I ❤ Faces: Thankfulness!

Each month the women behind i ❤ faces take a week off from judging photos and give us participants a chance to share our story through photos.

This month they've themed their "off-week" as "Thankfulness".

i will start by saying that I am so thankful for Amazing Grace {that saved a wretch like me}! That one gift alone is enough to be thankful for but I am blessed by so many other things, too!

I am thankful that I have a whole list of blog posts on Thankfulness--if you are new here, i write a "Thankful Thursday" blog post every week. It keeps things in perspective and encourages me to be thankful for small and mighty things.

Despite keeping a weekly record of Thanks there are definitely a few that make the list every week.

You already heard my #1

And here are the next Top 10 things i'm continually thankful for:

J

(taken 8 years ago!)

Cutie Face

(8 days old and off to church!)

Family {extended and immediate but, especially, my twin!}

(when we were itty bitty babes!)

Running

(first marathon with the twin!)

God's beautiful creation

(rose gardens, Portland, OR)

Worshiping God with friends through Bible studies and church services

(Sweet friends at CBS Bible study)

Traveling

(In Spain, pre-baby)

Blog connections and friends!



Candy

in front of a Candy store

Animals, particularly, Churchill and Margaret Thatcher {aka, Maggie}

Now I KNOW you all are thankful, too, so create your own thankful post and hop on over to i❤faces to share it with others!

Fabulous Friday Giveaway: Clay by Clay

Jessica Clay is the creative mastermind behind the gorgeous pieces of jewelery found in her new Etsy store Clay by Clay (started just two months ago!). Her store is creatively named Clay by Clay because she mainly works with metal and polymer clay. Jessica is a self taught artist but she loves learning from others online and taking classes when she can.

By day, Jessica is a lawyer but by night she is a crafter. After spending five years as an {overworked!} litigator, she decided she needed a change that would let her have a life outside work and to start a family. So Jessica changed jobs to work for a judge and started working on her jewelry in her new-found free time.

Jessica's inspiration comes mostly from the nature around her home in Minnesota. Despite living only a few miles from the interstate, Jessica and her husband regularly see deer, raccoons, rabbits, and fox. She says it is really strange seeing a group of deer crossing the street next to the gas station and a couple of blocks from the mall--I can't imagine!

Jessica loves working on simple earrings that can complement any outfit and can really be worn everyday. She also loves to make pieces texturized with real leaves from her neighborhood (although that will have to wait for awhile now that all the leaves have died!).

I am in awe of Jessica's talent and cannot believe what she can turn polymer and metal clay into--it is astounding! I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about Jessica and seeing her incredibly neat creations.

Want it right now? Buy it!

Jessica is offering free shipping for Monkeys on the Bed! readers from now until November 14. Make sure you shop Clay by Clay before her offer expires. Please mention "Monkeys on the Bed" in the notes to seller page and she'll refund your your shipping charges.

Want to try your luck? Win it!

Jessica is generously offering one Monkeys on the Bed! reader her (or his!) choice of earrings. YAY!


How can you win?

Mandatory first entry: Please visit Jessica's Etsy store, Clay by Clay, and pick out which earring set you'd choose if you won. You MUST leave a comment with your answer or none of your other entries will be valid.

Want Extra Entries?
for each extra entry, please leave a separate comment. All extras are worth 1 entry each unless otherwise noted

• Become a fan of Clay by Clay on Facebook
• Heart or Favorite Clay by Clay on Etsy
• Tweet about this giveaway (1x/day), referencing my account (@monkeysonthebed) and linking to the giveaway. You MUST leave me the URL for your tweet! For a fast tweet, feel free to use this message:

Win a gorgeous pair of earrings from the Etsy Store Clay by Clay on @monkeysonthebed http://bit.ly/2sS7Jj

• Be a subscriber or PUBLIC follower (or both!) of Monkeys on the Bed!
• Subscribe to my email feed (<---see left column). You must CONFIRM your subscription for this entry to be valid--2 entries!
• Buy something from Clay by Clay (don't forget your free shipping!). 10 (yes TEN!) entries!
• Blog about this giveaway, linking to this giveaway AND to Clay by Clay 5 entries! Please leave me your URL linking to your blog post
  

The fine print:

This giveaway is open to the residents of the USA and Canada, aged 18 and older. The giveaway will end on Saturday, November 14. You must leave the mandatory comment before receiving extra entries. You must leave a way for me to contact you with each entry! I will draw a winner via a Random Integer Generator and announce the winner on this blog and email the winner as well. If the winner does not reply to me within 48 hours, I will draw a second winner. I reserve the right to delete your entry if you do not follow the rules listed above.

