If you're the praying kind...

As a mom who knows where her children are....who knows that they are safe and warm and okay....I have to do what I can to get the faces of these three boys out to as many people as I can ~ because their mother isn't as fortunate tonight.

This hits close to home for me as these boys are missing from Morenci, MI ~ a town about 4 miles away from my own hometown. My mother taught at Morenci until her retirement. Searches are being conducted in and around both towns, including the areas surrounding the state park where I worked when I was in college.

They have been missing since Friday, when their father gave them to a "friend" he had an internet relationship with. She was to take them from the home so that their father could take his own life, and return them to their mother's home at a designated time. The father's attempt failed, and the woman never returned the boys. Police have not yet proven (or disproven) that the woman really exists and are uncertain if the father's story is true.

Click here for more information. This story is also being picked up by CNN and other national news outlets.

PLEASE....no matter where you are, look at the faces of these boys. Memorize them. Know their names. Keep your eyes open for them. If their father is being honest, they may be with a woman driving a silver van, and they really could be just about anywhere by now.

And, most importantly, I ask that you pray for them and for their family ~ for safety and comfort and courage and strength ~ and for their safe return home.

Ooh! Ooh! Pick me!

Jen @ Tatertots & Jello is giving away a Silhouette machine! Now....I'd LOVE to win that bad boy, but I realize the odds of that happening are pretty much slim to none. There are so many amazingly cool projects you can do with a Silhouette! Head over to TT&J to check out some of the things Jen has done with hers, and leave a comment to enter to win one for yourself!

I'd love to stay and chat/post more/catch up, but I can't at the moment and when I {do} tell you all about it you'll understand why. I promise. I hope everyone is doing well! Have a fantasticly wonderful Thanksgiving ~ and good luck to all of you crazy Black Friday shoppers!

What Sleep Deprivation Will Get You...

I'm tired. The hubband is gone hunting for the weekend, and he has my guard dog with him. Not that Molly (dubbed "the brown mound of lay-around" by my brother) isn't a force to be reckoned with...when she's taken her arthritis medication. ;) I just feel safer with 92 lbs of yellow dog at the foot of my bed. Even if I do think he'd probably lick an ax murderer.

Anyway...It's late and I'm putting off sleep and I started playing around in photoshop. Oh, c'mon ~ you know you've been there. I was thinking about making a Christmas printable to share, and trying to choose my favorite Christmas song from which to steal some lyrics...and then I thought, "Well, I always did like Bing Crosby." No ~ I'm not going the "Little Drummer Boy" duet with David Bowie route....I'm going old school...



How many of you are having flashbacks to the pool scene from "Christmas Vacation" right now? Right!?!?!? :)

***Edited*** This printable is available for download! :) It's formatted to a 5x7. {Click Here} if you're interested! I should also mention that I've linked up to the Weekend Wrap-Up Party @ Tatertots & Jello!

I think I might be tired enough to sleep now. G'nite folks!

One of Those Days

As moms, we all know that at some point there is going to come a day when everything just goes wrong. That was my day yesterday. I got up in the morning, got tiny person 1 to the bus stop, and spent the morning making my list/s of things that I wanted to get accomplished while tiny person 2 was at preschool. Then I went to the basement to get clothes out of the dryer only to find that the clothes in the dryer were...wet. Cold, and wet. I ran the dryer and started sorting the laundry into loads (am I the only person in the world who can do at least one full load of {pink} every week?), then I went back to check on the clothes in the dryer b/c I wasn't having a good feeling. Yep...still cold. AWESOME. I told the hubband there was a problem with the dryer (perks of having him work from home!) and he checked it out...and then called the repair dude.

I went on about my day, and as I was preparing to take tiny person 2 to preschool, I realized that tiny person 1 had left her homework folder at home. Oooops. So, I threw the folder in the car, took TP2 to preschool and went straight to TP1's school to drop off the folder....only to find that the secretary had been trying to reach me b/c TP1 was in the office....throwing up. Seriously - f.a.n.t.a.s.t.i.c. Of {course} I'm going to have a puking kid....when I Can't Do Laundry!

So now, I've got 2 kids at home all day, and I have to get the house picked up and clear the area around the dryer so that repair dude can do what he needs to do when he gets here....TOMORROW. Yep - I've got laundry ~ literally ~ hanging from the rafters in the basement. Anyone wanna trade? NO!?!?!? Oh, c'mon! ;)

On the bright side, when I have a {crap} day, I usually find that doing something I really want to do makes me feel better. At least a little. So I have a quick, easy and inexpensive project to share ~ just in time for Thanksgiving. Here's the finished product, displayed in the entryway of our home...

To start, I picked up an inexpensive wooden craft frame from Michael's. I brought it home, spray painted it brown, and measured the opening to determine the size of the print I'd need to fit inside it. Now, I've showed you this trick before, but I'm showing it again b/c 1) it's one of my favorites 2) when it comes to "oversized" prints, this really is a cheap and easy way to get what you want & 3) I want to remind everyone that you don't have to be limited just b/c you don't have a color printer at home. I used the measurements to make the art for the opening, then determined the closest {larger} size available from my Costco photo lab and moved the art onto a plain background in correct print size, so it looked like this...

Sometimes I darken the excess area, but I didn't bother with it this time. All I had to do was cut off the excess, do a little trimming to make sure it fit well, and bust out the mod podge to attach it to the frame.

So there you have it! A quick, easy, inexpensive little reminder to "Give Thanks" ~ which is just what I needed on a day when nothing seemed to be going right.

OK...I'm going to try to share this and see it it works! {Click Here} to download this printable ~ it's made to print as a 12x18. Enjoy! Go check out all the great ideas being shared at the Weekend Wrap-Up Party @ Tatertots & Jello!

Loving Fall!

There are so many things to love about Fall! And that month or so of fall between Halloween and {Thanksgiving} ~ when we can bring out all of our "pretty" fall stuff to replace our "spooky" fall stuff ~ is my absolute favorite. This year, I threw together a quick little something for our front porch.

For {$2} I grabbed a straw broom and a leaf vine from the dollar store, hit 'em with a few dots of hot glue & Voila!

It's a great little punch of color for the porch ~ one that only took, literally, 5 minutes to put together (including the time it took for the glue gun to warm up! for reals!) ~ and I love that it was so inexpensive.

In the next few days I'll be posting more Fall-type stuff! I have always loved {Thanksgiving} and, as much as I'm going to try to get my Christmas decorations up and the holiday shopping finished at the beginning of December, I refuse to skip Thanksgiving!