I’d like to take a few minutes to thank Tina Marie from Living Simply so That Others may Simply Live for awarding me the Versatile Blogger award!

Tina Marie has a great family blog with lots of homeschooling and sewing ideas. I love seeing her handy work. I admire her sewing ability, since my sewing skills are rather simplistic, and I just LOVE the name of her blog!!! 

The Versatile Blogger Rules
If you have been awarded the Versatile Blogger award:

 

  1. Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
  2. Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy.
  3. Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
  4. Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award
  5. Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.
I don’t get out blog browsing much. I’d love to, but my days are too full, so this was a rather hard task.
Here are my nominees (in no order):

 

  1. My Life’s a Treasure
  2. Day By Day in Our World
  3. Sanctus Simplicitus – Blog
  4. Family At The Foot Of The Cross
  5. The Beautiful Gate
  6. Through My “I”s
  7. Rosary Mom
  8. Familia Católica
  9. Tercets
  10. Lord, Make Me a Saint
  11. Not a Deacon Yet
  12. My Catholic Family Circus
  13. Little Saints in the Making
  14. Mostly Blue with a Touch of Pink
  15. Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints | Catholic Homeschooling and Traditional Catholic
  16. Reasons for Chocolate
Ya, I know it’s suppose to be 15, but once I decided on the ones I wanted to nominate I didn’t know who to take off!! Hey, it’s only one extra!! 😉
 
Okay, 7 things about myself?!?!?!?

Well, let’s see….

  1. I am the 4th born child out of 5. I have three brothers and a sister. My only sister was a tomboy, so you could say I was my parent’s only daughter!! 😉 BTW: Wearing hand-me-down clothes from my older tomboy sister was rather heartbreaking since she always wore boys clothes!!  But I love her, anyway!
  2. In kindergarten I said I wanted to grow-up to be a bus driver (I don’t know why), in junior high I hoped to work with animals, and in high school I wanted to be an art teacher….That’s not really all that interesting except for the fact that I now am all three!!! When I take my kids on an outing I drive a “bus” (It’s actually a 15 passenger maxi van.), my kids act like cute and silly animals, and I since I homeschool, I teach art!! All my dreams came true!!! 😉
  3. Unlike most stay-at-home moms, my husband almost always does the shopping for our food. That started because of my health problems. I’m now doing much better and I could do the grocery shopping, but old habits die hard, he has just continued doing the shopping. Besides he’s faster and loves the game of getting a good deal!! Hey, who am I to complain!! 😉
  4. I love the woods! As a child I’d spent hours just walking through the woods. I always felt I could talk to God there. I really wanted my kids to have the ability to live near a woods which they could play in. So when we had an opportunity to move into a home in the woods I was overjoyed!!
  5. Number 4 leads me to this….We live in a spit-foyer and I HATE split-foyers!!!! The tiny foyer with an inward swinging door, combined with two sets of stairs makes for a nasty entryway!! It’s personal preference! But if you saw our family of 11 trying to enter our porch-less house on a rainy day I think you’d understand!! I still can’t believe we bought a split-foyer!! Okay, so I’m sure you are wondering why I agreed to buy a house I hated??? Well, we wanted a country home and the only property in the country we could afford had a split-foyer on it! But here’s a secret: since our home addition has been completed I like my split-foyer home…. I just wish I could make the foyer bigger!!!
  6. I’m allergic to all metals except gold. I get a rash from metal belt buckles, clothing snaps, cheap jewelry, and any non-gold medal that touches my skin for an hour or more.  I wear my Miraculous Medal on a soft rope.  I discovered this allergy after I got my ears pierced. My ears and face swelled up. They were so stiff and puffy that the earrings were hidden in the swelling. When I discovered why I was swollen and had the earring removed, I slowly got better.  No, my husband can’t get away with buying me cheap jewelry -not that he’d try!!  
  7.  I’ve created a website ” from scratch” using HTML and Java Script years ago. I taught myself this crazy computer lingo to create an online place for my hubby and I to sell antique toys over the internet. It was a nice hobby, but our family life no longer allows us to shop for antique toys to resell. But the fact that I actually used a computer and created a website is amazing since I never got good grades in computer class at school!! Also, when my hubby wanted to buy our first home computer back in 1999 I hated the idea!!  Oh, how things can change!!!
Thanks again, Tina Marie, for this honor!
 
