Spring/Easter 2011

Getting some country culture at our friend Melanie's house...

School and "recess" at Woodward Park...

The girls made our mail carrier cookies and a card for Easter. She was so excited to receive them and told the girls, "Oh my goodness! You made my day!" The next day the girls received a thank you card from her and she told them that the day they gave her the goodies was actually her birthday. What a nice surprise - for her and my girls ;-)

I made the girls African-themed Easter "baskets" this year. Just seemed appropriate ;-)

Easter morning...

The girls woke up at 5 in the morning to
decorate our house with balloons and streamers ;-)

Mackenzie sang in the Choir at our church Easter morning. Of course, it was much better in person than on my video recording ;-/

Easter at Steve's parent's house...

Lots of crazy hail storms and rain this Spring. We are so ready for some sunshine!

It's been a fun spring but we are definitely counting down the days to summer! Won't be long! :-D

April's Craft Night with Friends

I recently had another fun Craft Night with some of my friends.

Fab Jess has really gotten into making necklaces lately. She made this really pretty one...

and this is another cute necklace she recently made...

One of Jess's tips to creating unique jewelry is to find a cute necklace that you like in a store (she finds really fun ones at JC Penney's) then take a picture of it with your phone and recreate it at home. I think she needs to sell the jewelry she makes - if anything, to support her habit! ;-)

My friends Brandi and Christine are both pros at making flowers (so is Jess - notice the cute pink flower in her necklace above). Brandi made a super sweet necklace with several denim flowers...

Here is a tutorial of how to make the necklace. Brandi has also really gotten into making necklaces lately, too. Here's an example of 2 others that she's made. I'm in love ;-)

Christine is also great at making necklaces. In fact, she has her own business making hand-stamped and personalized necklaces. You can check out her website here. This is an example of what she makes...

For this Craft Night, however, Christine made cute white flowers from a cotton fabric that she attached to hair clips for her girls...

Here's some more tutorials for making flowers...

Calamity Kim

Little Birdie Secrets

Simply Vintage Girl

Tip Junkie

I decided to make a holder for my girls hair clips for their "new" bathroom. First I took this photo of my girls...

Photo by Brandi Simons

Then I turned it into pop-art at bighugelab.com. I saved it to my computer then printed off a 10" x 10" square of the picture...

Next, I bought a canvas at Hobby Lobby. Their art canvasses were not on sale and I rarely will pay full price there; however, their wall art was on sale :-)  So I purchased this 12" x 12" square canvas. It had the perfect outside trim and pink background - saved me a step of painting it!

Funny ha ha - my girls saw this in our house and were horrified that I was going to hang it up in one of their rooms ;-)

Next step - I cut my pop art photo of my girls into 4 squares then Mod Podged them onto zebra striped scrapbook paper. I let that dry then I mod podged that onto the canvas, leaving part of the pink and black background showing on the edges. After that dried, I gave it a final coat of glitter Mod Podge.

Last, I staple-gunned 2 ribbons to the back of the canvas (to hang the clips on) and voila! A very simple and easy finished project...

Catching Up on Co-Op Activities

Our homeschool Co-Op has done some fun activities lately including...

A field trip to PetCo in Tulsa...

a field trip to the Philbrook Museum...

and a service project for someone in hospice care...

I just love the families in our Co-Op. They are all so sweet and a huge support to me. We have the best time doing life together - sharing in our struggles and rejoicing in the good times. Homeschooling wouldn't be the same without them!

Your Great Name - by Natalie Grant

Happy Easter, friends...

Welcome to America!

Dennis Emiku is one of the Administrators at Calo Me Lare, the orphanage that Project Hope Worldwide is building. Dennis has been responsible for finding the most needy orphans in northern Uganda to live at Calo Me Lare. The first 20 moved in this past February. They now have clothing, food, shelter - and most importantly, lots of love. Here are videos of their first church service. I love watching these!

As mentioned in a previous posting, Dennis flew from Uganda to Tulsa to speak at Kwero this past week. It was his first time to fly on a plane and he was so nervous the entire time. The girls and I met him at the airport, along with a few others from our church. They greeted him with his favorite candy - red licorice - and his favorite snack food - beef jerky. Dennis said, "Whenever I saw your girl's smiling faces, I knew I was safe." ;-)

Our team spent a lot of time with Dennis when we went to Uganda this past December. He is one of the neatest guys I have ever met. He has an amazing testimony and has such a huge heart for helping children in need.

Dennis spoke at our church this past Sunday and shared about his childhood and about life in Uganda. Here is part of his discussion with our pastor...

Dennis is here for two weeks so we "reserved" a day during his stay to spend time with him and show him around town. The girls and I thought it would be fun to take him to the Aquarium in Jenks. We weren't sure if he would be interested in it or not but he LOVED it! We are so used to the Aquarium because we've been so many times before, but Dennis was seeing everything for the first time with new eyes. It was so neat to watch his expression at each exhibit. His mouth just dropped to the ground in awe of God's creation. He was actually very quiet, which is unusual for Dennis - who is not one to be short for words. It was just such a worshipful experience for him and a good lesson for me - to be mindful of God's amazing creation and to not take it for granted.

After the Aquarium, we went back to our house. The girls gave Dennis some Zany Bands for the children at Calo Me Lare and enjoyed talking with him while I cooked dinner. He said he loves trying new food in America and the girls requested their favorite, Mexican Pizza, so we had that along with burritos, Spanish rice, chips and salsa, and cinnamon crescent rolls.

After dinner, the girls played soccer with Dennis...

Then we looked through a photo book I had made from our Uganda trip and reminisced. 

We had such a fun day together. Dennis has made so many new friends during his trip and we are all so blessed to know him. He's a pretty special guy and I know God has even greater plans ahead for him.

