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Now, what do you think of ObamaCare?
Dr. David Janda explains rationing and why Dr. Rob Steele must defeat Dingell:
Emily’s Chance – Revell Blog Tour
Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.
Emily’s Chance was an easy read and fairly decent story. In my opinion though, it is a typical romance novel in that boy meets girl and boy and girl get married, with a sprinkling of hope and healing in between. Pretty predicatable.
What I liked about this book was the female lead was not too big for her britches. Even though she was wealthy, she chose to live beneath her means so as not to stand out but be a so-called normal person. She had learned that certain social circles, like the one her wealthy parents frequented, were quite often more about appearances than about what mattered most in life.
I enjoyed how Emily learned that a loving family can exist after growing up in a family who did not love one another and was somewhat “disfunctional”. I loved the protrayal of good relationships with the grandparents, the community the town enjoyed and that Chance and Emily were willing to give up their dreams because of their love for one another.
I didn’t really learn any new spiritual lessons. The spiritual lessons shared with the pages of this book were reminders of what is important in life – family, good relationships, community.
“Available October 2010 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”
10 Tips for Planning a Great Bridal Shower
Faith and Family Reviews received a $100 gift code for writing this post through Brandfluential. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product, as are our sponsored posts.
Fall weddings are beautiful. Well, weddings are beautiful any time of the year, aren’t they? In this post, I’d like to share 10 tips for planning a great bridal shower.
1.) Decide whether or not you are planning a surprise shower or will the bride be informed of this special party in her honor.
2.) Choose a theme. Themed showers are very popular these days and make planning fun. Themes may be according to the brides interests, the host’s or a combination. Theme ideas include: Hawaiian (especially if the bride and groom are going to Hawaii on their honeymoon) or any other country the couple may be visiting, or perhaps a room theme like a Kitchen, Bathroom, Bedroom etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg and truly the sky is the limit on what the theme could be.
3.) Choose a location. This is very important, as you want to choose a convenient location for most of the attendees as well as have enough room for everyone.
4.) Make a list of guests. Usually the guest list includes close friends and families, but more often than not whole groups of people, like the church the bride and groom attend, will be invited as well.
5.) Order invitations. Once you have your theme and how many guests to invite, it’s time to choose and order bridal shower invites. You can incorporate photos, customize or personalize these invitations to make them look exactly how you want them to. Once you receive the bridal shower invites, all you have to do is send them and wait for the RSVPs to roll in.
5.) Plan activities, games and prizes.
6.) Prepare a menu. Once you decide on the menu then you will have to choose a caterer or shop, cook and bake from scratch. Be sure to recruit some help if you are expecting a large crowd.
7.) Shop for decorations, game and prizes supplies. Quite often the host of the shower will gather information and photos of the bride and groom so that those who are only acquaintances can become more acquainted with the couple, their families, how they met and became engaged.
8.) Set up and decorate. Make sure there is sufficient space for gifts, coats, hats and purses.
9.) Choose a greeter. Have someone greet the guests and put their name in a hat or bowl for a random gift drawing.
10.) Lastly, but certainly not least, have fun and make sure to get lots and lots of pictures!
A bridal shower is a time for the bride-to-be to relax and surround herself with good friends and family. If you were planning a bridal shower, what things would you do to make the day spectacular for the bride to be?
Monday Motivation
Last week’s Monday Motivation:
~ This week we have a mommy blogging event that TheMotherhood.com and Wendy’s have coordinated. So we will be going to lunch with grandma and other mommy bloggers. As I already stated, this went very well. I think we bloggers and our friends and family packed out Wendy’s!
~ We also have another CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Agricultural Farmer Training) Field Day to attend. Looking forward to that. Besides getting a little lost due to not knowing the road I needed to be on turned right – no signs saying it did so – we enjoyed the afternoon outside in the fresh air learning about tomatoes, the farm, meeting new people and talking about farming.
~ Writing our business plan and submitting it is a priority so we can see where it takes us and hopefully allow us to plan for the approaching new year. Still working on this after a full week last week! Ugh, gotta get it done.
~ De-junk. Organize. We already have two big bags and a box to giveaway and I hope to have more before Vietnam Vets pick up comes this week. We just don’t want to be cleaning stuff we don’t need. It is so crucial for our sanity to get down to bare minimum. Just the basics here please. But do you know how hard it is? Hard. Believe me! If you are the praying kind, please pray that we discover what our bare minimum is for our family and home. We got rid of a bunch of things, but have a lot more to sift through, so this is ongoing.
This week’s Motivation:
~ This week I am very thankful for two friends, Sarah and Professor, who have agreed to review products and write reviews. As an introduction, Sarah is our pastor’s wife, mom to seven and a former nurse. She enjoys gardening, healthy living and eating. Professor is my neighbor and friend who is mommy to three and an English Professor at the University of Phoenix online.
~ Since we were so busy last week, this week we will be staying home except for our outings to the YMCA to swim, which we all love. The children are improving. Two of them passed the swim test to swim in the deep end, so now they can really work on their endurance. We might even try the open rock climb this week.