Thankful Thursday: on time!

Today has been an extremely looooong day and I NEED this post to remind me that, in reality, I have a LOT to be thankful for. I might be finding super small things to be thankful for this week but it is often the small things that count, right?

1) All the stores near us are completely sold out of candy corn...which means i have stayed true to my hopes of not buying any more :0 (see, i told you these thankful things would be small!)

2) We received 60 free photos and 3 free Christmas cards from Shutterfly and 30 free Christmas cards from Kodak Gallery! Woohoo! Getting some of our Christmas cards ready so far in advance is a huge bonus!
3) Being featured on the fun blog, Mama Notes. Thanks, Samantha!

4) A free ride on the Pink Pig today at Macy's! Thanks to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta for the ticket and preview and party...and make sure you check out {life with} Cutie Face for a fully-featured post!

5) Finally being able to attend our church's service this coming Sunday--we have either been out of town or working in the nursey so we can't wait to finally listen to our pastor speak "live" (as opposed to streaming from our podcast!)
6) A chance to hang out with the twin and cousin R while at the Pink Pig!

7) Cutie Face's Grandpa (and my father-in-law) came to visit for a few hours on Tuesday and gave us some really cute shots of Cutie Face to use for our Christmas cards! Yay! (and all i have to say is...what a difference a REAL camera makes! check out that quality!)
8) That, when Cutie Face finally (and I mean...FINALLY) fell asleep in the car on our way to the Pink Pig, she actually stayed asleep while i made a quick stop at Babies 'R' Us...despite being transported into the shopping cart and back into the car seat...which means she actually got a 40 minute nap today! (yes, that really is her in the stroller)

9) Our neighborhood Yahoo! Group is so incredibly helpful and generous! Today I bought two great kiddo toys for Cutie Face for uber cheap--a Little People dollhouse and an incredibly vintage Little Tikes' Washer and Dryer (+ironing board) set. So fun! I love recycling toys--so eco (both in the ECOnomical and ECOfriendly sense)

Note: this is not my photo...i left the toy at my parents' house so that the cousins could have another fun thing to play with while visiting Mimi and Poppy!

I'd LOVE to hear what you are thankful for this week!

W.o.G. Wednesday: Joel 2:22-24

In lieu of posting my normal Word of God Wednesday, I am participating in Word-Filled Wednesdays for the first time. I hope I'm doing it right! Thanks so much to Kelly for letting me know about this neat linky!

I do want to share more of Joel chapter 2--so encouraging and a book of the Bible that often gets overlooked! How great is this passage?

Joel 2:18-27*

¹⁸ Then the LORD was jealous for his land
and took pity on his people.

¹⁹ The LORD replied ^[a] to them:
"I am sending you grain, new wine and olive oil,
enough to satisfy you fully;
never again will I make you
an object of scorn to the nations.

²⁰ "I will drive the northern horde far from you,
pushing it into a parched and barren land;
its eastern ranks will drown in the Dead Sea
and its western ranks in the Mediterranean Sea.
And its stench will go up;
its smell will rise."
Surely he has done great things!

²¹ Do not be afraid, land of Judah;
be glad and rejoice.
Surely the LORD has done great things!

²² Do not be afraid, you wild animals,
for the pastures in the wilderness are becoming green.
The trees are bearing their fruit;
the fig tree and the vine yield their riches.

²³ Be glad, people of Zion,
rejoice in the LORD your God,
for he has given you
the autumn rains in righteousness.
He sends you abundant showers,
both autumn and spring rains, as before.

²⁴ The threshing floors will be filled with grain;
the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.

²⁵ "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm —
my great army that I sent among you.

²⁶ You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the LORD your God,
who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.

²⁷ Then you will know that I am in Israel,
that I am the LORD your God,
and that there is no other;
never again will my people be shamed.

*all emphasis mine!

