Archive for Holidays

The Swiss Colony – Lady Bug Truffles Review and Giveaway!

How cute are these little guys!  And VERY tasty too!

Swiss creme covers these wonderful little bugs of goodness.  With their centers made of light and airy chocolate truffle.  These Lady Bugs are delightfully decorated and almost hard to eat (key word ALMOST).

The Swiss Colony website offers may choices in addition to these adorable Lady Bugs!  Easter’s Coming!!! 

My Review:

Funny story first.  I have a 3 year old little girl, who was very upset that I was eating “bugs”.  She learned very quickly, that these “bugs” were very good.

These Swiss Colony Lady Bug Truffles are wonderful!  I really enjoy chocolate and these made me close my eyes and enjoy the smoothness and flavor.  I recommend The Swiss Colony!  With Easter coming, now is a great time to order Lady Bugs!  Not only are they very good, but they are a conversation piece!  Add them to your Easter Table as decoration then eat them!  Decoration and Dessert!  Below is a picture of my box!  Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring me some more!

Disclosure:  I received this item free of charge from The
Swiss Colony.  No monetary compensation
was received or offered, nor was I under any obligation to write about this
product.  All opinions expressed are my
honest thoughts.  I am not offering any
sales or taking orders for this item.  I
will not receive any compensation in connection with any sales of this item.

 

Giveaway – You Could Win One Too! **Only open to the US.


a Rafflecopter giveaway


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“God Loves You!” Personalized Children’s Book Review

God’s love graces each creature, the great and the small,

and it soars to the sky like His redwoods so tall.”

This is a beautiful heartfelt book for your children is written by Jennifer Dewing and Illustrated by Maria Carluccio.  It is available at “I See Me! Inc. Personalized Children’s Books“.

God Loves You” won multiple awards in 2010, including Mom’s Choice Award and Creative Child Magazine’s  “Preferred Choice” Award.

There is a great deal of personalization in this book.  You are able to include the following information, child’s first, middle & last name, gender, dedication, sender, the month, day and year!

The book flows along paths of different illustrations, including the ocean, thru the wood, springtime, etc.

Follow this link for a tour of the book - “God Loves You!”

This is a great gift for Easter, baptisms, births, or just because.

My Review:

This book is full of love and inspiration for you and your child.  This is going to be the “go to” present for when friends and relatives have new babies.  The personalization in this book is extensive, no more writing in the front cover for me.  I’ve read “God Loves You” for my daughter the past few nights.  She loves the illustrations and I love the message coming from the book.

**”I See Me!, Inc.” did mention to please place your order before March 23rd if you’d like it for Easter.**

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.


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Hasbro Fun & Coupons!

I’m always looking for ways to save on toys and games.  Sometimes it’s not always easy.  I’m big on buying stuff on sale or clearance and saving it for a rainy day or holiday.  I was super excited about an email I got this morning!  I LOVE coupons and use them regularly. 

Go and check out  www.hasbro.com/fun .  They have great coupons for Playdough, Transformers, Baby Alive, Elmo and more! In addition, they have a daily game for 6 to 13 year olds, are giving away Hasbro toys & games every hour until the end February.  AND – they have a daily deal.  Today’s was a Baby Alive for 50% off!  I unfortunately missed it, but I signed up to get the daily email for a heads up!


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Happy New Year 2012!

Happy New Year 2012!

Wishing you a wonderful and properous year ahead, filled with love, joy and peace!





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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Faith and Family Reviews!

Enjoy your family and all the festivities!

We are enjoying  a quiet day at home as a family.



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A FREE Nativity Booklet

If you are observing the birth of Jesus this Christmas, you may want to check out this free Nativity booklet from Answers in Genesis:

Direct link: http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/files/2010/12/nativity-booklet.pdf?utm_source=AiGSuperSpecials&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FreeDownload&utm_campaign=SS12222011

Merry Christmas!


