Cardboard Testimony

I saw this video on another blog and thought it was a great one to pass along..It always amazes me everyone has a story and we never know what that story is. This video shows many different hardships people face and overcome thru God's grace. God can turn any situation around if you just believe. He takes broken lives and makes them whole again.

It made me think about what I would write on my cardboard...What you would write on yours?

Favorite new things....

If you know me personally, you know I am a thrifty person.. I HATE to buy things full price.

Luckily we live in an area that has some really good consignment store which make shopping oh so much fun. I love to buy things guilt free..

That being said I am still cheap. I have no problem getting the girls new things but like most moms have a hard time spending money on myself.. That being said, I have had my eye on a couple things for awhile and promised myself when I sold a couple more pieces I would buy them regardless..

Of course once I recieved them I was sooooo excited and thought this shopping for myself IS fun!

The first thing I got was a new camera strap.

I got this design and LOVE it!!!

I purchased it from My Funky Camera if you are interested in getting one for yourself.

The second thing I got was a key wristlet.. I can never find my keys in my purse. You would think I could remember to put them in the same spot everytime but evidentally that is to much for me. This works perfect. I can either keep it on my wrist for those quick stops, like garage sales, or I can throw it in the purse and actually reach in and grab it.

I purchased this from the sweetest seller on etsy sweetirie. She was wonderful to work with and I highly recommend her.

Next I have my eye on a custom camera bag and a apron, since I can't seem to stay clean when I cook.. If anyone have any recommendations I'd love to hear them. Also I LOVE LOVE LOVE to trade products!!

Scripture Pendant Necklace

I have made quite a few pendants with scripture verses in the past. I decided to create a necklace solely with this purpose but added a unique cross charm to make it a little more spiritual.

I just love how it turned out....

Find it here

I also made this necklace for a customer and actually remembered to take pictures.

This is one of those necklaces I was honored to make and has such a special story behind the necklace. It makes me so proud to do what I do!

You can find this one listed on etsy here

Back to work

My internet is back up and running after a very long couple weeks.

Now I am playing catch up time with orders and I am SO excited to announce I am branching out into a new line.. Something I have been wanting to do forever and am finally getting around to it. Let me just say it's way to much fun and so exciting!

I will let you all in on it later this week when I get pictures done..

Also I do have flood pictures to get up for those who have inquired about them..

Until then, I'll leave you with a few pictures of my "help"

Get cracking, we have orders to fill little girl!!!

(Just so you know I don't suck my thumb when I work ;) )

Iowa Floods

Just wanted to let everyone know the two towns on either side of us have been affected by the floods.

My sister lives in Vinton and had 4 feet of water in her lower level. We have spent the last few days helping her clean up and sand bag.

The town of Cedar Rapids has been flooded terribly and our internet tower is currently underwater (10 feet deep) and they are hoping to have it up and running by next week. Right now I am using a neighbors computer so any orders will be delayed by at least a week.

I'll be back as soon as can with pictures!

Thanks for your patience..

Sisterly Love

In my last post I mentioned my children and their never ending clothing choices. I failed to mention that I very seldom can even keep them dressed.

I don't know what it is, why there is so much nakedness in this house. It's not like my husband or I walk around naked. I don't know where they get this from or WHY???

Luckily we live in the country so when the clothes go flying off outside, there usually are no witness's. However when we see them streaking across the yard we do ask they redress themselves. Of course they do not.

Tonight they are outside trying to find worms. We look outside and see two bare bums. My Dh says "If you don't get dressed the cops are going to come" Kinzley is a little shocked by this, gets dressed and tells Kenna to hurry up and get dressed. Which she does not.


They then have a conversation about how Kenna is going to get taken in the cop car, yada yada yada.. So my Dh looks at me and says "How sweet that she is worried her baby sister is going to get taken to jail"

Then Kinz says:
"Are they really coming?"

DH:Yes

Kinz: I suuuuuure ammmmmm going to miss her!

So much for the love..

Big Girl Bed

A few weeks ago Kenna decided to jump ship, er I mean bed. She had crawled out before but didn't decide to make it a nightly thing until recently. Then she wouldn't stay in so out with the crib, in with her new little dollhouse.



