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365 Devotional Journals with Ellie Claire

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Ellie Claire Christian Books and More

I am so thankful for the beautiful products Ellie Claire has sent me to review- Y’all, if you love to journal, know someone that does, or want to find a starting place- this is it! (Check out my video below for an in depth flip through of each journal.)

3 Ellie Claire 365 devotionals image

These devotionals are absolutely delicious! Each one has a cover to feast your eyes upon, and are filled with scripture and quotes that will motivate and invigorate all, from young to old!

Each book would make a perfect gift for a young lady to begin devotional journaling, and would be great grandma gifts (think of grandma journaling to her grandkids in these). In each you will find a color coordinated ribbon bookmark, thick, crisp white lined pages for writing, and sturdy binding. Each devotional features artworks coordinating with its theme/cover artwork.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus is a dated (beginning January 1st), daily devotional filled with scripture and prayer to help you stay focused on Him through the full day to day life we all lead. These are perfect to begin each morning with a devotion and Jesus, to help get our hearts ready for serving those we love. There is plenty of room for recording your thoughts and prayers on the lined pages. Each devotional in this book begins with a line of Christian hymn and ends with scripture. The devotion in paragraph form brings both the hymn and the scripture into more focus/meaning for the reader and reminds us of all Jesus’s glory using scripture as an example.

Inside Page of Turn Your Eyes

Peace Begins with Me is also a dated devotional, beginning each day with scripture, and a life-applicable devotion. The day’s page ends with a verse of scripture. Ellie Claire describes this devotional with this:

Our peace affects others. And the Giver of peace awaits to give us the gift that can change our world. It begins with a prayer. It begins with me.

How true is this?! This summer I felt everything spiraling out of control-our home, the farm, grieving a huge loss, our hectic schedule of commitments. And you know what happened? I broke down, and asked God to give me peace; I asked Him to show me how to bring peace back to our family, to my mind, to our day to day life. And he delivered! It wasn’t what I expected, but things turned around greatly when I seeked Him for my personal peace and understanding. When life feels out of control, He is the only one that can take the reigns and deliver peace.

This devotional is full of every day, practical life application and prayer to get us through those times of chaos. If anything will help give you quiet in the chaos, this devotional will!

The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything In It: 365-Day Devotional Journal points to all of God’s glory in the natural world around us. Your favorite science, nature, and animal lover will adore this journal. Filled with stories and facts that point to God’s hand in creation and the natural world, this devotional begins each day with scripture, and ends it with prayer. The lined pages have ample room for journaling thoughts, prayers, and even doodles and sketches. Adding borders and quotes that go with the peacock and floral theme would be fun!

These devotions show the intention in God’s Word as applied to every day life; our life surrounded by His beauty, how people and animals, all of nature, relate to one another in His image.

 

    

It is Home

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I haven’t just written a random post in a while. I used to sit up at night and write. But then reading blogs about preparing traditional food, infant reflux, and pinterest got in the way. 🙂


That Pinterest ….

But tonight (June 27) I can’t sleep, and I feel like writing.

When Jtom and I made this decision to move our family to Nebraska, we knew it would take time to meet new people. Over time, I didn’t know where the best place was to move the family, but once we settled here, I found that it was the best choice to make. Additionally, a friend of ours have moved to the Charlotte area of South Carolina. Before she left, she would always look into finding charlotte home builders and I never knew why until she finally revealed her plans. Change for us both has come at the right time I think. It would take time to find the right groups of friends, the right church home, and the right children for Lexie and Max to befriend for themselves. Plus since its so cold in Nebraska it would be a good idea to have someone similar to air conditioner repair passaic nj so we can keep our home a lovely temperature.

We also knew that we wanted to start buying food in bulk to save money, since we would now have the room to store it. We wanted him to get to hunt more, so we would have wild game for eating. We wanted to raise chickens again, so we can have fresh eggs, which we all miss terribly! Oh my goodness, there is nothing like gathering eggs in the afternoon for breakfast the next day. (Or even better, dinner that night).

Well, maybe milking my own cow would be a very close second …

Ah dreams. They’re really not too far away, with as quickly as time goes by, maybe 5-10 more years?

