Keep God on Top

Another awesome night and lesson for my girls at the BLAST.  They each came home with a bottle to remind them to Keep God on Top.  I just had to share it.  Life can shake you up but God should always be on top!

A New Start

Well, the last month has been a whirlwind adventure that I swore would never happen to me, but once again God laughs at me when I say never.  We have now made the official move to York, NE, even though I thought I was a lifer in Colby.  There has been so many amazing "God Things" that happened along the way and I wanted to share those with you.  With the loss of a job, we decided to take a leap of faith and listed the house to try to sell in a few months to make the move to York, it sold in 4 days!  Aahh, and the buyers wanted in by August 25th.  We accepted the offer and got moving towards starting over.  A realtor showed us houses, lots of them but nothing jumped out then at the end of the day told us she happened to have an apartment up for rent and willing to rent month by month, we accepted it without even seeing it, and I love it! We prayed for a job and Brad got offered a  job as a Crop Consultant with United Farmers Coop., which he had just stopped by and dropped of a resume when we were up looking at houses!  We had tons of help packing the house and loading the uhaul.  We were very worried about what we were going to do once we got up here with unloading it, and a guy that used to buy equipment from Brad called a former pastor that was here for the summer and they lined up 5 guys and 2 ladies to welcome us to York.  The girls started school on Monday and they are so incredibly happy and loving it.  Both have made lots of new friends and are adjusting great.  Remember that in every step of the process, God will take care of the little things.  You just have to watch for all the "God moments" in life!

Water Balloon Bouncy Balls

This is for you Courtney, she has requested that I give you a tutorial of how to make these water balloon bouncy balls.  It is a very quick fun activity to do with your kids or for your kids! 

First you will need water balloons and a pair of scissors.

Put a small amount of water in a balloon.

Cut each balloon apart.

Pull the cut balloon over the balloon with water in it.  Keep layering until you have the size you want.

Super Bouncy and Super Fun!

Lamp Redo

Shianne and I came up with a project from her garage sale find.  She bought this lamp, I forgot the before picture sorry, and it was silver with the white shades.  It was pretty loose and kept falling over, so with a little love and just tightening things up, plus a can of very bright pink paint, she is a very happy girl!  Although her dad might not be as impressed with the pink driveway and bottom of the basketball hoop.  The wind caught it a little more than we thought.  Oh well, it was lots of fun!

Handmade Gift Exchange

Something new is always fun!!  I signed myself up for a Handmade Gift Exchange.  It was so much fun.  Please click the link to check out all of the other awesome crafts that were made.  I made the black photo holder and the 4th of July craft is what I received.

Riley's Birthday Cupcakes

These are Riley's 6th Birthday Cupcakes.  It was so much fun making them and she is sooo excited for her birthday party tonight!

Photo session

While getting ready for Bible School this last week, I needed a break and took my girls on a little field trip to a burned up old building for an impromptu photo shoot. I love the results!!! Here are just a few of the ones we did. I edited them some and took the color out and just had so much fun. It relieved some stress, too!

Front porch

This has been a project I have been dreaming about since we bought this house. I love that I have a little front porch and knew that I wanted a couple of big planters of flowers. The kicker was making it look homey. Then as I was driving by the thrift store I saw a wooden rocking chair and had to have it. So I brought it home and told Brad and the girls I wanted to redo it and paint it turquoise. Both Brad and Shianne told me how dumb that would look with a red house but I am stubborn and did it anyway. And I love it so much now!!!

It has been a while

It has been a while since I have been on here. Things here have been crazy busy trying to get all of the end of the year school stuff finished. Hard to believe we are entering into the summer. It will be busy with fun, sun, and water. The new waterpark is sure to take up a lot of our time. Now it will also including building a new swingset and fence. I have lots of new projects coming, like redoing an old dresser I used as a child, and revamping a rocking chair for our porch. So excited to get them done and I promise there will be more posts coming soon.

Bean Bags

My girls and my daycare girls love bean bags, but I haven't had any except for when we borrowed some and I was to cheap to buy them. So this last weekend I was at my Mom and Dad's to help them out after my Dad's hip surgery and just on a whim was playing with my Mom's sewing machine. I decided to throw some bean bags together (my sister Cara was shocked that I could do that and referred to me as Martha Stewart for the whole process). They turned out so great. Even though I haven't touched a sewing machine in probably 12 years! The seams are not the straightest but man to my kids and the daycare girls love them!

