. We are finalizing Braxton's adoption tomorrow and will take him to the Temple to be sealed on Saturday. Brooklyn is beyond excited about going to the Temple! Here is the announcement I made, I ordered them a little late... so if you haven't gotten one, it will probably get to you sometime this week. Sorry! :)

Here's a sneak peak at two of the cards I made up for us to do at the reunion, we did alot of fun crafts, and so I'll post pics later this week, or as soon as I find my camera. lol. Hope you all have a fantastic week!!

Our life today...

So I had so much fun with that little survey over there in the right hand corner of my blog. So fun to see people's opinion's about music on blogs. It was pretty split right straight down the middle, some of you like it and some do not. Me personally, I like it. I like to have it playing if I'm scrapbooking or doing something else on the computer. I admit, sometimes it bugs me too though. So for now, I think I'll leave it on, since autoplay did win by 5 votes. lol. I think I'll start putting random polls up just for fun! Thanks to all who voted! Today has just been one of those stay in my PJ's and no make up days. I don't have many of these, but today has been one. It's been nice. I have had a bit of insomnia this week, so the late nights haven't helped any either, and I wake up so tired. I have made great use of my late nights though, and no I haven't been checking bloglines or surfing the Internet. wink. I've been reading Cane River... have any of you read this book as well? Man, it is really making an impact on me. I wasn't expecting it to make such an impression. I just can't imagine people being so cruel to other human beings. What made them think that slavery was okay? I just can't seem to wrap my brain around it all. I'm only half way through it and I'm hoping it's a happy ending, but I'm not counting on it, since this is real life. I've also been scrap booking. I ordered some more pictures from Snapfish and they should be here the beginning of next week. I'm almost caught up again on the kids albums. My kids are growing up right before my eyes, I love to catch those little moments in their scrapbooks. I hope they enjoy their books as much as I do. haha. :) I have card club tomorrow. SO excited, I'll have to post some of the cards I get. It's a Father's Day theme. We are all getting to busy, and so this is our last one together. Bummer. Oh, we've also been staying home ALL week, even though I need a few groceries etc, it is going to have to wait. Since Brooklyn broke her arm, she stopped wanting to potty train. So... we let it go and are starting from scratch again this week. I called Zach's aunt who has a day care. She is the PRO at potty training and she gave me some very helpful tips. I'm going to post them, in case I need them again when it's Braxton's turn. :) It's sure working for Brooklyn!! Although I'm going a bit stir crazy, it will be worth it when I don't have two little ones in diapers anymore! Aunt Gwynn's Potty Training Tips:

1. No pull ups, EVER! They are too much like diapers and the kids know it.
2. Take child every hour to the potty just to try.
3. You know if a child is physically ready to potty train if they can wake up from a nap dry.
4. For one week leave the child's underwear off, put a dress on them or lrg. T-shirt etc. if you don't want them running around completely naked. This sounds funny, but this is key, since once the child has one or two accidents they figure out that they HATE it trickling down their leg.
5. Reward with a small treat every time the child goes in the toilet or if you don't like candy, use stickers etc.
6. Use lots of praise!
7. If you can watch closely and catch the child, take them straight to the potty to finish.
8. When they do have an accident, show no emotion, just take them straight to the toilet and say Oh, here is where we go potty.
9. It takes most children a longer time to go without wetting the bed at night, so it is okay to still put them in a diaper at night time.
10. If you do have to go out on an errand, keep it short (an hour tops) and no wearing diapers. You may have to use a public bathroom, sometimes this scares the child though. (Just for the first week.)

She said it usually does not take longer than 2 weeks using this method for a child to be potty trained.
I know everyone has their own way of doing it, this has just been working really well for us. I know that each child is different. :)
I saw a couple of fun websites on Tip Junkie ... and thought I'd share Simply Creative
, so fun, especially if you like craftiness!
Baby Steals, they have a new product each day that is marked way down off the original price, who doesn't love a good deal? Okay, I'm off, maybe I can finish Cane River, oh wait, it's time to make dinner. I am wishing I had time to make
This even though I just had it on Saturday... Thanks for the recipe Jessi! It's SOOOO good!

