Lisa shares how to shop for budget friendly pieces - like this $60 Biker Jacket  and create two looks with red pants and leopard shoes.










Lisa shares her finds & deals for shopping for the colors of Valentine’s Day - like these cute lace up sandals (which are going to be “HOT” this spring/summer) and a pretty lace dress.














Navy and maroon are a great combination for the cold winter months











Tissue turtlenecks are the perfect way to wear dresses in the winter
























It’s been a month, and Lana’s still shopping her closet! 











Blog hopping with the gals at The Blended Blog for a look at day in my life.





Playing with Polyvore and Pinterest to recreate an easy work-wear look.








Nicoles Legacy - Shaunacey writes about the legacy left by her courageous friend Nicole, who gained her angel wings recently but left a huge impact here on earth.








Choosing Happiness - Every day we have a choice how we function in the world, read about Shaunacey's choice.









Sheila knows many people who are struggling right now, but she encourages others as well as herself to  choose joy, despite the pain and she shares things that give her hope. (Click here for a link to Toby Mac's video.)










Sheila explains what Ash Wednesday and Lent are for those people who have never been to a liturgical church and she shares what she's committing to for Lent









View a day in Nicoles crazy life here












Nicole recaps family day and being grateful here

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Did you ever dream of getting married and living happily ever after? Well, we all grow up with fairy tales and whether we realize it or not they have an influence on us. So I find it hard to believe that any of us think our marriage will end in divorce  when we say yes and walk down the aisle to be united with our beloved. Unfortunately, the truth is a huge percentage of marriages fail every year. Divorce happens for so many reasons and some are understandable and others really boil down to a laundry list of sad excuses. I have to be honest and admit that immaturity and selfishness were probably at the heart of the dissolution of my first marriage. Who was immature and selfish? Honestly, it was both of us but how it fleshed out was different for each of us.

So getting married again must have changed those flaws because my hubby and I are on year twenty-two. Right? If you believe that, then I have some Ocean Front Property in Arizona for you {good song King George Strait}. No, I didn’t magically become mature and selfless. No, my Mr. DC didn’t either. But over time we did grow up. We have learned much over the last twenty-two years and I could write on and on about how our marriage reflects the look of love but some of the ways may not be the mainstream idea of fairy tale and happily ever after love.

Love is a word that just encompasses so much. It can be a feeling and a verb at the same time. It is active rather than passive. It can move mountains (figuratively) and be the driving force to change people and practices. It’s just big and strong and yet small and gentle. It is something we desire to possess and yet it isn’t something we can necessarily touch. We know when we see it, read about it or feel it. It touches all of our lives and brings life. We are better for having loved and for being loved.

But, there are parts of love that are difficult. Love isn’t always happy faces and rainbows. No, real love endures lots of obstacles. It endures being wronged. It endures hardship. It forgives. It seeks to be reconciled with those who caused pain. It seeks restoration from brokenness. Yes, these are some of the parts of love that make it really beautiful.

But, when I was younger I didn’t realize that love and marriage would a place where people hurt each other. I didn’t realize that marriage wasn’t all about that other person existing to make me happy. My self-centered ideas coupled with an unwillingness to adult caused a divorce. Not a very good look of love for sure but one that many have faced or will face. But I did learn from that tragedy. I became an adult and learned to navigate in adulthood.

Marriage with Mr. DC hasn’t always been easy. Adulting with him has been an adventure though and one I cherish very highly. We have had the opportunity to experience many aspects of love. We have grown the most through learning to forgive. Being reconciled to one another through accepting our own responsibility for hurting the other has led to restoration through our different problems over the years. Love has shown itself ever so faithful especially when we learned to embrace love that is much deeper and better than the kind that is based purely on happiness. My love for that man is deep and it is solid and unwavering, as is his for me. I know we can weather the storms in the future because of the dark storms we have gone through in the past. Love has served us well. But if I’ve being completely honest, it’s the love shown to us in Christ that is the example. When we seek to love through being sacrificial instead of selfish something really special develops. Our loves grows deeper as we seek to serve the other rather than look at marriage as an opportunity for self. In the end, the love of sacrifice wins. Really it’s a win-win for both of us.

