A post that made me want to race to the fabric store. Right.now.

Utterly hilarious kids.

Carb-loading at its most delicious.

A most adorable dress. (HT: Big Mama)

Happy weekend!!

The winner of the Science Spa kit is Dawn F!

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I was happy to discover last week that it is practically painless to switch from (defunct-this-week) Bloglines to Google Reader. And glory be, it turns out I actually like the Google reader better!  I read over 100 blogs a week, so I really appreciate the way the google reader just lets you scroll through every blog in a one-click way.  My wildly eclectic list includes faith to fashion to photography to frugality to just plain funny.

Here are a few I just added:

Fish in My Hair hilarious, irreverent homeschooler

Pleasant View Schoolhouse gentle, inspiring homeschooler

Centsational Design– awesome and frugal home decor projects

My Life in Projects – my very own sister Rachel’s house-projects blog!

Happy Monday!  I am off to do a zillion things.  I leave Wednesday for the TOGETHER FOR ADOPTION conference! I’m sooooo excited!!!

• I’ve got a Juicy Juice $100 giveaway going on til the end of September.  Enter by sharing a healthy eating habit.
• This DIY lampshade is the coolest thing I’ve seen in awhile.
• Speaking of cool, here’s a great way to cook dinner and still keep your house cool.
• This reminder was so sweet to me that I kept the page open for days and read it at least 5 different times.

What’s the most interesting link you’ve come across lately?

Ever wondered if you could write a book?  Tell your story to a women’s group?  Become more involved in the ministry at your church? Proverbs 31 Ministries is holding their annual She Speaks conference July 30th-August 1st.  It looks like a great conference for anyone interested in sharing a story in the broader world.  I reeeeeallllly wanted to go last year but already made plans to go to church camp.  This year I am really hoping I might be able to go.   Making it even more possible is the fact that Lysa TerKeurst is giving away a scholarship to the event.

I would love to explore the idea of speaking about things that I love to write about:  mothering, money-stretching, and other topics that turn women’s hearts towards home.  Given my fears about speaking, it might be that writing is more my gift.  But I’ve felt my heart being nudged lately, enough that I’d like to know more about speaking.  I always want to be ready for what God might have in my future, and I feel like this conference might be another step on that path.

If I’m chosen for that sweet scholarship, I’ll be considering that a big ol’ open door from God. You can enter too, simply by blogging about the conference and linking back to Lysa and She Speaks.

Just wanted to let you know that this week I’ll be chatting with Tricia Goyer on Living Inspired. The show is on Thursday afternoon at 3 PM central time. I’ll be talking about our adoption story, among other things. You can tune in live, or listen to the tape of the broadcast afterwards at the Living Inspired website.  Doubtless I’ll be the one stammering all over the place.   Yikes.

Looking at the first sentence of the first post of each month in 2009 was an interesting trip down Memory Lane for me.
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• January:  The Ring My daughter showing off her engagement ring!
• February: Today my two sweet sisters-in-law along with my mother-in-law threw a lovely wedding shower for our Amanda. Prelude to my daughter’s Valentine’s Day wedding!
• March: In 12 minutes a lady is supposed to be here to help me pick out tile and vinyl for our new (old, flooded) bathroom, so I can’t talk long. Seems the wedding took all my brain cells, because a week later I flooded the whole bathroom.  Royally.
• April: I’ve written before about Bible memory work Although I don’t feature our monthly verse in my sidebar anymore, we’re still plugging away with memorizing.  This month (and last) was Psalm 147.
• May: I hope and pray y’all aren’t getting sick of me linking to the Compassion bloggers, but really, how could I NOT link this these posts??? A couple of wonderful posts from bloggers who saw the work of Compassion International in India.
• June: We’re flying 34,000 feet over Anchorage, headed for Seoul, South Korea, and I’m wondering how this trip will be. The start of my trip to Seoul with three of my sons.
• July: 143,000,000.  Orphans, that is. Can you do something about that?
• August: John and I had our first daughter in 1988, back when homeschooling was still far from mainstream. Explaining how we unexpectedly became a homeschooling family.
• September: In previous years I’ve done a big shop the day before the beginning of the spending challenge and counted it as the previous month’s budget. The start of the September grocery spending challenge.
• October: We had a busy day, with school, yard work, and running a few errands. The end of the September grocery spending challenge.
• November: To-Do list scrawled in a spiral notebook on a Sunday night, long enough to wrap around the block. Pondering just how much a body can get done in a day.
• December:  I stood at the kitchen counter tearing open an envelope from our adoption agency, unaware that inside was a picture of my daughter. More about adoption.  And AIDS.  And activism.

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The idea for this post came from FiddleDeeDee and Musings of a Housewife

Way back in January of 2006, my first blog ‘crush’ was Chris of The Big Yellow House, now known as Notes From the Trenches. I spent the wee hours of many evenings going through her archives, reading every word she ever posted. (Did I ever tell you this, Chris? 🙂 ) I was enthralled. Her youngest and my youngest were born the same month. She had almost as many kids as I did, and I could tell that she was the type of person I’d love to have as a real life friend. When I got the pleasure of meeting her at BlogHer 08, I discovered my hunch was right.

Should you have a similar wish to be a psuedo-blog-stalker-person, but in a much less time-consuming way, check out the cool new gizmo in my left sidebar. It is just below my grocery tally — yikes, I’ve already spent a lot this month– and it lists the posts that I wrote exactly one year ago. Making it ever so easy to read a post or two a day from my archives until you’re all caught up for the past year. Or sick of me. Or both. 🙂

….is the way it points out the diversity and the beauty in the lives of the people I have grown to care about through blogging.

It makes me curious….how many of these blogs can you identify? (All of these posts were written in the past week.)

1. A friend jumping out from the bushes to sunscreen her kid
2. A friend rhapsodizing over ranch men
3. A friend mourning the loss of her mother
4. A friend giving away a really good-lookin’ camera strap
5. A friend arguing that Christians more than atheists tend to embrace life
6. A friend recommending a wonderful watermelon/canteloupe salad with mint
7. A friend accidentally ordering 2 kilos of eggplant
8. A friend talking about the crucial value of women as homemakers
9. A friend pausing on a getaway with her hubby to photograph a chicken
10. _____________________________________

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Give me your guesses. For #10, tell me the most memorable blog post you’ve read this week. Just for fun, I’ll send a copy of my book A Sane Woman’s Guide to Raising a Large Family to the person who identifies the most blogs. I’ll announce the winner on Saturday!

I’ve got one or two more Korea posts coming eventually, but this evening I enjoyed catching up on all of you…..thanks for being my blog friends.