This and That

Harper and I had lunch with our friend Melissa today. It was a lot of fun. Melissa is pregnant with her little miracle baby in May. In a week or so - she and her husband are having a "gender reveal party" to share what they are having with all their friends. Everyone is supposed to wear pink or blue - whatever your guess is. I think that will be so much fun and I know which color I plan to wear!
Melissa gave me the prettiest scarf and this amazing necklace for my birthday. I did NOT expect her to give me a gift - so I was very surprised. I thought that was so thoughtful and I can't WAIT to wear that necklace (and the scarf!!)
Speaking of wearing.......for the last two years I have been wanting a pair of cowboy boots SO bad - mostly to wear with dresses for a fun look. I have not been able to find any I liked but I recently found a pair on e-bay for a great price and got them for a little birthday present to me. I got them yesterday and wore them today and I LOVE them. If you know me in person - you may start seeing them on me pretty much every day.
Harper has been refusing naps lately. She usually only takes a morning nap but she will NOT take one and would not take an afternoon nap either. I'm hoping it's just the holidays and that I can get her back on schedule. It may also be that she is VERY close to walking. Today she kept acting like she wanted to so bad and tried over and over but just couldn't make that first step. But she would laugh sooo hard every time she even thought about it. We are close.
Of course - she may not be sleeping now that I have started letting her drink diet coke.
(just a joke)
I'm trying to get out of a rut of eating chicken breasts every night so I tried a new recipe tonight. I'm a HUGE fan of Gumbo. I LOVE it! So I saw Paula Deen make this one day - it's a Gumbo Casserole (or as I told Scott "Gumbo Bake" because he wouldn't have eaten it if I said casserole). I thought it was really good. It doesn't taste so much like real gumbo because there was no roux but it had similar ingredients and was really good. I put the recipe HERE.
(and I'm sure some of you are going to ask me what Gumbo is - it's a soup common in the south, especially Louisiana, that has seafood or chicken, sausage, okra and rice. It is YUM-O!)

And finally:
I just wanted to briefly share that one of my resolutions for 2010 is I’m changing a few things about my blog. I mentioned this yesterday and it’s nothing earth shattering - just a few personal adjustments. I started my blog to “scrapbook” my life and that is still my main goal. The great thing that has come out of it is being able to share my faith and to try to encourage others through prayer. I LOVE that! And I plan to continue that. I will continue my prayer blog but I’m also starting to work with www.prayergates.com and that has been an answer to prayer for me as a good way to keep up with and organize prayer requests. More on that in the next coming days!!!! (I’m also EXTREMELY behind on prayer requests (and praises) and hope to get it all updated by the first of next week!)
I will no longer be doing any giveaways or any form of product or website recommendations (there may be a VERY few exceptions). I never wanted to have a “big blog” and I have never sought out to increase my traffic. I found myself getting very stressed out about a lot of aspects of blogging this year and I feel like it has taken away time and energy from Harper and my life in general. So this year I’m just going to focus on documenting our lives. That’s what I’ve really tried to do recently but I’m just putting that back as the pure focus of my blog - my life and faith. That may mean that most of you quit following and I go back to having 10 readers and I’m okay with that. I do LOVE all of you who daily leave me comments. You have been an encouragement and a community to me as I stayed home this year. I’m thankful you have chosen to share our life with us.
I am going to do the Show Us Your Life Fridays because I think that is a great way to find other bloggers and it gives me a blog topic every Friday! Ha! And I will try to do as a part of that - show us your business once every few months so everyone can get their creative things featured. I love being able to help with that - but one on one - it has just become impossible.
I just wanted you to understand why some things might be different this year. There may possibly be an occasional giveaway through BlogHer if it is REALLY fun but other than that - I’m just going to write to preserve my memories and thoughts. I get SO many requests and I just have come to a point where I can’t keep up with them. Hopefully you can all understand that! I'm not trying to be selfish - I'm just trying to be a better wife and mother.

Pin It