But when we came to York we put a few things on the back burner for the first month or so. We needed to get settled in our new home. A large part of this involved finding a more affordable energy policy. Our electricity bills have always been high but they did seem to jump when our baby was born. Fortunately we managed to find a more affordable policy by browsing electricity comparison websites like Home Energy Club. Using their website made it easy to compare different energy providers such as TriEagle Energy to find the best power solution for us. Things all worked out in the end though and we are much better off now. In addition, JTom needed to continue learning his new job. Lexie needed to understand this was our new home (which she did with great ease), and learn about our community. Settling in to a new home can be very difficult, especially for children. With this in mind, if you and your family are considering relocating to somewhere like trappers crossing, you should consider how hard this may initially be for your kids.

We began by going to story time at the library. There I met a wonderful lady who has two daughters of her own. She told me about their church, and was completely open and honest with me about anything I had questions about- the church, the town, etc. She gave me names and phone numbers to other women in the community. She connected me with a salon to get mine and Lexies hair cut- which turned into me meeting two wonderful ladies that were so gracious- she gave me an entire list of reliable babysitters in case I needed someone.


A short month or two after we moved (and I after I met that mama at story time), we began visiting churches. And through doing this we have met very nice families with small children. We still haven’t found our church home. I suggested a few weeks ago, that maybe we need to travel outside of York to look. We would much rather find one here, in our own community, but we need to be open to everything. At one of the churches we visited in town, there were many familiar faces from the library.

Then, one night I exclaimed to J.tom, “I’m going to make Max’s baby formula!” His reply was something like, “oh. my. gosh. *insert eye roll* that’s great. how much is it going to cost me?”. Haha- the funny part here, is that he was kidding. The commercial formula max was on was already costing about $150 a month.

Upon hearing the ingredients, JTom was on board, and was quick to assure me that it was a great idea and much better than the commercial stuff that is full of toxins, corn syrup solids (whaaat?!) and GMO foods. Okay, okay, that’s another post…

In my efforts to heal Max’s reflux and the damaged it has caused to his gut and esophagus, we visited the chiropractor (see this post). Not only was he a very kind, understanding doctor with amazing “bedside manner” with my children, he asked what else he could help us with- Did we need any resources or contacts for anything?

He genuinely wanted to help our family.

I told him about wanting to make Max’s baby formula, using the Weston A. Price recipe, and explained I had no experience in any of it, despite all my research, and told him what ingredients I would need and which ones I couldn’t find.

Not only did he fully support our wanting to make homemade baby formula, but he gave me the name and number to another (amazingly kind and generous) lady who was very well educated in Weston A Price. The chiropractor mentioned her husband is a veterinarian here in town; it just so happened we needed to board Scarlet while we traveled to visit family. (And his clinic was one a co-worker had mentioned to JTom.). Small world. Err…. Town.

A few days later I contacted Dr C’s source. A few days after that she came to my home, shared her resources, knowledge, and homemade whey, and other ingredients I needed for our baby formula.

She was so kind.


A week later, we have placed orders with Azure Standard for our organic, whole bulk foods, received the organic grassfed beef through the Nebraska Food Cooperative, and found our raw milk at a local family farm!

Talk about blessed.

I know this is long and drawn out. But there is a reason.

When J.Tom and I talked about how everything would take time- making our house a home, finding a church, meeting friends and other families we want our children to be around, etc. we also acknowledged that everything would happen in God’s time.

We knew it may be weeks, or it could be months before things all fell into place.

After almost 3 months of a cold, hard winter, in a new town, with no familiar faces to interact with, God sent us at least 6 people I can think of off the top of my head, that if Jtom were gone and I needed something, I would feel 100% comfortable calling them. Complete strangers gave me their phone numbers after meeting us one time.

Blessed.

We had faith, that if we put forth the effort and prayed about it, God would place in our lives the people that needed to be there.

I really, entruly believe that is what has happened.

In our journey to simplify, become healthier, get closer to Him, and heal our son, we have already found this amazing support system of like minded, Christian families.

I know small towns get a bad rep. We were told, “people move away from Nebraska, not to it.”

But in this move, which many people thought was a wrong decision, we have found so many blessings.

For that, I am truly thankful.

It is amazing how here is now home. During our travels to visit family, we were both longing to be back home, in York, after only a few days away.

Its small. And it is windy. In the winter it is cold. And in the spring the wind will blow you over. But York has an amazing community.

It is where our family is.

It is home.

Almost back home!

Baby Summary Weeks 35-36

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Max hit the 37 week mark yesterday, so this is a post for the last two weeks of his life.