What a wonderful world...

Remember this card? Well I finally found the website I got the cute bird template... just in case anyone wanted make one. :) Bird Pattern And another vinyl project I've been working on, I'm going to hang it right above the oven.So when it's crazy and hectic at dinner time I can remember that making dinner is really important for my little family. So anyway... you know what I'm LOVING right now?? These jalepeno cheetos are SO good. Wish I had some right this very minute. Oh and do you know why I love blogging so much? Because of little things like this If you don't remember Hilarie won the big give away on my last drawing. I sent her a little something, and then she sent me back this cute card and bows that she had made! Thanks so much Hilarie. It totally brightened my day. :) and this... I won Marci's 100th post give-away! :) I'm so excited to try out some of these great recipes! Sometimes when I really think about the state that our world is in, I panic. I feel major anxiety concerning the crime rate around the world, the peer-pressure that my kids will have to face in their teen age years, global warming, food shortages, etc. etc. It's easy to fall into a bit of depression or gloomy way of thinking and then I look at all the amazing people I've met through blogging, and I think, just look at all the good that there really is in the world! Perfect strangers showing each other kindess that often gets over-looked by so many of us. So thanks to ALL of you for lifting me up and helping me see past the bad. So many of you have touched my life in one way or another for good. One of my favorite quotes is "Walk towards the sunshine, and the shadows will fall behind you!" Have a great weekend!

Wednesday & Thurday...

I decided to combine yesterday & today's posts into one, it's been kind of crazy here and blogging every day just isn't fitting into my schedule as well as I had hoped. :) So anways last Wednesday, I went to the doctor and did the dreaded yearly exam. Ugh. SO nice to have over with though. That's all I'll say about that subject. lol. I did my grocery shopping, and mostly just a bunch of errands in town then on Thursday, we had Card Club at Kayla's house here are some more of the cute cards that the other girls made: I also have some fun finds to share with you... have any of you ever heard of Piggies & Paws? I hosted a party a while ago and all I have to say is WOW! These are the sweetest little keepsakes ever, they take your children's handprints and footprints and make the cutest little art work pages out of them. My friend Pam designs for them, and she does great work, so if any of you are in the Logan area, and want to host a party or get your child printed, let me know, and I can get you in touch with her! She might even come up here if we can get enough people ahead of time to be printed. Anways check out there website, really her work is fabulous! I ordered a bunch of Brooklyn, and can't wait to get Braxton's done. Here are my two favorites that I got for Brooklyn. PS Pam also designs cute digi scrapping stuff, so head on over, she has some fun freebies too! :) Okay and the next one, I was on Lisa'sblog and saw This Fun Site! If you love jewlery check them out! Their jewlery is SO stinkin' cute and fabulously priced!! When we lived in Texas, I loved this store, but I had no idea you could order online! This could be good or really bad. :) Okay and one more fun little find... I've seen so many cute blog headers and scrapbook-looking blogs around, I came across this siteand thought they had some really cute and unique blog backgrounds, so if you are interested check her out. Has anyone seen I am legend? We just rented it, (at Zach's request), it was a bit too tense for me, and we didn't like the ending, but it was pretty creative writing.

Refreshing...