Happy Valentines Day

These are the girl's valentines we made this year!!!

Stay Tuned

The girls and I spent yet another snow day home yesterday. To prevent all the laziness and "Mom, I'm Bored" from happening we spend the day making homemade valentines. It has been a long time since we have done this and they turned out so adorable!!! Stay tuned on Monday for the pictures of appear!!!

Super Bowl Snacks

A few of my yummy Super Bowl Treats!!! I was these on a blog I follow, eighteen25 and just couldn't pass up making them. Have a great day and enjoy the game!! Go Packs!

Days 17-20 in the Organizational Challenge

I haven’t ever got the pictures up of the last days of the 21 day challenge. I started working on scarves and forgot about it until my friend Morgan wanted to do this challenge as well. So in looking back I realized that I haven’t posted, so here are my last few days

Day 17-The mail, I use my baskets, from the first day's challenge and now I use my binder as well. See my home management binder post.


Day 18-Keepsakes, I have a tote for each child to put their keepsakes in.

Day 19-Master Closet I didn't do a whole lot there, we keep it pretty nice since we finally have a bigger closet.
Day 20-Photos- I have them all separated into individual boxes for each child and then have all of them and my supplies for scrap booking in totes.

Weekly Organizing Challenge has Started!

This week's challenge is to create a home management binder. I am loving this idea! It is cutting down on my paper piles a lot. What a simple idea with wonderful results. Some of the categories that I used are menu, to do lists, shopping lists, weight loss tracker, Courtney's scarves, Shianne's math. I am sure I will come up with more, but this is

Courtney's Crusaders

A few weeks ago, my friend Courtney was diagnosed with breast cancer. Because I do not live close enough to her I don't feel like I can help her as much as I would love to do. In thinking about this I have come up with Courtney's Crusaders. I have made yarn scarfs to help raise money to lighten the load from medical expenses that come along with Chemo. For a suggested donation of $10 I will send a pink scarf to you and all the proceeds with go to benefit Courtney and her family in their time of need. I love her so much and this to me is one small way that we can help her through this very tough time and she can know how loved she really is.

If you are interested in ordering a scarf to support her please email me at bkphilipp@st-tel.net. I will get in touch with you and get your address and give you mine as well so that I can get the scarf to you.

Yarn Scarf

This are so easy and fun to make. I have a couple of them now and now matter how many you do, no two will look the same. All that you need are 20-25 7 foot stings of yarn and then tie several knots to hold them together.

Day 16-Cleaning out and Organizing the fridge

I have never actually pulled everything thing out of my fridge, cleaned it top to bottom and the put everything back in. I usually do a shelf or two, when they are really dirty. So I do clean it but nothing like this challenge. It was amazing how many items we had double of that each her half gone. I combined items and threw the stuff we don't use or that was no longer good. I think it turned out pretty good.

Awesome Thrift Store Find

I went to a local thrift store in town on Saturday looking for a piece of furniture that I might be able to refinish, although I came up empty handed in that area, I did find these awesome glass containers. Everyday the girls are always coloring and I have markers and crayons everywhere. This is the center of my table, not the best centerpiece but very functional and I don't think it looks to bad. Brings some color to the table.

Day 13-Medicine Cabinet

This is in my linen closet so was done on a previous day, but here is a closer up look at what I did

Day 14-Under the Bathroom Sink

I can't keep much under here because of daycare but did clean it up and try to organize the items as best I could

Day 12-The Spice Cabinet

Darcy got me these awesome lazy susans for my spices at Christmas. I love them and it cleaned up my spices a ton, it is a great thing to see what you have.

Day 11-The Freezer

The Before and After of my freezer.

Day 10-The Laundry Room

This is my laundry room. I love having this room. The picture is minus all our piles of laundry, but this got me to get washing, so my project of the day is to get caught up on all the laundry. It feels so good to have this room clean and makes it a lot easier to tackle my piles.

Day 9-Toys

I did this over Christmas break. I went through and threw all the broken toys out and tried to organize them into categories. Not the greatest, but this is how they look on a good day. I have to go through at least once a month and redo them with all the daycare kiddos they don't stay this way my any means.