Oh life...

Oh life, you have a cruel habit of getting in the way of this little blog. We have been doing a whole lot of nothing around here. Just living life, taking care of business, making memories and getting ready for Christmas.

I know I haven't blogged since I joined Thirty-One. But I joined in October and have had a few catalog shows and an open house event with two other direct sales companies. If you would like any information on the business, the products, how to place an order, or anything else please send me an email. I love this company and I love sharing how it has helped my family with others. I also attended the Spring Product Premier over the weekend and I LOVE sharing about all of the new products! Send me an email for more info.

Amelia is growing like a weed, she is so funny and smart. It amazes me how smart she is.

Some of her funny sayings right now:

When she asks for something and we tell her yes she will clap her hands and say "oh nank you nank you nank you!" (Nank you is how she says thank you)

When you ask her what Ava's dog's name is she will tell you Princess Wedda (Princess Lella), I ask her a hundred times a day just to hear her say it.

She will tell me that I am her best friend or her favorite princess. She will say "Mommy you my best friend ever ever the end" or "Mommy you my favorite princess ever ever the end". We read a lot of books and she always ends the book with "ever ever the end". I guess she thinks that is how you tell someone they are your best friend forever... It is too cute!

On the days when we are going places she will ask me where we are going she will say "Karmie's House?" "Erika's House?" "Mena's House?" If the answer is no to all three of those questions she will say "Awwww" like she is sad that we aren't going to one of those houses. (Mena is how Amelia says Mia, Mia is my mom)

She keeps us laughing, that's for sure.

What is new with all of you? Even though I don't post I still read blogs just about every day but some times I miss some.

Thanks for sticking around, maybe I can keep up with this little blog on a more regular basis...

She's Back....

My sister has rejoined the blogging world... I told y'all that she would be back!

Go check out her blog and show her some comment love!

Her story is amazing but it is hers to tell.

I am so proud to be her sister, that's for sure!

(do you know how hard it is to get that many people to look at the camera and smile?)

Consignment Sale Success!

I had to share my consignment sale finds from Wednesday. I didn't get a ton of stuff but the things that I did get we're all things that I was looking for.

I spent $38 for everything you see in this photo. I don't think $38 is bad, especially if you consider that one of the smocked dresses can cost more than that!

 I got this book for $2 and there are two place mats in the package and I got them for $2 as well.

This outfit was $6 and I almost didn't buy it. But Karmen talked me in to it and I am so glad she did.

This adorable pumpkin shirt was $1. I couldn't make something this cute for $1, so I bought it.

One of these shirts was $1 and the other was $2. I plan to applique them for Amelia but I am not sure what I am going to do to them yet.

Y'all these are Stride Rite shoes in almost perfect condition (there is a little bit of normal wear on the bottom), I got them for $2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoa!

This outfit was too precious not to buy! and at $6 not a bad deal. Those are little pigs on the top.

A Sweet Potatoes outfit for $4. I love this, it is going to be so cute this fall!

A fleece footie pajama for $2. Side note: people were proud of their footie pajamas this year...I saw about 6 fleece footies from Carter's that someone had priced for $10 EACH, at a consignment sale. And I saw several others that were priced for $7 and $8. I can get new ones in the store for that price...

This dress is made by House of Hatten, I got it for a whopping $3! It is actually a size bigger than Amelia needs but she can wear it on her birthday this year and to any birthday parties we may go to and hopefully she can wear it for her birthday next year too!

My best deal of the day was this smocked Ballerina dress for $7! It is made by Amanda Remembered. The hem has been pulled on the front but I can totally fix that! I love that it is long sleeves, it is so hard to find smocked dresses with long sleeves at least it is for me...

Anyways, that is my finds at the consignment sale. Sorry for the bad picture quality, I took all of the photos with my iphone while I was confined to the couch yesterday because I hurt my back Wednesday night... I'm much better today!

Have you found any awesome deals on clothes lately? I'd love to hear your shopping successes!!!

Birthday Party Ideas

We will be celebrating Amelia's 2nd birthday on October 6th (even though she doesn't turn 2 until October 13th). I have been coming up with ideas for her birthday party here and there...

The theme is You Are My Sunshine! I am so excited about it! I got the idea from Hillary's blog. Her party for Sadie was ADORABLE!!! I will not be doing the same thing that she did I'm just running with the theme and putting my own twist on it.

I am using yellow and orange as the colors. I thought about using a lot of colors but Amelia's first birthday party had a lot of color and I want to keep things simple this year. I want it to be cute but not over the top. So simple yellow and orange it is...

