Family Musings

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of PartyLite Simple Pleasures Holiday Sweepstakes for SocialSpark . All opinions are 100% mine. I've hosted more than my fair share of in home shopping parties. Cooking shows, make-up, jewelry, but surprisingly, I've never hosted a PartyLite in-home party. However, I have owned several PartyLite pieces and candles that I've received as gifts. Maybe in the new year I can find a PartyLite consultant and have my friends over for some Spring redecorating. From browsing their website, I know the benefits of hosting a  PartyLite party  are pretty good. I wish I hadn't missed out on the December hostess specials. One of them is 12 dozen tealights for $12! That would be a crazy good deal even if it wasn't PartyLite! I can't think of anyone I wouldn't invite because all of my friends love pretty things. And love to make their homes smell nice too. You can always keep track of the ne...

Carefully applying sprinkles... And some more icing... Mary did surprisingly well with the squeeze bag. Notice my Christmas card covered door? It's missing about half of the cards! Bruce joined in too. :) Enjoying the fruits of our labor... It's okay that she licked her fingers, we were done decorating! PS - Canned cake frosting isn't a good choice for cookies.

I hate last minute Christmas shopping. But does that stop me from doing it? Not usually. It doesn't matter how carefully I plan. I start buying Christmas gifts over the summer forming nice stockpiles in the dark depths of my closet. Then, some how, in the midst of Christmas parades, baking, and sending the annual family photo card designing, I forget about them. Or I realize that I forgot about someone on my list. A year or two ago it was my dad. Christmas day didn't go well for him and I've always felt bad about that. Not this year. His gift is going to be great! I planned ahead and thought carefully about what to get him and how to get it. Of course, my laser focus on him meant someone else got neglected. They read this blog so I can't tell you what I bought them, but I'm just glad I don't live too far from the mall! Because we only buy gifts for those closest to us, I can't confess here what last minute gifts I've bought... don't want anyo...

This is one way we entertain ourselves in the Sabin household. This $5 laser pointer is pretty cheap entertainment!

I was pretty excited about the new Facebook Timeline. Still am. But there were a few minutes last night that I was a bit freaked out. I used the feature that allows you to see what your Timeline looks like to the public and almost started hyperventilating when it showed EVERYTHING I had posted since I joined Facebook in 2008! Unacceptable. I had read that I could fix that by changing the settings for each item. Did you catch that? Each. Item. No way! Not sure about you, but I don't have time to do that. So I did some more sleuthing and found a way to do it with just a few clicks of the mouse. I figured I wasn't the only person who might freak out about their entire FB history potentially being available to the whole wide world, so I thought I'd walk you through the steps to make your Facebook Timeline private. And just so you know,  you can't undo this action unless you go through and change each individual post. How to Make Your Facebook Timeline Private 1...

I've had a lot of fun hosting parties with Mommy Parties. My most recent sponsored party experience featured Oral B Stages toothbrushes and toothpaste. We started with some yummy snacks and fun gift bags. Each guest received a toothbrush, full-size toothpaste, coupons, and a full-size Disney Baby Naturals body wash/shampoo. I also threw in some fun kid-friendly flossers that my own daughters like to use. My favorite snack (other than the Jello Jigglers!) was the "tooth brushes" I made out of pretzel rods dipped in chocolate, then rolled in chopped peanuts. After we played a game with some toothy flash cards, the children enjoyed watching the new Winnie The Pooh movie. I'll be perfectly honest though, they only really enjoyed the movie for about 5 minutes... then their attention spans couldn't handle that many kids trying to sit still in the living room. Instead, the moms talked about helping our children keep healthy teeth and which products...

"I'm just a mom." Have you ever said or thought that? Have you ever heard a friend say that? It's not really true you know. We are never "just" anything. In fact, we've been created with hearts of compassion that are meant to ache when we read stories about the atrocities in this world. One that grips my heart and mind every time I am reminded of it is child slavery. I first became aware of this issue after listening to the audio book Not for Sale . In some ways, I read the book and my despair grew. How could I, "just a mom" do anything to help children half a world away. I could barely get my own child to fall asleep, let alone rescue another child from a life of hard toil! Children like Malavika who, at 5 years old, had already done more hard labor than I've probably done in my entire life. Fortunately, the book didn't leave me feeling hopeless. I discovered that I have a tool so obviously available for this fight that I alwa...

