Valentine's Day Gifts

First let me say, sorry about these awful pictures. Total bad blogger move but life is so crazy busy right now and I still wanted to share the gifts I got for the special people in my life. 

JACK

I ordered him a personalized shirt. I picked the fire truck seen below. I love shirts with his name on it. He'll wear it this week and for his Valentine's party at school. 

On Valentine's Day he is getting this fun game that I got on clearance at Wal-Mart for $11. I also got him a sweet card but that is mostly for me to put in his memory box. He's not getting any sweets this year because he will get PLENTY at his party and from his friends.

 

This week I gave my Secret Pal this shirt from jane.com. Instead of the teal I got the sleeves in a pretty pink. I went ahead and gave it to her so she can wear it at least a few times. I also picked up a pair of Valentine socks that are super festive. 

My wonderful parents will also get a gift this year. They had these sheets on Amazon deals and since they just purchased a new mattress I thought some nice sheets would be a great gift. I also picked up my dad a box of sugar free chocolates since he is diabetic. 

Jack has the BEST teachers. A friend told me about this lady who makes these super cute cookies.  I'm having them shipped and they should arrive the day before Valentine's Day. I'm going to add a sweet note and I really hope they enjoy them. 

Valentine's Day is a holiday I really love. I enjoy giving gifts to my love ones. Do you have any special gifts you plan on giving this year? 

Easiest Valentine Cookies

This past week Jack and I whipped up some simple Valenine cookies. I can't tell you enough how easy they are and they are so yummy.

Here it is and I can guarantee that you will love them. Plus, I'm now thinking about other combinations I could use.

1 strawberry cake mix

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

chocolate chips (white or regular)

Valentine sprinkles for added festivity

You mix up the cake mix with the oil and eggs and then throw in as many chocolate chips as you want. You put the dough in the fridge for an hour. 

You then cook them at 350 for 10-12 minutes. 

Add sprinkles if you want to add some Valentine fun. We did  to most of them and left some without sprinkles since my mom isn't a huge fan of them. 

Next time I want to do a lemon cake mix with white chocolate chips. They will be super cute with pastel sprinkles. You could even do white cake mix and add green food coloring for St. Patty's day. 

There are so many different cake mix flavors now that the sky is the limit with this simple recipe. 

Have you ever made cookies with a cake mix? 

Simplify Pictures

Reading Grace Not Perfection has inspired me to simplify our lives. In order to build a strong foundation I don't want any baggage or disorganization to get in my way. I've decided that one of my tasks for March (yeah, I"m thinking ahead) is to make a yearly photo book of our family.  The main goal that is attached to this task is to create intentional memoires with my family. What better way than looking through organized photo albums? Currently by pictures are on Facebook, Instagram, my work computer, my blog, my personal computer, my phone, prints, Walgreens, and my google photos.

1. To organize all of my Facebook photos into albums. I'm deleting a lot of them and choosing just the ones I want to represent our family.

2. Get the Instagram photos that I want to be in the albums. This is gonna take some work.

3. Organize my work photos into one album and then make yearly folders to drop each picture in.

4. I'll check through my blog and see if anything stands out and I'll save those to the folder on my work computer.

5. I'll take the photos from my personal computer and will uplead them to facebook into the correct album.

6. The phone photos will also be downloaded to facebook into the correct album.

7. Ill go through my prints that were mostly printed via Groovebook and I'll put the year on the back.

8. The Walgreens photos will probably be deleted since I feel like they are in other places.

9. My google photos will be added to my work computer and put into the correct folder.

Now comes the hard part. Ideally I would be able to just upload all of them to Walgreens but I've done that in the past and some were very fuzzy. I plan on using picmonkey to edit my photos. I plan on taking one year photo book at a time.

Although I have this task to be completed by March, I'm really hoping to just get at least one complete by then. It really is going to take a lot of work to get it all organized.

From now on I'm going to be better about backing up and sorting them right away and even go as far as printing 2017 pictures as I get a bunch.

How do you deal with ALL THE PICTURES?