Speaking of simple... We are keeping the guest list small. We will more than likely be having the party at our house and since we live in a garden home there isn't much room for parking. We invited a lot of people to her first birthday party but this year we are only inviting immediate family.

Over the last several months I have been adding things to my birthday party idea Pinterest board... Here are a few things I have found so far.

I want to frame this and use it as decoration at the party, maybe switch out one of our framed photos for this just for her party... You can find it here for free! I love subway art and this print is adorable, after the party I can use it in Amelia's bedroom.

I've already bought some of these books to give as favors along with some animal crackers and some candy. I'm not sure what else I can include in the favor bags I need to look while I am out shopping and find a few more things to give.

I would LOVE to find some brown paper sacks big enough to hold the books and decorate them like the ones above... I found the idea for those here.

I know I want to use yellow and orange polka dot balloons to decorate with. I also have several milk glass vases that I want to have sitting around with yellow and orange flowers of sort in them. I have a few mason jars too that I can make bouquets of flowers in to have sitting around.

I don't have much planned yet but for a simple party I think this is a good start. My next item to tackle is the invitation. I need to start working on it now so that all I have to do is add her photo closer to party day!

If you have any ideas please feel free to share them! I love hearing ideas from others!

I would get an F

If car maintenance were a course in school I would have gotten a big fat F. I know nothing about the in and outs of cars and all of their parts and I'm ok with that.

So imagine my panic when the tire on my husband's truck (that I was driving) went flat. Ugh! When my sister in law and I left her house it was fine, when we got to the gas station the guy next to us pointed it out. Y'all, I didn't even know it went flat. There was some road construction that we went through and that is the only thing we can think of that happened.

So here we are with a flat tire and I have no clue how to change one and I'm not sure that Heather knows how either. She called her husband (my husband's brother), my husband was 2 hours away at drill. My father in law was on his way to their house but we didn't know how close he was. He and my brother in law showed up at the same time to rescue us. About 10 minutes later we had the spare on and were on our way.

And the old tire? Not fixable... Seriously. It has a gash on the side of the tire, not the part on the road. And where is the gash? On the inside of the tire, like the side that goes under the truck! I have no clue what happened! Go big or go home, but seriously Kristen did you have to go that big?!

Looking back it is funny but it wasn't then. The whole situation got me thinking that now may be the time to start learning things here and there about vehicles, like how to change the tire and such... Do you know how to change a flat tire? If so would you like to teach me?

Meet my family

Hello, I'm Kristen. I am a sinner saved by God's wonderful grace. I am a work in progress. My husband and I are currently looking for a home church in our community. Honestly we haven't visited any churches around our area. We went to church in a community about 20 minutes away and then started visiting a church in another city but we want something in our community. We need to get on that!

I am 26 years old, though I will be 27 on August 20. I have a twin sister, her name is Karmen (blog coming soon!). Karmen is my best friend and you will probably hear about her and her family a lot!

I married my wonderful husband on September 30, 2006. We've known each other for 10 years and have been a couple for 8 of those years. He is my other half. Of course we have our differences but what couple doesn't? He is the love of my life and I am so thankful to have him!

We were blessed with a beautiful baby girl on October 13, 2010. Amelia is such a blessing to us, we tried for 10 months on our own to get pregnant we went through 2 months of testing to determine why we couldn't and it was determined that I have PCOS (poly-cystic ovarian syndrome) which makes it difficult to get pregnant. We did one round of Clomid and luckily I got pregnant that first cycle. Amelia is our only child but one day we hope to give her a sibling.

I am an aunt to 5 nieces and 2 nephews. I am their Chickie and I love them all as if they were my own.

I enjoy baking, photography, sewing and thrifting. I dislike household chores... enough said!

Again, welcome to my blog I hope you will follow along with us!

Traveling on a budget with a toddler...

I am far from an expert on traveling because the last vacation that I went on that I had to plan for a place to stay, what to eat and the like was our honeymoon almost 6 years ago. And our last big vacation was 4 years ago but my husband's family planned all of that.

So now here we are planning to go to the beach with my brother in law and sister in law and niece and I have learned a few things since we started discussing and planning. We are on a tight budget so we have had to plan accordingly. We started planning this trip months ago so we could pay for our condo by the deadline instead of having to come up with a ton of money in a short amount of time.