So I'm feeling great, totally renewed and rejuvenated! Wasn't conference amazing?! And I am so excited about all your comments! I am feeling much better about who is viewing my blog, I have decided not to go private as of yet. However I do have a couple of changes I want to make to the blog, I've been reading up on the subject and I also want you all to be aware of what I've found out. First off I think EVERYONE should have some sort of site meter on their blogs, for your own protection. Two of the best meters I have seen are Site Meter and Blog Patrol they are both free and it just lets you check to see how many hits you are getting and where they are coming from. I use site meter. I also saw on a few of my other friends blogs, that they had put copyright notices on their pictures and also posted a notice on their blogs. (I'm not really worried about you guys peaking in at my life, though I feel pretty boring, and I can't believe so many of you are interested in it. haha. :) but even if you aren't a professional photographer... (like me) you just need to keep the pics of your kids safe, I just don't want anyone to be able to download them and use them for anything they want. If you go to Chantri's Blog, she has a great tutorial on how to put a copyright on your photos and why it's so important! Check it out for sure! Okay now on to the FUN stuff! I've been up to ALOT this week, with my media fast, I did pretty dang good, I'm not going to lie, I did watch the Dancing With the Stars Episode and also the Barbra Walters Special on how to live to be 150 year old! But I REALLY cut back and had pretty much no computer time, I got alot done and I also noticed that our home was more peaceful, I was more attentive and focused on what I needed to get done last week. I missed blogging alot, but it was definitely what I needed last week! So I'll be posting what we did last week little by little as the week goes on. :) As for the winner.... I had no idea I'd get that many comments, I seriously thought I'd get 3 or 4, I'm overwhelmed and excited! I hope you don't mind but, I've added all you new-comers to my bloglines account, so I can check back with you! :) I'm so excited to get new ideas and get to know you all! FUN! Okay... I used a random number drawing this time, the number that it chose was 24... which would be Hilarie!Hilarie! So e-mail me at sunshineinmysoul_33(at)yahoo(dot)com with your address so I can get it mailed to you! To tell you the truth, I don't even know what I'm going to send you yet, so maybe I'll give you a couple of options! :) I'll leave you with a few of the things I got done last Monday...

• deep cleaned my closet, moved winter shoes and clothes to the back (hope I didn't jinx myself) I bet I took 3 trash bags to the idea from my house this week! :) That always feels good.
• Scheduled dentist appointments... can you believe in a few weeks I have to get my wisdom teeth out?! I'm pretty nervous, since I've never even had stitches or a broken bone Ugh... any tips for a speedy recovery welcome!
• Did a little scrapbooking
• took Brooklyn outside to play
• Finished my card club cards... all the girls did such cute ones, I'll have to post their ideas later too!! Here are mine. Hope you have a great day!

Holiday Hugs...

I do a little Recipe exchange with some friends... I love new recipes! So I'm sharing one of the Recipes I got this last week.So good. So simple. Holiday Hugs Ingredients: Bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels, Hershey's Kiss or Hershey's Hug and M&M's candy Step 1: Heat the oven to 170º. Set a number of bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels (one for each treat) in a single layer on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, then top each pretzel with an unwrapped Hershey's Kiss or Hershey's Hug. Step 2: Bake for 4 to 6 minutes (the white chocolate will melt more quickly), until the chocolates feel soft when touched with a wooden spoon. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and quickly press an M&M's candy into the center of each Kiss. Step 3: Allow the treats to cool for a few minutes, then place them in the refrigerator to set, about 10 minutes. PS we tried this with rolos... it was absolutely divine!! (I personally liked this better than just the hugs or hershey kisses. mmm. mmm. good. Also thought I'd share one of the Christmas cards I made this year... And...just a few more fun sites that me and Brooklyn have been having fun playing with, ...Build a Gingerbread House and alsoMake a Flake Happy Friday!

It must be my lucky day...

I just happend upon this site... you know how it goes, you click on one blog and then see a link that catches your eye on their site, follow it and before you know it you aren't really sure how you got to the blog you are on! C'mon I know it's not just me that does that. :) Well I came across The Goodie Box and saw these cute cards that they were giving away... who doesn't like a give away?! So I posted my little comment and then today... I get a notice saying I WON! How fun is that?! So check these girls out at the The Goodie Box today! Who knows what they will be giving away next and it could be you who gets it! And look how cute this fabric is... I'm am so excited to make a cute baby quilt with it for my sister-in-law Linda. So fun. I better get going on it though, she is due at the end of December. :)

Card Club...

I am involved in two different Card Clubs... we meet once a month, we all make a set amount of cards for each other and then we pass them out, so we come home with a bunch of new ideas and cute cards that we can have on hand for any & every occasion... it is SO fun and I look forward to it EVERY month! We sure had some cute cards this month, so I thought I'd share a few that I made and a few that I got to take home. :)