Where in the World party!

My younger brother got his mission call for our church recently and I had to throw an opening party.

Our 5 older brothers have all been on missions and we are all so extremely proud of him for wanting to go.

I really wanted to make his opening special and a big moment, but not over the top at the same time.

I was expecting it to come on a Friday and it surprised me on a Thursday so I had to hurry things up a bit to be prepared.

If you are here for my fashion post, here is my outfit:

pants-Forever 21, top-Old Navy
It's not super exciting, but it is the only picture I have of what I wore this week and I was out of my sweats!

I love the top, it is super comfy, the sleeves are fun and flowy, and it did a good job of distracting from the pooch that had developed from eating cupcakes during the day.

I'm a stress eater.

And no, I'm not 4 ft tall.

I'm 5' 2", shrimpy next to my brother.

I had my great friend Brittany, over at Invite Me, design cupcake toppers and water bottle labels.
My theme for the party was "Where in the World?!" and she did a fabulous job making it all come together.
The cupcake toppers had his name and then The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints was in a bunch of different languages.

I wanted it to be all green and blue {globe looking}

I made the poms with tissue from Party City and hung them with fishing wire.

Vanilla cupcakes with adorable blue and green cupcake liners from Michael's.

My brother ate 3/4 of the rock candy sticks, at least it wasn't my kids taking them! I had sixlets and M&M's for snacking. Thank you to my wonderful mother for picking out all of the green and blue M&M's!

Last minute I found Jones blue and green soda, thank you Bevmo!

Water bottles with flags from different countries as the globe, loved this idea from Britt!

Patiently waiting for Mr. J to get home from work so he could open the letter.

Isn't he so cute?!

Reading the call, we had speaker phones going to our brothers out of state, and Mrs. H was on video g-chat.

And...for fun, I had everyone guess one state and one country that he could be going to.

My husband won with the guess of Des Moines, Iowa!
We are so excited for my brother to have this opportunity.

The mission is huge and covers most of Iowa, & some of Missouri & Illinois!
This California beach boy is excited to go somewhere new!

Linking up here
{fashion}

{party}

And the winner is...

Zaylyn said: I Liked Modern Wivelyhood on fb 

We are so excited to work with you!
Thanks everyone for entering!

Until Sept 1st you can use the code MODWIFE to get for an extra 10% off over at Daydream Believers!

Last day to enter...Daydream Believers giveaway

Wouldn't it be awesome if I could offer an amazing giveaway and enter myself?

I've been loving all of the different colors that people have commented saying they'd like and wanted to check them out.

What a tease!
Here's what I'd pick if I won.

Little Miss L is turning 2 in October and I'm throwing back and forth the idea of a fair-ish party and by that I mainly mean, colors. 

There will be no petting zoo or pie eating contest.

I would love a Queen Bee Tutu in ruby, aqua, white and cookie!
That is quite the combo, huh?!

Then because I like to reuse, it would double as her 4th of July outfit.

So that would be my pick if I could win it all!
Have you entered?!

Hours and counting...

Me, awarded?!

I'm so excited,

 a couple people think I'm kinda neat and awarded me with these!

I received the Butterfly Award from Karima over at Karima's Crafts

Thank you Karima!

Here are the fun questions I get to answer

1. Name your favorite color-at the moment, all shades of blue

2. Name of your favorite song-God Gave Me You-Blake Shelton---if you haven't heard it I attached it in a previous post here along with some wedding pictures :)

3. Name your favorite dessert-My sister in law's chocolate chip cookies with milk

4. What wizzes you off at the moment?-I think this means, annoys you? My children being picky...more on that below

5. Your favorite pet-We {my parents} have always had dogs. Golden retrievers and a sheltie, but we only have 1 at a time. Fletch, Sundance, Chubby Nugget, and Ellie

6. Black or white-If I'm wearing it, black is more slimming. In the house, white

7. Your biggest fear-Losing a child

8. Best feature-I'm a loyal friend

9. Everyday attitude-Be Happy, Love one Another, Choose the Right, Seize the Day, and Show Gratitude

10. What is perfection? Trying to see the world the way my children see it

11. Guilty Pleasure-Me time, I need it

12. When you're upset you...{my husband reminds me} that I can only control myself and the way I react

I got this award from my good friend Lesley over at Fabulously Flawed 

Seriously go check out what story she shared over on her blog. It is hilarious!