My Girlz Most Requested Dinner

My girlz loooove Mexican Pizza and request it all the time, so I thought I'd post the recipe. It's really easy to fix and goes great with Mexican Rice, chips and salsa.

Ingredients:

Refrigerated crescent rolls
1 lb. ground beef or turkey
Taco seasoning
1 can of petite diced tomatoes
1 can of refried beans
Shredded cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Unroll crescent rolls and spread out in a casserole dish...

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. While baking, brown ground meat. When no longer pink, add taco seasoning to taste. Add tomatoes and beans. Continue to simmer for about 10 minutes...

After it is cooked throughly and after the crescent rolls are done baking, spread onto the top of the crescent rolls (which becomes the pie crust). Sprinkle with shredded cheese and bake in oven at 350 degrees for an additional 5-10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Spa Day Bathroom Makeover

So we needed one more thing to do this weekend because Kwero just wasn't enough to keep us busy ;-)

I got the hair brained idea that since the girls were spending the weekend with Steve's parents that we should redecorate their bathroom as a surprise. Poor Steve. How he puts up with me, I'll never know.

So we painted the bathroom MY currently favorite color - turquoise - and went to town with a "spa" theme...

I actually painted this spa girl on canvas material for a local business that hosted spa parties a few years ago. They recently closed their business and when I saw they were selling everything in their store, including my canvas, I thought it could make a great shower curtain! So now it resides in my girl's bathroom and it helped dictate the theme. I just added the zebra ribbon to give it a finished look. As I told a friend, I can't sew, but I do have mad glue gun skills!  ;-)

The turquoise was a little too plain, so I added some swirly lines and mis-shaped hearts...

LOOOOVE this clock (in MY favorite pattern) - $20 @ Target...

I hung toile and zebra striped ribbon around the mirror and painted black accents to frame it...

I bought these cute little utensil holders at Target for $10. Added ribbon & made domino magnets customized for the girls and voila! Cute little containers for their "beauty supplies"...

I made this shadow box of Abby's first bathing suit. It has actually hung in their bathroom for years now but I just can't part with it...

And what spa bathroom would not be complete without shells and candles?

And new towels finished off the bathroom. Mackenzie is way into zebra stripes right now and Abby's favorite colors are blue and green...

And here's video of "The Reveal". It starts about 15 seconds into it...

You'll never guess what the girls are doing right now as I type this - yep, spa day :-D

Kwero 2011 Update

We just celebrated our big annual fundraiser for Project Hope Worldwide (PHWW), called Kwero, this past Friday night. After nine long months of planning, it was so neat to see it come to fruition. Amazingly, and all thanks goes to God, we were able to bring in $107,161, exceeding our "far-fetched to our humanly pea-sized brain" goal of $100,000. As my husband said, "You know God's hand was on it when a bunch of goofs like us can pull off something so big." What's so neat is that 100% of the profits will go directly towards building five new homes for 40 orphans at Calo Me Lare in Lira, Uganda.

Here's a few pics from Kwero that I took. (We had a photographer take some, too. I'll add hers later after she posts them.)

These are pictures of the Silent Auction area and the Crystal Ballroom where dinner was served and the program took place...

My two girls and one of their friends crocheted a beautiful blanket for the silent auction. We were so excited to find out it sold for $375! Here's a pic of them finishing the last touches on the blanket...

And here they are at Kwero...

Kwero's not actually an event for children, but the girls have raised quite a bit of money for PHWW and since they spent so much time crocheting the blanket (close to 75 hours!), we thought we'd let them attend this year. They had so much fun and really enjoyed meeting people and telling them about their blanket and their ministry, Girly Me Missions.

The entertainment was provided by Grady Nichols and Arthur Thompson who both put on an AmAzInG show! They are so uniquely talented and it was really neat to see them collaborate together and put on such a fantastic program.

We showed this video about the work PHWW does in Lira, Uganda. (This was filmed while I was there this past December.)

I love to watch that video and the others that were made during our trip. Such great memories and good reminders that our work for PHWW is not in vain. It's so neat to see so many people excited about what they are doing half a world away - helping the neediest children in Uganda. And Calo Me Lare would not be the same if it weren't for the amazing work of their two administrators, Tony and Dennis.

Dennis is the man responsible for going out into the remote villages in northern Uganda and finding the neediest orphans to live at Calo Me Lare. He actually got to fly in to Tulsa this last week and was the guest speaker at Kwero this year. I so enjoyed getting to know Dennis when I went to Uganda. Our team worked with him on a daily basis as he took us to the villages and introduced us to the children that would be living at the orphanage. He is one of the most sweet and upstanding men I have ever met in my life. He has an amazing testimony and such a huge heart for helping others. I just love that man!

So when I found out that Dennis was flying here, the girls begged me to take them to meet him at the airport. They've seen videos of Dennis and heard me talk about him so they loved him before they even met him! They were so excited to greet him at the airport (with his favorite food in hand - red licorice and beef jerky)...

This is a picture of what my sweet hubby won for me in the Silent Auction. It's a picture of one of the orphans, named Tracy, that was created by Roberta Smith with Art Community for Christ. It has a special place in my heart because I was with my friend, Kelley Compton, when we rescued Tracy from a bad situation. We took care of her for a day then turned her over to a loving family who was able to provide for her until Calo Me Lare opened last February. You can see pics of her rescue and read about her story here.

And here's a special thank you from the children at Calo Me Lare...

So, all in all, Kwero 2011 was a huge success - again all thanks to God (and the help of lots of great volunteers). We get to "rest" for about three months then we'll start planning for Kwero 2012. Can't wait to see what's in store for next year!