linqia – Page 7

The Cutest Date Ever + Smoothie King Challenge

January 14, 2016

Before I had Sophie-Rae, I didn’t think my love for her would ever be the way it was with Hampton. He was my everything. He was my best little buddy and my favorite cuddle bug. He was my little helper and favorite play date. I just couldn’t picture how this would all change and expand to a second child. After having SR, I quickly realized (the first moment I laid eyes on her) that my love grew so much in one incredible moment to fit them both into that mold. While I do tote them both around everywhere with me, Hamp continues to be my #1 play-date buddy…until his sister catches up!

smoothie-king

Easy Stuffed Shell Pasta Recipe

January 11, 2016

There are nine people living in my parent’s house right now. There were ten before my sister went back to school. To say things have been crazy and hectic around here would be an understatement. Four kids, 3 and under. Need I say more? Because things have been so insane, finding super easy and quick dinners to cook at night are a must. I love this simple pasta recipe because it is easy, quick to make (about 35 minutes) and so delicious!

Easy-Pasta-Dinner-Recipe

My New Home Wish List + Hhgreg Giveaway

December 12, 2015

This post is sponsored by hhgregg but the content and opinions expressed here are my own. #blackstainless

After owning our first house, we learned a lot about what we want and what is important to us in our search for our second home. For example, we definitely want a garage. They are very common here and we figured out very quickly that with young children, that is something we both feel like we want and need. Another thing is stainless steel appliances. We had white appliances in our first home and while they looked great in our kitchen, they showed every spec of dirt that touched them. I was constantly cleaning them and somehow they stayed dirty.

Because it is the holiday season, I have been doing a LOT of baking (stay tuned for next week’s yummy treats). My mom has a stainless steel fridge and I love it so! It is seriously wonderful and beautiful. I’ve been searching online and looking at our options for our new home and I must say that I love these beautiful stainless black appliances from Samsung. Are they not beautiful? I’ll take one of each, please!

My favorites are the french door fridge (please, hubby!), Dishwasher, this one and I definitely can not forget this beauty! Now through December 31st, hhgreg is offering the following discounts on appliances (no promo codes needed):

Up to $1000 Off Samsung Refrigerators

Up to $1000 Off Black Stainless Steel Refrigerators

Up to $500 Off Black Stainless Steel Ranges

Up to $200 Off Black Stainless Steel Dishwashers

Up to $100 Off Black Stainless Steel Over-the-range Microwaves

Now, I have a HUGE treat for you! hhgreg is giving one of my readers a $25 hhgreg e-gift card! All you have to do to enter is visit hhgreg and leave me a comment telling me which stainless steel appliance you would like to purchase! Good luck!

My Biggest Challenge as a Mother + BabyNes Machine

December 11, 2015

This post is sponsored by Gerber® BabyNes® but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

There are endless challenges to parenthood. What I’m learning is that as children grow, the challenges change but do not go away.

Time is and has always been the biggest challenge I face as a mother. I am constantly trying to figure out new ways to manage my family’s work life, social life, nutrition, fitness, family time, alone time with my husband, grocery shopping, paying the bills, etc. It can be too overwhelming if I really let myself think about it too long. With an ever growing to-do list and a jam-packed planner, I am always up for new time-saving strategies.

I recently heard of the BabyNes machine and while I have not tried it myself, I have read from other bloggers that it is wonderful. This is basically a Keurig for baby formula! How awesome is that? Gerber makes the machine and formula and so I feel confident about the nutrition and quality as it is a brand that I know and trust. I would love to try one! Can you imagine? Just pushing a button and the bottle being ready for you? Now that is a time-saving strategy I can get behind!

The BabyNes machine is powered by WiFi, so you can have alerts sent straight to your iphone, tablet or computer on info about your baby’s growth, nutrition and you can even get nutritional advice from experts! I love that! I think every mother could use a little extra time and this seems like a great option for making that extra time available. This would be a great gift for any new or expecting mother!

What do you think about BabyNes? Would you give it a try?

Baking Christmas Cookies with Betty Crocker

December 4, 2015

This post is sponsored by Betty Crocker but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

One of my favorite holiday traditions is baking Christmas cookies. This tradition began our first Christmas as a married couple – 4 years ago and last year we got H involved by letting him stir the dough. This year, since I have my son and nephew, it was twice the fun! Betty Crocker made things easier for me this year. I loved running out and picking up the Betty Crocker Peanut Butter Cookie Mix and making these delicious Easy Peanut Butter Cookie Cups. They were a huge hit with my family.