I can barely think straight because of how randomly awesome and honest her post was.

She asked the us to share a story true or not in order to accept the award.

I have one fresh on my mind, heck it took up most of my evening and you can decide the true parts and the exaggerated parts and hopefully some of you can relate.

I have 2 extremely picky eaters. When our son turned 2 and only ate pirate's booty, pretzels and quesadillas we knew we had to take control of the situation. People told us to force it, to bribe, to reward, to put a time limit, to spank, to be patient, and to negotiate. The last thing I wanted was for Mr. J to come home after a long day to a stressful evening accompanied by a witch of a wife. I decided to try to negotiate, I set the terms, but Cowboy got a say. He could pick breakfast and lunch, but he had to try dinner, which later turned into eat all that was on his plate. Oh my heavens, months of bawling and tantrums, and he even threw up a couple times. It was so sad, but I told him in order to be like the Hulk, he needed to eat healthy things. He still takes awhile to eat, but he eats what is on his plate. He has tried most veggies, most fruits, meats and fish without the tantrum.

His sister was an amazing baby food eater, almost too amazing. She's almost 2 and I'm annoyed with her only eating fruit and snacking throughout the day. I made bbq chicken quesadillas today. Plain for the kids and was hoping she would at least try it. She started fighting it, well guess who decided she would lay down the law? Me.

Mr. J is out on business for the week and maybe I'm a bit too high strung, especially since it's only Tuesday.

She would not try the corn or the quesadilla, and would only eat the blueberries when Cowboy would come inside to feed her. It broke her heart that he got to play and swim outside {grandpa was on pool duty} and I could tell she thought her world was ending. It was breaking my heart too, but I couldn't be inconsistent. Then there came the pouting from BOTH of us. I was complaining to my mom who was telling me I was doing great being patient, she's the best! When I finally got her to eat 2 measly bites, I decided an hour of this crap was enough for me. The second I opened the back door, Little Miss L lifted her chubby fingers and motioned "come on" like NOTHING had happened. Are you kidding me?! My dad made some joke about my daughter being as stubborn as her mother and I just gave him the look. Talk about complete witch...I don't do well when my husband is out of town. After realizing the pool was a tad bit cold, I gave the kids a bath and was going to put them straight into bed an hour early until my mom reminded me that they'd probably wake up an hour earlier. I got them ready anyways and they mellowed out a bit. When I begged my mom to go put Little Miss L down, she was requesting momma. I went in, still pouting, because I'm not a grown woman or anything and she climbed right on top of me and kept saying momma. Every tense muscle in my body relaxed, I started rubbing her back, started her music thing, and my mom said "momma said there'd be days like this." I swear my mom didn't have days like this because we were perfect children, or so she says and she has an insane amount of patience. She left us alone for a minute and I rolled Diva for a day onto her pillow, took her binky out, smothered her with kisses and she giggled for the first time in hours, didn't even beg for her binky back.

Even though when I first went in there, I will admit I was thinking, ughh it's 9:15 "my time." 

I thought that my coffee table was tapping it's leg waiting to be sanded.

I dropped the ball on the ayso soccer for cowboy {I will blame moving and 1st time mother trying to give the kid options}and now need to look into other things to get the boy involved.

My coupons are not filed yet for the week

Laundry was still in a pile.

The list goes on and on and on.

But

I know that while I was in there with Dinnertime Diva, surrounded by her absurd amount of sleeping buddies (horsy, 2 puppies, blankie, duck, and bear)

she knew I'm a sucker for her and that I love her, always.

We will see what dinnertime brings today.

  I'm going to give these awards to 5 ladies and they can pick if they want both awards or just 1 and let me know if you do it so I can come check it out!

Lesley at Fabulously Flawed

Emily at Mirrors, Metaphors & Kaleidoscopes

Michelle at Daydream Believers

McKelle at In De-Stress Mode

Karima at Karima's Crafts

Giveaway ends soon!

