#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.

Christmas 2020 finds our little family smack dab in the middle of our Maryland chapter of life. We have been here a year and a half now, and according to Alan’s orders, we have one and a half years left. Of course, with the Army, you really never know.

What about you? What chapter are you in? Sometimes it helps me feel less overwhelmed when I remind myself that whatever is going on is simply one chapter of a thick book. Things may look bad now, but circumstances are always changing.

Did any of you manage to hire a photographer and send out photo Christmas cards for 2020?

Spoiler alert. We did not. With everyone hiding in their own little huts, I did not have time to meet any photographer people. I may still send out paper cards, but I have not decided yet. There is only one week before our Christmas trip, so time feels kind of short.

But you can call this my Christmas letter. Here we go….

January: Four out of six of us had the flu.

The Army keeps Alan vaccinated, so he was safe. Joshua was protected by the grace of God, that’s really the only explanation. Ironic that we started the pandemic year with the flu. It was a haze of fevers.

February: JD and Daniel played War (with a deck of cards) obsessively. I won “most beautiful cookies” in a valentine cookie contest, and per J.D.’s insistent begging, we added a second basketball goal….

which he NEVER plays with.

I dragged Alan and the boys to Valley Forge in freezing temperatures so we could get the full experience. That is one of my favorite memories.

March: My Israel book was published….

…just in time for no one to be allowed to travel…lovely. Travel books do not sell as well when people are not travelling.

Oh, and yeah, the world fell apart. Schools sent the kids home on the 13th and still haven’t taken them back. (lol)

Actually, at this point virtual school became the over arching them of the year for us. 2020 was all about computer school and learning to deal with it. It was a major adjustment.

April: We started getting 20 school emails/day, and we had Easter service in our pajamas.

May: We embraced swimming in creeks.

June: After one thousand days of warning us, the printer finally ran out of ink.

Also, I finally learned how to use Power Point. I know this is something I *should have* learned twenty years ago, but I managed to dodge it until third grade computer school.

July: I took off for a mom vacation in Florida in the middle of the surge.

Look, sometimes you just gotta do what you just gotta do. It was bliss.

We also took the family to Ocean City, Maryland for the first time.

August: We packed up all the boys and drove to Alabama for two weeks.

September: Virtual school began again. I spent most of September stress paralyzed.

But Joshua got baptized, so there’s one good thing!!!

October: Caleb had a beard, Daniel was a Fortnite dinosaur, and John David was a Creeper.

November: I began to accept my new life as a virtual home school mom.

Yes, it only took me eight months, but all of a sudden–BAM!– I am there! Acceptance achieved.

December: Going to see our families for Christmas again– so long as we can stay healthy. So far so good!

The boys got to open their presents twelve days early, but that is not so unusual for us. You have to celebrate early when you travel on Christmas. It has to be ridiculously early if they want to have time to play with their new toys before Christmas, so they opened gifts yesterday.

The thing about early Christmas was that it felt impossible to be serious about school and work this morning. “Who cares! It’s Christmas!!!” But we buckled down and went to class anyway.

All in all, 2020 was not a total bust. Many good things happened here.

Our family had more time THAN EVER with Alan. Normally, he takes a ton of trips. This year he never left town until November. Plus, he is still working in our room. His office is closed. We see him all the time.

One of my biggest goals for 2020 was “Teach the boys more responsibility.” I had no idea it was going to be such a hands on lesson. Thanks to virtual school, they have definitely made large strides in the responsibility department.

Now maybe for 2021 we will work on “staring at screens less.” I make no promises, honestly.

We made it though, friends! 2020 is all but finished. Time to have turkey and pies again and hope enough of our friends take this vaccination so they will let us back out of our cells!! Ha!!! Wahoo!!!

Merry Christmas, y’all!!

The post 2020 in Review: From the Flu to the Lockdown 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.

When I was a kid, my struggles were confidence, fear, and talking in public. A shyer, quieter little mouse was rarely seen. All my mom ever heard at conferences was, “She’s sooo quiet.”

