Painted Jars for Tealights

These are not nearly "perfect" because I let my kids paint them, which was both a great craft project, and sweet way for them to welcome a new baby that was born to friends of ours a month ago. I'm still learning to let go when it comes to crafting.

Assemble art mats (to protect your surface), empty and clean baby food jars, other large jars, and paints.

Paint them.

Take pictures without getting paint on your camera. This part is tricky.

Once they dried, I popped in some battery-operated tea lights to test them out.

Lovely. And they go with my color-scheme for the baby shower!

You can see my attempt for an ombre jar in the back.

I've also spray painted baby food jars to create gold vases, that was a more professional look, but less kid-involved. Plus I turned baby food jars into kid sippers for a birthday party.

Jessica

Giveaway! Back to School Labels and More from Stuck on You

Did you realize that it's the end of July and school is starting in just 1 short month?

I know, slightly taken aback as well, so when Stuck on You contacted me and offered me any products in their line to try, i jumped at that chance. That was, until I realized that my daughter (entering 1st grade) didn't actually need any school supplies labeled and her clothes don't need them either:( I've been waiting and waiting for the chance to iron in all the labels, like my mom used ot do when I went to summer camp, or put little tiny labels on each and every pencil, but her school has shared supplies, so no school labels for her.

Thankfully, we are lucky enough to have a few friends who could use some awesome personalized things, who knew that Stuck on You also made placemats and water bottles and all sorts of awesome stuff?

I picked up this adorable placemat for a friend's new baby,

then this water bottle for a fairy-loving-5-year-old, who is entering kindergarten this year.

Both totally amazing, and make up for the fact that I don't get to go all OCD-label-loving on my daughter:)

But, here's your chance, *you* can go label-crazy, since Stuck on You is offering two (TWO!) of my readers a $25 credit for anything on their site. Just fill in the rafflecopter below, and I'll pick a winner next week when I'm back from Haven. So you have plenty of time to enter and get your other back-to-school friends to enter too!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Please visit www.stuckonyou.com to view our full range, our top products are:

Personalized Labels - http://www.stuckonyou.com/usa/name-labels-kids-school.html

Personalized Artsmocks - http://www.stuckonyou.com/usa/art-smocks.html

Personalized Lunchboxes - http://www.stuckonyou.com/usa/lunchboxes.html

Personalized Drink Bottles - http://www.stuckonyou.com/usa/drink-bottles.html

Personalized Silicone Placemats - http://www.stuckonyou.com/usa/silicone-placemat.html

This was a sponsored post, which means I got free products, but the ideas, words, and photos are all mine.

Jessica

Disneyland Tips and Tricks

Yep, we bit the bullet took the big kids back to the happiest place on earth. Maybe it's just that last time we went I was pregnant so I was filled with feel-good hormones, but this time was not as easy-breezy as the last. So I learned the hard way (read my daughter throwing up on *my* bed), what to do to make the most of your Disneyland trip.

Plan ahead. Book character dining, transportation, hotels, tickets etc well in advance, these things fill up fast and you don't want to waste a morning waiting in line to buy your tickets. Check out my advice on airplane travel with kids if you need to fly there.


Know your kids and what they like. If they hate the dark, Space Mountain just isn't going to work for you.


Keep it age appropriate. Last time, with a 2 and 4 year old we mostly did Autopia, carousels, teacups, and every single fricking train we could find:) This time they didn't care about any of that AT ALL (except the teacups, which are an enduring favorite) and just wanted roller coasters. To quote my 4 year old "I like the zoom, zoom, fast, up, up, down, yay"! Imagine that with hand movements and a LOT of jumping.


Take advantage of Magic Morning hours, and do the "must-do" rides then. For us this was the new Cars ride at California Adventure, and Space Mountain at Disneyland. We had less than 15 minute waits for each one, which was amazing considering later in the day wait times topped 2 hours!


Keep them fed and watered. This is what happens when you forget.

Which leads to...