Have ya'll seen what my friend, Michelle, over at Daydream Believers has offered up to one of my sweet followers?!

Remind me that you follow and you are entered, super easy!

Plus there are a few bonus entries so if you really want to win a sweet tutu for one of your favorite lil' gals, get on over and enter!

Giveaway ends Thursday at 11:59 pm pst.

Good luck!

Hoo are you?

1. Do you prefer to use a regular pencil or mechanical pencil?

When I was in school, mechanical, now regular. Wonder why that changed!

2. What is your favorite color in the crayon box? 

That's a hard one...salmon pink and cerulean blue

3. Bottled glue or glue stick? 

bottled glue

4. calculator or do it in your head?

need a calculator for sure :)

5.Favorite subject while in High School? 

I really liked photography...back then it wasn't too much digital yet so most of our time was spent in the dark room. I liked subjects based on the teacher. If I clicked with them and they taught well I enjoyed the class more.
Feel free to enter my giveaway!

Linking up here

Patterns & Color

A few weeks ago Lindsey, over at The Pleated Poppy challenged us to mix patterns.

I was excited for the challenge because I love stripes and florals, but got a little nervous thinking about them together.

Here's how I made myself do it:
Took the kids to Sea World and packed the stripe shirt as an only option to go under the floral shirt.

Mind tricks people, you know how you complain to your husband, "Honey, I seriously have no clothes!!" This time I really had no other clothes, and I brought it all on myself!

We traveled over to the island of Coronado. My family started going to Hotel Del when I was a baby and kept going for 25 years after that...with all 20-something of us! Thanks to the economy issues, we haven't been in a couple years! It was bittersweet to go back to the island and see everything that's changed, but how it's still very much the same. My heart broke a little bit that my kids won't have some of those amazing experiences of being with a huge, spectacle of happiness that was our family. I guess that's what happens when you are on the younger end of the grandchildren being born. Maybe I'll have to brainstorm another place to start traditions.

Don't mind my sunken eyes, Sea World for the day and not very much sleep left me drained.

There was not much I could do to get those things to open!

on me-capris & floral shirt-Old Navy, striped shirt-Gap

on the boy-shirt-Gap, shorts & flip flops-Old Navy

on the girl-dress-Naartjie, shoes-Old Navy, headband-Lyndi Lou

We went to this delicious local breakfast spot that I'd never been to before.

"Hi there, do you do reservations for 25?"-Doesn't work too well for little pastry shops.

Isn't she just scrumptious? I could kiss those sweet lips all day and that button nose...Simply love it and pray she doesn't get mine.

Not the best picture of Mr. J because he was talking and must have blinked, but that's not the point...

Look at that sweet little grandma. Do you think she thought it was weird that I had my big black camera in her face? I didn't think of it at the moment. He made her day by talking with her over breakfast and wrangling our children. Not only did he have a sweet conversation with her, that table was empty before, no chair. She came walking up and kind of looked around silently hoping for a little help. Mr. J scurried around, found a chair, helped her clean off the table and got her situated, while other people awkwardly watched and would not give up chairs that they were "saving." A man said to him something about being a real good man. Amen to that! Love when those moments happen and I can watch my husband be the genuine, old fashioned, polite man that he is{half watch because I'm usually also watching that the salt doesn't end up in our water, the knives stay away from faces, and that we don't let anyone run off with our children.} She sure loved having a morning companion and went on about her husband being in the Navy and she told him they'd retire in Coronado and that's exactly where she is now. Smart woman.

I didn't wear the same outfit again that week, but I did want to try it with color. Normally, I'd grab my white undershirt, but I tricked myself again, on accident this time. It was in the laundry and I thought I had a peach one somewhere. It actually matched!
ankle pants-Forever 21, shirt-Old Navy, undershirt-Buckle, necklace-Juicy couture

Would you like the chance to win a custom tutu for a girl you know?

Get a head start on Halloween, birthday, Christmas or being the coolest for thinking about their dress up time!
Check it out here

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