Giveaway Announcement and Update!

I hope everyone has been as busy as us as to not notice that we are late announcing the Seasons At Home subscription giveaway! We have not forgotten, we just ran late with all of the hub-bub around our house!

~*~ And so, the winners for the June giveaway are ~*~

Misty at Little Home in the Woods and Emma!

Both ladies are receiving full subscriptions to Seasons At Home Magazine! Congratulations ladies!

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Wow! We have have needed a post here! In our last post we were getting ready for the CHEC Homeschool Convention. That event passed over a week ago. Since then we have been working like bees to get the summer issue of the magazine done! I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen working away at making food and other things, and have a similar day planned for today. But we are very excited to have this issue done!

While we are in the midst of getting this issue wrapped up, our posting shall continue to be limited, but I do have some recipes I would like to pop on here. Besides that, God is changing things on our homefront, and I'm sure we will have a post announcing future changes and blessings!

I thought I would post a few pictures from the convention : ) Unfortunately, we didn't have very many. The first day we didn't even have the camera because it got locked in the car, along with our credit card machine. Needless to say, day one we ran the stone-age "cash only" booth! The rest of the time, we were either busy with people or not paying attention to the fact that no one was taking pictures.

Our lovely banner! I was very happy with how well it turned out =) That was a hard one to design.

Mother and I. From the looks on our faces.. what do you think the caption should be on this picture? :) I have one ~ Jess: "So, you think we look like we know what we're doing?"

On the second day of the conference, I switched out with Dad and took the kids back home and then brought them back to come in and see the booth. Which I don't think could have been frilled up much more than what we had it! We had the fluffiest booth in the building..

John Jr. (I call him Wally)

We had the pleasure of meeting the McDonald family who were in a booth behind us! It was so nice to meet Miss Tiffany.. I can only wish that we had gotten a better picture. Vain questions you ask yourself when looking at yourself in a picture: What happened to my hair?.. Why does that shirt make me look fat? Ah.. things we can laugh about later.

A very sweet picture of Madison and Abigail McDonald :) Little Abigail wandered over to our table and she and Madi got to talking. They played together the entire day!

Working in the kitchen making food for the magazine :)

One of the absolutely sweet and adorable dresses Mother made for the girl's tea for the magazine! (Evie is modeling) She's making hats to match as we speak :)

That is all there is for this moment! Have a very blessed Independence Day everyone.. and many blessings ~*~Jessica~*~

Getting Ready..

We haven't been blogging very faithfully these past two weeks, so I thought I would post a little update on what we have been doing. Our main activity has been getting ready for the CHEC Homeschool Convention in Denver on Thursday! We are very excited as this is our first year doing a booth for our business and magazine. Mom and I have been running about, making up all of the "homey" goodies we want to decorate the booth with, plus all of the other products we are taking with us. Needless to say, it's going to be one packed booth! I keep finding things we can take with us..

Here's a couple of things we have been working on this week~

We discovered that nice displays of any kind can be wickedly expensive. Amen Dad knows how to make our own! This is our cookie stamp display for the table. He made a couple of others for our magazines and cd's.

We are also taking along the majority of our ribbon embroidery goods. I made up two little designs to sell with the ribbon. I had all of the instructions and how-to pictures printed out on nice little cards. I thought they came out rather pretty :)

And when preparing for the convention hasn't kept us busy, the weather has. We've had tornadoes and storms almost everyday, nothing too serious, but they have provided some wonderful picture taking opportunities. Not to mention all of the rain has been wonderful! Our garden is enjoying it immensely

Two tornadoes came down yesterday behind our house, a good distance off, but close enough to see. Both stayed on the ground for about an hour, but I don't think either did any damage.

Now I need to hop off here and get to the rest of my duties for the day! I might have a chance to get back on later to finish my homemade ice cream post :)

Have a very blessed day everyone! ~*~Jessica~*~

Delight Yourselves in The Lord!

This was today's Elisabeth Elliot newsletter and I thought I would share it. I found it very encouraging..

A Safeguard for the Soul

"Souls are vulnerable things. They need safeguards. It was when Paul was in prison that this idea came to him. He had just been writing to the Philippians about the benefits that accrued because of his own sufferings and the possible death he might die. He told them of Epaphroditus' illness and anxiety, and finished with "In conclusion, my brothers, delight yourselves in the Lord!...You will find it a great safeguard to your souls" (Phil 3:1 JBP).