Take breaks. This time we stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel, which was attached to California Adventure, so we could easily go back. Also, the room had bunk beds which made our kids incredibly happy.

A sample day:

6am: wake up. Vacation doesn't turn my kids into sleepers, sigh.
7am: breakfast
8am: we are *in* the park! Rides, rides, rides!
11am: lunch. Either in the park or at Downtown Disney where the food is better
12pm: rest in the hotel room. Ideally nap, but the kids watched shows while *we* napped:)
2pm: Swim and waterslides at the hotel pool. We also snacked the kids (totally a real term, right?)
4pm: Back in the park for more rides!
5pm: Dinner.
7pm: Kids asleep, we read for about a minute until we fall asleep:)

I had purchased 50 pins on eBay, and gave them to the kids beforehand thinking that pin-trading would be a fun activity and keep them busy in lines and at meals.  Plus, the backs kept falling off and we would lose them, fine since I paid about 25 cents for each one, but if I had bought them for $7 at the parks I would have been steaming mad. Plus, they weren't interested for a minute, and no one around was trading pins (or even wearing them)! Maybe they just needed to be older?
#totalfail

Other tips I'm missing?

We aren't planning a return trip until our youngest hits 42 inches. that's the magic height for all of the rides (except for the upside-down roller coaster in California Adventure), and now that I've done the rides, I can't go back to all Dumbo:)

Oh, and the part where my daughter threw up? It was because we had let her eat all the cr@p they have there (for 2 meals). Minus 1 point for the parents; lemonade is not a food group, and neither are churros or ice cream sandwiches. After that we went back to "normal" eating, eggs and fruit at breakfast (no mouse-shaped pancakes), a real lunch, and fish or chicken with veggies for dinner.

Jessica

It's Not Furniture, It's Ikea...

Even though I have a tried and true love for Ikea, some things just weren't meant to be.

Like this dresser that we call the "sunscreen cabinet", or the morning launching pad.

After opening and closing the drawers, mostly the top one, 20+ times a day for almost 2 years, it's over. The love is gone, and the top drawer won't close all the way. Boo.

When we moved I thought we would finally be grown up and only buy adult furniture, but the lure of Ikea got to us. It's so cheap! It's so close! It will only take a day and a half to go there, bribe kids with soft serve, buy the item, wait for it, load it into the car while not decapitating said children, schlep it home, unload kids, put kids to bed, unload items, and put together with a million wooden dowels:)



So I'm looking around, and ready to buy an *actual* piece of furniture that can withstand that many drawer movements. Any suggestions?

Jessica

Car Conversations #2: Foundations

This little one wants nothing more than to talk about construction all day and all night (if we let him).

So it was no surprise to me that one recent morning I spent the 15 minute drive to preschool discussing the differences between piers and spread footings as they realate to the strength of foundations. Yup, that's what he wanted to talk about. Nothing like my older daughter, whose conversations might be more about the foundations of life, nope, just construction, plain and simple.

I need to thank God every day that he sent me a son who loves construction.

Because it could have gone another way.

A not-so-ideal way.

You now...

I almost don't want to type it for fear it will happen, but here goes.

TRAINS

It could have gone "train" and I know zilch about trains. Ditto for cars or any vehicle that isn't a construction vehicle.

We do have a bit of firefighter love, but I can handle that.

So very day, I thank God for giving me a son who can talk about construction with me. I also need to thank my parents for letting me watch This Old House, Hometime, and all sorts of PBS shows about construction, before there was such a thing as HGTV. Honestly, not sure how I made it:)

Plus, I'll give thanks to my husband for marrying someone who watched all those shows and can discuss with gusto why I prefer Joann Liebler as Dean Johnson's cohost, as well as why I know how to build a glass block wall, a skill I will never need as long as I have my say about our designs:)

Jessica

Bloggy Business Cards

Look who's putting on her big-girl blogging pants and finally got some business cards?

Me!!!!

