#1. Marley Lilly is the most fun place to shop online.

I am not sponsored by Marley Lilly, nor am I an affiliate. This does not make me any money to say this. I just love this place. You can order anything monogrammed from Marley Lilly, and it does not come all the way from China! This stuff is monogrammed for you, in South Carolina.

When I first found this site, I may or may not have spent quite a bit of time pinning and wishing.

This store has the CUTEST stuff!!!

I’m a wee bit obsessed with monograms:

It may sound silly, but frilly touches like my monogrammed initials on my jacket and my hand bag do help brighten my day!

I don’t think I had ever ordered a single monogrammed thing before I found online stores who do it. Why? Well, I love the look of it, but we move a lot, so I do not know the places to go anywhere I live to find services like this.

Also, it just looks expensive, you know?

What I LOVE about this online store is that you can find pretty stuff for good prices. Everything is so cute, completely affordable, and I can order it from anywhere, without leaving my house.

#2. Etsy shops are essential for finding things that are super personalized.

Let me show you a few of the other adorable things I found on Etsy!!!

#3. Yes, I use Amazon just as much as everyone else. It is less personal, but it is obviously practical.

Here are a few cute things currently for sale on Amazon. (December 2023) I actually am an Amazon affiliate, so I do collect advertising fees when you order from my Amazon links.

I like this watch. It is on a deep discount for Cyber Monday. Unlike Fitbits and Apple watches, you do not have to constantly recharge this good old fashioned watch.

Okay, and this one is my favorite Amazon find:SaveSave

Where are your favorite places to shop? I would love to have more ideas to find affordable things.

The post 3 Fun Places to Shop Online appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I am so happy to announce our first giveaway in months, and it is an EXCITING one, just in time for Christmas!

***This post and giveaway are sponsored by Picturesongold.com. All opinions are my own.***

Let me tell you all about what you could win in this giveaway from PicturesonGold.com.

This is a $140.00 value sterling silver locket with your chosen photos laser engraved into the locket. That is my favorite part about it. You do not have to go hunting through your house for some tiny pictures. This is the problem with me and all those “personalized Christmas ornaments.” Who has time to go hunting for photos?

With this jewelry, you upload the photos you want in your locket straight from your phone or computer. I customized mine using the photos on my phone, and it took all of five minutes. Most of those minutes were spent just deciding which pictures to use.

First, you get to pick your locket shape and cover.

They have circle, heart, oval, dog tag, and square lockets. You can also order all sorts of pendants or bracelets, but this giveaway is for a locket. There are so many choices!

Choose whether you want gold or silver. I chose sterling silver.

Then you choose what you want engraved on the front. I am a sucker for a monogram, so I went with that on both my necklace and my mom’s.

Isn’t the monogram so pretty??

I ordered mine back in 2017, and I wrote about it here. This year I designed one for my mom, and it will be her Christmas present this year.

Personalized gifts are such a significant thing to give to your family and friends. I am a total sucker for a #1 Mom necklace or jewelry with my kids’ birthstones. This locket goes even above and beyond that with photos that feel like a hug each time you wear it and open it up and look at their smiling faces.

Choosing which photos to put inside is always the hardest decision for me. I was designing mine for my mom. Who do I choose?? She has so many of us to love!! I chose group photos to try to include as many family members as I could.

The photos in the locket turned out well, but it was hard to get a good picture of the engraved pictures. The one on the left side of the locket is of mom, dad, my brother and his wife, and my husband and me, along with our two-month old first baby. That was an extra merry Christmas, with the addition of the first little grandchild.

The picture on the right has all five of mom and dad’s grandchildren, all together for last Christmas. Plus, it was a good picture of everyone, which is always an amazing accomplishment in itself.

This locket holds up extremely well.

I still have mine that I ordered in 2017. In fact, I am wearing it right now, and it is still in perfect condition, though I did change out the chain this year for a shorter one.

Be sure to enter the giveaway, so you can win one of these beauties for yourself or to give as a gift this Christmas!

***Rules to Enter***

-Must be 18 to enter and win

-Must be U.S. resident

Don’t wait for the giveaway though. Check out all the ways you can make photo-engraved jewelry for your family this Christmas here: PicturesOnGold.com. Here is a discount code just for my readers: FESTIVE10

The post The New Perfect Christmas Gift Giveaway 2020 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

We are so lucky in our family because we have all these delicious recipes handed down from generation to generation. Maybe it’s the French heritage in my mother’s side, or the fact that they were so gifted in the kitchen no one would ever let those recipes die, but food in our family is gooooood.

There’s only one problem.

Have you ever seen a recipe written by your grandmother? Unless you already basically know how to make a thing, their recipes won’t do ya much good. Why? Well, the thing is they include very few detailed instructions. It’s mostly a list of ingredients and a temperature to bake it at!