~ Getting some client work done and preparing for some time off from one client for the month of November. Puttering on other business projects.
~ Hopefully complete and submit our business plan to the Farm Business Development Center.
~ Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. So thankful we live in a small house that it will just take a little direction and participation from yours truly to hopefully get things in tip-top shape, well, as much as they can be with ten people living in under 1200 sq. ft! We’d love to entertain over the holidays and are simply not comfortable doing so until we purge and clean! The children have worked hard to keep things going while I was pregnant, worked and healed from having Sir Eats Alot, but I am well now and raring to go! Let’s see how much Sir Eats Alot cooperates.
~ We are also revising Tuesday’s column to include health posts, so it will be Health & Garden Tuesday. I know we all desire to remain healthy during the winter season, so we hope to share what we are learning about building up our immune system and preventive ideas as well.
Hope you all are staying motivated as we head into winter. I’d love to hear some of your ideas for staying on top of things and keeping your motivation running so you remain an effective mommy/parent/friend/sister/daughter etc.
FFR Giveaway: Pentel Products
Congratulations to Karen F, Liz I, and Emillie P for winning our Pentel giveaway! Thanks to all who entered and to Pentel for sponsoring this giveaway! Winners chosen by random.org
With school upon us you may be looking for a way to get some school supplies know that all the school supply sales are over and Pentel want’s to give 3 prize packs away to 3 lucky readers! These prize packs will be filled with Pentel automatic pencils, Pentel pens, and Pentel erasers. These prize packs will be worth $20 each.
(the below pictures are not guaranteed to be in your prize pack they are just to show you some of Pentel’s products)
So you wanna win?
The giveaway is open to USA only and 3 winners will be chosen to win 3 Pentel prize packs.
Mandatory Entry: Visit http://www.pentel.com/ and tell me why you want to win.
Extra Entries (Please be sure and leave a comment and link for extra entries):
1 Entry:Follow Faith and Family Reviews On Twitter (http://twitter.com/faithfamilyrevw)
1 Entry: Follow Pentel on Twitter .
1 Entry: Like Faith and Family Reviews on Facebook. Do not unlike us after the contest is over thanks!
1 Entry:Like Pentel On Facebook
2 Entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Google Friend Connect.
2 Entries: Tweet about this giveaway, but only one tweet per day please. Include your tweet url with your comment. You may write your own tweet or use this one:
Giveaway: Enter to win a Pentel Prize Pack! @faithfamilyrevw! http://tinyurl.com/27r7b6t Please share! Thx!
5 Entries: Blog about this giveaway and link back to this post and to Pentel website.
1 Entry for every comment you leave anywhere else on this blog, but please leave a link with your comment!
1 entry for every comment you leave on Pentel’s blog here. Please leave a link with your comment!
Details:
This giveaway will run from October 22 to November 4th at midnight CST. The winners will be chosen through Random.org. Pentel will be sending 3 winners 1 prize pack each filled with automatic pencils, pens, and erasers (estimated value $20). Winners will be contacted via email on or before November 15th and asked for their contact and other pertinent info. Winners will have 48 hours to send me their info at [ffr] [giveaways] [at] [gmail] [dot] [com] (without spaces and parenthesis). Please note: This giveaway is offered to USA only.
Thanks and have fun!
Wendy’s Bloggers and Friends Pick 2 Lunch Project Plus Midweek Giveaway! *CLOSED*
Congratulations to Jessie C! You won our Wendy’s giveaway! Thanks to all who entered and to Wendy’s and the Motherhood for sponsoring this giveaway.
Faith and Family Reviews received four Wendy’s gift cards valuing $7.00 each and a stipend in exchange for sharing about the Wendy’s Bloggers and Friends Pick 2 Lunch Project hosted by TheMotherhood.com and Wendys.com. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products/gift cards and stipend, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the Pick 2 menu.
Yesterday we went to lunch at Wendy’s for a bloggers event. This event was held with the purpose of trying Wendy’s new Pick 2 menu, which consists of four half salads – The Spicy Chicken Salad, The Cobb Salad, The Apple Pecan Salad and the Baja Salad. Then you have the choice of adding one side for the price of $4.99, but this did not include the price of a drink unless you chose to get a salad and water. The side choices were: a Dansi bottle of water, a small chili, a baked potato, Jr. Cheeseburger, Chicken wrap, small frosty or a variety of soft drinks.
We invited Grandma to come with us since most of my friends were otherwise occupied or lived too far to attend. We tried their new Pick 2 menu. My oldest, Virtuous, along with Grandma tried the Spicy Chicken salad with a baked potato/chili. My second oldest, Peanut, and I tried the Apple Pecan Salad with chili as our side. On the way home we thought that we could have all chosen one of each of the salads, but oh well, we didn’t. The Cobb looked good and I wasn’t sure what the Baja was until we discussed it after lunch.