One side has all the pertinent blog info, and the other has my picture and a few photos from the blog. They are from Moo.com, so they are thick, and shiny and totally lovely to hold in your hand, and the incredibly talented Elke Barter, of the blog redesign fame, did them for me as part of our barter:)





And I tried to follow all the sage advice of Haven and blogging conference veterans: put your *name* on the cards (ahem, Kara), put your photo on the card, and your website, and Facebook, and Twitter, and now Pinterest, and Instagram...

Wait, did I totally forget to mention that I am now on Instagram?

Yep, I did. So head over there to follow me, since it's super easy for me to post pics right from my phone, especially good if you are a relative of mine and you have a vested interest in seeing adorable photos of my kids. Or photos of my adorable kids, either way:)

Next up, I have to plan my blog conference wardrobe, ack! Any good advice on that one?

Jessica

Last Minute Party

Two weeks ago as I was unsuccessfully reentering the world of parenting from my 2 week trip to Israel with no children, I realized that if I didn't have people over to keep me awake, I would fall asleep on the floor at 4pm and my children would run wild over my sleeping body.

So, I hurriedly texted a few friends for a totally last minute BBQ.

In my attempts to make it "fancy" for my daughter, we searched the pantry/party closet, and came up with pretty paper straws, nice paper goods from Target, and a pink tablecloth.

Enter this pin,



and I was all set.

Strawberry lemonade was a *huge* hit (I would have added basil or rosemary had it been for adults only), and we cooked up some hot dogs on the grill and called it a day.

Plus, I managed to stay awake until 7pm, a real accomplishment:)

Jessica

God is Testing my Patience Today

This actually happened 2 weeks ago but it tok me this long to decide that I wanted to publish it and actually fess up to the internet world that I believe in God. Anyway, here goes. I dictated this into my phone at 3:02pm on July 2nd, 2013.

Clearly God woke up this morning, and decided to test my patience. Except, you know, God doesn't actually wake up, but in my version of things this is how I think it works. Maybe it was because I didn't pray for anything for *me* on my recent trip to Israel.  It's not like I didn't pray, and I'm not throwing this in the face of everyone who needs something and prays for themselves, because believe me there been times in my prayers for pretty much just a nonstop recitation of the word "please"- please please please please please please please but this time there was a whole  "thank you thank you thank you thank you", with some pleases for other people and a huge feeling of gratitude. I just felt so full and thankful that I didn't think to ask for anything for myself and so today God woke up and decided to test my patience.

It all started with me yelling at the kids (I should take my own advice about how not to yell) which is always a bad thing trying to pack for trip that we're leaving for tomorrow, but since we just got back I'm packing things directly out of the dryer since I just managed to wash them from getting back from Israel. Then we left the house a little bit late, I got to go to work out, great, except this time the workout hurt even more than usual. Probably from the two week in Israel of no workouts. Then I got a parking ticket parking, which caused me to be late for a hike with a girlfriend, which meant I was almost late for preschool pick up, but there were 15 harrowing minutes of what is usually a 30 minute drive to preschool where I thought for sure I wouldn't make it and I would see the crestfallen face of my little four-year-old sweet prince.

At least we got to go to lunch which was followed by a haircut. My son used to hate haircuts, you could know because we had to cut his hair at home, bribing him with Dora and lollipops on the iPad (I clearly meant Dora on the ipad and lollipops for his mouth). Cover him with a blanket and still he cried and squirmed, so now we've moved up and he can go to a real children's haircut place and this time I only had to bribe with Ricola cough drop which was the only thing I had in my purse at the time. 

I had an extra small purse and just my drivers license, one credit card, and about three dollars in cash. 

Then comes my next problem- the haircut place only takes Visa and MasterCard and I threw an American Express card into the little purse.  My son's balloon blows away and we have to ask the lady for another one (while still unable to pay). Then we go to Trader Joe's where I get nasty looks from the woman at the haircut place (apparently she walked there to get herself a snack). I feel like shouting,  "Lady, Trader Joe's takes AMEX, it's okay"! but I didn't because I'm polite like that and I knew God was testing my patience.