They leave you with a billion questions. 

“Wait. When do I remove this from heat?”

“How many cups is 2 pounds of confectioners sugar?”

“Do I do this in a mixer?”

I could go on and on.

So I used the family recipes as a guide, and I went online searching for full-direction recipes for the desserts we grew up loving. I was highly successful in finding perfect recipes for sour cream pound cake and for red velvet cake. I could not; however, find a very close fudge recipe. My Maw-Maw was FAMOUS for her fudge.  I had to do my best using her recipe for that one, and I’ll share that one with you next time because it turned out beautifully. The boys couldn’t get enough.

But for now, I’m going to do the easy thing. I’m going to give you LINKS to the most perfect red velvet cake recipe I have found, but see below for the cream cheese frosting. 

Let me know if you try them out and love them as much as we did! And don’t fall into the trap of trying a red velvet cake mix and canned cream cheese icing. That was terrible! I tried it.

OH!!! That reminds me. The red velvet recipe I’m sending you to does not have the yummy cream cheese icing, which is a big deal to me, so I’m including our family recipe for it.

Cream Cheese Frosting

(from my Grandma to you)

Ingredients:

1 stick margarine (I used butter.),  Milk (1 T if needed), 8 oz cream cheese, 1 t vanilla,  3.5 Cups Conf. sugar, 1 C nuts if desired

Directions:

Heat butter and cream cheese together until butter is melted and cream cheese is soft. Mix them together well. Add sugar and vanilla. If icing is too thick, add a little milk. Stir in pecans if desired.

And now for the pound cake…

I made these cakes for friends, and upon Alan’s request, I also made the pound cake for my family. He actually drove to the store at 7pm so I could make this cake for him before I went to bed. Hahaha!!! Of course, Alan and Daniel were the only ones who would try it because my other children are too picky to try pound cake. Oh well, at least they eat their broccoli. 

Merry Christmas, y’all!!!

 Recipes I’ve shared in the past:

Baked Potato Soup

My Award Winning Chili

Easy Roast Recipe

The post Our Favorite Red Velvet and Pound Cake Recipes appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

The nice folks at Picturesongold.com have supplied me with ANOTHER locket to give away!

This giveaway doesn’t end until 11:59 PM Christmas day! Hooray!!!

I’m including my original review of picturesongold.com’s lockets for you to see how awesome they are.

The giveaway form is at the bottom of this post. Best of luck!!

***I was not paid to write this review. All opinions are my own.***

Living  in the South has ignited a passion in me for all things monogrammed, engraved, and personalized, so when I came across this locket that you can personalize online in 5 minutes with words AND photos, and order it right to your doorstep, I HAD to try it. Thankfully, I was able to get my hands on a free blogger sample. (Thank you picturesongold.com!)

Making the Locket on PicturesOnGold.com

I was a little nervous about making it. Usually places like this want an exact size of photo, or I goof up and order 3 instead of 1…..like I did with those Third Love bras…but that’s another story…

Y’all! It was SO EASY, and there were OPTIONS– like Subway!! Silver or gold? What should be on the front? Which font? Choose your left inside. Words or photo? Choose the right inside. Choose what’s on the back. How long of a chain? Which type of shipping?

Want to see what I picked?

All 4 boys on the left, Alan and me on the right

What made me the happiest of all was that the upload time was quick, and they automatically shrink it to fit the locket. Then I was able to slide the photo around on there to center and enlarge the photos the way I wanted.

For the front I chose engraved initials:

Love!

It goes with everything. I was so excited when it arrived in the mail only a few days later, but you choose your own shipping option.

What sold me was that when the locket came, it was ready to wear. I did NOT have to go searching the house for tiny photos to fit in it. They are permanently “photoengraved” in.

Reader’s Discount!!!

You can use this code, just for my readers: BLOG10  That will give you 10% off your locket order. I cannot guarantee that the code will work in conjunction with other discounts.

Just go here to see all the personalized gifts they sell.

And now for the giveaway!!! Whoo-whoo!!!!

Prize is a locket like mine from PicturesOnGold.com for you to personalize online.

***Open to US residents only.***

Log in to the Rafflecopter below using Facebook or your email address. Then select one or more of the entering options to complete your giveaway entry!

Best of luck! Winner will be announced the day after Christmas!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post The Christmas Giveaway: a Personalized Locket! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Yes, my dad let my three-year-old drive his wheelchair. But boy, did he have fun!

We just finished the longest Christmas vacation ever. 3 weeks!!! Full weeks!! It was a blast.  It was genuinely fun because we didn’t spend the whole 3 weeks in any one place. We went south, then we went north, then we went home, then we went back south, then back home. We had a good time with it!

