Blog Tutorial and a Winner!

So, I'm not sure I can exactly call this a

tutorial because, really, there isn't much to it.

But, I thought I'd go ahead and post about it because:

a. It's a blog setting that is just in a weird place.

{I kept looking under the settings tab and could never find it}.

b. I love helping you all beautify your blogs by giving

you the resources you need to customize it to your liking.

c. I want to remember where I found

this setting in case I ever decide to change it. :)

Okay, so the "setting" I'm talking about

is how to customize the comments wording.

If you already know how to do this, then just skip

this first part and scroll to the bottom to see

who won the Hello, Good Gravy giveaway.

1. Click the design tab

{Your screen will look like the pic below}.

2. In the blog posts box click Edit

3. This box {pictured below} will pop up.

The green arrow is pointing to the box where

you can customize it to say whatever you'd like.

There are a bunch of different

settings in this box, so have fun with it. :)

4. Then click save.

Click here to check out my other blog tutorials.

And last but certainly not least,

we have ourselves a winner of the

Hello, Good Gravy giveaway!

Congrats to Angie of The Lingo Family.

I'll be sending you an email. :)

The Desktop Picture

This may be one of those funny stories where

you just had to be there, but I'm telling it anyway

because it was just too cute not to share.

Here is a screenshot of the

desktop background on Josh's laptop:

The other day Josh sat down at his laptop

and started laughing and then he asked me,

"Did you?? You didn't do this, did you?"

I was in the kitchen at the time, so I walked

over to the laptop and this is what I saw:

Josh and I looked at each other and

we just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Guess Mr. Noah thought Daddy needed a new

picture, so he took it upon himself to change it.

Oh, it was so funny!

So, it just goes to show, if a two year old

can work a computer, anybody can!

Whatever Works

Here are some of my favorite outtakes of Noah modeling

the hats Mary sent him for the giveaway post.

{This would not have happened without a bag of candy!}

Whatever works, right?

-----

I'm serious woman. If you don't give me the

candy you promised, this hat is coming off!

Candy... now!!

Okay. Now go ahead... snap away.

Yummmmy candy!

A ring pop and Andes mints! She hooked me up!

What? You want me to smile?

Sorry Mom. That was not part of the deal.

I Heart Faces: Cell Phone Pic

iheartfaces photo challenge this week is to post

a cell phone pic. This is definitely one of my favorites.

I was making mac & cheese one day for lunch, so

I had the cheese all cut and ready to throw in the pan.

Before I knew it, Mr. Noah was standing on his step stool

stealing all the cheese! I couldn't keep his little hands out of it.

Little stinker!

What a sweet memory. :)

A Few Things...

I have some exciting news to share!

It is kind of small, but look whose sweet little face

made Momtog's new header! Soooo exciting!

Thank you, thank you, thank you

for taking the time to vote for Noah's picture.

I really appreciate your support!

You can check it out here if you'd like. :)

And, I'm sure some of you are ready to know

who won the 1st giveaway, right?

Hooray Laterah you won! Email me!

For those of you who didn't win, Mary is offering

15% off your purchase until Saturday, February 26th.

Click here to do a little shopping!

At check out, use this code to receive your discount:

BONJOUR15

Thank you, Mary, for such a great giveaway!

Also...

Good Gravy Designs giveaway is still open, but it

will close this Sunday, February 20th at 10 pm CST.

So, get your entries in before it's too late!

Next week we will have giveaway #3! Yay!

Well, I think that's all I got tonight.

Hope you're having a wonderful weekend!

Stinkin' Cute

Can't get enough of this sweet little face.

He's just so stinkin' cute!

Valentine's Day

A beautiful, sunshine-y day.

Spent the entire day with my 3 favorite boys.

Lots of chocolate {proud to say I only had one little piece!}.

Walked along our favorite trail.

Received a sweet package in the mail from Mimi & Granddad.

Lunch date with Mr. Bonjour {alone!}.

Noah partied at MDO & brought home way too much candy.

Einstein's birthday was celebrated; he was king for the day.

Absolutely no cooking took place.

Except for some homemade dog bones made for the king.

Took a little nap. It was so nice.

Surprised with this iPhone cover. I'm in love.

It was a lovely day.

How was yours?

happy v-day + a giveaway!