Grandma thought the meal was very filling, she couldn’t even eat all the salad. However, she admits that she isn’t a big salad eater. She adds that she thought the chicken was very tasty and enjoyed her tomatoes. She really enjoyed the baked potato with its extra seasonings as she doesn’t usually dress up her baked potato with anything except butter.
Virtuous thought that the chicken was very spicy but it wasn’t to bad. Her chili was delicous she said.
Peanut and I thoroughly enjoyed our chili and Apple Pecan Salad. It had dried cranberries, pecans, and two different kinds of apples (one red skinned and one green skinned) and included a pomengrated vinaigrette topped with blue cheese. The only thing I didn’t like was the blue cheese as I am not a big fan of blue cheese. If I were to get it again I would ask them to leave off the blue cheese. The chili didn’t seem to have as many kidney beans as we are use to adding to ours but it was still delicious. I just like the extra kidney beans for fiber and protein.
It was great to see some moms we met at the 77Kids Do Good Day and meet a couple others. We actually pretty much packed the Wendy’s restaurant we met at and didn’t have a whole lot of time to interact with everyone eating, ordering, finding seating, having to take care of kids or get back home to those children getting home from school.
We have a surprise midweek giveaway! Enter to win two Wendy’s gift cards valuing $7.00 each and take your spouse, friend or child to lunch on Wendy’s and TheMotherhood.com!
Check out the menu!
Mandatory entry: Tell me which Pick 2 lunch you and your lunch guest would choose.
Extra entries are:
2 entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Twitter.
2 entries: Follow TheMotherhood on Twitter.
2 entries: Follow Wendy’s on Twitter
2 entries: Tweet about this blog post including the hashtag #WendysPick2 using your own tweet or the one below:
Enter to win 2 Wendy’s gift cards! @faithandfamilyrewv
2 entries: Like Faith and Family Reviews on Facebook.
2 entries: Like TheMotherhood on Facebook.
2 entries: Like Wendy’s on Facebook.
2 entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Google Friend.
1 entry for every comment left on other Faith and Family Reviews blog posts. We need some “Comment Love” 😉
5 entries for blogging about this giveaway, linking to this post and TheMotherhood and Wendy’s
Please note that this giveaway will only last one week, ending on October 27 at noon! One winner will be chosen via Random.org and contacted on or before October 30th. Winner will be given 48 hours to respond via email with their mailing address. Winner will then be mailed two $7.00 Wendy’s gift cards via USPS first class ma
1-800-Flowers Birthday Smiles Giveaway
Love this Lily Meadow Bouquet from 1-800-FLOWERS! Life, Music & Laughter is giving away a $40 gift card from 1-800-FLOWERS. And I’d like to win, so if I blog about her contest I get an extra 5 entries!
1-800-FLOWERS is celebrating October birthdays! Come on over and join the fun!
Monday Motivation
Last week’s Monday Motivation:
~ My husband and I have an appointment with the Executive Director of a farm incubator program that we are interested in. This meeting went better than I expected feeling rather unprepared. Now to finish our business plan!
~ We really need to do our end of season garden clean up! My husband has been battling a cold but is feeling better so we should be able to do the garden this weekend. The weekend weather turned out great and everyone was healthy so we were able to accomplish quite a bit in this area.
~ Swim lessons for the children. We decided to take advantage of the YMCA’s no enrollment fee (at least for this month as we test drive this membership thing) and have been swimming every day since Friday. Yes, even I went swimming once. The children love it. I am hesitant to take Sir Eats Alot in the pool at his young age or else I would be in there as much as the other children. I grew up swimming all the time. My mom tells me that my sisters and I were swimming by four. We’ve been swimming most days and only one child has been complaining about it and lessons. I think our four year old and two year old could take off swimming any time. They just need to gain more confidence and arm strength.
So I actually exercised! My goal is to get exercise while teaching my children how to swim. All of them are at different levels but for not growing up swimming I think they are all doing great. It’s exciting that we can share the love of swimming together. Yep, I swam again, but this out of shape mama needs to go slow. Not as young as I use to be, unfortunately. But I am loving our family time at the YMCA.
Other than that I am just trying to manage home, children, homeschooling and work. It is definitely a juggling act. That’s why I may be taking most of November off from most of my work-at-home responsibilities except for one client whose busiest season is Christmas. I need to regroup and refocus a bit and hope that time off will help. Still juggling!
This week’s Motivation:
~ This week we have a mommy blogging event that TheMotherhood.com and Wendy’s have coordinated. So we will be going to lunch with grandma and other mommy bloggers.
~ We also have another CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Agricultural Farmer Training) Field Day to attend. Looking forward to that.
~ Writing our business plan and submitting it is a priority so we can see where it takes us and hopefully allow us to plan for the approaching new year.
~ De-junk. Organize. We already have two big bags and a box to giveaway and I hope to have more before Vietnam Vets pick up comes this week. We just don’t want to be cleaning stuff we don’t need. It is so crucial for our sanity to get down to bare minimum. Just the basics here please. But do you know how hard it is? Hard. Believe me! If you are the praying kind, please pray that we discover what our bare minimum is for our family and home.
