GIVE-AWAYS, HOME BUSINESSES, AND CATCHING UP!

I have several friends who have now started up home based businesses and I wanted to give them a shout-out..and to steer you towards their items as they are QUALITY with a capital Q thing. :)

First up:

I've followed Dianna's blog Tuininga Increase for quite some time now and just recently she started up the most amazing little business. She is an incredibly talented photographer and has been able to turn a few of her photographs into cards. You can see them (and order them!) HERE. What I love is the fact that, not only are they GORGEOUS photos, but the cards are blank inside -so you can write whatever you want in them. I showed John the pack of cards and he was pretty impressed (that is HIGH praise!). :)

Dianna is holding a drawing for What's the Difference? Manhood and Womanhood defined by the Bible by John Piper AND a pack of her beautiful cards. Head over to her blog to see how you can enter to win these great gifts!

Next up: Livi Lu Creations

Lynn is a dear friend of mine. I "met" her back in June of last year. Our daughters were on the same SN list at our agency. She has been my go-to person whenever I've needed advice on attachment and bonding since Lynn has adopted 4 precious kiddos!

Recently Lynn decided to take her hobby of sewing for Olivia and expand her talent into a small business. You MUST check out these adorable outfits!! They are absolutely beautiful and to have something like this handcrafted just for you?! Amazing! Go check out Livi Lu!

Lastly, my favorite bow-tique!

SaraBeth Bows, as most of you know, is where I have purchased 99% of the girls' hair bows. They are meticulously made, look amazing in my daughters' hair, very reasonably priced, and to boot -Jeanette is just a joy to work with!

The bow above is the bow being given away for September. Go to Sara Beth Bows to enter and win. Jeanette also has several Halloween Bows discounted if you purchase them before Halloween. Go check them out!

Now -to catching up on us!

the kids enjoying an afternoon in the pool. believe it or not -it's actually getting too chilly to swim..the water, not the outside (as we're still hitting 100 regularly right now!).

Elizabeth is actually getting pretty good at swimming -we just put the floaties on when there's only 1 adult in the pool for safety.

The next few pics are from last weekend. We tried to make moon cakes for China's Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. I'm still learning how my oven cooks and I got distracted while they were baking..and instead of checking on them I ended up letting them go 'till the timer went off. They were a tad "crispy". :) Thankfully they didn't come out of the oven 'till the kids were in bed so they didn't have to see their creations thrown away. :)

are they done yet?!

Miss E showing off her apron. :) We bought plain ole kids' aprons at Mich*aels and then I put some iron-on things on them and they colored them with special markers and ...voila! ..they all have their very own unique aprons to wear when they're helping me cook. :)

Finally -a pic of all of us together! Our 1 year post placement report is being done tomorrow (Saturday)...it needs to be on our agency's desk by 11/4 so we had to get it done a bit before the 1 year anniversary. Anyway, part of the requirement is a picture of the whole family together. Well, we didn't have one! I realized this fact late last Saturday night so called up my parents EARLY Sunday AM and asked if 1 of them could quickly snap our pic before church. Thankfully they were able to!

I'm off to iron a few drapes...we're still slowly working on the decorating part of moving into a new home. I'm hoping by the end of the weekend we'll have some progress on that front! :)