I pin, do you?

Okay my latest addiction on the webs is Pinterest. Have you heard about it? Its basically idea boards online.

Are you addicted too? Would you like to check it out? If you want to try it out let me know your email and I will send you an invite. So I thought I would do a weekly post with my my fave finds.

Energy bars: The ultimate energy bar formula. I am still trying to come up with easy, healthy, and whole alternatives to what I can find in the store. Matt and his sister Christine come up with all sorts of cool recipes and healthy ideas. Christine came up with a formula you can use to make all sorts of different types of energy bars. There are so many possible combos. One of my favorite things bout this formula is that you can make bars according to your dietary restrictions. I made some today that were chocolate, coconut, dates bars. They were awesome!  The kids couldn't even tell there were black beans in them. Score!

"Raised" Beds- I just love this idea. It looks cool, it saves space. So many options and fun. I think I have the hubby ready to build it as well!

Puppet theater- I love this idea. Its so simple and yet so effective! (Also I got the idea for posting your favorite pins from this site! Thanks!)

Snack/Toy Bandolier- Love love love this idea. Deborah over at Whipstitch even gives you a step by step tutorial. She based it off of the Chewbaca style bandolier from the star wars toys.   I want my MIL to make one for Beck. I think he will just love it. :)

Cute little purse: And then the final thing I have for this week is this cool purse pattern and its a free pattern at that!!! I got lucky enough that my MIL made one for me and I love it! I'll try to get some pics of it this week to post later.

Now lets see if I can get back into blogging again! Also let me know what your user name is on Pinterest. I would love to follow you! Mine is just my name, Debbie Reininger. :)

Easy Canvas Prints

So recently I was approached by a nice guy over at Easy canvas prints. He wanted to see if I would like to order a canvas for free and then tell you guys about it. I normally just ignore these people but being a photographer I though, why the heck not.

I have canvases hanging all over my house. They are one of my favorite ways of displaying photographs. Now I have never ordered a canvas from anyone other than one of my professional labs, so I didn't know what to expect.

I went over the their site to see how easy it would be. And it was actually really easy to order. The only problem I had during the ordering was that it made me pick an image that was already oriented in landscape and the image I put together was in portrait form. They didn't have a button that I could find that made it easy to flip my image to the side.  So I had to go back into photoshop and flip it around to make it work. A little annoying but not bad. (As you'll see below I made a collage of several images for this print. I do not believe they offer an option to do this. I did it in photoshop.)

There were lots of options on what you wanted to do with the sides of your canvas. You could have your image stretch or mirror or you could put color. I tried to change the color on the side but for some reason it kept freezing up on me. That may have something to do with me using a mac and safari as my browser.

Overall it took me about 5 minutes to order. I was pretty impressed with how fast and easy it was. So now to wait and see what the quality was like. Now remember I am used to some of the highest quality canvases. Knowing that this was just a site for regular joes my expectations were not high.

About 5 days after I ordered I received the canvas. It isn't too bad. The quality isn't fabulous but its not bad either. There is a little bit of color bleed around right edge of my image. The back of the canvas is not finished but has a hanger on there so it is ready for instant hanging. And I wasn't impressed with how the side looked on the wall. They just didn't fold the edges in as nicely as I am used to.







Overall I was pleased with the product. I am pickier than most just because I am used to professional canvases. But if you are just looking to print some of your favorite images, this isn't a bad way to go. This is a fun way to preserve memories or make a great wall grouping.

this post was sponsored by easy canvas prints.

Updates

I guess its been a while since I really posted and so much has changed. I am coming out of my fog and will hopefully be posting a little more. So here is a little novel to update you all.

Family:
We have had a lot of changes in the last year. Brandon's mom moved in with us in January to help us out with all the craziness in the house and it has been wonderful. Just having another set of hands in the house has been a life saver.

The big kids are all doing really well. School just started for them and they are really enjoying the year so far. Hannah is in 7th grade and playing the cello and horseback riding and Ben is in 4th and still loving his legos. He says he wants to be a director when he grows up, and watching how he likes to boss the twins around, I think he may do really well in that career. ;) The twins think he is the bees knees! They love that he wants to play with them and will do whatever he asks. Its so cute to watch.