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9 Christmas Traditions

Every family has their own traditions. Usually traditions come from the generation before, but families will often create new ones too. Our family shares family traditions from both sides of our families, even the traditions our grandparents shared with our parents but our parents did not necessarily carry on in the homes we grew up in. Plus we include the true Reason for the season.

This being Christmas weekend 2011, I thought I would share nine Christmas Traditions observed by our family. We either do these things each year or have done them in the past. These traditions are the ones our children often request and remember most. We love to decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving, if at all possible. It just seems to make all the effort worth while when we get to enjoy the festive decor for a month and a half. Tear down is usually the first weekend in January.

1. Buying a real Christmas tree. This is something that my mom always did with my three sisters and I. My dad would come too sometimes, but tramping around in the woods was difficult for him with a bum leg from having polio as a 1 year old. The first two years of our marriage we had a real tree and then I succumbed to the artificial tree bug after working two years retail and decorating them as part of my job during the holidays. Last year was the first year we took the children to buy a real tree and they loved the experience!

2. Decorate tree and home with Christmas decorations. We love to decorate our home and tree while playing Christmas music and snacking on Christmas cookies! We put up our Navitity scene and other holiday decor around the house. Sometimes this includes outside lights or our outside Nativity scene. Just depends on how many lights are working or how much time and effort we want to spend any given year.

3. Read the Christmas story. Not Up on the Housetop (although it is a great rhyme to share!), but the Nativity story of Christ’s birth in the bible in Luke 2. As born again Christians, acknowledging and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ is the most important aspect of our holiday season.

4. Sing Christmas Carols. We actually sing the first verses of Hark the Herald and Joy to the World all year round as they are requested every night at bedtime by 5 of our 8 children we still put to bed! Well, baby doesn’t request it but we still sing it to him and include him in the numbers.

5. Observe four weeks of Advent. For several years we observed four weeks of Advent with an Advent wreath: lighting candles, reading a corresponding devotional to prepare for the coming celebration of our Saviour’s birth. But alas, our advent wreath has seen better days and I have yet to replace it so we have not observed it in a couple of years. Those evenings are very special memories though.

6. Christmas baking. Christmas is not Christmas at our home if there is no Christmas baking. The aromas, the fun of cutting out cookies, making up treat plates and savoring the delicious goodies are a huge part of our holiday traditions.

7. Watching Christmas movies. We start this right after Thanksgiving too. There are so many wonderful movies about this wonderful festive season.

8. Hospitality. Our home doesn’t quite seem like Christmas when we do not have extended family over for Christmas dinner. Now that the cousins have become older and have more places to go, there is something missing from our festivities when they need to be somewhere else or are sick. We would love to have other people over and have even considered those who are less fortunate but have not quite figured out how we could start implementing this new idea. It’s a bit tricky when we have young children to invite complete strangers into our home. Guess that’s why there’s shelters and soup kitchens, but what about really embracing people in need into our homes? Just something always in my mind but not ready to risk my family’s safety.

9. Gifts. We do give gifts as it is representative of how God gave the greatest gift in sending his Son, Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin in a lowly stable for our sins. This goes for family gifts and usually to at least one charity as well.

Our children love to go through Gospel for Asia’s Christmas Catalog or World of Vision’s to see what things we can give to a family in another country. We give to our local food pantry a few times a year as well. Last year our two older boys and my husband gave their time volunteering to ring the bell for Salvation Army.


For family gifts, we give a few small gifts and maybe a larger gift. It was such a blessing to hear our oldest daughter the other day say how she always thought they got a lot at Christmas and how she wanted to do the same thing as we have done. All our children love to give gifts too!

Share some of your family traditions, we’d love to hear about them!


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A Special Trip Down Memory Lane: Our Engagement Story

The anniversary of when my husband asked me to marry him is coming up very soon. It’s ironic because the date he asked me to marry him and our oldest daughter’s birth date is within a day of each other. Neat, eh? My husband can be very romantic and the way he asked me to marry him proves that very much.