All I want is to get out of the parking lot except my car has been egged, except not with eggs with some weird sort of corn muffin or corn nuts throw up. The most disgusting mess all over the side of my car. I really hope it wasn't from the haircut place.

I go home put the groceries in the elevator, but turning on elevator wakes a cranky baby who was woken up at 4:30 in the morning. I see that this recitation is turning into Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day but I just know that God is testing my patience.

Now I go back to the haircut place with a Visa card to pay it, and I feel awful so I over-tip to make them feel better, although really losing two hours of not charging the Visa card is not the worst thing in the world, and now I'm finally finally going to get to spend a little bit of time with my mom and my sister and hope and pray that this day will be over because other than this morning, I've really kept my cool taking deep breaths and knowing that today is just the day that God woke up and decided to test my patience.

Jessica

New Look for the Blog

After a year and a half of the old header, I felt like it was time for a new look. So I bartered services with a good friend, Elke Barter, graphic designer extraodinaire!

In exchange for a new header and business cards, I got to pick out all of her paint colors and carpet for her new house and create a special pinterest board of ideas for her house! Umm, I think I got the better deal since I totally would have done that for free:)

Here's a peek at the Pinterest board I made up for her.



I love that she challenged me to use more jewel tones, instead of my go-to charcoal grey and cool blues, and I am already dying over the pictures of the space.

A sneak peek at my business cars coming soon, once I can pry them out of my baby's hands. I think she thinks they are baby-sized playing cards:)

Jessica

Israel Trip

First, Happy birthday Dad! You are amazing!

A giant photo dump with occasional comments is about all I can manage at this point. Needless to say, it was an amazing trip. We went with our synagogue and our rabbi, and the point was to see Biblical Israel the Israel of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Shilo where the Tabernacle stood and Hannah prayed for a baby. I don't have any pics of Shilo, but praying there was one of the more powerful moments for me.

My husband and I have been before, together and separately, and each time it does feel like we are coming home. Especially now that we have more and more friends who are living there (no pictures to protect their internet-privacy:).

Oh, what? You realized that the first photo with the "biblical Israel" title is actually from Masada, and *not* in fact part fo the bible? Yup, that just shows you how brain-fried I still am, but, it is a lovely view of the Masada mountaintop fortress, the Judean desert, and the Dead Sea beyond. I took almost no photos that day, since it was a bajillion-schmillion degrees, then we were in the Dead Sea, where it's so salty/minerally you float (so no cameras!) and then we managed to get to Ein Gedi, a lovely spring but I was just wandering around in my swimsuit, UV shirt and Keens at that point and longing for a temperature less than the sweltering 109 we had just come from!

The Binyamin winery-

The Jordan river where Yehoshua brought the Israelites into the land of Israel after 40 years of wandering. Or thereabouts. Also purported to be something super important for my Christian friends, but I will for sure, screw it up and offend someone if I try to explain what it is:)

Also, that shack on the other side, is Jordan. So close my cell phone got a text message with "Welcome to Jordan"!

Us on a mountain, Tel Azeka, looking over the valley of Ella, where David and Goliath actually fought. Totally awesome.

We finally get a peak of the Mediterranean and can dip our feet in in Askelon, where we see ancient Roman ruins, and a Philistine city.

The tram ride up Masada, 

Us at the top. And yes, I do realize that we have a million pictures of the two of us. And I'm wearing the same hat in most because my other hat (which looked ridiculous) got lost on the first day. My hubby says that because we were in Israel, that we were closer to God, so he had a hand in losing that awful hat:)

Us at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Also, this is me in my tichel, or head scarf, which I was trying out for fun, and was super cool in a I-felt-not-as-hot way, not in a trendy way:)

I will also point out that we have photos from previous trips that look almost identical of the two of us in the same spot, but in our two previous visits I was 5 months pregnant, so i was SO, SO happy to not be pregnant on this trip.