The twins have been going through a really tough stage. Well tough on us at least. The 3's have been just as hard as the 2's, just in a different way. They can communicate more and that has made things much easier. But the temper tantrums have been off the charts. I think they are figuring out how to deal with their frustration but not succeeding very well.

Both kids have very different ways of dealing with their anger as well. Beck will lash out and hit or kick and scream at whoever is closest when he is mad. Ella will scream at the top of her lungs until she is hoarse, sometimes up to 2 hours.

We have tried so many different methods to deal with this. We have tried time out, mimicking, silent treatment, talking through emotions, distraction, etc. The one we use the most is the time out, super nanny style. But it just doesn't stop the screaming. Most of the time we have to ignore and then just wait out the 30 minute-2 hour tantrum. Its fun. My eyes only twitch a little bit all day long now. I just don't know what to do anymore.

We got Ella totally potty trained which has been really nice. Now Beck is a totally different story. I though in the beginning of potty training that he was going to be the first to be done, but he decided about half way through that he wanted nothing to do with potty training. To say he is headstrong, may be understating his  a bit. He is going to do it on his own terms and no one else can talk him into anything else until he is ready.

We have once again tried many different methods for him and nothing seems to work. My dad has taken him for the day on 2 occasions and spent the whole day drinking juice, having treats, wearing big boy pants, etc. Only to have him not pee the entire time he is with my dad. At our house we have tried the go sit on the potty every 20 minutes with m&m's, going cold turkey off diapers for 3 days only to have him pee all over my house and not even care that he is doing it, and running around with no diaper. Needless to say, it is driving me a little crazy. I'm just not even pushing it right now. I figure when he is ready he'll do it.

We are not watching Katie anymore. We had only agreed to watch her until she was a year and then it went a little longer than that. She was ready to be in an environment with other kids her age.  I think home care only works for so long and then they need to be somewhere that can keep them stimulated more and around their peers. She is such a sweet girl!

Diet:
We are still working on the diet part of our lives. Over all we are trying to stay away from anything processed and anything that comes out of a box. Its working pretty well overall. But it wasn't helping all that much with weight loss. So now I'm using livestrong.com to track my calorie consumption. It is helping. I am down 9lbs in the last month. :) I've only been using it for a month but its nice to see my progress. Now to get motivated to work out again! I had to drop yoga due to finances (but they have some new plans that I may be able to fit back into the budget in a couple of months), I really miss it. After I dropped yoga, I had some trade worked out with a personal trainer. But now I need to do some on my own. Its been so darn hot in Texas that anything outside has not been very pleasant, even in the early morning. Hopefully it will start getting cooler and we can get back outside and start moving our bodies.

Meds:
I've gone off all of my meds (anti-anxiety/anti-depression) as well, which has been part of my anti-social personality issues. Can I tell you that weaning off these meds is that hardest thing I have ever done? The withdrawals just sucked. It has taken me about 2 months of slowly weaning and waiting for everything to leave my system, to start to feel just a little bit normal. I am still struggling but I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm ready to stop feeling like a hollow version of myself. Every day its getting a little better, I just want it to be all better now.



Trying to stay positive, its just really hard.

2nd day of school

 So I finally talked little miss thing into letting me take her picture and even grabbed a few more of all the kids.

Frist day of school!

Can't believe how fast the kids are growing up! Hannah just started 7th grade and Ben started 4th grade. And the twins are 3 1/2. Where has time gone? The big kids were at their dad's house this weekend, so I didn't get my pictures before school but I did manage to snag a few after school.

I got all the kids except for the youngest who did not want anything to do with the camera. :)

Us!

As you know I am never in front of the camera. So when we were over at a friend's house, I actually got in front of the camera and let my friend click away. We got some fun shots! Thanks Heather!

Growth Chart

I came across this cool post on creative mama's site on how to make your own growth chart. Her's is much cuter than mine but I love the idea and I don't think it turned out too badly. :)