Making, Finding, and Having Time

Anthony and I are learning a new marriage lesson lately. That lesson is about TIME. We neither one have a whole lot of extra time with our busy schedules. Two days of the week I spend the entire day down at school taking classes, one day a week I am with clients the whole morning and afternoon. The days I am off school, I am doing homework that takes a lot of my time. Anthony works 5/7 days ...sometimes 6/7 days and he works over 10 hour shifts most days. As you can imagine, we are having a hard time finding time.

This week Anthony had tuesday off and we went out to a wonderful dinner at Black Angus where we had a lovely steak dinner and noone had to do dishes or cook. It was delightful. The downside is that we don't have a lot of time together but the up side (which this pollyanna always likes to find) is that when we do have time together, we no longer waste that time by sitting on the couch watching tv, doing other things, or scheduling other tasks while we are together. Now, we treasure this time so much that we turn off cell phones, don't get on the internet and only watch tv if it's something we bond over (like CSI:Las Vegas)

So, I guess my lesson is that time is relative and it matters what you do with your time and you have to MAKE time for each other. God is continuing to teach us every day on this journey called marriage. So far, it's a great trip. We are going on 2 months married soon! :)

Have a lovely day everyone!

Mr. Clean

I am so grateful today as I am sitting at school and my house is cleaned up by my beautiful husband. I had school last night and he spent his day off cleaning our apartment. He is amazing. I have been lucky the whole two years of knowing and loving him but being his wife is something else entirely. I really admire Anthony and all that he does at our house and thought that the blog deserved to know that!

The Lewis Family Craft

Anthony and I learning to knit and don't laugh! Anthony is only learning because I have very poor fine motor skills and arts and crafts are not my strength so he learns things like this to teach me. I am academic in every way. I learn things through books, reading, classes, etc.... I have never been very artsy and for this reason I have been sad! I love seeing people create things and I always feel in awe of people who create masterpieces and make homemade gifts and just feel left out when I talk to other people who do this. For this reason, I have taken on scrapbooking, card making, ornament making, and now knitting. I have learned to do the cast on tonight and I am excited as it soon did not feel so foreign to me. I love my husband for sitting in front of Youtube learning how to knit so he can teach me. It is impressive to see a man with knitting needles and pink yarn just because his wife REALLY wants to make her own scarf! I love him! SIGH! :)

Growing while Grocery Shopping

Lately I have been really trying to adjust to the jobs that come with being a wife. Anthony works about 60 hours a week therefore I pretty much run the house in every other way. I do the cleaning, cooking, shopping, financial managment etc...and I love it. I really like it because I am a bit more organized than him and it makes me feel like I am helping him out a lot when he gets home and can just relax after a long day at work. Today I took my first shopping trip using coupons. I have used minimal coupons before but today I was thoroughly prepared to shop with coupons. I use some blogs that show deals to help me, get the sunday paper, and clip, clip, clip! This week until tomorrow K-mart has been honoring double coupons up to $2.00. I went there today and literally got $95 of products for $15. I came home and Anthony was astounded. I ended up getting several things for free and stocking our shelves with snacks, cleaning products, and health and beauty items like deodorant, lotion, toothpaste, and shampoo/conditioner. I also did our grocery shopping today and came in under budget which was amazing and I got enough food to last us about a month. I am really proud of myself and also very pleased that this actually works.

While I was out there pounding the pavement and going to a billion different stores to get the tuna for 20 cents less, I realized that there is a lesson to be learned here. Probably more than one, but I thought I would share what God is working on me about. When I decided to take on this task of trying to use coupons and work the system to get our household budget down I began with a good plan, great organization, and several hours of preparation. When I went out today, I allowed myself several hours to get the shopping done so I could adequately use the coupons and pick the products that we could use and get them free. It took about 4 hours for me to finish today.

