Shutterfly's Holiday Card Promotion

As a mom who takes tons of photos, i try to make sure that i dont just leave them on a disk on the computer but actually make prints of them as well. i love to scrapbook but even if i dont have the time to scrap them all i still love to put them in a simple album and keep the dates straight. i usually have my prints made from Shutterfly.com.

right now Shutterfly has a great Holiday Card collection and an even greater promotion for bloggers who love to use shutterfly. they are offering bloggers 50 FREE photo cards!! this is a great deal. sending out christmas cards can become expensive. i always love to include a photo in my christmas card so this deal really caught my attention. one of my favorite parts of christmas, even growing up, was getting cards in the mail and looking at the photos of our family and friends. now that i have my own family i enjoy sending out cards just as much as receiving them.

Shutterfly has an incredible amount of card designs to choose from. click here to check them out. you can choose from a layout with just one photo or ones that hold many photos. they also have an entire collection of christian christmas cards. here are just two that i like.

they also have a line of christmas gift tags. i like this idea as they come with your family's name on them so you are not hand writing each one. below is a fun example. click here to see more.

and last but not least they have a line of story cards. these christmas cards give you the opportunity to catch everyone up a little bit on your year. a mini family newsletter. some years i enjoy writing a quick note about our family milestones and this is a really cute way to do it.

to see more story cards, click here.

if you are a blogger and want to get 50 free cards, it is really easy. follow this link.

i hope your creative juices are flowing. i know that i am thinking right now of the pictures i want to use for our cards this year.

so go check out shutterfly and start thinking about which photo and card you want to send out this year.

trick or treating

alright... this will be the last halloween post, i promise. the week before halloween was packed full of fun activities.

tuesday night we got all dressed up and headed to garrets school for halloween halls. each grade level decorates a section of the hallway and they invite the students and their families to come back one night and trick or treat the halls. it is really fun. they classes get so creative. we have enjoyed making that a tradition over the last couple of years.

thursday the girls and i enjoyed trunk or treat in the church parking lot with all of our MOPS friends.

i even got a picture of me and my sweet girl
everybody checking out their goodies and eating a snack
such a good big sister.

then on saturday, yes, saturday we went trick or treating in a neighborhood. here in greeneville i guess they never trick or treat on a sunday if halloween falls on a sunday, so we joined up with some friends and found a great neighborhood to trick or treat in. the weather was just perfect. a little cool but not to cold. the kids had a blast and got SO much candy.

i love this last picture of dave with the girls. brenna wanted one of us to go with her up to the houses. so much of the time she seems so grown up, it is nice to have her want our help every now and then :)

dressing up

princess brenna! brenna is all about the girly, fancy, sparkly, shiny. she had in her head she wanted to be a princess. gram poirier made this dress for her for her birthday. you can tell by the look on her face how much she LOVED this dress.
showing off her fancy shoes.
indian warrior garret. i had a great time creating the costumes for garret and raelyn. they were super thrifty as all i had to buy was a two pack of pillow cases. everything else i already had in our craft supplies. the hot glue gun was my best friend for this project.

indian princess raelyn... what a beauty she is. i put a little bit of make up on the girls. after i did, i felt like rae looked so grown up. i told dave later that night that she is NEVER allowed to wear makeup :)

froggy jori... this costume was garrets for his first halloween. i LOVE that i can use some of the things that he wore for the girls. such a cute little frog she was.
we love dressing up. i loved it as a kid and now i love it as a mom dressing up my kids.

punkins

i love halloween... this will be one of a few posts i will put up about our halloween. i love the creativity that comes with it. creating costumes and dressing up, carving pumpkins, colorful leaves, cooler temps, fun games, fun with friends, candies and treats. we invited some of our friends over for a pumpkin carving party. we played in the leaves, ate a picnic lunch and then went to town carving. the kids out numbered the adults so there were lots of pumpkins for the adults to carve.
brenna helping dad push out the eyes of her pumpkin
by the time dad got around to doing his, he got out the power tools! cheater!
garret did awesome and carved this own pumpkin ALL by HIMSELF this year. he stuck with it and did a great job.
here is the whole crowd with their pumpkins. such fun!
i love how the pumpkins are all so different. we had the kids draw on a piece of paper what they wanted their faces to look like. then we tried to do the carvings just like their pictures. brenna even drew what she wanted hers to look like. from left to right, brenna, raelyn, garret, and daddy.

addition week 4

ok so things are all kind of starting to run together. i will try my best to give last weeks update.

they completely finished the new roof.

they added another small roof over the french doors to help break up the height of the exterior wall
they worked on re-directing our path so that it goes right to the french doors

they did all the rough electric and plumbing

they installed all the windows and doors
and we passed our framing inspection on friday! it was a good week. drywallers are here today, cant wait to show you what it looks like with drywall up.

Rollie Pollie

going back a little b/c i havent shared joris big news yet. at 13 weeks she decided she was ready to roll over and has not stopped since. the second you lay her on the floor she flips herself right over. she gets so proud. of course it helps when everyone in the house stops doing what they are doing and cheers for her. the big kids get so excited. even though she has done it a hundred times they cheer like it was her first time. once she is flipped over she spins herself in circles to see what everyone else is up to. garret calls her a tick tock clock and that is exactly what she is like.

the blur of her rolling over...
those sweet little cheeks. i cant believe how fast she is moving now. i am guessing it wont be to long until she can get right where she wants to.

addition week 3

monday= rain!.... not good for a house that has a gigantic hole in its roof. dave worked sunday trying to tarp the roof so the rain wouldnt come in.... but it did. monday morning dave and i were out in the rain re-tarping things and sweeping water off the decking. we got it to stop coming in the house. it wasnt a ton but there was rain coming down the walls from behind the crown molding in the kitchen. the good part is that the walls that got wet will be coming down anyways.

tuesday the guys worked like CRAZY!!! i have to say was i am so proud of my man. him and his guys worked from 7 am until 6pm putting up all the roof trusses, the plywood and the tar paper on the roof to get it all dried in for the storm that was going to come again that night. dave had planned on renting a crane to lift the trusses on wednesday morning but the weather was calling for strong winds and he didnt want to go another day with just the tarps. so they worked HARD and LONG and everything by hand, without the crane. my heros!

hard to tell but the trusses are on and the playwood

inside view of the second story-
this is a picture of jori and i in HER new room. she is still sleeping in the cradle in our room. she is about busting out of it.

wednesday they worked on getting the metal roofing up on the roof

thursday they framed the interior walls upstairs

friday they cut new windows in the already framed downstairs walls b/c i had changed my mind... oops.

they are moving so fast. dave says he is on track to have the entire thing done in three more weeks.