This year, we thought it would be nice to box some up in our Ziploc containers and give some to extended family and friends. I think this was G’s favorite part! Or, maybe it was eating the cookies. While Hamp is still a little young to really appreciate baking, G was so into it. He loved helping me put the Reese’s in the cookies and was so proud of himself. We had so much fun baking these treats, but I will always remember this year’s Christmas with all of our family being together. It is loud and crazy around here, but we are getting settled in and loving all these babies running around!

This is definitely one of my new favorite cookie recipes. Betty Crocker knows her stuff, let me tell you! Her recipe calls for cocktail peanuts, but because I was making them for the kiddos, we skipped that ingredient.

Easy Peanut Butter Cookie Cups

Ingredients

1 pouch (17.5 oz) Betty Crocker™ peanut butter cookie mix

: Water, vegetable oil and egg called for on cookie mix package

1/4: cup chopped cocktail peanuts (I skipped this ingredient)

1/4: cup peanut butter chips

1 1/2: tablespoons coarse sparkling sugar

36: Reese’s™ miniatures peanut butter cups, unwrapped; Directions; Heat your oven to 375°F. Place mini paper baking cup in each of 36 mini muffin cups.In large bowl, stir cookie mix, water, oil and egg until soft dough forms. Stir in peanuts and peanut butter chips. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Dip top half of each ball into sugar. Place one ball, sugar side up, into each muffin cup. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Immediately press 1 peanut butter cup into center of each cookie. Cool in pan 5 minutes. Remove to cooling rack to cool completely and enjoy!

Are you trying any new recipes this baking season?

Be sure to print your Betty Crocker Coupon and enter below to win $10 paypal cash to try a Betty Crocker recipe yourself!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Special Gift + Saving Tips

November 26, 2015

This post is sponsored by Voya but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

Everyone has that one gift they always remember. The bike or the coveted boots or new cell phone. My memorable gift was the year my grandfather gave all 10 of us grandchildren stock. I was young enough to not have a clue what stock was and had never heard of the stock market. He sat us down and explained it to us and I am forever grateful for this investment.

This year, instead of giving the kids in your life a bunch of new toys hat they really don’t need, consider investing in their future. Voya Financial helps Americans plan and invest their money into safe accounts and mutual funds to help protect heir future. After reading a little about them, I found that they are even offering every baby born on October 19th of this year a complimentary $500 mutual fund. Do you know anyone with children born on that day? Let them know about it!

Voya Saving Tips:

-Budget

-Set up an IRA

-Purchase Life Insurance

-Contribute a small amount of your paycheck to an investment fund.

In a Google Consumer Survey, nearly one-third of parents said they would rather family and friends gift a financial contribution to their child’s future during the holidays. To be completely honest, I fall in that 1/3. I would so much rather receive financial support for my kids future than another toy. What about you?

Holiday Recipes and Sweepstakes with Mezzetta Memories

November 25, 2015

This post is sponsored by Mezzetta but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

Every holiday season I begin putting together new recipes for different things. Thanksgiving, Christmas parties, Family Christmas dinner, etc. There is always a list of events that I need to cook for. I was at the grocery store the other day and saw Mezzetta olives! I made a delicious Holiday Pasta Salad recipe last year and I thought the olives would be a great addition to a Holiday skewer I was planning for this week!

Ingredients:

-1 red pepper chopped into one inch squares
-Basil leaves
–Mezzetta Green Olives (cut out the pits)
-Feta Cheese cut into one inch squares

Directions:

After cutting the pepper and cheese, place the ingredients on a skewer. Drizzle with olive oil and season with ground black pepper.

These are so easy and the perfect color for a holiday appetizer. Mezzetta is hosing a Holiday Sweepstakes where you can win an Olive Lover’s Gift Basket with a ton of goodies. Be sure to enter the sweeps here!

Print a 0.50 coupon here!

What is your favorite go-to holiday appetizer?

A Break from Moving with NBC’s The Voice

November 25, 2015

Thank you to NBC for sponsoring today’s post and inspiring me to try NBC TVEverywhere!

Today is officially our last moving day! We are moving the last bit of our furniture and belongings over to my parent’s house. This move has been so bittersweet. The process itself has not been fun. We have been packing and moving boxes every spare moment for the last week now and we were out of town for 9 days before that. We were bummed because we missed out on all of our favorite T.V. shows. Lucky for us, we discovered a new way to watch T.V. without the T.V. On our desktop! We were literally able to catch up on our favorite NBC show, The Voice, while we were packing – which was awesome. We even created a fun and romantic date night out of it.

Saturday we went to a wedding and my in-laws kept our kids for us overnight so that we could get some packing done. We got so much done and thought we deserved a break, so we cuddled on the couch under blankets and caught up on The Voice. See? Packing can be fun! 😉

It not only made packing a little more fun, but we also got to catch up on the show we had missed -even though we had already moved our television. I absolutely hate to miss out on The Voice and watching Blake and Adam go back and forth. They crack me up. This season has been really fun because there is a contestant on the show who has made it pretty far who is from Alabama. We love to root for our hometown girls in this state!