She was so proud of herself and has done such a good job of sleeping it in. There are nights were we have to "remind" her she needs to stay in her room but for the most part she stays put.

Although now that she has free reign of her room at night, I never know what she will look like in the morning. This morning she had on pajama pants with 2 tank tops on over the jama shirt. Sometimes she has on jean shorts in the morning, sometimes tights and rain boots.

I think it must run in the family...

Wet weather, mud and a flooded basement

The weather here in Iowa has been something else this year. Our winter started with terrible ice storms which knocked down a huge tree, which ended up landing on our wooden swing set. My poor girls are out there climbing over the tree to get to the top, although the tree was laying on the slide so there wasn't much they could do once they got up there. 2 sides of it were completely useless to them since there were so many branches in the way.

We finally got it all cleaned off after 3 weekends and a lot of sweat and tears (ok it wasn't that bad but it did suck) Now we (and by that I mean DH) just need to put the roof back together. We also have a trampoline with a mesh net surrounding it. Last fall we had terrible winds that blew it across the yard and broke one of the poles so it is use able if they only jump on half of it. Then to top it off our landscaping STILL isn't done and since it won't stop raining it doesn't look like it is going to be anytime soon. There are huge tire runts in the backyard from machinery getting stuck. The grass has grown on top of it so we can't see when we are mowing and get stuck. My husband finally just stayed close since I was getting stuck every few minutes. The front yard has no grass at all. The ditch is full of water and we have frogs that croak all.night.long....loudly.. I try to pretend I am camping but it's not quite working.

On the side of the house we do have a little area of grass I am able to put the water slide and pool up. I just didn't dream after a full year of putting the house here we would still not be done. I am a do-er so this waiting drives me mad. However we have has severe (as in more tornado's and super high winds) for the past few days so it isn't looking like it is going to get better any time soon. I looked at the forecast for next week and all 7 days we are suppose to have rain again. With the temps in the high 80's.. Uhmmm I think we forgot to have spring this year.

Kinzley doesn't really seem to mind the fact she has to walk thru the mud to get to her toys.

Remember this post?

Kenna, on the other hand HATES to be dirty. Hates mud on her shoes or on her sister's shoes. Hates mud on the floor or on the dog. HATES it. And just for the record I didn't know she hated it until after I took these pictures. What kind of mom do you think I am ??

So each and every time she wants to go play, we have to take her over to the grass since her feet can't get dirty. It's really not a big deal in the seem of things. It's just getting old..

I really shouldn't complain since 2 months ago we were dealing with this due to the lack of landscaping..

Let me tell ya, THAT was a fun couple of days. Luckily my husband and I were able to get everything up and nothing got ruined. It was just A.L.O.T of work cleaning it all out. Our insurance decided to deny the claim since we didn't have flood insurance. Gotta love insurance companies. We figured we took out 60 gallons of water in the one bedroom! I don't even to know how much water there was in all.

In my mad dash to get everything moved up to higher ground (and get pictures) I didn't get a shot of my sweet delicate proper girls during the flood. Where were they you ask??

In the bathroom floor, naked, "swimming" in the ice cold muddy water.

At least someone thought is was fun.

Oh and in case you are worried...My terrific FIL came the next weekend, installed a new sump pump and finished the job the plumber can't seem to show up to finish. While my yard is drenched at least my basement is staying nice and dry.

What the H E double hockey sticks was that???

I was laying in bed last night at 1:00 in the morning working reading blogs. Our garage is attached to our house via our bedroom wall. So I am laying in bed working reading, and I swear I hear a car start IN the garage.

Now my husband's car does have remote start so I assumed it was just a malfunction. But I sure wasn't taking any chances. So I wake him up, explain what I hear. Of course he looks at me like an idiot and rolls back over.

So I do what any wife would, I say

"Well I guess I'LL go out and check what is going on. If I don't come back it was nice being married to you for the last 7 years. Make sure the girls know how much I love them."

nothing....

AHEM..Are you awake?????Dear! Honey! Seriously!!!!

