For the last year I have been designing my 2011-2012 LDS Home Executive Day Planner selling for $11.99. Here are some of the great features of my planner:
1. Full color throughout entire planner
2. Spiral Bound for easy to turn to pages
3. Inside pockets on both front and back covers to keep receipts, bills, coupons, etc.
4. New recipes every month
5. "Her To-Do's," "His To-Do's," and "Kid's To-Do's"
6. Weekly menu
7. Weekly grocery lists - divided into categories
8. Daily Highlights - a mini journal area
9. Dotted lines in the top corners to keep your place.
10. Address pages for Family Favorites, Mom's contacts, and Kid's contacts
11. Eight pages of notes
12. Four pages of LDS stickers (temple, date night, FHE, etc.)
13. Perfect size to fit in most purses (6x9)
The LDS Home Executive Day planner is the perfect gift for your mom, sister, friend, or any woman in your life (including yourself). It is a planner that will organize, motivate, and inspire her as she cares for her home and family. The LDS Home Executive Day Planner is a gift that she will want year after year.
It's been forever since we updated you all about our lives. I get on our blog just about daily to see if any of you have updated your blogs and I am so thrilled when you have. I figured I had better update you all as well. We have had a wonderful summer, I cannot believe it's almost August and Braden goes back to work in about a month! Where has our summer gone? Here are some pictures...more will follow...of what we've been up to (not in any order - sorry)
For our ward's Youth Conference we were in Salt Lake City. Braden and Arrie stayed with my parents for a night, so since they were so close, they came up one night for our hike up Ensign Peak and Swimming at the hotel.
Getting ready to hike Ensign Peak
Overlooking the Salt Lake Valley from Ensign Peak
Arrie with some (extended) cousins at Crispy Creams.
She LOVED watching the donuts being made
We went to Oregon for a week to Braden's Grandparent's cabin at Wallowa Lake.
Arrie sitting around the campfire waiting for s'mores
Arrie had long exhausting days at the cabin. She napped so well we were able to go in her room and take a picture of her sleeping without her waking up.
Arrie LOVED the deew (deer) at the cabin. Here she is looking out the window for more
Arrie is obsessed with glasses. Here is a pair she found
Her is another pair - of Grandpa's - that she found in the desk! :)
We went on a hike. Here are a few pictures from that
That's all for now, I will post more pictures later
I know it's Jen that usually updates the blog, but I just wanted to post and share the latest lip dub music video my students made. We had about 300 people and it's the first ever lip dub to be done in the dark. Be sure to let me know what you think! Enjoy
Some of you may have received a facebook message from me the other day. I hope you didn't mind the little pitch for my new product. I'm really excited about this new little business I am starting. Some of you may know that I worked as a graphic designer and then, when we had Arrie I came home to be a mom, but continued to do free-lance graphic design. I had an idea about a year ago for an LDS planner. Well, since that idea hit, we have had a lot of learning take place.
I started designing my planner and approached BYU for education week. Come to find out, they do their ordering for education week in February (Education week is in August) so I was too late, but they said to come back and they would order for "next year" (now this year).
I am having them printed in China, so that has been a huge learning experience - luckily my contact Ida, understands me and I can understand her English too.
I met with an accountant and had to learn a lot of other lingo. I had to find a company to help me ship internationally and all those port fees and cargo info.
I have learned how to and how not to approach businesses that might sell my product. And some internet stuff for advertising.
It is neat what can come from just an idea. There is a lot of learning that takes place and I am so glad that I have ran with my idea and gotten this far. I love my planner, I hope others will love it just as much. It's the planner I've always wanted but could never find. AND the cool thing is it's going to change every year with suggestions from all the women who use it.
If you're reading this and have an idea - do it!!! It's great! We're encouraged to find ways to continue our education and the only way to do that is try new things - read a new book, try a new project, in my case - start a new business! :) Well, if you want to see the planner, you can go to my blog Picket Fence Publications. Thanks for reading.
I miss my mission! What can I say? My brother is researching videographers for his upcoming wedding and he stumbled on this that one of them had done. He sent it to me and I loved listening to the youth testify and talk. Sadly to say, I am loosing my Russian...
This is wonderful, ENJOY! Especially you missionaries that served there!
I happened to turn the TV on yesterday when this woman, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, was being interviewed on the Today Show. I absolutely COULD NOT BELIEVE what I was hearing!
This woman had an opportunity to go to Japan for six months and her husband encouraged her to take advantage of that. He would come out to visit with their two boys and then they would come home and resume their lifestyle.
That isn't what happened. Instead she came home and divorced her husband and left their two children. She said something that made me gasp out loud. If she hadn't gone to Japan and had "opened her eyes" and hadn't left her family, she said, "It might have taken me many years to say, woe, I did that thing that I didn't want to do which was give up my life for someone else."
WOW! That is the epitome of selfishness. Watch the video below, it is unbelievable people are justifying her actions and that her book is up for awards.
I teach the Mia Maids at church (the 14 - 15 year old girls) and our lesson on Sunday was about Eternal Families. Below is another video with the right perspective that I showed in class. Elder Eyring says, "The greatest joys and the greatest sorrows we experience are in family relationships. The joys come from putting the welfare of others before our own, that is what love is."
I know without any doubt that families are essential in our Heavenly Father's plan. I know that we can be together for ever and that in order to do so we need to give our marriages and our children our very best, our all, and ourselves.
Is it hard? - yes, it's hard. I have had long days when I don't think Arrie's bed time will ever come, but it does and I get to rest. But I am a wife and a mother first and foremost. I love Braden and Arrie more than I can comprehend and I wouldn't give them up for the world. I know that our Heavenly Father won't give us any challenge in life that we cannot bare. He is always there to help us.
I hope that there is not a single women out there that will allow what this woman has said to stand as a positive example to them.
Arrie loves to dance and play on her piano and she recently discovered she loves singing. On Sunday we were watching Music and the Spoken Word and Arrie started singing along - so I grabbed my camera. :)
So I was talking to my dad and he asked if I had some of the cute things on camera that Arrie does. He said that I might think that I'll always remember what she did as a baby or how she did things but that it would surprise me the things I will forget. I don't want to forget, so I got off the phone and grabbed my camera. Here are some of the cute things about our baby (that isn't really a baby anymore.)
I am the Mia Maids teacher in our ward and I love my calling and the girls. This year the theme for the youth is the 13th Article of Faith:
We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