Since I wasn't pregnant, we got to do totally awesome stuff. ATV riding in the Judean desert, and the Hezekiah water tunnels at the City of David in Jerusalem. Imagine yourself in a 2000 year old water tunnel, about 26 inches wide, between 4 and 8 feet high, and about a mile long. Oh, and with water up to your mid-thigh. It was amazing, and scary, and crazy, and I was so happy to be behind relatively fast walkers or I might have totally lost my mind:)

Overlooking the Jezreal Valley, on Mt. Carmel, the sight of Elijah's showdown with the prophets of Ba'al.

Har Meggido, which is Armageddon, where the actual Armageddon is supposed to take place. Plus very picturesquw with eh date palms grown from archeologists who spit their date pits onto the dig:) You can actually see 31 different layers of cities/cultures/civilizations here, it's like a giant archaeological layer cake.

Ancient grain silo.

Tel Dan. Which was another archaeological site. By this day I was about to lose it if we saw one more Tel, but at least the walk to the scorching sun-drenched Tel, was a water walk with rivers and trees.

And finally Caesarea, a Herodian sea port from Roman times, which is just as beautiful as we remembered it being, except that this time there was no time to shop and by Roman glass jewelry  Sad for me, happy for my husband, who detests shopping. Conveniently  we did all our shopping in one coke-and-shwarma fueled evening in Jerusalem, so we were all set in the gifts department:)

We hope to bring out two big kids back in a few years time, they just need to be able to survive the airplane flight first! So I'm taking recommendations on things to do with kids for the next time!

Jessica

Giveaway!!!- Updated: The NIVEA Indulgence Challenge #NIVEAindulgence #spon

I just heard from NIVEA and they want me to offer a giveaway to my readers, um yes, I will happily offer all of you a chance to win 2 NIVEA products, a bathrobe, scented candle, and get this, a $50 giftcard to Bed Bath and Beyond! So I'm reposting my review of their super silky body wash, and you just need to enter with rafflecopter below. Good luck, I'll pick a winner by the 11th. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

With three kids under 6, I'm more likely to skip a shower all together than to actually take the time to enjoy one, so when I was approached by NIVEA about spending 10 days committing to make a little extra time for myself I jumped at the chance.

"Sorry, mommy can't read Amelia Bedelia (again), I'm working."

Even if the only beach action my feet see is in our sandbox, I still want them to feel more "silky smooth" than could-be-mistaken-for-the-sand!

Let's not talk about how blogging does not equate to working in the eyes of my kids, who have very limited computer exposure. Not sure what they think I'm doing on here, but a generic "working" will usually suffice.

So, when my "work" involved me locking my bathroom door, taking a shower longer than 4 minutes, and actually doing something after, you know, like applying lotion, I think their little minds were completely blown away.

As a refresher, here's my "office" for the purposes of this project.

Not too shabby, right? I really should spend more time in there:)

Soooo, after a week it felt less like a guilty pleasure, and more like spending time on myself so I could spend better time with my kids. And by the end of two weeks my skin is all smooth and soft, and I'm taking bigger, deeper breaths, and even my husband can tell the difference in my skin. I'm a devoted sunscreen addict, so my usual scent is eau de Coppertone, but now I'm layering in something a little more feminine and nourishing before my protective coating:)


How do you indulge yourself? Chocolate, a favorite perfume, silky soft skin?

Jessica

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Car Conversation #1: Modesty, Firearms and Necessities

Today our 20 minute drive home from Art Camp was more far reaching than almost any conversation I can think of having with my currently 5 11/12ths year old (her favorite way to express her almost-6 year old status).

First we started by discussing hair covering as an expression of modesty. Hats versus scarves, wigs, covering your hair all the time or just at religious occasions  Other religions and their modesty standards, full-body coverage, skirts to the ankle versus the knee, how much we cover "up top". Why some women at the pool wear bikinis and why "in our family" (my favorite way of expressing our values to my little kids) we wear swim shirts, both to protect ourselves from sun, and because we don't need others to see our tummies:)

Then, because we had the unfortunate timing to pass a car on fire, we talked about law enforcement, fire departments and guns. Why guns? Well apparently the car on fire wasn't an accident, and a suspect had fled the scene, so we were treated to police officers running with their guns drawn in hot pursuit. Not my ideal time to explain that guns aren't just what Uncle Jason uses for hunting. Let me say now, that I was loving the hunting reason. I mean, if it's in Little House on the Prairie, it just makes it easier to explain. Uncle Jason uses guns to shoot deer and turkeys (in accordance to local hunting laws) and Pa used his gun to shoot dear and wild pigs and to protect his family from bears. Easy.