Who would ever think that I used to be terrified of uttering a sentence in a room as small as a classroom? And yet, I was. It’s only funny to me because these days it’s like I’m just hoping for a chance to get up and talk. I enjoy a good podium– so much that I’ve been known to make Facebook Live videos.

A weakness doesn’t mean that you can’t change that thing. You can. It takes work, though.

You know what the struggle of my adult years is? Focus.

It comes out in almost everything I do.

In my writing, you can see it. I will bounce from topic to topic like no tomorrow. There’s no clear theme. There couldn’t be when I have no focus.

I’ve written about this here and there over the years.

You see it extremely clearly if you ever get in a car with me as your driver. Ask me a question while I’m driving. Go ahead. I dare you.

Boom. I missed the turn.

If I don’t focus solely on where I’m going, I end up lost on the regular. It doesn’t even upset me the way it used to because it has happened so much!

My house is full of half-finished projects. It isn’t that I’m not a finisher. The feeling of finishing a project is glorious, and only occasionally do I get too bored with a task to finish it. The thing is that I always have too many projects going on at one time to do any of them justice.

It’s hard to focus with so many adorable distractions. These two were learning to draw the northeastern states, using a YouTube video tutorial. Their maps were surprisingly good too!

Focus.

I’ve had friends who have struggled with purpose, with feeling like they make terrible decisions, with faith, anxiety, neuroticism. Those aren’t my issues.

Focus is my issue.

Here’s a list of things I want to accomplish right now:

1. Christmas calendar for grandparents
2. Christmas cards
3. Photo for Christmas cards
4. Finish Christmas shopping.
5. Finish Israel e-book.
6. Scrapbook all these things I’ve saved from the boys.
7. Put together this family recipe book for my mom (and Amber if she needs one).
8. Stay on top of my kids to make sure their homework is done.
9. Cook dinner every night.
10. Keep the house tidy.
11. Take the dog walking.
12. Stay on top of my diet plan and exercise—- 10 pounds by Christmas!! I’m halfway there!
13. Keep the blog afloat.
14. Wrap the presents.
15. Bake gifts for my neighbors.
16. This list really goes on and on..

I don’t know which one to focus on or where to even begin.

Is it possible to focus on one each day? No. If I did that, homework would go undone, boys would go hungry, and dust would take over.

Time management. Perhaps that goes hand in hand with the focus.

Maybe I should just set 5 goals per day. I can’t do all 12 in a day. Seriously. But I can work on the daily ones and spend time on one of the big projects at a time. Perhaps I could even work on a project at night and let the boys just watch or even help.

Where to start…..

But it doesn’t do any good to pick any random thing to place your focus on, does it?

And that’s where you sort of HAVE to make a list of priorities.

I didn’t really make a list of priorities though. Instead, I look at my calendar each day, see what my “have to-dos” are, and then add in the things I have the energy for.

Do you know what I mean? Some days I’m in a sit-and-create-things-on-my-computer kind of place. Other days I have baking or gift wrapping energy.

Is this a free-spirited way to do life? I wonder if my sister-in-law would say that she would never go off of doing what she felt like doing that day but instead would always stick to some sort of Christmas schedule.

Sometimes I make schedules, which is hilarious because I always, always, always, without exception, end up throwing them in the trashcan or simply never turning to that page of my planner.

Yesterday, I had the energy to start the Christmas gift wrapping. It was FUN! And it knocked out two birds with one stone because John David came and wrapped with me. It was so cute. he wrote names on the tags and cut the most immaculate straight lines in the wrapping paper you’ve ever seen.

Today I’m going to run to a store and pick up more wrapping paper so I can finish!

Even though this list is still forever long, and we have a long way to go, I still feel crazy accomplished because the boys all did their homework well this week, I didn’t resort to ordering pizza all week (since Sunday), and the gift wrapping has commenced. Success all over the place, right?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go focus on taking a shower. Then I’m off to Dollar Tree for Christmas boxes and stocking-stuffers.

Merry Christmas!

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

 

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!

