Blogging has been something that I have really wanted to do, but it seems there isn’t ever enough hours in the day! I am going to try and update/post something fun twice a week here on out. Wish me luck! 

I just wanted to let you all in on our next big adventure! No pictures yet, but I’m SO excited about it. 

My husband and I have decided together that it’s time for him to go back to school! So, that means we’ll be moving a few states over for him to go back to the University of Idaho. 

Last time he was in school, we struggled. We just couldn’t seem to make enough money to survive without going deeper and deeper into student loan debt. We do NOT want to do that again. 

Luckily, I’ve been able to build up my online business to a full time income, which is really going to help. My husband has also started his own business making fishing jigs that he will continue to do there. 

The other thing that is going to help is that we are going to be cutting our expenses as much as we can. One of the biggest ways we’re doing that is by cutting our housing expenses. Our plan is to buy a 5th wheel to live in! 

I know – we have a million kids (okay 3). We are buying one that has a good sized bunk room, and plenty of separation between our room and theirs. We will be downsizing, a LOT, which will really help. We plan on doing more outside of the home, and hopefully being able to spend more time together than we are able to now. Granted, when his classes get tougher (he’s planning on staying clear until he has a PhD), I expect we’ll see less and less of my husband until he graduates, but we will enjoy the time we have with him while he gets his second undergraduate degree. 

I’ll update with pictures as soon as we finally find our home! I can’t wait to share this portion of our adventures with you all  

The post Our Next Big Adventure appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

I started this blog as a way to document some family recipes. My goal was 100. I honestly don’t know if I’ve reached that goal or not. Not long into it, I realized that this blog could be an awesome way to connect with other moms in my same walk of life, to get out my own frustrations and creativity, to uplift and inspire others, and to supplement my family income. It’s been such a blessing in so many ways. One that comes to mind is the time we were almost out of diapers and Huggies contacted me and asked if I would review some of theirs. They sent me about 4 months worth, for FREE! I cried. 

Since then, I’ve talked about products I love, cloth diapering, my religions, blogging tips, parenting tips, and fitness tips. I have LOVED every minute of it and I am excited to get back into it a little more now that my youngest is a year old and my fitness business is pretty secure. 

I am REALLY excited about the next walk of life I’m entering into. We’ve found ourselves on 7 acres of land in an old farm house. The first year here I spent sort of mad that we lived where we do. Outside of town about 15 miles, 45 miles from my husband’s work, and sooo far away from family. We live in this house because (ironically) it’s all we could afford. We couldn’t afford apartments or houses in town. We got a REALLY good deal on this house, so here we are. 

But something changed a little while ago. Instead of being mad that we’re here, I decided to embrace it and all it’s farm life glory. This means some new and big adventures for me and my little family, and I am SO excited to share them with all of you. 

We’ve been working on some fencing for a pig, we have 9 baby chicks, and are thinking about a goose or two. This is a HUGE step from a girl who always planned on living in New York City. 

I plan on sharing a little bit of this farm life on the blog during the next little while. I hope to inspire others to love the part of life their in, to be willing to try new things, and to really embrace all the blessings life has given them. 

Plus I’m going to show you how we built our fence. FOR FREE. Well. We paid for screws. 

So stay tuned. I’m working on some stuff I think you’ll like! If you’re not following me on Facebook and Instagram and all that good stuff, DO! The links are up at the top left corner. 

Have an amazing day  

The post My Adventures appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

From time to time, I like to make blogging tutorials. I know that a LOT of the people who read my blog are bloggers as well, and I like to write posts that I KNOW they will find useful. This is one of those posts. Knowing this coding is essential to blogging. Whenever you put an image in your sidebar, whether it’s an ad or your own blog’s button, you use this code. If you look down at the right side of my blog, there are quite a few ads and buttons. They all use this coding. (Some are a little more intense than others, but this is the basic code).

I used this a little while ago when I made the button on the right side of my blog for the 31 days to a closer family series. I show you the process I went through. 

There are a few terms you need to know before we start this tutorial. 

1. image src – the image src is the url of the image you want shown. I know that sounds pretty intense, but it’s not. I would tell you what src and url stand for but… I don’t actually know and I’m too lazy to look it up. This is the part of the code that tells your website what picture to put up. Here is how you get your image src –

1. Upload your picture to an image hosting site. I use photobucket and that’s what I’m going to show you on this tutorial. 
2. On the right side of the page, there is a box that says “links to share this photo.” The link you want is the one called Direct. That is your img src. Copy and paste it onto a word document so you have it later. The img src for my button is http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y446/corp8292/31daysbutton_zps9748236c.jpg

2. The URL you want the picture to link to. This is the website you want the browser to direct your visitors to when they click your button. I wanted this button to take traffic to the intro page of this series, so the URL I wanted was http://www.amouseinmykitchen.com/2013/09/31-days-closer-family.html. Figure out what URL you want your picture to link to and save it in the word document as well. 

Okay, now that you have those two pieces of information, I’m going to give you the code you need. It looks like this: 

 <a href=”URL here” > <img src=”insert img src here” alt=”name of your button” width=”150″ height=”150″ > </a>

That code will make a button that is 150 pixels x 150 pixels. You can change the width and height to whatever you want. Keep in mind that if you make it too big and your image has a low resolution, it won’t look good. 