We watched pretty much every Christmas movie ever made.

And we were terrible.

Truly terrible.

We let the kids stay up as late as 10 some nights. I know. The shame! Other nights we put them to bed at 8, but there was one night we were at a big reunion party. It was an hour and a half from home, and by the time we got home and got the boys all in bed, it was after midnight!

I know!!! We are never this shocking. We are such boring people normally.

Some people skip stones…..we chunk boulders. (Don’t worry. Only into the water, and no one got hurt.)

I don’t think I got out of bed before 7:30am a single morning.

Discipline? I would say we were the opposite of disciplined…

We took the kids to two different movies. We let the boys sleep as late as they wanted, and for some of them that was actually until 8 or 8:30am!!

A disproportionate amount of corn dogs, candy canes, and chicken fingers was consumed.

JD has about quit napping completely.

The boys played so much Skylanders they’ve already beaten the new game twice.

decorating the Christmas tree cookie cake

We built Lego creations, we colored, we ate ice cream, we played with cousins and friends. We got spoiled by grandparents. We completely forgot about reality.

I kept saying things like, “Tomorrow we HAVE to get back on schedule. Tomorrow we’ll all go to bed at 8, and I’ll set alarms and get up at 6….”

Never happened. Never.

Dan and I found this centipede(?) on a walk. I’m not a bug expert. Centipede was my best guess.

And so tonight we didn’t even bother to put everyone to bed until 9 or 9:30. I made coffee and did the dishes. You will be happy to know that we did actually make them shower.

Alan is furiously re-immersing himself in work emails. He took a ton of time off too.

I laid out my clothes but totally forgot to lay out THE BOYS’ clothes. Who knows if we’ll be able to find anyone’s shoes or belts tomorrow.

I set my alarm for 5:30am…..but you know I’m the worst EVER at getting up when my alarm goes off. I set my alarm, and Alan actually laughed. Sigh.

I’m scared y’all. I think we actually had too much fun on our break. I don’t think we can go back to real life. I’m afraid no one will be able to wake up tomorrow morning!!!

I don’t think this is an irrational fear.

We played Star Wars. Ha! Just kidding. THEY played Star Wars. I’m not that cool.

Why does real life have to be so very very real and strict and work-like???

Ah, but it does. You can’t train children for the world without upholding standards in their childhood. You can’t expect them to go to college if you don’t first teach them elementary math. And have you seen elementary math??? It’s not all that easy!

Tomorrow is the big day! Are you ready?? Were any of you as big of slackers as we were??? Tell me we are not alone!!!

Well, if you were, we would like to wish you all the best of luck. I’m sure everyone’s shoes will be clean, dry, and easily found. Everyone will be on time, and no one will cry. Well, maybe me at 5:30am. I might cry. I’m just not so sure I “got this”!!!

Okay. Deep breaths. We’ll be fine. What’s a good verse we can recite to ourselves?? Oh yeah.

Joshua 1:9

 

Have not I commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid neither be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Gotta go. The Benadryl I took to make myself go to sleep earlier is finally starting to kick in…

The post REAL life starts again tomorrow. Oh, yes, the kids are going back to school! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I guess you know which stocking is mine.

This might have been the easiest Christmas in 14 years of April and Alan family Christmases. We only had to travel two hours, and we woke up on Christmas morning IN OUR OWN HOUSE. Have you ever??? I mean, we had almost never!! Do you do this? Do other people do this every year??  It was so nice!

I mean have you read my other Christmas stories???

Our Nightmare Before Christmas

The Funeral, Christmas Trip

New Years in San Francisco

Well, I’m happy to tell you this is NOT one of those stories. We did go and see our families, but we were able to do all of that and still be at our own house on Christmas morning.

Around 7 or so a.m., we heard Boy #1 begin talking to Boy #2. They simply chatted calmly in bed. Some of the boys woke up the other boys. I don’t remember who got up first, but a miracle happened…..

No one came and jumped on us…..

They gathered themselves in the living room, just the four of them in the living room to patiently wait for their parents to get up.

Whaaa???? We were so pleased with all this that we didn’t make them wait. We went ahead and joined them.

I love watching my children open their presents. Christmas is a whole other level of special for children. When is it that we lose that? Let’s get that back.

Yes, he’s actually CLAPPING. He’s so excited. There were a few To: Caleb and Daniel presents this year. They may look ages apart, but it’s actually only a 3 year gap. Some kids are tall. Some kids are shorter.

SO HAPPY

Be sure to see the 50 second JD video on Facebook, and share in the excitement.

We all went to church together. It was nice, though nothing topped the Christmas Eve service.

Christmas Eve service

There was something about the meaning in lighting these candles and taking communion with so many fellow believers that made Christmas more real to me this year. We sang Silent Night, and I wanted this moment to never end.