We had an emotional few days packing up all of our belongings from our first 4 years of marriage and knowing we are leaving our first home – the house we came home to after our honeymoon and brought our babies home to for the first time. We are so excited to begin our next adventure and find the perfect next home for us. I’m excited that even through the chaos we can still catch up on our favorite NBC shows, like The Voice, on my laptop. This show gave us the perfect musical distraction we needed through our move and I love that we were able to watch T.V. without the T.V.

Check it out for yourself and watch full episodes here! Which NBC show are you into?

A Different Kind of Christmas

November 17, 2015

This post is sponsored by Hallmark but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

A couple of weeks ago, I announced that we had been hit with a couple of big surprises that week. One of them was that my cousin and best friend is pregnant…with TWINS! We are so over the moon for her! It’s kind of crazy because twins do not run in our family and her doctor said this happening was a 1 in 10,000 chance. It is truly a miracle. The other huge news that hit us was that our house sold!! Finally! After 20 months on the market, we are finally moving! The catch? We are moving next week. Yep, right during Thanksgiving. In order to try and enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday and be able to spend time with family, we have decided to move on Wednesday.

So why is this Christmas going to be so different? Well, we have decided to move into my parents house until we find a house in order to save money. They have plenty of room now that the three of us kids are grown and out on our own, but it will be a huge change during a very busy time of year. It will definitely not be without challenges, but we are so grateful to them to allow us to stay there because we will be able to save a ton of money for a down payment on our next home. We are hoping to be there for only a month or two, but one thing I’ve learned is that you just never know what God has in store for you.

We just got back into town Sunday night from Jacksonville and had been gone for 9 days. I came home to a mess and tons of laundry and I am now in the process of packing up our entire house with only a week left to do it. To say I’m stressed would be an understatement.

While we are going to be going through a big move and hopefully another one soon, I am determined to make Christmas just as special. Change is very hard on young kids. This is probably going to be tough on H especially, so I want to keep things as normal and fun as possible. That means sticking to traditions.

My mom has a little Charlie Brown Christmas tree that she let me borrow to mess with Ryan and the kids. I came home yesterday with it and told them this was going to be about as good as it gets this year. Of course, I was playing with them and Ryan got a kick out of it. I also stopped by Hallmark and bought these adorable Charlie Brown Itty Bittys as well as this adorable little Peanuts Christmas Light Show! I bet you can’t guess which one was H’s favorite! He loves anything that plays music. He just giggled and danced and played it over and over. It made my day that he was so happy over this tiny gift.

While I was at Hallmark, I also picked up wrapping paper, ribbon and tags to start wrapping all the presents I bought in Florida. I was a little bit too obsessed with the plaid reindeer paper. It is adorable and I have big plans to sit in the floor in the middle of all of our boxes and start wrapping a few gifts while watching Hallmark Christmas movies! They are my favorite.

Have you ever had a crazy holiday due to a big life change? What do you enjoy buying at Hallmark?

Diaper Bag Checklist and FREE Printable

November 2, 2015

This post is sponsored by DESITIN but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

When I was switching SR’s diaper bag into a personalized backpack a couple of weeks ago, it dawned on me that I had WAY too much stuff in her bag. As I was cleaning it out and putting the items I really use in her new backpack, I felt so much better. No more fumbling through a bunch of stuff to get to my diaper cream anymore!

Here is a list of the things that I have included in her new diaper bag:

Wipes
Diapers
Bottles
Suction
Burp Cloth
Bib
Extra Outfit
Desitin Diaper Cream
Any Medications
Pacifiers
Toy/Taggie/Lovey
Teething Ring

If you’re a new mom, baby stuff can seem so overwhelming. I remember going to register for my baby shower and how overwhelmed I was. There are so many brands of everything. How do you know which one to buy? Unfortunately, it is really trial and error. Every baby is different and they all prefer different brands. One brand that has been a constant for me and my babies is Desitin diaper cream. I have used it since I had H! It is in both of their backpacks and I keep a tube in SR’s nursery as well. It has been a wonderful product that I haven’t had to go through the process of elimination with like I did with pacifiers and bottles.

I made a FREE printable for you to take with you when you are getting ready to pack (or re-pack) your little one’s diaper bag. Whether it is your first baby and you have no idea what to include, or it is your 5th and you just need to eliminate some things, this is a simple list that will help you keep only the necessities you actually need.

Get your Target Cartwheel 25% off Coupon here!!

FREE Printable HERE!

Would you include anything else in your diaper bag?

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