Yummy Asparagus!

I don't know about you guys but I love summer because summer bring fresh veggies!

One of my favorites is ASPARAGUS! There is nothing like yummy asparagus.

So today I thought all of you might like to know how I like my asparagus!

 I like to line my pans with tin foil to make things easy.

So first I put 1 Tablespoon of olive oil in my lined pan.

After I have washed and cut about an inch of the bottom of my asparagus, I toss them in the olive oil.

I then put them in the oven for about 15 minutes at ° 375.

I like mine a little crunchy so you may want to leave it in a little longer for softer asparagus.

After you take them out of the oven I squeeze a little lemon over them along with some kosher salt.

 I also like to add some toasted almonds...or any kind of toasted nuts.

 Add a little Fetta to top it off and you got some delicious asparagus!

HINT: I normally like to add crumbled bacon on it, but the bacon didn't really go with this meal, but the bacon is yummy.

 And voila, you got a tasty side dish and  I consider it a healthy side dish!

And because you ate "healthy" and it was so simple to make.... you cook your family up some A+ cupcakes for dessert! YUMMY!  I promise you it can't go wrong!



Wood Pallet Entryway Table

There comes a time on the blog world where you have decorated your room, and shared all of the projects. Well the time is coming to an end where I have shared just about everything in my living room. It's a little sad that I only have a couple of more things to share but soon I will get to share my living room reveal! I'm pretty excited to share the final look with all of you! But for now I get to share another one of my DIY living room projects.

So the next DIY project on mind was an entryway table.
I don't have much of an entryway but enough to where it's in need of a little something.
When I bought my furniture for my living room this was suppose to be my entryway table.
The entertainment console that we had before, didn't look right for our new television. Well I thought it looked fine, but the hubby didn't (you know how they can get when it comes to their television).
So I had to give up my entryway table.
It actually is an entertainment console but since we already had one it was perfect for my entryway. So I thought. I'm happy that the television and this console were a perfect match because my entryway has a new table and it's absolutely perfect!

Who's ready for a DIY entryway table using...you got it, a wood pallet!
How could I not want to use an old wooden pallet? It matches my living room theme so well! Lucky for me I didn't have to search high and low to find any either. My landlord has a million of these, I asked if I could have some, and he replied "sure take as many as you need!" 

The first thing I did was to saw off half of the pallet, so it looked like this. Can you see an entryway table??

I then got another wood pallet an used this long piece for the legs.

Now the best way to get the wood pieces off the top and bottom is to use a hack saw and saw the nails off. Those nails are in there and I found it easier to just saw the nails off. It left the nail in the wood but you can't really tell. So once I got off all those wood pieces off that long piece I would saw it in half. I need two of these long piece for four legs.

Here is the long piece cut in half. Can you picture the legs yet?

Now you have to use your imagination because I can't find the pictures to the rest of this project. I'm not sure what happened to them but they are gone.

I then placed the 'legs' under the wood as you can see.

I screwed a nail through the top and through each side to keep the legs sturdy.

You will need a power drill, this wood may be old but it is tough.

So this is how the 'legs' look on my table.

Here's a picture from the front.  Looks like an old table that was made a long time ago! Perfect!

Now if you know about pallets they are missing board pieces. See picture above.

I cut the wood pieces off of the other pallet and fit them to size. Some were a perfect fit and some needed some sanding. Instead of risking splitting the old wood and nailing the wood pieces in, I just used wood glue and it worked perfect.

I then colored the top the color of my living room theme. I made sure it had that weathered look to it. The older the look the better!

Here is my new entryway table! It looks great! This is all you get to see for now, but I will be showing you the decorated piece soon!

You know the best part about this is...it was free! I already had the paint and the pallet was free. I could have bought legs but I really wanted to give it an old look. When I think back to old wooden furniture, it's not modern.  Making the legs from the wood pallet made it that more unique.

Oh and since my landlord gave me permission to use all the wood pallets I want, I will be! I have seen some cute things made from wood pallets and plan on giving them a try! You can't beat a DIY project that is free and looks great!

Precious Moments Bible Craft

  As head of Children's Church, I have to come up with something each Sunday to keep the little ones busy or my Sunday could turn into a complete mess it you know what I mean. I'm not a very good entertainer, when it comes to small children. I'm not good at keeping them busy with games, music, or those types of things that you do at Children's Church. I do give a small lesson so that the little ones can understand but children can only listen for so long. So to make sure that the children don't go haywire on me and to pass the time, I do crafts! Now that is one thing I can do! But coming up with crafts that pertain to the Bible and that small children can do isn't all that easy. So I look around the web and thankfully there are some helpful people out there to help make my Sundays with the little ones a HAPPY SUNDAY!

