a good quote

we had our relief society dinner a few days ago and one of the ladies there gave us a book mark with this quote on it and i thought that i would share it, because i really liked it and i think that it is a good reminder for us all.

it is from Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural address:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

just a few words to ponder on. i think that i really need to let my light shine a little more. in fact Christ said something similar in Matt. 25: 14-16

"Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Niether do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

i think that i need to have a bit more courage in the things that i do and not think that i'm not as good as others, because i'm just as important as the next person and i have things to offer also. anyway just wanted to share a few thoughts and i'll leave you with one of my favorite songs when i was in young womens. i still can't read these scriptures or anything to do with this topic without singing the song. enjoy!

dinners made easy

i always hate trying to figure out what is for dinner and the annoying questions that come with it. well i found a website that is making the chore of dinner nonexistent. i can't remember exactly how i found it but i think that it was through this website, zen habits. this is a really good website for helping you to reduce just about everything in life. anyway it was here that i found this website, unclutterer. and it was here that led me to this website, saving dinner. so basically you sign up for a meal menu and every week you get a new menu for six days. all of the recipes are really easy and simple to make. they give you tips for preparing ahead of time and they give you a shopping list and let you know exactly what you are going to need for every night and how much. they even give you side dish suggestions. so there is no stress in planning and you know you have everything because you got what was on the list. we have been using it for a week now and have had all kinds of different things. the menu that we are using tells what things to substitute to make it a vegetarian meal which is nice since we are trying to eat more vegetarian meals. dinner has not been a stress all week and they add a crock pot meal as one of the meals perfect for sunday dinner. if you don't want to stress about dinner anymore you should go and check out the sight. so far everyone in our family has liked everything that we have made and another really good thing is that it is so easy to make that the kids could do it and not have to be watched while they are doing it. i'm totally loving it so far.

midnight screams

so this weekend we were sleeping and we heard this screaming coming from outside and it got the dogs all worked up and barking. it only lasted for a few minutes and then it was gone so we kind of brushed it off as being some animal and didn't think more about it. we thought that maybe it was from a bald eagle because we had one of those in our tree one day last week. really cool to see so close. this is one of my pictures of it i really wanted to get one of it with its wings spread out, but it wasn't flying away and it was way too cold to stay out and watch it all night. we went back inside and when we came back out about 5 minuets later it was gone. oh well. back to the screaming, well last night at about 2:00am it was back. it is an awful sound like a banshee screaming, at least how i imagine one would scream. so i did some research today to discover what it was and i think that it is a barn owl. it must be staying close to our house maybe in our barn even. anyway it is really unnerving to be sleeping and then to hear that awful scream. here is a website that has the sound if you are at all curious as to what is keeping us up at night. here is a picture too, it looks really cute but the sound coming out of it is awful. speaking of birds and another bird sighting i had this winter. we were driving to town and i saw a snow owl on a fence post. i said to phill that hedwig was on that post and he had no idea what i was talking about so i had to explain to him didn't have a camera then but it was cool i have never seen one of those in the wild before.

a little eye candy for today

i was just browsing around looking at other sites this afternoon and found some things that i thought were really cute so i thought that i would share them here. the first three are done by helen dardkin you can go to her site here if you know me well you probably already know that my favorite one is the one with the teapots i totally want material like that to make a super cute tablecloth it would just make me happy to look at it all the time. i love the art work and would love to have the talent to paint or even draw more than a stick figure. i really love all the bright colors in her art work.

this is an organizational idea from donna downey i thought that it was super cute and it made me think that i would like to have one of those but i might need to start on a smaller scale because i don't have that much ribbon or maybe i should start buying more ribbon. i think that is the answer. hope you all enjoy your eye candy it is definitely better than eating candy

my happy news

okay i have been trying for awhile now to get back to my prebaby weight i know it has been 13 years since the first one, but you should never give up trying right. well i'm finally getting a handle on the whole eatting right and excerise thing. when we moved up here a year ago i was at 160 and i was pretty proud of myself. well moving in with phill's family was not helpful i have never seen people eat so much and i got into it to and went up to 190. not a happy time for me. it has taken me awhile but i have so for lost 41lbs and i'm currently at 149 i can fit into a size 10 jean :) yeah!!! i would like to lose 19 more pounds and then i will be at my target weight but if i lose a little bit more that won't be so bad either, lol. i looked all through my pictures to see if i had any good pictures of me so that you can see the difference but no such luck. i seem to only take bad pictures. i just wanted to share with you all my happy news. hopefully before summer begins i will be at my target weight then i can get a cute new swimsuit for the summer since we spend a ton of time at the pool in the summer around here. i found some really cute ones, here and here. it seems almost impossible to find any one piece suits anymore but all of these seem to be long enough that i think they should be modest. anyway that is all there is for now back to the grindstone (aka. cleaning the house:(

all you need is love

while i was sick this last couple of weeks i watched this movie. and i totally love it. it was a really great love story, a little twisted in the story telling but the colors and the music were great. i love beatles songs so watching this and knowing all the songs was really fun. if you haven't seen this i totally recommend it. i think that even phill enjoyed it a little but i'm not sure. i think this is one that i will buy so that i can watch it whenever i feel. i really love musical and if you look at the movies i have purchased for me to watch i think that the majority of them would all be some kind of musical or a movie that has a lot of music in it. i added a few pictures form the movie so in case you haven't seen it you can at least enjoy some of the eye candy from it. i really like the artsy kind of filming in a movie. anyway go check out this movie when you get a chance. today i think im going to try and do some scrapping. i haven't just sat down and done that in awhile. maybe i'll have some cute pages to post tomorrow.

project #2

well here is project #2 an easter garland that i saw in this last issue of creating keepsakes i thought that is was super cute so i gave it a try. i made the egg shapes out of the cardboard backs that come on the paper packs. i always save them because you never know what you can use them for. all the paper i took out of my scrap bin so i'm not sure which papers they are or who made them. i just used modge podge and glued everything together the ribbon is just some that i bought at wal-mart and the flowers are wooden ones that i found at the dollar store awhile ago. i so love the dollar store. anyway that is all of my projects for the weekend maybe i'll come up with some new ones for next weekend it might be fun to think of something anyway.

family project

here is my project that i did this weekend. i just came up with the idea, i'm sure that i have seen something like this somewhere but i just decided to do something like this. i got the people stamps from stamp'n up and really wanted to do something with them so each of us was made out of stamps i loved that the stamp kit included the glasses now those that wear them have them on. and we included the dogs and cats that was kay's idea. i tried to make it so that everyone was a little shorter but it ended up making the image of jeh look like he is only 4 but that is okay. the blocks are some old building blocks that jeh got for christmas a long time ago from my parents and the paper is just scraps that i have had for awhile now i think that i have finally used it all now. i have done a ton of projects with this paper. any way that is one of the projects that i did this weekend i hope to finish up project #2 today after i clean my house that is. so i had better go and get started on it now.

sick, sick, sick

well i have been crazy sick lately. i don't know what i had but i do know that it was awful. i made some really cool crafts this weekend and i was going to up load the pictures on to my blog but the server isn't working and i guess that i will have to try again later today they you can see what i made i'm so excited by it. anyway hopefully i will be able to update later today