My husband and I had a long distance relationship for two years. So nearly 18 years ago my husband was visiting from Chicago in my hometown. We had not seen each other over Christmas that year so this was our holiday visit. We had looked at rings on my previous trip to see him, so thinking like a female I wondered if he was going to pop the question on this visit. On the night before he was to return home, which was a chilly winter evening, my husband (or love interest then) asked me if I would like to take a walk, I, of course, said yes! I lived in a small town with very little traffic and there were street lights for most of our walk through town, up and down a few little hills and across an arched bridge. After the bridge it was pretty much pitch black, except for the millions of stars shining down on us. I looped my arm through his and that is when I discovered the answer to my “wondering” for I felt a little square box in his pocket! I was pretty much over the moon at that moment, as I anticipated the question. We walked up what is called the “hospital hill” leaned against the guard rail under a starry sky snuggling close and he asked, “Theresa (and my last name), will you marry me?” I said yes and we kissed! ;-)

My ring is a beautiful solitaire. Too bad I don’t have a camera that takes decent up close photos or I would take a picture of it….soon the camera situation will change though and yes we did find our camera….on a shelf in our walk-in-closet!?

We had to wait until our next visit when I traveled to Chicago to purchase wedding bands. If the internet had of been as big as it is now, shopping at Men’s Tungsten Online might have been an option for us, but alas neither of us even had a computer back then! My engagement ring was part of a set, so we really only had to get my rings sized and purchase his wedding band, a simple band with a comfort fit. Much like the look of the curved sides of these tungsten bands, only in gold. (P.S. MensTungstenOnline.com has some pretty neat looking stuff!)

It was fun looking at rings and having that purchase checked off our “to do” list.

I am grateful that my husband gave us such a wonderful memory of our engagement. What a special trip down memory lane!


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Down Time

Yesterday was basically down time. My second oldest daughter and I were out from 9:30am to 11:30pm on Wednesday. We did have one hour at home for dinner and to quickly nurse baby before heading back out again. We had two classes to attend and help “work”.

Then we had friends stop over for lunch yesterday and to do a Zyto Compass Scan, which is a service I offer for our essential oils business. But other than that it was down time.

Today was rather mellow too. Friends from our barn stopped by after dropping off our girls, as she has offered to take them to the barn as our schedules allow. Nice on days when I don’t have a vehicle.

Why is it after being busy I just want to zone out? Would it have anything to do with driving five hours on Wednesday and just being flat out busy for nearly a week? I don’t know I haven’t figured it out yet. But zoning is what I am doing! ;-)

Update on Oven

The oven part actually came on Wednesday, but do you think we can find the repair man’s card? So no chance of getting it fixed earlier if we cannot call them to reschedule the appointment! Arrghhhh! That’s what I get for leaving an itty bitty business card on the counter and going out all day so it gets lost!

Update on Vehicle

Still no vehicle. Not sure when that will happen. My husband looked at a used one last night and decided it was not for us. I think he plans to go out tomorrow to a local dealer who has some sale going on, plus following up with our car sales man friend.

Quiet Weekend

I am looking forward to a quiet weekend at home. I could have worked but I actually said, “NO”. We could have gone out to another event but I said, “NO”. The girls and I are planning to complete some sewing projects as they all need new skirts. Thankfully we were given some fabric, plus we bought some very inexpensively from someone getting rid of fabric out of her stash. We are going to play Christmas music and just enjoy being together while we create!

I am looking forward to baking up a storm next week! We miss baking. And a huge part of our Christmas traditions is baking. The aroma of baked goods filling the house, the music playing and munching on homemade snacks as we deck the halls and everywhere else brings us much cheer this time of year!

Enjoy your weekend!


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A Chance to Win a $50 Visa Gift Card!

If you’d like a chance to win some extra Christmas cash, enter to win BlogPR’s $50 Visa Gift Card Giveaway here.

Good luck and happy shopping!


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