It would be very easy to allow depression and anxiety to overcome us when we look at the dismal circumstances in which we sometimes find ourselves. Who had better reason than Paul for depression? ("Oh well, but he was Saint Paul!" we counter.) He had learned by practice how to apply the soul's safeguard, which is not mere enjoyment. It is delight. This is a command and therefore an act of will, and it is done in the Lord. No circumstance is so dismal as to prevent obedience to the command. No trouble can blast that safeguard. Do it. Do it by faith. Delight yourself in the Lord. Maybe you will have to get out of bed, get up from your chair, go outdoors and walk, sing a song out loud, bake a pie for somebody, or mow the lawn as an offering of praise. You can do something which will help you to obey that command. It is amazing how strongly what we do affects how we feel."

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Let's choose JOY!!

Many blessings on your day! ~*~Jessica~*~

Vanila Bean Frappuccinos

A dear friend and I have been talking about Starbucks, and generally how we can't afford it. It really is true. Even if you can afford $4.00 for a cup of bean water and foamy milk, going often is a rotten waste of money! This is of course coming from a Starbucks guru (we love Starbucks). I'm a shaken tea addict.

So she started digging around for some good coffee recipes and sent them to me to mess around with. This afternoon, Mom and I decided that we needed a little perk, so I dug out the Vanilla Bean Frappuccino recipe :)

Vanilla Bean Frappuccino

I only changed a couple of things in the recipe. I decreased the amount of sugar, added more ice cream and added vanilla extract too. This is pretty basic, throw the following ingredients into the blender and turn it on.

2 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2-1 cup strong brewed coffee, chilled
4 small scoops vanilla ice cream
3/4 cup ice cubes

It came out quite yummy! I have been craving something with chocolate today, so I stirred in a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder into mine, and some chocolate chips. Just like a Java Chip Frappuccino.. :)

Thanks Michelle!

June Quilt Block!

This is the lovely June quilt block for our quilting membership. I love all of the pretty blue fabrics for this one :). This one is a little less challenging than last month's block, which involved fabric folding, but it came out so very pretty! We only have one more block to go before we can put our quilts together! I had better catch up on mine..

Have a lovely day everyone!

~*~Jessica~*~

June Giveaway plus May's winners!

The winners for the Seasons at Home Subscription are..
Cathy Bryan and Heather G! We have emailed the winners, and you must respond within 5 days of this post.

This is the June Giveaway Post so go ahead and enter! Two winners will receive a Seasons at Home Magazine subscription! We do have a new rule that an email MUST be provided. We will not go to your blog to contact you. To read the rules again, go to the Giveaway Page above, Thank you and blessings!
Theresa

Growing Time..

As much as we love the snowy winters here in Colorado, there is something equally exciting about our "growing season." Yesterday we were officially able to start our garden! We are starting most of our seeds inside, rather than outside like we did last year. Last year really was dry and most of our seeds either didn't sprout, or dried up soon after sprouting. It really was a sad harvest, and we greatly missed our usually bountiful harvest of Zucchini!

I loved the sprouting trays we used! They were the big trays of peat pellets that blow up when you pour water over them. I thought they were much better than just using a big tray of dirt. It allowed us to start lots of different seeds all in one tray without worrying about the sprouts getting mixed up. Quite neat, like a mini-greenhouse. We are still using the big trays of course, but only for one kind of seed per tray, such as our cucumbers. I'm hoping we get lots and lots of cucumbers this year, it would be nice to have enough at one time to make pickles!

After we got home today from our little family outing, I was surprised to find the radishes already poking their little green shoots out of the dirt..

Here's what's growin' in the garden so far for this year: radishes, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins (including White Casper pumpkins!), sweet corn (our first try with corn!), green onions, chives, peas, and green beans, basil, oregano, sage, cilantro, and dill. The only things we haven't planted yet would be the tomatoes and peppers. But, we normally buy plants instead of starting seeds for those.. for this climate, we've found it's easier.

Hoping to be able to post pictures of a lovely harvest of vegetables and herbs this year! What's growing at your house? :)