 

Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey…..and he shall speak peace to the nations..”

 

 

Zechariah 9:9-10

 

The post The Struggle of My Adult Years: Focus appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I had this big idea to make buck-eye balls like my mom always has..but it was much more work than I expected. Katherine and Elsie helped me finish them up.

***This post belongs to a series of posts detailing life as a 22-year-old military wife, back in the beginning of the War on Terrorism. To read it from the beginning, start here. To read the  chapter before this one, click here.***

Christmas arrived.

I could ignore it in my sadness over not having Alan with me, or I could embrace it for the fact that it was still Christmas.

Truthfully, it was not a sad time anymore. I had Elsie, Kayla, Sarah, and Cloe to hang out with all the time. Life was mostly downright fun.

I hung lighted garland around my duplex front door, and my friends and I gathered for a Christmas meal together. We made buck-eye balls in the kitchen and drank raspberry wine and sparkling white grape juice. It was my first year to ever play Christmas hostess in my own home, though it was actually still weeks before Christmas. I had a ball decorating and using my fancy glasses.

Table all set for Christmas with my friends. Never pass on an opportunity to use the fancy glasses!!

Some people keep their beautiful wedding china and crystal in boxes or cabinets, but that’s never been me. I am a firm believer in pulling out your best things for company or special events. What’s the point of owning things that no one ever sees or uses? Give yourself the blessing of eating off your most beautiful plates and drinking out of the glasses with the platinum rims is what I say!

It’s true that friends are the family you make for yourself, and we had built for ourselves such a delightful family. I wouldn’t trade them for all the stability, security, and never-changing zip codes in the world!

Katherine, Sarah, and Cloe

Christmas dinner 2003 made me proud to be an Army wife.

There we were, not fretting about the safety of our husbands or letting jealousy get to us. We were not licking wounds and building up bitterness. Instead, we were laughing and cooking and encouraging one another. This was our own family away from home. You don’t hear much about military spouse “battle buddies”, but it IS very much a thing. It was THE thing that saw us through that long, potentially lonely year. Only it wasn’t so lonely because we had each other.

I don’t remember if we all exchanged gifts, but I do remember this one gift I received from Kayla that Christmas. She said she knew I liked to decorate with pretty things, so she bought me this blue and yellow sewing box that matched my guest room colors. It’s funny the things that you remember, but that’s the only gift I remember from that whole Christmas year. It made me feel special that she’d thought enough about me to buy me a gift, and also that she said she knew I liked pretty things.

Believe it or not, I actually DID sew that year too. I was the designated hemmer of our group. I can’t sew a stitch without a machine, but with the machine, I could read the directions and hem up everyone’s pants just fine. It did seem like all of my friends had short legs.

And so with this feeling of love and hopefulness and the recent victory of our husbands in catching Saddam Hussein providing the optimism, we all headed our separate ways to home for Christmas.

a photo of Alan on Christmas or sometime close to Christmas, in Iraq

Home for Christmas

I made the rounds to all of our family gatherings, both on my side of the family and on Alan’s side. It was the right thing to do. Things should proceed forth as normally as possible. Even if I was still new to Alan’s side, I would forge on and provide plenty of smiles and warmth because I was the closest thing anyone had to Alan that year.

When I was a child, Christmas was always a BIG deal. First, we’d go to Dad’s family’s gathering on Christmas Eve. All the extended family would be there at Grandaddy and Granny’s house.

Then on Christmas day, we’d either go to Maw-maw’s house, Maw-Maw was mom’s mom, or we’d go to Granny Hyde’s house. Granny Hyde was Maw-maw’s mom. Both Granny Hyde and Maw-Maw loved hosting Christmas, so it was arranged that they took turns.

Christmas with my cousin and her baby

But just a few years prior to the Christmas of 2003, both sides of my family experienced profound loss. We lost Maw-Maw in ’97 and Granddaddy (Dad’s dad) in ’98.

Maw-maw died on Christmas Eve, leaving this gaping black hole in the lives of every single one of us. I had spent one week every summer of my childhood at Maw-maw’s house. She was one of my heroes and a true kindred spirit. We all loved her. This is still the hardest loss I’ve ever experienced.