To find more Word-filled Wednesdays, please visit Penny's blog

Tutorial Tuesday: preview of next week!

Next week's

Tutorial Tuesday

Will be using...

beautiful fall foliage leaves

so make sure you collect some for our special project!

And this week's tutorial tuesday will be coming once we finally come in from the glorious 70 degree fall day weather we've been enjoying today! Until then...

Tutorial Tuesday: Disappearing Ginger Cookies

Take note: If you only decide to make one of my tutorials THIS TUTORIAL IS THE ONE YOU MUST MAKE! Seriously, your friends, family, and complete strangers will thank you for making this recipe and then they'll ask you to make it again (and again and again).

okay. I'm off my little soapbox. But seriously...you need to make these "Disappearing" Ginger Cookies. And this is what you need:

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour


2 teaspoons baking soda

4 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cloves (feel free to make it rounded for extra spice! Delicious!)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon


1/4 teaspoon salt


1 1/2 cups shortening (ie Crisco)


2 cups sugar


2 eggs


1/2 cup molasses


3/4 cups coarse sugar or decorating sugar (granulated sugar can be used as a substitute and this is what i almost always use!)

1) I am not a huge fan of shortening but man oh man are these cookies worth it. So don't be afraid to dive on in and just start using it.

Measure the shortening (getting all the bubbles out of the measuring cup--you want all the shortening this recipe calls for!)

2) Put the shortening and sugar in a mixer and allow it to whip until fluffy

You want it to look like this when it is done:

3) While that is whipping into a fine fluff, measure out your dry ingredients, starting with the flour

and then adding the spices, salt, etc.

4) Thoroughly combine those dry ingredients

5) now that you've beaten your shortening and sugar and combined your dry ingredients, ADD the eggs and mix well.

6) then add the molasses. I use the same measuring cup as the cup I used for my shortening--that way the molasses slides out of the measuring cup a little more easily and then you get more molasses goodness in the cookies.

7) Blend well, until it looks like this:

8) Now it is time to combine the flour mixture to the molasses goo. Do this SLOWLY, ensuring that the flour is mixed in well before you decide to add more flour...

9) Your dough should now look like this:

10) Once your dough is ready, chill it. This step is not a necessity but I've found that the cookies taste better after they've chilled overnight. They still taste GREAT if you don't follow this step so don't worry. (PS Don't mind my glucose drink or the rest of the fridge!)

11) When you are ready to make the cookies, keep in mind taht these cookies are designed to be BIG...some might even say GIANT. So break out your 2 tbl scoop (I use a coffee ground scooper)


12) Roll the dough into a ball and then place it in the bowl of coarse/decorative/granulated sugar

and roll it around until completely covered:

13) Space evenly on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes. If you like chewy cookies (like J does) then make sure that you do not bake for any longer than that--these cookies will firm up after they come out of the oven.

14) Don't forget to take a picture of your finished product...we almost forgot until we got to the last cookie!

Enjoy! These cookies will disappear before you know it!

I ❤ Faces: Balloons!

I hope you all have recovered nicely from your Halloween festivities. Once I finish my current bag of candy corn, I'm swearing it off until next year. Besides, I have to pass a pregnancy glucose test in two weeks :-0

Speaking of Halloween festivities, I was blown away by last week's I ❤ Faces winning entries were incredible! I hope you all had a chance to look at them this weekend--so creative. (check them out here if you missed their post)



Moving on to this week...the theme is balloons! Not satisfied with my current selection of balloon photos (of which there are plenty, trust me, since Cutie Face is a humongo fan of balloons), I decided to turn a rainy Tuesday afternoon into the perfect day for a photoshoot.

Cutie Face and I headed to CVS on Tuesday (but you can read more about that on our family blog here), bought some balloons, and then spent the next hour blowing them up. Well, she didn't blow them up (though she tried which definitely scared me--choking hazards!).

Turns out the only balloons available were water balloons.

So they're small.

And not so durable.

But, we finally had enough to cover her crib mattress so in went Cutie Face and on went the camera...3,000 clicks later*, i finally had a decent one which you can now view here...

as J said, "Well, it isn't a winner but at least she's cute!":

Don't forget to head on over to I ❤ Faces to see more balloon entries! They're sure to BLOW you away (yay! i love puns!)

*PS I also love hyperboles.