Actually, today is Mr. DC’s birthday. Happy Birthday to you, my beloved! I’m sharing this post to honor him. I thought I would share a couple of photos too. We renewed our vows at 15 years when he returned safely from a deployed overseas. It was a special day…

 I have found the one that my heart loves…Song of Songs 3:4


Carrie is a regular contributor for The Blended Blog and also maintains her own blog over at A Lovely Little Wardrobe.  In her spare time Carrie can be found finding the beauty in the everyday through scripture or in her relationships.  She is a soft spoken Texas with a big heart and an even bigger desire to find the good in the world.

In trying to decide what to write for this "The Look of Love" series, I considered the love I have for PC, which lead to reflecting on my love for my daughters and granddaughters, which spilled over into love for my many and varied pets, my family, my friends.  Not necessarily in that order.

But I felt like many of those "loves" were very well-covered by my TBB comadres already.

So I chose to write about my love for two young girls who have impacted my life, my two Jennys.  I will share the story of one Jenny here and the story of the other Jenny on my blog at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After.  Maybe I can entice you into visiting me there for that post in the futue.

Today's Jenny was my student in elementary school.  I think Jenny was my student for only a year, year and a half at most, but somehow she greatly impacted my life in a relatively short period of time.

Jenny was the second girl, fourth oldest child in a family of about seven or eight children.  She transferred to Schuster Elementary, where I was the librarian, in the beginning of second grade, I think.

The oldest Molina child was Javier in the fifth grade, then a sister in fourth, a brother in third, Jenny followed by some baby sisters in kinder and first.  Stepping-stone siblings with a few preschool-aged little ones still in diapers at home.

Schuster was and still is a small school with around 300 students.  While there, I prided myself in learning almost all of the children's names very quickly and being able to call them by name when they visited the library.  I also got to know a number of the parents as many of them walked their students to and from school every day.  The Molina children in lived in government subsidized projects about a half mile from school and usually walked themselves to school without either parent accompanying them.  Safety in numbers, maybe?  I learned later that Mr. Molina worked construction in Colorado and was rarely home.  Mrs. Molina was in El Paso alone with all of the children.

It wasn't until our school Halloween carnival that I really began bonding with the children beyond just working with them in the library when each one came with his teacher and class.  On Halloween, however, the Molinas really shone brightly because they had the most creative homemade costumes.  I remember that Javier and Richie were scarecrows wearing too-big adult clothing and newspaper torn in strips for stuffing.  We had a good giggle because they were so "over-stuffed" they had trouble walking all day without leaving a newspaper trail behind them.

The little girls above were neighbors of the Molinas.  Javier and Richie are standing to my left.

As winter approached, I noticed the children came to school without the proper wraps.  No gloves, no hats, and sweaters instead of coats.  All of the school-aged Molinas had begun coming to the library after school, staying until I shoo-ed them out the door for home.  I often had snacks for the children who stayed after school and the Molinas would gobble up whatever I gave them.  Once the sun started setting earlier, I was worried about all of them walking home at dusk in the cold.  I began loading them into my Windstar van for the quick trip home.  In exchange, the children would help me with little projects in the library.

My own parents came for a visit and met the Molinas sometime late that fall.  Because the children only spoke limited English, it was sometimes difficult for me to communicate with them and my parents could only smile at these little ones.  By Christmastime, I had grown quite attached to all of the children with a particular fondness for Jenny.  She was funny and spirited and feisty.  At seven or eight years old, Jenny had more common sense than I did at 35.  She was the one who kind of kept the rest of the children in line, even if she wasn't the oldest.  My parents sent money to help me buy all of the children hats and gloves and little treats for Christmas.  That last day of school before the holidays began, I had my first opportunity to meet Mrs. Molina when I dropped the children off at home.  Her warm smile broke through the language barrier between us.  She seemed to be a good mother who loved her babies and did the best she could by them.

Spring picture day neared and I knew the Molinas could not afford to purchase even the cheapest packages of photos for each child.  I sent a note home in my broken Spanish to let Mrs. Molina know I wanted to buy the children's school pictures.  And oh, how spiffed up they each came to school that day.

This is Jenny.

And these are some of her siblings but not all.

Keep reading to find out what happened to the other pictures.

The end of school came and I knew I would miss this family of children a lot.  I promised to stop by to check on them now and then over the summer months.  On one trip to see them, I was greeted by other children in the apartment complex that I knew from school who informed me that the Molina family was gone.

No one knew where they had gone.

I was so sad.