Don't you just love it when an idea becomes reality? Me too! At the beginning of October, I posted about a possible re-design of my entryway . And over Thanksgiving break, Bruce turned my plan into reality! I am really pleased with the hooks we chose. They match the brushed nickel on the door knob and give a spot for a light back pack and a coat. We used 1x3s for the trim plus bulls-eye corner pieces to add a slightly decorative touch. Our not-so-little secret is that the entire thing is attached to the wall with Liquid Nails. Each piece was attached separately and we have to be careful that nothing really heavy hangs on it. But for our purposes it is absolutely perfect! What's your most recent home improvement project? I'm thinking I'll start working on the kitchen next. Do you have any good, inexpensive ideas for interesting backsplashes?

Ever have one of those days.... where you know a deadline is looming but you just can't get yourself motivated to do it?  Well, today has been that day. And to be fair, it is only the most recent in a very long string of days in which my to do list gets longer and longer. When that happens, the only things that get done are those with a deadline. This is one reason I have photos of my family languishing on cds tucked in random places, flash drives hanging out in miscellaneous drawers, or on a gazillion different websites. I have just been hoping that they will all still be handy when I am ready to make that scrapbook of my 4 year old's first year! I was really excited then when Mom Central offered to send me a SanDisk Memory Vault , which is "designed for long-term preservation." In reality, it looks and functions an awful lot like a standard flash drive. But what intrigued me about it is that it "engineered" to help my photos and files stay safe ...

As much as I try, I always end up needing last minute gifts for extended family or acquaintances. One of the easiest things I know to get is a Hickory Farms basket. We've received one as a gift each of the last few years and it always makes my husband happy. He likes it if I take the summer sausages and use them to make homemade lunchables. Of course, this usually only happens in January after we've received our annual gift of cheese and cured meat. That's how we roll with holiday traditions around here. If you need to ship a Hickory Farms basket, they are offering free shipping for orders over $35 or their $3 3 day shipping deal which guarantees that your gift will arrive within 3 days. Plus, if you buy the Party Planner gift box, they will donate $5 towards Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry Campaign, a national nonprofit that is working to end childhood hunger in America. Additionally, Hickory Farms honors our servicemen and women by offering free shipping on sele...

One of our new (as in, we've done this 2 years in a row) Christmas traditions is to have a Christmas card exchange for the littles in our life. It is a wonderful way to guarantee your children receive actual mail and its also another way to focus on others during the busy holiday season.  To set it up, I chose 9 other families with children my daughters knew well and asked them if they'd like to exchange cards. I tried to make sure that all of the families knew each other so no one was sending a card to a stranger. Then, we all posted our addresses and the proper spelling of our kid's names so no one had to dig around for the contact info. For me, a Facebook event was the easiest way to manage the exchange of information. Then, once you've got your participants, it's time to make the cards! Last year, I bought dollar store cards and Charlotte colored or wrote a note inside each one. This year, I wanted them to do something a little more handmade, but on the ap...

Believe it or not, 2011 is the first year that my family has ever really put up a Christmas tree. When it was just Bruce and I it never really seemed all that important, especially since we were usually traveling on the holiday itself. But last year, after Christmas was over, I snuck over to a clearance sale and bought a 6 1/2 foot fake tree. It's been hiding in my daughters' closet ever since. Well, until Black Friday. And then last night, it was finally adorned with ornaments that I've been collecting over the last 14 years. I especially love my tree topper, which has been sitting on tables for the last few years since it never had a tree to go on. It is a metal nativity piece featuring Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. For posterity's sake, I thought it might be a good idea to note when some of my favorite ornaments were acquired so my children won't have to guess one day. This ornament is from Charlotte's first Christmas. And this one is from Mary...