Too quickly, we were all headed back to our houses when so often I just want to curl up at the altar and soak it all in…

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”       Luke 2:10-12

…But it was back to Christmas as usual, and I can’t help but wonder. Are we entering a new phase of our lives?  There simply isn’t a BABY anymore. JD is 3 1/2 now. No one is a baby. Life is c-a-l-m-i-n-g down. No one wore a diaper, no one carried a sippy cup, and no one got out of their seat. No one even colored on himself.

Wow.

I think I might cry!

No one was sick this Christmas either. JD caught a cold, accompanied by a very pink eye, but even that ended in two days.

OH, and guess what! Once Christmas day was over, Alan took my minivan to the shop, and I now have a clean minivan, with a heater that heats, and a functioning defroster! Somebody get this man a trophy!!

I feel like we just had the perfect Christmas. I can safely say that because Christmas is fully over. Saying Christmas was perfect can’t possibly jinx it now.

Of course, I did find one baby to hold.

Ah, sparkling pretty lights. I may never take my Christmas tree down. Plus, I’m hoping Alan will do it for me. Hmmm…I wonder if Alan is hoping that I will do it. I seriously don’t even want it taken down. Let’s just leave it up until next Christmas!

Hallelujah! And may we never forget what it’s all about. This is an incredible excerpt from the Passion of the Christ. You do have to click the link to YouTube to watch, but it’s so worth it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDm-myjQgdM

Wishing you all a blessed 2017! May your kids behave. May your rain be snow, and may all your prayers be answered.

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”        Luke 2:13-14

The post This Christmas: 1st Year at Home, 1st Non Disaster Story appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

And today is New Year’s Eve. Time to pick a goal, a resolution, a plan!!! Or as my adorable little boys say, “It’s time for our New Year’s revolution!” That makes me smile every time.

I may not have daughters, but I have adorable nieces.

So did you set goals? I have goals in mind, but this year I’m focusing more on this word: persistence.

For me, that’s about persisting in what I know is the right thing to do, even when I’m not seeing immediate results. I’m often guilty of throwing in the towel when results aren’t as big and quick as I want them to be. I get bored with a thing and move on to another. That’s not a highly productive way to live.

Fishing takes persistence too. The boys enjoyed fishing this Christmas, but they didn’t catch anything this time.

I want to be more persistent:

-With Bible reading and prayer

I have found this to be most effective when done in the morning, and mornings are rough when you are raising children. One thing I am working on is getting up earlier to get this done before the morning rush, but when I fail to get up early, Bible time has to move to 8am, and that’s okay. Late is better than not at all.

-As a wife

The hardest part for me sometimes is just being “nice.” Bahhhh. Niceness. But niceness is extremely important in a marriage, in any relationship. I want to be right more than I want to be nice. I actually need to stop being so persistent about being right!

-As a mom

The hardest part for me is sticking with a plan. I’ll assign chores, and I’ll make sure everyone’s dong their assigned chores for about a week, and then I start to slide, especially about the “kitchen helper” chore. They need to do it. It’s good for them. I need to persist in making sure they are there to help me with dinner and not be lazy by doing it myself.

Yes, sometimes simply doing it yourself is actually the lazy way out. Training a tot to do a job is much more work than just handling it for them.

I need persistence with discipline too. It’s such a drag, but the kids are so much more pleasant to be around when you do it consistently instead of hit and miss.

-As a blogger

There should be a schedule. Posts should come out like clock work instead of so very mixed bag. I know there should be a schedule. I can’t promise a schedule, but I will make one. I can’t promise to stick to it, because I am a scatter-brained, free-spirited mom of four.

-As a writer

I’m hoping to enroll JD in part-time pre-school a couple of days per week. This will help me get more writing done, and I can start going to the dentist again.

-With my health

I’m using a Fitbit Charge II to help me get into better patterns this year, and I’m loving it.

-With my house

I’m good about getting dinner cooked each night, and Alan has now taken over the laundry. That goes a long way. However, I need to be more persistent about spending an hour or two  each day cleaning house. Yes, in our phase of life it requires that.

So who’s ready for 2017? What would you like to accomplish this year? Do you have a word? Our pastor gave us a list on Christmas day of words we could pick from. It was a helpful list. I lost that list, and I can’t remember them all. Persistence was on there. I think it had several fruits of the spirit, so I will do my best to re-construct the list:

Words to Focus on for 2017:

faith

hope

love

faith

persistence

joy

peace

goodness

self-control

kindness

Happy New Year’s! I hope it’s a happy one! I’d love to hear about your goals.

Did you blog about your goals? Link up below. We’d love to read it!

The post Persistence: My Word for 2017 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.