LIFE♥MADE♥LEMONADE ❝ and I intend to drink it ❞   |   twitter   ·   facebook  ·   follow





The Girl
♥ I am Nicole. I am a wife and a mother of twins. Life is flying by me in a flash the older I get and I don't want to forget a minute of it- hence this blog. Hope you enjoy your time here!



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@nab8521

agenda
Mon Pinterest Nail or Fail
Tues Recipe of the Week
Wed Weight Loss
Thurs Time for God
Fri Focus on Family


weekly verse
Matthew 17:20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

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  Time For God: Scripture Journal

Yesterday, while we were out at Target, I picked up two new composition notebooks intended for journaling.  I got one for my personal journal and the other for what I will call my Jesus journal.  I saw something online a while back that people make called Scripture Journals that really caught my eye.  Basically, it is just a place to keep track of things you learn while reading the Bible.  I am not totally sure of the layout I plan to use yet, but I am excited to get started.

I think keeping a Jesus journal can help you stay on track with reading your bible and also just staying close to God.  I think a Jesus journal should be an extension of yourself and your thoughts combined with God’s word.  For example, if you read a chapter on faith you should write down key things that you took from it along with how it made you feel or other things it might have laid on your heart. I think your journal can be artistic or it can be very simplistic in nature.  The bottom line is that it should be something that you love.  It should make you want to progress in your relationship with God. It is about you and God, plain and simple.

I found some pretty neat Scripture journals online that I thought might kind of help with the description I am trying to give.  Some of these are from other religions I don’t follow but I still thought it would help get the point across.  I think Scripture journaling can work whether you are a Baptist or a Mormon.  The bottom line for me is that you love God and we all need to have a strong relationship with him.  This is my way of doing so.

(Picture from The Red Headed Hostess)

(Picture from The Red Headed Hostess)

(Picture from The Reality of Anxiety)

(Picture from Sugardoodle)

(Picture from One of a Kind)

So, as you can see they can be anything you want them to be.  I plan to start my journal today and continue with it everyday hereafter.  From time to time I may share a page from it on here if I feel like someone needs to see it for whatever reason but for the most part I think I will keep it to myself.  It is, after all, a journal and I just think journals are private things; an outpouring of your heart.  In this case it is still that but also a learning and growth experience that I do hope some of you will try out.  At the very least, if journaling just isn’t your thing, make sure to make some time everyday for God.  I think it is easier to stay close to Him if you talk to Him daily.  In the end I think it will be beneficial for those who do. 

That’s all I have for you today…earlier this week I missed two days of posts because of some mishaps and hopefully it won’t happen again.  I will be back tomorrow with a family post.  See you then :).

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  Pinterest: Gardener’s Hand Scrub
Today’s Pinterest Fail or Nail comes from here.  When I saw this on Pinterest I thought it would make a great gift in almost any situation.  I sent Aaron out to get the soap for me and he came back with white instead of pink.  The soap still smelled fine- just not as pretty since there isn’t a soft pink touch to it. 
So I filled the jar 3/4 full of sugar…
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Then I poured in soap until about halfway to the lip of the jar.  The original poster said to fill to the bottom of the lip but as I was adding soap I thought that might be too much. 
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And then I stirred it all together…
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I added about a nickel-sized dollop of soap just to make sure.  I ended up with a thick hand scrub.  It smells okay but honestly I think the pink soap would have had a better hand scrub smell.  I didn’t have extremely dirty hands to test out how well it worked but I tried it out anyway. 
It felt amazing while washing my hands and there were a lot of suds which I love.  The only thing I don’t care for is when you rinse your hands they have the same feeling as when you dry them after washing dishes- not silky soft at all.  I would definitely make this again but next time I think I’ll do half soap and half coconut oil.  I think adding in some oil will help give the silky soft feeling I was missing. 
So overall I think this was a nail- I still want to give it as gifts and will with my tweaks.  I’ll be back tomorrow with a recipe you won’t want to miss!
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  wakey wakey

Friends, I may have stepped in it.  Really stepped in it.  I somehow talked my wonderful husband into working out with me… in the morning.  If you know me then you know mornings are not synonymous with Nicole.  If you don’t know me, at least you now know how I feel about the morning.  I have never been a morning person. Ever.  But I am trying to change that.