I find it really sad that I spent the time getting ready to get a good deal on groceries but procrastinate about things that really matter in life more than the grocery budget. Now, I am not saying that the grocery budget doesn't matter because it is essential to running our house but there are FAR more important things that I ignore and do not prepare for at all. Here are a couple of examples:

My health -- I do not prepare for my medications to be out. I end up going a few days without things because I conveniently forget to call in meds or just don't pick them up. I don't plan my workouts in such a way that I won't miss them. I treat them as optional and then they become optional.

Homework -- I do not give myself adequate time to finish assignments to my liking. I rush myself and in turn do not feel good about my performance when I really want to learn.

Spritual disciplines -- I do not give myself enough time with the Lord. I push him to the last thing of the day and then I give him what is left of me when I am tired. I am spending time with him but it isn't quality when I treat it this way.

These things were really brought to my attention today and I feel God leading me in the direction of getting these things together! Thank you Jesus for teaching me lessons through the practical. That is, after all, how I learn!

--Erica Lewis--

Moved to tears!

Watch the video below and just thank God for the days that you have before you. These people are truly heroes in my eyes!
Cancer

Wedding Prints for virtually nothing!

Hey everyone, I had to tell you about the great deal I got today thanks to an awesome blog and my own searching....

Money Saving Mom --a few of the ideas came from this awesome blog!

I went onto York Photos, CVS.com, and Snap Fish and made new accounts with each of them. An account with these companies as well as photo storage is completely free. Well, add to that that you get free prints from each company and I was able to get our wedding prints (a total of 120 prints) for about $3.00 total! Is that amazing or what? Also, just a note, York Photos are only 8 cents a print after that so I would suggest that company for further photo needs. Also, CVS.com has amazing deals on gifts like a photo collage poster for $12.49 as do the other companies. The bonus to CVS is that you can order them online and pick them up in your local store so it sidesteps the shipping process and the possiblity of your prints getting bent in the mail. That's a huge issue to me since I ordered a really great print and it was bent completely in half when I received them from another company.

Thanks for stopping in and I hope you get some free prints out of this deal like I did!

--Erica Lewis--

An Awesome Greeting Card Giveaway

Hey everyone, I found a great new blog and there was a chance to win some really beautiful greeting cards so I entered and wanted to share the link with you so you can enter. Also, while you are there, enjoy the blog because it's worth a stay! Have a lovely day and following the link to enter to win!

Enter for Beautiful Greeting Cards

-Erica Lewis--

Instituting a bed time

Does anyone out there have a husband who is addicted to his snooze button? I do! Anthony is having such a hard time getting up in the morning and getting started. The other night, I put my proverbial foot down and instituted a bed time for both of us. I am not really bad about getting out of bed but I am horrible about getting enough sleep for my day and activities. I tend to stay up entirely too late *cough, reading blogs* and then find myself being sluggish the next day getting things done and feeling less than wonderful. We both are in need of a serious BED TIME! I have decided 10:00 is a great bedtime since it will give Anthony at least 7 hours of sleep. He gets up really early in the morning for work but seriously, he will snooze until he is in the danger zone of being late.

I can't institute much earlier than 10:00 because two days of the week I am in class until 10:00. Those are nights that I will probably get to bed around 11:00 instead. I still have to drive home from school so I will get to bed a little later than he will. I know Anthony though, he will stay up becuase he has a hard time sleeping without his wife beside him. AWWWWWW. Either way, I would appreciate any ideas anyone has for getting my husband out of bed or starting him out with some energy in the morning. Also, I need some tips to get me to go to bed even when I want to stay up and read from my favorite blogs

The Howerton Family Blog This is a blog of a friend/professor of mine and I love keeping up on her lovely family and beautiful children.

Mama Manifesto This is a blog that my above friend/professor writes for and it features several moms and great tips, recipes, humor, etc...

My Special Ks This is a blog I stumbled upon yesterday but it's now one of my favorites. It is about a family (The Garcia's) and it just moved me. I can't explain. Give yourself a whole afternoon and go and read about their journey!