To say Max ha started eating is an understatement.  The boy is devouring finger foods.  Everything from dried blueberries and apples to sausage and sauerkraut!  He ate the sauerkraut like it was running away from him!  This weekend he enjoyed my cucumber and tomato salad in oil and vinegar … with garlic!  We still do pureed foods just because sometimes I don’t have a meal made that doesn’t have dairy in it, but he is eating a LOT more finger foods.  I can’t wait for him to try watermelon and cantaloupe this summer.

We still only have two teeth, but I think he is working on the top two.  They’re a little white but not puffy yet. He has been napping great!  Most days are 2 1.5 hour naps, sometimes a cat nap at 4:30 if he is really tired.  But we usually just do early bedtime at 6:30pm instead.

Crawling … well, he is moving about 2 feet at a time before he falls on his belly and decides to roll over.  So yes, he is crawling, but not for long distances.  He rolls and scoots around a LOT more than he does crawl.  **EDIT: he crawled all the way across the living room floor today!  I know, it’s a 37 week update, but had to add it!  YAY MAX!**

He enjoys being outside, and playing in the water.  We have had beautiful, warm weather as of late.  So Mama has been laying out while the kids play.  He sits in the baby blow up bath tub and Lexie plays in her kiddie pool.  Speaking of which, they are finishing our fence!  Woo hoo!  I am so excited.  It should be complete tomorrow morning.  They did most of it today.  Lexie is so excited, she has been waiting on her fence for a very long 3 months.

Helping mama make the salad …

Last weekend was Mother’s day; we went to church at the Methodist church (which I liked a lot, surprisingly, coming from a full gospel girl.   It was really homey).  JTom got me a bread maker for Mother’s day- woo hoo!  We have already used it several times and LOVE it.  way better than doing it by hand, any day.

This past weekend we stayed home and worked around the house.  JTom and Lexie got the garden in and JTom got the sprinklers set up in the flower bed.  He cut into the sprinkler system and put little sprayers in the flower beds.  They’re really cute.  Our garden this year is just: tomatoes (roma, big beef, early girl, burly boys, and cherry), red and green bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and butternut squash. We put the bed in on the south side of the house, where they dug out for flower beds.  It’s the perfect spot, and J.Tom may cut in some sprayers for the garden as well.  I sure hope so.



I got some petunias for the back porch and filled the hanging baskets for the front, like I do every year.  Lexie and I planted some giant impatience in a big pot for the front porch; they smell SO good.  (I love having a front door that we use to come into the house)  

JTom also got some new burners for the inside of his grill, so we can get back to grilling again soon.

Overall it has been a low key couple of weeks.  Some how things have seemed really busy, but in all honesty we haven’t been super busy. 

How have you spent your last few weeks?  Anything exciting happening?

water play


she couldn’t resist; we didn’t have a kiddie pool yet




Mmm  blueberries





Our record heat one day last week- 100 degrees here in lil ole York (we had snow on the ground the week before …)


Daddy and Mister


Reading a gymnastics books while waiting on class to start.




My morning Yoga





Mmmm Cucumber!


My Mister’s curls



wearing Daddy’s hat and looking like my cousin Wesley’s twin when he was this age.  Like, if she didn’t have on the lace night gown, she would look exactly like him.


wearing daddy’s hat



Max is Baptized

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Today, sunday the 6th we had max’s baptism at church.  It was wonderful; he was so alert, and so happy.  Lexie told JTom while we were up there, ” i don’t want to baptize, daddy.  I don’t want to.”  She was pleased to see it was Max whom was getting baptized, and not her. Haha. She was relatively quiet in church; if you know Lexie, you know this is a big feat for her. Oh, my sweet little social butterfly. She did look like an angel today though. Im so proud of the little girl she has become. She is still a toddler, but acts older in so many ways. But the best part is, she is still a silly, funny, snuggly little “essie baby girl”. God just doesnt make them sweeter than her.



This morning at church, for Epiphany, we chose a paper star out of the collection plate with a word on it. We are supposed to apply this word to our life, so as to become better disciples for God. I am really going to focus on the word i selected, praying about it, and try to apply it in different parts of my life.
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This coming week we have a lot of things to do in preparation for Nebraska. I have many, many, many lists to make. Most of our plans are up in the air until we hear back on the mortgage situation, closing dates, etc. after that, things should go more quickly. In the meantime, j.tom starts work there the 14th. The kids and i will wait here until things settle out. That means more responsibility around the house for me in the next few weeks, but nothing i haven’t done before. Please pray for his safety as he travels to NE this coming weekend, and as we prepare for the big changes ahead of us.

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