FOR A PRINTABLE VERSION OF THIS CRAFT CLICK HERE

Make sure to follow the instructions on that site to download this craft.

If you have any question or problems you can contact me.

 I got the idea from Oriental Trading and decided it was a great idea for the little ones. They could color it and afterward fly it around, and most importantly keep them busy!

I browsed around the web and found this cute picture of Precious Moments Angels. It went well with my bible verse:

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  John 14:6

I made the kite with the bible verse on it and the little Angels and my craft was all set to go!

You can print out the picture above if you want the children to color the whole thing or you can do as I did below.

This takes much more time and paper though. If you have a large class I would print out the one about.

So this is an example of the kite I did.



 I printed out this kite and verse on a colored sheet of paper (see picture above).



I then printed these out on a white sheet of paper (see above picture)

Now this part was time consuming because I cut these out and glued them onto the colored kite.

I then printed these bows out on another piece of colored paper.

If you look below you will see that the bows are different colors.

Because there were several children I printed out the bows on different sheets of colored paper and then took a color for each bow from each sheet of paper.

I cut a piece of yarn for the kite string.

 I hot glued the yarn to the back of the kite.

 I took 6 bows and hot glued them to the kite string.

 Here are the results!

Doesn't my son color just lovely lol! He puts no effort in to coloring what so ever.

I just love Precious Memories...I think they are so adorable.

This is a great activity at church.

You can even do little bible study about how we get to heaven too!

It is also a great craft and bible study for your children at home.

They can play with it, they can hang it, and they can learn from it!

It don't get any better than that does it?

DIY Decorated Old Wooden Window

Today I'm going to share with you a project I couldn't live without when I seen this DIY Decor. When deciding on a theme for my living room I was inspired by a wooden barn bird house my Uncle made for my Mom from the house her Dad grew up in and she grew up in as a child. I love the look of 'old' wood. I grew up in the country and 'old' wood just has that 'country' feel to it. Everyday I would see this old wood house that my Grandfather and Mom grew up in, so having an 'old' wood theme was a no brainer.

Here is my inspiration...the wooden barn built from the house that my Grandad and Mom grew up in!
Isn't this an awesome idea my Uncle came up with to have memories of the house they grew up in?
Hopefully I will have an update showing the actual picture of the house...I'm just waiting on my sister to send me a picture.

So how could I pass up this idea to have an old wooden window frame displayed on my wall? I just couldn't live without it once I seen it. It would be the perfect touch to my living room. So I got right to work and started on my first DIY project for my living room.

Here's my wooden window frame.

If you look closely you can see some very small glass bottles.

They were very old glass bottles that my Mom had collected (she loved antiques).

I thought that this frame would be a perfect place to display these cute little glass bottles.

I then bought some scrap paper at Hobby Lobby.

If you go to Hobby Lobby I'm sure you will see it.

I then picked out how I wanted it to be displayed.

Once I had the look I was going for I handed the project over to my husband.

He printed up these designs so he could press them onto fabric.

(Click Here to see more about this concept)

Now it's a permanent design on fabric not paper.
I can wash it, it's sturdy, and looks better than paper.
I hot glued each piece of fabric onto cardboard for support.
I then placed each one in the window block.

 I then added the glass bottles to the old wooden frame.
I added some flowers to the old glass bottles for some charm.
And here is the final product of my first DIY project in my living room.
The best part about it is I can change the patterns at anytime!
I will probably do that soon since I really didn't have a color scheme in my living room at the time I made this and just picked out some cute patterns.

I added this cute 'Amazing Grace' Wall Decor as a finishing touch.
It was my Mom's favorite song so it fit right in with my wall decor.

Remember this cross I had made (if not you can check that out here).
Well here is its home!

Here is the final product of my 1st DIY project I had made for my living room!
I just love how this wall turned out!
It's my favorite decorated wall in my living room.
It's my dedication wall to my Mom who passed away of cancer 5 years ago.
 So it has a very special meaning.

Thanks for stopping in and taking the time to checkout my DIY Living Room Decor!
Come back soon to see more of my projects from my living room :)

This post was featured here:

Faith Means Letting Go (For Moms of Kindergartners)

Today is not a blog about crafts, recipes, projects, or whatever else I normally put on my blog.

Today is a day where I pour out my feelings to you all.

So why pour out my feelings...because I'm not sure what else to do besides keep myself busy.

It's official...all my children are in school.

This had to be one of the hardest days of my life. Holding my little guy's hand as I walked him into the school building. I cried as we waited in the gym for school to start. I was shaking not wanting to let go of his hand. Everyone around me was calm and starring at me. I felt alone, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't keep the tears from falling. I still can't.