Most people know when to go, or they depart when they are old and their calling has been fulfilled. With Maw-maw it felt more sudden, and as though we were all robbed. No, it should not have been her time to go, and yet it was. She left early, and the disappointing feeling of loss from that cut so deeply that even in 2003, six years later, we still all keenly felt her absence.

Maw-maw was fine. She was with God, but we weren’t quite fine. But we are resilient people if we are nothing else, so we still made the best of it. We still came together and followed all our traditions.

It’s amazing how comforting Christmas traditions are and how much you miss them once they’ve gone. How I’d love to have just one of those Christmas gatherings back.

I enjoyed seeing my family. I always found it comforting to get to see family, and we did still have Granny, who was 90 by then, and we were thankful. Everyone missed Alan, but no one on my side of the family was accustomed to having Alan there yet. He’d only been to 1 family Christmas, so his absence wasn’t nearly as impactful as it was at Alan’s family Christmas.

Alan’s Family Christmas

As comforting as participating in my own family’s Christmas traditions was, going to Alan’s family Christmas was….emotional. It’s like walking out of a movie theatre of childhood memories and back into the reality of your life, with people who are aching.

Me, with Alan’s cousins and his sister

Probably most people didn’t realize how sad they were that Alan wasn’t there, and everyone put on a happy face and enjoyed Christmas. Alan’s family is also a clan of successful, resilient people. I’m telling you, we come from excellent stock.

But sometimes our pain leaks through when we don’t mean for it to. It’s there in their eyes or their quiet or the way their smile doesn’t quite meet their eye crinkles.

Alan’s family doesn’t begin Christmas celebrations until Christmas day. For Christmas lunch, all of Alan’s mother’s family gathers, even to this day, at Alan’s grandfather and grandmother’s house, and eats and opens presents. These grandparents had four children, and each of their children had at least two children, so it is a ginormous family gathering.

Everyone seemed jovial enough, considering, and asked how Alan was doing in Iraq. Aunt Ellen had even sent Alan his own little Christmas tree.

But around lunch, I started to notice their grief. Alan is a happy, hearty, talkative, laughing fellow, and his absence was extremely noticeable.

Alan’s grandfather said the prayer as usual before the meal, and his voice cracked. It wasn’t just a little crack. It was a heavy one, from a man who’d already lost a brother and who knows how many friends to the ravages of war.

By the end of Grandaddy Cunningham’s Christmas day blessing, there could not have been any dry eyes in the room.

The t.v. was going most of the day in the kitchen of Grandmother’s house because President George W. Bush showed up on a surprise visit to Baghdad and had lunch with the troops. Alan wasn’t actually in Baghdad, but it still made us feel more connected to him to see the President and the men and women in uniform eating with him. We knew they were all there in Iraq. They were having Christmas too, and it looked like everything was okay.

In the afternoon, once everyone had opened presents, I headed back to Alan’s parents’ house with his sister and his parents. We opened presents there that night, and in the morning we all took a 5 hour drive to a small town near Augusta, Georgia to be with Alan’s dad’s side of the family. They had a large extended family gathering too.

Pants! Thank you!

The biggest thing I remember about Christmas night was that we all wore our “ho ho hooah” 4th Infantry Division Christmas t-shirts while we opened presents. I also remember that Alan’s dad kept things light with some funny jokes. My favorite was when he opened a brand new pair of trousers and said, “Oh! Pants! Thank you!” and then proceeded to put the pants on his head and stick his arms in the pant legs.

We needed that laugh! I can still see it in my head!

Alan did get to call and talk to us all and wish us a merry Christmas. He did an amazing job of keeping upbeat.

Holding one another together

We all managed to have a pretty good time. Everyone was putting on a brave face for everyone else, and maybe it sounds stuffy, but the truth was it was helpful. We were all holding each other up from falling apart in this way. It worked. I can’t explain it to you, but it just works when humans get together and walk through life and hardship together.