I have tried to make commitments to work out at night when Aaron gets home from work but we just never seem to get there.  I could go on my own during the day, but then I am outnumbered by toddlers 2:1.  When Aaron gets home all I want to do is eat dinner and watch some TV before it’s time to head to bed.  Not to mention, when I do work out at night I can’t sleep.  Therefore, we have decided the best time for us to work out is bright and early before Aaron leaves for work.  So tomorrow morning I will be waking at 6:30 AM to start my day right.  This should be fun.  I can do it. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me… and Christ does indeed strengthen me so I will be fine.  It is time.

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  Hard Work

I subscribe to an email newsletter of a blog called Women Living Well.  This morning the email was about hard work.  In my previous posts I have revealed that I am lazy.  Apparently God does not like lazy…  I knew that of course, but it was nice to have a reminder. 

Colossians 3;23 says “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”

This week I am challenging myself.  With two toddlers running around it can be very hard for me to keep the house clean.  The main issue I have is that I just don’t feel like doing anything.  So for the next two weeks my challenge is to keep my house clean all week long- starting today.  I know my husband would appreciate it, the kids would appreciate it, and I would appreciate it.  It feels so good to have a clean house, almost purifying.  I tend to do one huge clean and then let things go.  I have always struggled with this.  Hopefully if I can do this for a couple of weeks it will become habit.

I will take pictures of any progress and post them here for everyone to see.  Right now my house isn’t too bad but it can still use some improvement.  Guess I better go get started!

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  since I’m being honest

Yesterday I ate an entire chocolate bar in one sitting.  One of these to be exact…

Chocbars-serenity

I ate the whole thing.  It was delicious.  It was like Pringles-once you pop the fun don’t stop.  I had all intentions of stopping after 2 squares.  That didn’t happen.  The good news is that there is no more chocolate in the house and there won’t be for a long, long time.  I don’t normally buy things like that anyway.  I love good chocolate and it was on sale so I got it on impulse.  It won’t happen again.

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  keeping it real

The one personality trait I love on people more than any other is honesty.  I try to live my life as honestly as possible but I will admit that at times it is hard.  Sometimes it is easier to tell a lie to avoid hurting others’ feelings or avoid confrontation.  I try very hard not to lie in these situations- to myself or others.  So, in the interest of keeping it real, there are several truths I need to face about myself.

I am fat. I am lazy. I am a quitter.  I am a procrastinator. I take the easy way out every time.  I limit myself.  I never finish anything I start. 

I am messy.  I am disorganized.  I never put things back where I found them.  I will choose my computer over cleaning any day.

Some people would tell me not to speak so harshly about myself but everything I have said above is true.  The truth hurts.  I need a wake-up call.  I need to hear the truth.  I need to speak the truth.  I need to confront the truth.  I need to make new truths.

Want to hear another truth?

I am over it.  Over myself.  Over being fat. Over never finishing what I start.  Over being lazy.  Over being disorganized.  Over it all.

I have been this way for far too long.  I am ready for change.  I need change.  With help from God, friends and family, and effort on my part,  I will change.  

I, of course, realize that change requires action and I am, in fact, acting. 

I am beginning to address problems one by one, my first problem being going out to eat.  We go out A LOT.  Aaron works late hours and by the time he is off of work I usually just don’t feel like cooking.  We end up with fast food, pizza, or whatever restaurant we choose to go to.  This bad habit isn’t good for our wallet or my waist.  This week I took steps to addressing that problem.  Enter freezer cooking.

I have known about freezer cooking, or Once a Month cooking, for a long time.  It looked great but I never tried it.  The premise of it is basically to cook food and freeze it to have on hand for nights that you don’t feel like cooking.  It is perfect for someone like myself.  So this week I dove in head first.  Well, maybe I just dipped my toes in.  I figured to start out I would just try some really easy things first.  I got some boneless, skinless chicken tenders and 3 bottles of marinade at the store… I could have made my own marinade and in the future probably will, but for now I wanted convenience.  All I did was divide up the chicken, dump some marinade in each bag, labeled the bags, and stuck them in the freezer.  Ten dinners ready to be thrown on the grill.  I also divided up some frozen fruit mix for smoothies.  I just put 1/3 of a large banana in each bag with the fruit, labeled the bags and threw them in the freezer.  All I have to do now when I want a smoothie is dump one of the bags in the blender with some orange juice.  Easy peasy.  Today I added some taco meat, ground beef for spaghetti, and burgers to the freezer as well.  After all was said and done, I ended up with 8 smoothies and 15 meals. If all goes well with this little experiment I will be getting more in depth with the whole process. 

If you are interested in reading more about this way of cooking, I suggest going here: Once a Month Mom

Stay tuned!






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