About my Summer “To Do” List:
I’m still busy working on that Summer “To Do” list! This week we are moving into our newly completed home addition!!! My house is 100% a mess from the “in-home Chinese fire drill”.  The bedrooms have been moved around now that we no-longer need to squeeze 2 sets of bunk-beds into tiny rooms!  We also have a new living room!! The old living room is now a dining room and the tiny eat-in kitchen is now a larger kitchen. Furniture from every corner of the house has been move to a new area and every shelf and cabinet has been emptied and re-organized! I said 4 years ago I never wanted to move again, but this project feels too much like moving!! It was nice to take a short break from my home re-do to make up this post!
 
Well, I’m back to cleaning the mess!
May God bless you all!
~Jen-Marie

16 Comments

  1. I am honored to be nominated among such wonderful blogs. Thank you, Jennifer! I'm so glad you are close to being able to relax and enjoy your newly arranged home. I also enjoyed learning more about you from this post.

  4. You deserve this award. I love the ideas that you come up with. I am not good at crafts at all. I have zero imagination. I chuckled when I read about your foyer. We have a similar entrance with an inward swinging door and no space for people to get in out of the rain or snow without trampling each other. Right behind our entrance door was a tiny coat closet. Needless to say, we ripped the doors off that closet and put a bench in there. This helps when we are getting ready to leave. At least three can sit on the bench and wait, but getting in the house still proves to be a problem and we are only 6 almost 7 people.Btw, my husband does most of the shopping too. I send him with a list of the things that cannot be forgotten and he improvises the rest. He shops much quicker and spends less money than me so I can't complain. Growing up with my godparents, my godfather always did the shopping. Gotta love our sweet husbands.God Bless!!! 🙂

  5. Oh, Wow! I'm being showered with blessings! Thank you so much!!

  6. You deserve it, Elisa! I really enjoy your blog!!I'm so excited to finally have my little world in more of a completed order!! It's such a wonderful blessing!

  7. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! I had fun writing it! God Bless!

  8. Thanks again, Tina Marie! I take no credit for the ideas, God only opens my mind and eyes to see them. I just hope they can inspire others to see God in all things!I'm very glad to hear I'm not crazy when I get frustrated at our foyer!! We are not blessed with a closet in our foyer, just walls and 2 sets of stairs. There's only enough room for the door to swing open. We thought about adding our addition onto the front of the house so we could create a new front door and foyer, but it would have cost a lot more and we wouldn't have been able to got the same square footage. A pouch would be good, but it's very difficult to add a nice-sized porch to a split foyer. I don't know about your husband, but I need to better train mine to NOT buy too many sweets!! He's so loving, he likes to surprise me with yummy things to eat!! I love him for it, and my figure is loving the cookies, too!! ;-)God bless!!

  9. It was great to read these things about you, Jennifer. #7 blew mymind – probably because I have such a hard time with computers in general. Number 2 cracked me up!!Thanks for the award!

  10. Thank you so much for thinking of me. I really appreciate it. You have been such a great support for me as I've been starting out. I enjoyed learning 7 more things about you and looking forward to learning even more. You are a great friend.Karri

  11. Dear Jennifer, thank you so much for such an honor! I am thankful to know godly women like you! You are an inspiration to me! I really enjoyed reading about you! It's funny that we both have a messy house right now! lol! We just moved into a new \”old\” house, so I understand what you mean!!! blessings!!

  12. Hi Jennifer~ Gosh, thank you so much for the award! I'm truly honored that you would think of little ole me:) I enjoyed learning a few fun things about you…Thanks for sharing! May God continue to bless you for offering your many gifts to all of us. Ave Maria!

  13. Thanks you for thinking of me on your award! YOu are an inspiration to so many!

  14. Jennifer, thank you so much for including me in this. I am really looking forward to checking out all of these blogs! I will be posting mine by the end of the week. Congratulations on getting your addition finished!!!

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