He slowly rolls out of bed..

I'll come too..

Don't bother, I got it.

OH NO I'm not having your death of my conscience!!!

Turns out the remote start started on it's own earlier in the day. Kind of freaky if you ask me. Especially when you are an unexpecting soul just trying to work read blogs.

How do YOU eat an ice cream cone?

Is it like this?

Or this?

What????

Not everyone eats one from the bottom up?!?!?!?

F5 Tornado Damage

A few posts ago I mentioned an F5 tornado ripped thru a town an hour away from me. This past Saturday my DH, my 2 nephews, 2 of our friends, and I went to "help" in the clean up efforts. 1/3 of the town of Parkersburg was destroyed. There were also numerous smaller towns and rural area that the tornado path took. ( I believe the tornado was on the ground 75 miles total with a width of 1.2 miles in parts)

Parkersburg had 1300 volunteers Sat alone so we choose to go to a nearby smaller town, New Hartford. FEMA was there and they kept saying over and over the volunteer turnout was unlike anything they had ever seen before. We were asked to go with a group of college kids to clean up a farmers field. I thought this will be the first thing we do, it should only take a few hours with 25 people..

I was so wrong....

We spent 8 hours picking up remains of houses, barns and the contents. We put things into piles (probably 300 of them) and we ended up having to leave before it was done. I imagine there was still a full day worth of work yet. We felt awful leaving before it was done but he was like "You gave us hope again. When we looked at this the past week, we thought there was no way we could clean it all. Now we know we can finish it." This is one thing we will never forget.

Luckily the rain had delayed the planting so we were able to see the things to pick up. Had the corn been taller not only would it have been ruined but we couldn't have seen what needed picked up and there is no way to tractors/combines could have gone in..

With the exception of a few wet, torn pictures, a social security card in a plastic bag and a checkbook nothing had any value.

This is what we found;

pieces of shingles smaller than the size of your hand

OSB boards the size of a dinner plate

random pieces of games, one uno card, one checker, one monopoly piece, a puzzle piece
a toilet handle,
pieces of cd's

1/2 of the Ratatouille DVD case

There was nothing left of anything. Things were literally shredding into small pieces. I can't begin to imagine the force of the winds to rip things apart as violently as it did. The metal was so twisted, we couldn't tell what is was.. Just thousands of hand sized pieces of twisted metal...

Late in the day I realized we never found anything glass. It simply shattered before it made that far.

There were a couple of the random things that we could tell what they were:
a little boys shoe

a gas tank from a semi

the seats of a swing set glider

the yellow slide off a swing set
2 different push mowers
a swimming tube

a metal boat that was been flatten and folded in half
a snowmobile
Yeah you heard that right.

A snowmobile with it's blades gone and the motor hanging off.

We were in ONE field.. The damage was absolutely mind blowing. Standing in that field on a BEAUTIFUL 85 degree day with a wind blowing and a brilliant blue sky you wonder how this could have happened 6 short days before.

You look off to the right, a house is perfectly intact, look straight behind you a house with no damage at all, look to the left a house that doesn't even have a limb down. Standing in the field if you looked straight ahead you saw this:

A piece of land that had contained an old farmhouse, a barn and metal building GONE. Nothing left at all.. You could see the exact path this tornado took. 3 sides of the field were fine. At times the path was headed straight for a house and then it moved over saving it.. It was just unbelievable to see. Pictures don't even come close to capturing the mass destruction that happened.

The white thing on the end of the house in the below picture is a boat! We drove past numerous times before we realized what it was. The other side of this house had an attached garage that was gone.

This cemetery had 90% of the headstones knocked over. There were 3 foot wide pine trees seperating the cemetery from the road. ALL of those were knocked over and cleaned up before we got there 6 days after the tornado.These two pictures are of a grain elevator in between 2 towns. It's crazy how twisted the metal is.
This was unlike anything I had ever seen. The Red Cross and FEMA had done a great job (that I could see) of trying to make sure people were taken care of. The residents were amazed at how much work had gotten done in the few short days. I just hope the volunteers keep coming since there is so very much work left to do..