As far as detailed packing goes, my SIL and I sat down and made a list of things that we wanted to eat for meals while there and snacks we wanted and drinks we would like. We will be eating out a few times but not a ton. So we made a list of nonperishable items that we could buy ahead of time that we could pack to save us from a HUGE grocery bill once we arrived. Each time we go to the grocery store we try to pick up a few things from the list and put in our large plastic totes. My local grocery store has been running some great buy one get one free sales so I have been taking advantage of that. Buy one for the house and one to take to the beach is free. Buying a little bit here and there will cut down on our final grocery bill once we are there.

We are saving money on our condo because we are going on the "off season" (after Labor Day). We are also able to take advantage of sales on beach towels and sand toys for our girls since the summer season is coming to a close.

As for traveling with a toddler, well this is my first time to do it. I traveled a ton with Amelia when she was an infant and packed entirely too much for her... This time I plan to take a lot less for her. I have already packed a sleeve of diapers from one of the boxes I bought recently and I packed a new package of wipes to take with us. I will take a couple of pair of pajamas for her and myself and several outfits for each of us but plan to wash clothes and wear things more than once while we are there. That way Amelia and I can pack in one suit case and save cargo space.

We are taking two vehicles a truck and an SUV. We plan to leave the back half of the cargo section of the SUV open for diaper changes because who wants to do a diaper change on a dirty changing table at a rest stop? Not me!

As of right now our plan is to leave in the wee hours of the morning so the girls will sleep a good bit of the way down there. For the time they are awake we will have toys and snacks to keep them occupied. We are only 5ish hours from the beach we are going to so they should sleep the entire way though.

And what is a beach trip without photos on the beach? Instead of hiring a photographer to take pictures of us I am taking my camera and will take photos of my BIL, SIL and niece and then have them take photos of us. I also have a tripod to take a group shot to remember our first big vacation! I love the self timer, but a few years ago a good friend of mine bought me a remote for my camera and we use it now, it saves me from setting the camera then pressing the button and running to get in the shot. By doing the photos ourselves we save TONS of money and can get copies of the photos faster. Win for all of us!!!

The last big thing is we are taking our wagon. It is one of the plastic Radio Flyer wagons that has the seats that fold down. We will buckle the girls in to the seats and stick our beach bags between them so that they don't have to walk and we don't have to carry them to the beach. The condo we are staying in is not right on the beach, the complex is all on the beach side of the road but we will have to cross a parking lot to get there from our building. We believe this will be more convenient and keep everyone happy when going to and from the beach.

Our number one goal in planning so much ahead of time is so we can enjoy ourselves when we get down there. We don't want to worry about having to do a HUGE grocery shopping trip when we get there. We want to get there, put our stuff in the condo, change into our swim suits and hit the beach!

I know that not everyone can buy so much ahead of time because of space to pack things. We would have to take two cars anyways since there are 6 of us going so we knew we would have the space to buy now and pack it.

Doing all of this may seem so odd to some people but we aren't fantastic at setting money aside for specific purposes, so this works for us. We have been setting money aside for going out to dinner and gas and groceries when we get there but buying as much as we can when we are shopping for our families has lightened the load on setting money aside for food.

Do you have any tips for traveling with a toddler? How about traveling on a budget? We would love to hear your ideas!

I'm back... again!

I am really going to try to stick with blogging again. I said try, it is not a guarantee. But I have missed blogging and I have some free time at night after Amelia goes to bed so I am giving it another go.

You may noticed there have been some subtle changes... The major change is that Karmen is no longer here... WHAT?! No worries, she is moving to a new blog! So exciting!!! As soon as I can give the blog address I will. There have been some major changes in her life over the last several months, I can't wait for you to see.

I plan to highlight some of the craft projects that I have going on... The major project I have right now is a quilt for Amelia. I am going to post about it soon, promise! I am also going to be redecorating our living room, master bedroom and Amelia's bedroom so stick around for the fun that it will be.

I have two major events coming up that are taking precedence over everything, VACATION to the beach and Amelia's 2nd birthday party. We haven't been on beach vacation in 4 years, we can't wait to take Amelia. We are going with Zach's brother and his wife and their little girl who is 8 weeks older than Amelia. As for the birthday party, we are keeping it small this year. The theme is You Are My Sunshine! I'm so excited to share my ideas with you all!

I have a fun little business venture that I am working on. As soon as I get everything finalized I will share it with you. It involves children's clothing so tell all of your friends to hop on over here for the announcement of when I will be open!!!

That is all I have for now, I am so excited to be back in the blogging world! I hope you will share this blog with your friends because we are going to have a lot of fun together!!!