For years, I kept one of the school photos taken of each of the Molina children in a little package with notes and messages from them all tied up in ribbon in the nightstand beside my bed.  I had a special love for them and prayed that God would keep them safe, wherever they were.

Fast forward, six years.  I had transferred from Schuster and was working as the librarian at the Career and Technical high school which shared part of its facility with the School-Age Parent Center.  On one of my first days at work, a young pregnant girl walked into the library.  I looked up from my work to greet her and then did a double-take when I realized it was Jenny Molina.  She recognized me about the same time I recognized her.  Jenny was about five months pregnant and in the eighth grade.

We reconnected over the next few months before her baby was born.  I learned that Jenny's father and brothers were living and working in Colorado and that she and her sisters were living with their paternal grandmother in downtown El Paso.  When I asked why the family had split up and moved, Jenny explained that her mother had been caught selling drugs that summer six years before.  Mrs. Molina had gone out one morning and had never returned home.  The children waited all day for their mother to return but she never did.

Jenny took charge.

She contacted their father's mother across the border in Mexico.  Their abuela, whom the children knew only slightly, traveled to El Paso to check on the kids.  Jenny had suspected that her mother was doing something illegal because although unemployed, she would often be gone all day only to return home with cash and jewelry.  Jenny found her mother's stash of jewelry in the house and went with her grandmother to take it to be pawned.  Mr. Molina returned from Denver to pick up his sons but left his daughters for their grandmother to watch.  The girls and their grandmother moved into a small apartment downtown.  Now Jenny was pregnant and living with her boyfriend Angel's family.

Jenny would visit the library whenever she could but I think her school attendance was pretty spotty.  One day I took my precious packet of pictures and notes from the Molinas to school to share with Jenny.  I don't know that I ever saw her more moved.  She looked over each of the pictures, talking about her sisters, how the clothing each one had on had been passed down from one to the other.  Then she carefully examined the photos of Javier and Richie.  It was almost as if by looking at the photos she was able to travel back in time.  She said she hadn't seen her brothers since shortly after those pictures were taken so I gave them to her.

As the baby's due date approached, Jenny disappeared again.  She dropped out of school.  PC and I visited the Mexican restaurant where the baby's father was supposed to be working but he was no longer there.  I found myself looking for Jenny everywhere I went.  El Paso is that kind of small, big town.  But I never ran across her path.

I think working at the School-Age Parent Center, seeing so many sweet, young mommies with babies - sometimes even more than one baby - took a toll on me.  I only lasted as a librarian there for a year before transferring to another elementary school.

My fifth year at Moye Elementary, I went into school to set up the library on one of the days before school officially began. The building was open for registration.  Parents and children were coming and going all day.  During lunch, the main doors to the school were locked but because the AC had not been turned on yet, I had the library door leading outside propped open.  I looked up from where I was working to see a young pregnant mother with two little ones in tow coming toward me.

Jenny.

Again.

We picked up right where we left off.  Hugs, tears, but only a few because Jenny is tough that way.  I was thrilled to learn that she was there to register her daughter Daisy for first grade at Moye.  Over the next few months, I would see Jenny on a regular basis, at least a couple of times a week.  Daisy was quiet and shy and a little guarded with me at first but by Christmas, we were fast friends.

But before the school year's end, Jenny and her little family were gone again.

I haven't seen Jenny since 2012.  I have tried to find Daisy in the school district database but she doesn't seem to be registered with El Paso ISD.  As I prepared to write this post, I got out the packet again.  It is no longer beside my bed but in a notebook with special keepsakes from students over the years.  It was good to see Jenny, again, if only in pictures.

Tonight, I scoured through pictures I have taken from activities I did with my students at Moye in hopes of finding a photo of Daisy.

I did.

This one was taken at the beginning of her first grade year.  We were making origami diapers to go with a lesson on treating books like babies.

The picture below was taken toward the end of the school year.

We are making Little Miss Muffet finger puppets.

Daisy would be in the fifth grade this year.  And Jenny would be about 25 years old.

I know one day I will look up and see Jenny walking back into my life, if only temporarily.  But when she does I will be ready to hug her and tell her I love her again.

Hugs and kisses,

Leslie

Leslie is a regular contributor to The Blended Blog.  Wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, kitty-mom.  She is trying to figure out who she is after recent retirement. You can also follow her adventures to rediscovery after retirement at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After.