Money Saving Mom This is a blog where I Find freebies, coupons, deals, etc...

Newlyweds This blog is about a young family with twins and it features deals, coupons, recipes, and pictures of their beautiful family.




and the list continues! I am addicted to the blog world! UH OH?!

--Erica Lewis

One of my new favorite blogs.

Today my classes were cancelled so I decided to spend the day doing what I enjoy, reading blogs. I found a blog that really interested me and I have read over a years worth of posts already. This family has won my heart and most especially their little girl, Kennedy! If you are interested in reading this families blog go to:

My Special Ks


Also, I wanted to just let the mom know by posting this button that I am truly praying for their little girl. I am still reading in June but intend to finish their blog and keep up from now on. What a lovely family who has amazing faith, love, and dedication to each other. I am in awe of how strong this mother is and how amazing the family is as a whole. Something to aspire to in our home! :)



Much love to the Garcia Family,

Erica Lewis

Homemade with Love.

Anthony and I have decided on our VERY limited budget that this year we are homemaking Christmas gifts and they won't be tacky either. We are using my scrapbook brillance and Anthony's artistic and creative genuis to make homemade cards. Also, we are making our own ornaments, cookies, homemade candy, and the like. We are excited for the Christmas festivities to begin in our house. Today we went over to the mecca of all craftiness, Michael's and bought some card making supplies and I am not afraid to be bold and say they are going to be amazing! You better pray that you are receiving some of them! :) Who knows, maybe we will go into business for ourselves. Well, off to try our first template!

P.S. the picture used for this post is not my creation. I found it online as an example and thought it was pretty. Since I stole it, I will site my source http://www.madejustforyoubylacy.com

I will post my own once I get one made and beyond as we create them for the holiday season. I hope you are all getting excited and prepared for your holidays as well!

--Erica Lewis

Laundry with the Lewis'

You know what I love?! I love Laundry day. Anthony and I are not privelaged enough to be able to have a washer and dryer in our apartment so we have to shlep to the good old fluff and fold when we need clean clothes. Yes, we use our jeans probably more times than the good Lord intended but we do laundry right around once every 2-3 weeks. We have a lot of clothes, for the record. So anyway, I love Laundry day because we get to go and see everyone's "Last outfit" as I call it. This is when you see people who are wearing things that don't go together AT ALL. It was like they rounded up the kids and all of the laundry and as they were getting dressed said to themselves, "Well, I guess all I have clean is this old banana costume." I just love it! More often than not, I have noticed with ladies that is colored skirts of all fabrics and cuts. With men, it is usually sleeveless shirts that look like they had them since high school and some good old basketball shorts and black socks! I just love laundry day for this reason. I thought I would just share that. Anthony and I try to find the best "Last Outfit" we can! Have fun next time you have to do the fluff and fold and maybe just go for some good old fashioned people watching.

It's Christmas season in the Lewis Household

Anthony and I both are Christmas fanatics. We are not like the people who spend thousands on gifts and act like crazy people at the mall. No, we are the people who stay home and make crafty items, bake cookies, decorate the tree, make homemade ornaments, and remember that Jesus is everything to us and therefore we celebrate his birthday like we celebrate mine. In other words, It's Jesuspalooza time! :) Anyway, we have started our Christmas plans already and tomorrow we are going to use some of our time together to head to Michael's and pick up some items for this year's craftiness!

We are really excited to have our first ornaments together, our first Christmas tree, our first Christmas in our own home, and of course our first married Christmas cards. We both are super big on traditions and just can't wait to have some much fun. Tonight we are searching for ornament ideas (I am not going to spend $10.00 per ornament to buy them!) and looking for craft ideas that make excellent gifts. I am big into scrapbooking so I enjoy doing homemade greeting cards that are really cute and things like that. I just can't wait. Christmas has begun for the Lewis' and we are excited! You can't start too early when you are swinging Grad School at the same time!

Bring on the holiday season!!! :)