So, I want a button that is 300 x 300. After I insert my URL and img src and change the size and name, my code looks like this – 

< a href=”http://www.amouseinmykitchen.com/2013/09/31-days-closer-family.html”><img src=”http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y446/corp8292/31daysbutton_zps9748236c.jpg” alt=”31daystoacloserfamily” width =”300″ height =”300″></a>

That is just showing up as code because I entered into the visual editor on my blog post. When I put it in my text editor, it looks like this:

If I add the code <center> to the start of the code and </center> to the end, it looks like this: 

If you were paid for the button in any way or if the button is for an affiliate link, you need to add the code rel=”nofollow” after the URL. So it would look like this –

< a href=”http://www.amouseinmykitchen.com/2013/09/31-days-closer-family.html” rel=”nofollow”><img src=”http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y446/corp8292/31daysbutton_zps9748236c.jpg” alt=”31daystoacloserfamily” width =”300″ height =”300″></a>

That is just for google search purposes. You and the site that is getting the traffic can be penalized with lower google ratings if you fail to add that code. 

Once you have the code, you can either put it right into a blog post or on the sidebar using a text widget. 

There ya go! Let me know if you have any questions. 

What other blogging tutorials would you like to see? 

The post How To Make An Image Into A Button For Your Blog appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

Anyway, I decided that because of budget constraints and personal feelings about buying Valentine’s Day gifts, this year I am going to do something different. I’m calling it 14 Days Of Love. My plan is that starting the first day of February, I will do a small act of kindness to show my husband how much I love him and how much he means to me. I feel that these acts of love will bring us closer together than dropping $50 on something that he probably won’t like anyway. (He is seriously the worst to buy gifts for…) 

So, here is my plan. I would love it if you joined me in this 14 Days of Love event. 

Day one – leave post it notes for my husband to find. I plan on putting on in the dash of his car, one in his lunch box, one on the bathroom mirror… and a few other places that I’m not sure about yet. But I’m going to write at least five for him to find throughout the day. 

Day two – write a hand written letter to him. I actually try to do this every year. I feel like it means so much to see in writing the way someone feels about you. 

Day three – make it a point to compliment my husband for things he does for my family. I often find myself complaining about things he doesn’t do, and I don’t give him credit for all the hard work he DOES do. This is something I would like to make a habit. 

Day four – wake up before he does and make him breakfast. He would LOVE if I did this every day but.. I don’t. But, for one day, I can probably peel the sheets off and get up in time to make him breakfast before work. 

Day five – Pray for him. This is another things I want to make into a habit. I know the power of prayer is so strong, and I know that if I pray for him to do well at work, to be able to balance his family with his job, and for me to be able to over look his flaws and love him more, it will greatly help our marriage. 

Day six – Get ready. I know some of you do this every day but guess what. I don’t. It’s a good day if I take a shower before noon. On this day, I’m going to make it a point to wear nice clothes, do my make up, actually brush my hair, and look decent when he gets home. 

Day seven – Greet him at the door when he gets home from work. So often he gets home from work and I’m busy doing some stupid blogging thing or whatever and I barely even look up to great him. This is another thing I really want to make a habit. 

Day eight – Encourage him to spend time on one of his hobbies. I’m going to tell him it’s okay for him to go fishing 

Day nine – Play his favorite game. We use to have game night all the time when we were first married. Then kids and a job for him came along and it rarely happens. This day, it will happen. 

Day ten – Bring him breakfast in bed. Hopefully he doesn’t die of shock when this happens

Day eleven – Bake cookies for him. Or whatever his favorite treat is. 

Day twelve – Text him during the day just because. 

Day thirteen – Talk with him about the first time you met. Reminisce about your first dates, the way you felt about each other, how you felt butterflies in your stomach, etc.

Day fourteen – Make his favorite dinner. Make a different, earlier dinner for the kids. Arrange a sitter or wait until they are asleep and have a romantic dinner with your husband.

There ya go. That’s my Valentine’s Day plan. I arranged it all in an easy pinnable image (hint hint) so you could refer to it during your 14 Days of Love.

The post 14 Days Of Love appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.

The number five post from the last year was: 

11 of my favorite free fonts

2013 Mutual Theme Bookmarks

How to Home School Your Preschooler

2013 Mutual Theme

10 ways to learn to love running

During this last year, the blog has had 44,776 visits, 35,807 unique visitors, and 84,619 pageviews.

We have  1848 facebook fans, 879 twitter fans, and 1148 pinterest followers. 

We have HUGE hopes for this next year and a lot of good things planed to share with you all. 

I have been SO grateful for this opportunity to blog and share my feelings/ideas/projects with you all. I love that there are people who actually want to read what I have to write. It gives me a little break from an otherwise hard day of child raising/house cleaning/cooking that I so love. Thank you all for your support. 

And anyone who is trying to “make it big” in the blogging world (not that I have by any means) I have one word of advice. Keep trying. Don’t give up. Because people DO want to hear what you have to say. It just might take them a little while to realize that. 

Thank you all for making this dream of mine a reality. 

The post A Year In Review appeared first on A Mouse In My Kitchen.