Crazy how fast time is going these days!!  June was a super busy month here on The Blended Blog and on our individual blogs as well.  Kids graduated, teachers stressed with end of the years duties and moms tackled some tough questions and spent quality time with their precious kiddos!  Read about the fun had by all on our favorite posts from June!

As always with the end of the month comes our best in blog reviews. So get to clicking and see some things you might have missed!

Welcome to our newest series on the Blended Blog!  We came up with this idea at the Vegas blog conference and thought it would be fun to see what someone else would pick out for us to wear.  Luckily, I had many willing participants in the house this particular day to use for what you are going to see today.

Let me set the scene:



It was a lazy Saturday morning.  My mom was feeling energetic and simultaneously washing my cupboards while making a chicken caesar salad.  Willis was baking cookies and our Jen was enjoying a sleep in.  Lucia, having slept until 9, only wanted to go snuggle with Jen and wake her up.  Dan was in his happy placing out on his tractor, trying to get some cutting done before the rain storms came. The perfect setting to have some fun in prep for the inaugural Styled by Someone Else post.

When asked to go pick something out of my closet for me to wear, jewelry and makeup included, this is what they picked.

Lucia: She liked the colours together and specifically wanted red lipstick, pink blush and gold eye shadow.  She's a nut.

Mom: She wanted orange shoes, how do you not have orange shoes, she asks?  She was going for neutrals with a pop of bold pattern.  She requested purple lips to contrast the orange accents.

Willis: He was going for a flowery look, clearly, because I'm wearing EVERY FLORAL PIECE I OWN. And the nude lip and hair in a pony.

Kinsey: She's a color coordinator at it's best...all kinds of blues with bold red lips.


Jen: She built the outfit around a piece she liked.  She wanted my makeup to be minimal with black eyeliner.



In the end, I had a blast seeing what other people would choose for me.  Considering I spend most of my shopping time dressing other people, this was a nice change!  I look forward to seeing the next interpretations when we bring this series back mid July.

1) Summer Reading Program:
I remember getting the colourful booklets to fill out of my summer reads at the Cuelenaere Library and being so pumped if mine was up on the wall.  I filled my summer reading Little House on the Prairies, Babysitters' Club or likely Sweet Valley High.  Willis and Lucia have just started the Summer Reading Program at the Saskatoon Public Library and are way ahead of schedule.  Willis is currently enjoying the Hardy Boys series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Yuck.  Sure, they aren't classics (we tried Boxcar Children and all things Roald Dahl), but these have him reading at all hours. He is now a bonafide bookworm and I love it.  Lucia, on the other hand, my goal was to have her reading by the end of summer, but I think we may have conquered that this past weekend. You'll have to skip over to my blog to see the cute video.



2) Road trips, specifically to B.C:
Our annual trip as kids was 14 hours away to my aunt's place in Vernon.  No DVD players, no Ipods, just homemade cassette tapes with NKOTB mixes that I would beg my parents to play and many, many books to read.  I also once convinced my brother and sister that I could sleep with my eyes closed.   My kids have made the road trip a couple times already and each time they look forward to it even more.  We will go old school too on our roadtrip, limiting the handheld devices and optimizing the conversation, sing-a-longs, story time and the beauty of driving through the Rocky Mountains.


3) Playing outside/ imagination games:
I spent a lof of my summers outside bossing my brother and sister around.  We would put on backyard plays, magic shows and do fundraisers for our Kids' Only Club. Thankfully there wasn't cell phones for videoing back then, I can just imagine the embarrassing footage they'd have of me.  My kids will spend the majority of their days outside adventuring on their bikes, geo-caching around our acreage, weeding the garden, picking berries and playing in the pool.  There has got to be something said for liberal, carefree play that let's their imagination take over.  I can't wait to video EVERYTHING to use as blackmail later in life.


4) Camping Trips:
We were spoiled growing up in Prince Albert with so many beautiful lakes and beaches from 15 minutes to an hour away.  I'm sure we packed up and went camping every weekend available and I am so grateful for that.  We had everything from a tent trailer to a motor home growing up and one of my favourite things were rainy days when you would just open the windows and listen to the rain, playing endless card games and likely fighting, however, I don't remember the fighting.  Mom and Dad may think differently.  While we only have a tent and don't really venture out just as  little family, my kids do get plenty of opportunity to head out with my parents and their motorhome to enjoy the fresh air and all the fishing they want.  In fact, they may be taking off this week with them already.  What better way than that to celebrate the end of school?



What kinds of activities did you do as a child that you're dying to bring back for your kids to experience?

Hello! Sarah from Foxy's Domestic Side here, today we start a fun new series here on The Blended Blog. While we were trying to come up with some fun new things to do on the blog, one of us was reading ( I can't for the life of me remember who, I want to say Deena...maybe Sheila? Lana?) was reading What Alice Forgot (currently on my nightstand ready to be read), where she wakes up and can't remember the past 10 years. So for the next 6 months, the third Tuesday will be where we think we'll be in 10 years. Obviously I'm up first...So here it goes:





To get you all in the right frame of mind...These will be my stats in 10 years:

Baby Fox - Will be 15.5 (say what?! Sniff, Sniff)

Mini Fox - Will be 12.75 (almost two teenagers....)

Me - Will be 10 years older...haha, j/k I'll be 46

Mr. - Will be 49

Okay now that we've set that up, here's where I think we'll be in 10 years.

Baby Fox will be almost done with his freshman year of high school, holy cow, this is getting real, 10 years doesn't seem like a lot when you say it, but in reality...wow, he's going to be a man...almost driving!



Mini Fox will almost done with 6th grade, tween era, so not looking forward to the mood swings and attitude...oh wait, I get the attitude now, so probably not much different.



Anyways, for the kids I think that Baby Fox will probably be in some sort of non competitive after school activity and Mini Fox will most like be in gymnastics or dance and really loving it (so far at age 2.5 she shows no signs of liking any sport, at all).



Most likely I'll be at home full time, making sure the kids don't get into any trouble. Mr. and I have been setting up our life so that when the kids get into school I could stop working (if I wanted) so I could be home for the kids, take them to their after school activities and help with homework. We always felt that kids need to be accountable for their time, by me being home gives them that accountability.


We'd also most likely start traveling, we want to show the kids the world, have them try new experiences and see what else is out there. We'd really like to live somewhere for the summers, really emerge the kids into that culture for a few months.


We'd also be more involved in the church. Before we had kids were were a part of a couple of ministries, but with kids that has become harder to do, so hopefully in 10 years we'll be able to be a bigger part of our church community, and we've talked about starting a marriage ministry at our church. We were part of it when we were newly married in our old church and loved it. We'd also like to start being the leaders of Engaged Encounter, we had such a wonderful experience, that we hope we can pass that same encouragement and love onto other couples just starting out their lives.

Mr. and I constantly talk about what the future holds and where we want to be in X amount of years. It's going to be fun to come back to this post in 10 years and see where we are.

Where do you think you'll be in 10 years?