Happy Valentine's Day! Have any fun plans? Noah has a party at Mother's Day Out today and Josh and I are going to have a lunch date. Yay! And guess whose birthday we are celebrating today? Einstein! Four years old... just can't believe it! He deserves something special on his big day, so I'm thinking of making him some of these. Josh says Einstein won't touch them. He's probably right. Einstein is pretty picky about his treats. Silly dog!

Anyway! So, giveaway #1 has been hanging around the blog for a couple days, so I thought we should have another one! I'm really, really excited about today's giveaway from Good Gravy Designs. Lelan, another bloggy friend of mine, is so talented! She designs the most beautiful {and affordable!} stationary sets, note cards, address labels and more! You are gonna love it all. Just hop on over to her shop here and take a look.

A few months ago, I won one of Lelan's giveaways, so she sent me a set of the tricycle note cards with Noah's name personalized on them. I'm totally in love with them! They are so, so cute!! I will definitely be ordering more when we run out.

So, would you like to win some Good Gravy goodness? Of course you would! She is so kindly giving away a 20-piece flat note card set + matching address labels {love, love the address labels!} + free shipping!

Update: Giveaway is now closed.

To enter the giveaway:

Visit her shop and then come back and leave a comment telling me which note card design is your favorite.

For extra entries:

1. Follow my blog {let me know if you already do}

2. Follow Lelan's blog

Three chances to win! And as always, leave separate comments for each entry. Good luck!

And, enjoy your day with the people you love the most!

Two Years

Yes. It's true! The first of February {I'm a little late!}

was our blog-birthday, so I thought we'd do a little

celebrating with some giveaways! What do ya say?

I'm really excited about todays giveaway from one of my sweet

bloggy friends, Mary. She recently opened up an etsy shop and

it's full of the most precious children's hats. I was so excited

when she sent Noah a few hats to model. Isn't he just precious!?

I am so impressed with Mary's work.

The hats are very well made and just as cute as can be!

And the prices of her products-- very reasonable!

Mary is giving away a custom beanie hat

{with or without a flower} and you

can choose two different colors.

Update: Giveaway closed.

To enter the giveaway:

Leave a comment telling me which

colors you would pick if you won.

For extra entries:

Follow my blog

{tell me if you already do}

Follow Mary's blog

You have three chances to win!

Oh, and please leave a separate

comments for each entry.

Thank you!

A Little Bit of This & That

I'm sitting here with lots of things on my mind, so here I am with another one of my random posts. :)

You are gonna just die when you see what came in the mail today. Several months ago, I won third place in a Halloween contest and was given a $40 shopping credit from one of my absolute favorite Etsy stores: Cranberries & Capers. All along I didn't want to win first or second place-- I wanted third so I could shop at Cindy's store. :) And, as luck would have it, I won third place! So, finally after weeks and weeks of trying to make up my mind {thanks for being so patient, Cindy!}, I decided on three pacifier clips:

...and two sets of felt snap clips:

I am beyond impressed with her work. She's amazing! She even did a custom order for me and made me the pug paci clip. If you haven't visited her adorable Etsy shop, you must head on over and look around for a bit. Thanks again Cindy for everything!! I couldn't be happier!

So, guess what? The results of the Valentine Photo Challenge are in and Noah's picture got 2nd place!! Thank you a million times for taking the time to vote for us. It was a lot of fun!

And speaking of photo challenges, I entered another one a couple of days ago. :) Have you ever heard of Momtog? If you are interested in photography, then you would love and really benefit from this blog, so definitely check it out. Anyway, Momtog is about to relaunch a new website, so they are in the process of looking for ten pictures {from Momtog readers} to feature on their new header! I thought, what the heck, why not try? Right? So, I submitted this picture of Noah. Today I almost fell out of my chair when I saw Noah's picture among the 24 chosen out of 200 entries! So excited!! The 10 pictures with the most votes will be featured on Momtog's new header. So... would you take a second to vote for Noah's picture? I really hate to ask again {Josh said it's annoying-- and maybe it is}, but I really need all the votes I can get. Anyway, I promise I won't ask any more favors for a long, long time. Okay? Click here to vote for Noah. He is image # 14! Thank you for your support! I'll keep you updated!

Did you see the Valentine do-it-yourself I posted today? Click here if you missed it. It's so cute! And cheap!

I have some fabulous giveaways {three to be exact!} coming up soon! Fun, fun!

Oh, and I got an email today asking about the font I used in the picture above, and it's called BUDMO. You can find it here. :)

Okay, think that's about it.