I brought Zane to his classroom and helped him with breakfast. Parents were starting to leave and there I was still holding onto my little man. I knew it was going to be hard, because every time I thought about it this week, tears came to my eyes. With my girls it was a happy moment walking them to their classroom and smiling as I walked away, but I guess knowing there ain't going to be any little ones running around my house, keeping me company, is hard. It's real hard. It's lonely. 

Not only is Zane my last child he's also a Mommy's boy.

I have never been away from him, other than times I didn't have a choice. Like hospital visits. But that's a whole other chapter in my life that is finally starting to close. Another story for another time maybe? I am very blessed to be a stay at home Mom and spend every day with my children. I guess that's the hard part about spending every moment with your child, they eventually have to leave. It goes by faster than I ever could have imagined.

From the moment Zane Wesley Secret was born I couldn't put him down.

Was it because little boys steal their Mommy's hearts? If you haven't heard that before, I can say this is true.

Was it because I knew he would be my last little one? Not by choice, but for my health.

Was it because I watched my Mom holding her first and only Grandson in the hospital room knowing she was dying of cancer?

I suppose all of these played a big role into my special bond with my son. A bond that won't be broken even if it means I have to let go as I walk away from his Kindergarten classroom.

Yesterday he was born (so it seems) and today he is a big boy in Kindergarten. I'm not sure how time got away from me. Every morning my little guy would sit on me for hours and snuggle with me. He never was eager to watch T.V., or play with his toys, or do whatever boys do every morning. HE We looked forward to waking up each morning and sitting on the couch spending hours together. He gave me at least 100 kisses in the morning, and right now it seems like I've been cheated with my kisses this morning.

For the last couple of years I have been trying to get him to sleep in his own bed, and going on 6 years old you would think he would be sleeping in his own bed. But in the middle of the night he would always make his way into our bed, taking it over. Last night he went to bed in his own bed and woke up in his own bed. How I missed waking up to him this morning. How he managed to sleep in his bed all night, I'm not sure, but if there was a night I wanted him sleeping in my bed, it would have been last night. I guess maybe it was God's way of telling me that my little boy is no longer a little boy, but a big boy.

Here I am waiting for school to be out so I can finally hold my little man in my arms again, but for once time seems to be going so slow. Time always seems to fly, but for once it's on hold.

I wish someone would have told me that my heart would break as I slowly let go of my son's hand. I guess we are never really prepared for what our future holds or how we will feel. As I write this I can only think about how selfish I am because some Mommy's are letting go of their son's or daughter's hand as their child is making their way to heaven and I'm only letting go of Zane's hand for a short time.

My heart aches but I smile because he smiles. Zane was excited and couldn't wait to get to school. I am happy and I did cry tears of joy and I know I will be excited to hear all his stories when he comes home from school. As I write this I say I'm alone but really I'm not. God is always there to hear me, I just have to learn to reach out more to God. Now that I have more time I know that more time will be spent on having a better relationship with God.

The first step I need to take is letting go and trust that God knows what he is doing as Zane and even my girls get older. I can't always protect them, but I can always pray for them. As I write this I'm wondering why letting go was so hard. Is it because I no longer have control? The truth is, I never had control, God did. God knows what he is doing with our children's lives. I just have to learn to have Faith. The real protection is our Faith in God.

God walks with our children each day even as I had no choice but to walk away. God never turns his back on our children or us. We may never understand what God is doing in our lives but through good times and the bad times we must know that God knows better than us. He has a plan for our children as much as we want to control the lives of our children, but we must understand that letting go is the first step. We tried to do as God asked us to do as Mothers, but now it's time to let God do what God does best....HIS JOB.

I know with God's guiding hand and my Faith my children will walk away with their own Faith. So now it's time to have complete Faith that as my children grow their Faith will grow. I'm not really walking away or letting go, I'm just letting God take control......

Thanks for letting me pour out my feelings today. It was a hard week for me. Not only did I have to let go of Zane's hand as he started Kindergarten I had to let go of Jaden's hand as she started High School. Having Cameron going into 4th grade was a breeze!

Letting go is not always easy but we truly never let go we just leave it in God's hands for we can't always walk hand in hand with our children but God can. God is Our Father, Our

Protector, and we know this because God let go of his own Son for us. But just as we never really let go God never really let go of Jesus because he lives. Jesus lives through us and by believing this we know that letting go really means leave it in God's hands. As much as I hurt this morning, I know that by believing in The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit my time will come where there is no hurt, because I found the Faith to let go.

"But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me."  John 16:32

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.  Psalms 34:4

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.  2 Peter 3:18

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.  Proverbs 16:33

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  Hebrews 11:1

Leave your orphans; I will protect their lives.  Jeremiah 49:11

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  Proverbs 3:5

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.  Proverbs 16:9

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.  Proverbs 22:6

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."  Matthew 19:14

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  Gelations 2:20

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  Romans 8:18

Amen

I'll leave you with some happy moments!