So now we spoke about why kids are never ever ever allowed to touch a gun or play with it. That if she ever sees one, she needs to go to another room and call a parent right away. Also about how police departments have very strict moral rules about how and when to shoot, and how grateful we are to live in a country with police and firefighters to keep us safe.

Except now she wanted to go back to the part about hair covering, and I thought she said hair coloring, so I started in on a discussion of luxury. Of necessity versus "extra". We listed our necessities: air, water, food, clothes, a place to live, trees. Trees were her top one since she was pretty clear that without them we wouldn't have air. Smart cookie that one:)

And I jumped right into extras with "tv". She came up with: shows, ipods, ipads, kindles, toys, books, fancy shoes, purses, watches, cars (you can take a bus or walk), and restaurants. This was by far her favorite part of the conversation. I tried to add in "luxury" as in a manicure, where you pay someone to paint your nails for you, totally unnecessary but lovely if you can afford it and you make the decision to.

Which led to a reminder conversation entitled, "where money comes from". We've already had this talk, so it was just a reminder that how much money you have is usually tied to what you do for a job and (occasionally) how hard you work at that job. Today I focused on once you pay for your necessities, each family makes decisions about their extras or luxuries on their own. So someone might need a car for work, or someone else might decide to have a tv, or fewer toys, or a flip phone instead of an iphone.

Here she is collecting money for her school, we are rocking the talks about money and charity as an expression of our values.

We are really trying to get al those values talks in when they present themselves, because I have a hard time just turning to my kids and saying, "you have no idea what a handgun is, but you should never touch one".

35 minutes later, 20 to talk and drive, 15 to write this up, and I think I need a nap:)

What are you talking about in cars with your kids?

Jessica

Happy 4th!

While we are enjoying some much needed bonding time with our kids, I wanted to wish you all an amazing 4th of July.

We are so blessed to live in a land where we are each free to live how we want to live, and to raise our families under a banner of freedom.

Dinner Solutions for the Busy Mom

This post could also be called, "How I make a home cooked dinner every night when the little ones need my attention".

We are recently back form our amazing trip to London and Israel (pics soon, I promise). When we were gone a combination f people stayed with our three kids, one of them being our totally amazing, rockstar nanny. She has 3 kids of her own so I often think that she is secretly judging me for hiring her, when she manages 3 kids and a fulltime job. Turns out, she totally wasn't judging me and taking care of all three kids without any help was pretty tiring for her too! I can tell she has a ton more empathy for me, but also thinks that some of the things I place a priority on are crazy. Like making a home cooked diner each night. Um, that's part of the reason I have a nanny, so someone else can watch the kids while I'm cooking.

Short of that system, here are the meals I left for her to make while I was away, and the ones I go to when I need to jut get a healthy dinner in the oven and off of my to-do list.

I put everythign on one baking sheet, casserole dish, dutch oven, etc and pop it in the oven.

With three small ones under 6 I don't have time to be standing at the stove every night for an hour, or even for more than 5 minutes, if my baby (the attention hog) has anythign to do with it.

This was one of my easier and more impressive dishes considering it took me about 90 seconds to pull things from the fridge and into the oven. Salmon, with mango salsa over the adult portions, shitake mushrooms on the side, and a dairy noodle kugel from the freezer. Everything cooked/reheated in a 350 oven for 20 minutes.

This was salmon, carrots and asparagus, same deal. 350 for 10 minutes and we were done.

What's your secret to making dinner when you are surrounded by kids and things demanding your attention?

Jessica