Have a lovely Wednesday and try and stay warm!

Valentine DIY

Okay, so tonight I'm sharing this little Valentine do-it-yourself in hopes that it will remain a surprise for Noah's mother's day out teachers. I am friends with both of them on Facebook, so there is a chance they might possibly read our blog. But, I just couldn't hold it in any longer! I've been dying to share with you what I came up with to give them for Valentine's.

I knew I wanted to give them something handmade, so I browsed the internet for ideas, trying to come up with something cute. No such luck. Except I did come across these adorable printable tags that I knew I just had to use. So, I kept them in mind and decided to just think on it.

One morning while browsing around Target, I laid my eyes on the cutest, miniature pink ceramic dishes-- it was ♥love at first site. And the best part? They were only $3.99 a piece! I love when I find good deals like that! {Oh, and they also had white and red to!}

Okay, so here is what I did with my lovely find:

I bought the two dishes, a roll of clear cellophane wrapping, some ribbon, and a package of brownies {hope they both like brownies or aren't allergic to chocolate!}. Then I downloaded the printable tags {which matched the dishes perfectly, might I add!} from here and took the pdf file to Fed Ex/Kinko's to print them off on white cardstock {we don't have a colored printer}.

I followed the directions on the package to bake the brownies, but, since the dishes were miniature, I wasn't quite sure how much of the mixture to put into the dish or for how long I should bake them. So... I guessed: I poured the brownie mixture just a little more than halfway and baked it for 45-50 minutes. They came out perfect!

While I let the dish cool, I cut out one of the printables and decided to fancy it up a bit by adding some tiny diamond-stickers {found at Hobby Lobby} around the edges of the tag. I punched a hole in one of the corners of the tag, cut some ribbon and cellophane, and then tied it all up. Isn't it cute?!

I love it! Hope they do too!

Partied at:

Funky Polkadot Giraffe, Sugar and Dots, Lil' Luna,

Tatertots and Jello, Somewhat Simple, A Glimpse Inside,

Fingerprints on the Fridge, The Trendy Treehouse

Pretty Please?

Soooo, guess what?! Remember the Valentine's photo challenge I entered a few days ago? Well, Mr. Noah's picture made it into the Top 30! Yay!

Now it's time to vote! Would you mind taking a second to vote for us? I mean, really, how could you say no to this sad little face? :)

Voting will be open until February 8th and the winners will be posted the following day. Click here to vote! Noah is #7.

Thank you! What would we do without you?

p.s. Thank you to many of you who have already taken the time to vote for us! You're the best!

Valentine's Photo Challenge

The Paper Mama is hosting a Valentine's link up

photo challenge, so I thought it would be fun to play along.

What a sad little face!

Click here to join the fun!

noreply-comment@blogger.com

Hey ya'll.

So, we've been snowed in the past couple of days and it sure has been wonderful. Well, to be completely honest I'm sick of it and ready for all of this ice and snow to go away. Brrr. Too cold for me. But, as tired as I am of the wintry weather we've been having lately, I am thankful for it because Josh has been able to be home with us a lot this week. We've been able to spend a lot of quality time together, which is part of the reason I've been so absent from the blog this week.

I've been absent in writing, but be assured I have been reading all of your very sweet comments and I just want you to know I appreciate each and every one of them. ♥ You all are wonderful! Your comments are so encouraging and really bring me great joy each day. It is such a blessing to have so many amazing friends who are so hugely supportive of my blog.

Which brings me to the phrase "noreply-comment@blogger.com". *Sigh* Many of you have already changed this setting in your blogger account, but there are still many who haven't.

When I read your comments {or questions} I am doing it directly from my email account on my phone. The convenience of being able to respond back to you from my phone is, well, just simply wonderful. Occasionally though, I click on someone's name to reply to them, and I see "noreply-comment@blogger.com." :( Those words tell me I can't write you back.

So, what do we do about it? There is a very simple solution. You can set up your profile to allow people to click "reply" and respond via email back to you. If you'd like to change your settings, then here's how to do it:

1. Go to your Blogger Dashboard and click on Edit Profile.

2. When the window pops up, make sure and click the box "show my email address." {shown below}

3. Enter your email address. {shown below}

4. Then make sure to click SAVE PROFILE at the bottom of the page.

And that's it! Hope some of you find this tutorial helpful. Let's spread the word! :)

Stay warm!