Maybe it doesn’t even sound like hardship in the telling of it, and yet it was. I know that it was because I remember the point that I reached when I was done holding it together, and I just let myself fall all apart into a salty heap of tears. Sure, I’d shed a few tears over Christmas already, but then there comes that breaking point.

The airport.

That’s where I was when I let it all go. Christmas was finished. Visiting was done. I had been there for everyone. All that was required had been fulfilled. Now I had only to ride this airplane home, and Christmas would be over, and the new year would begin.

And this was one of my best new year’s yet because 2004 would bring Alan back home to us, and we could get started with regular life. We could finally be that newlywed couple that we’d been waiting to be.

I watched them all walking by, the soldiers in the airport, in uniform, going and coming on mid-tour leave, and there was news coverage of the sad military families apart for Christmas, and then there was this People magazine. I think it was People. It could have been anything, but that was the moment where the world started to spin.

Suddenly, I was acutely aware of sitting there all alone, and all of these articles and news stories might as well have been about me, and then I started to bawl. That’s always how it is with me. I can go on for ages and not think about any of my problems in a personal way. I can wear the stone face and be tough, until suddenly I’m not.

Unplugging the emotional stopper

I cried a river, quietly and trying not to make eye contact with anyone. Did anyone notice? Surely. No one bothered me, because that wasn’t what I needed anyway. What I needed was to get those tears out. It was time to unplug the emotional stopper.

Tears are just a part of the process. There’s a healing function in allowing yourself to feel, not wallow, but just be honest about your feelings, fill it up with tears, but then drain it before it soaks too much. Soaking is good for dirty dishes, but it’s not so good for self-pitying thoughts. Have your cry, then clean yourself up, and do something else.

When you know in your heart that you’ve done all the right things, there is a significant peace that comes with that. I had that peace. Sure, I’d made mistakes over the course of 2003, but at Christmas I had done what was right and good, and I felt as though I’d been an encouragement to both of our families.

Besides, this was 2004 just beginning, the year that would bring Alan home.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  Proverbs 13:12

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The post The Real Army Wives Series: Merry Christmas To Iraq, 2003 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

A rare snow day in Georgia! Caleb wisely decided to get out there before it all melted, which it all did, by 8:30 am.

I’ve been enjoying reading in the Old Testament lately. This morning I was reading about how Joseph died and the next Pharaoh didn’t know Joseph, but he certainly noticed the ever-growing size of their population of Hebrews.

“Immigrants.” It’s a problem as old as the ages, and yet we have all either had ancestors who were immigrants or have been immigrants ourselves. Immigrants– Outsiders– people who are different than the rest.

Pharaoh decided to do away with them slowly by killing off the baby boys, as they were born, so he called in the two midwives–see women have always had more power than we realized–and asked them to kill all the boy Hebrew babies.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that story, but what about Exodus 1:20-21, where it mentions what God did for the midwives as a result of their faithfulness in not killing the babies.

“Therefore, God dealt well with the midwives…And it came to pass because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.”

The King James Version says He made them houses. The New International Version says God blessed them with families of their own. The two are in agreement. The KJV just says it in the Old English way, which I sometimes misunderstand and need to read a more modern English version.

John David’s gingerbread house. I had the most fun making this with him!

But I take great comfort in this reminder from Exodus 1:20-21. When we honor God in our choices, he blesses us.

Sometimes the blessings take time, like how Joseph was sold into slavery and ended up in prison, but he worked his way out. In due time, God blessed him over-abundantly, putting him in charge of all of Egypt and reuniting him with his family.

God does bless our faithful actions.

drawing candy canes

And that makes me think of Christmas, the time of the birth of Jesus, because this gift blesses our faithfulness with the hope of salvation.

So I’ll try not to stress too terribly much about the gifts and the money because that’s not what this is about, is it?

It’s about God blessing us–the whole world– with faith, hope, and love, a baby born on Christmas day to save the world from punishment. There is now no condemnation for those who believe.

Merry Christmas!

The post God Blesses the Faithful 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.