Molly Piper

Super cute bracelet, right?

My friend Tiffany makes these! She co-operates a wonderful company called Legacy Bracelets. When Felicity died, she offered to make me one to honor the family God had given to me.

At first glance you’re probably thinking, “How does that bracelet represent your family?”

Oh, just wait…

The bracelet actually flips inside-out to display whatever images you select! It’s a portable brag book. Or a portable honorarium. Or maybe both.

You can visit their website and read their FAQs, but the basic concept is:

• You browse the pattern selection and choose the design you want for the outside of the bracelet.
• You submit your photos and/or text you want included to Legacy and give them any special instructions (there are 7 tiles in all).
• They do all the cropping and color treating.
• You get your bracelet shipped to you!

I seriously love mine. If you’re trying to think of a creative, heartfelt Christmas gift, this might be the one. Their order deadline for Christmas is 12/10, so order one SOON!

PS-I have the classic design, the Tiffany.

PPS-They didn’t ask me to blog about them. I just wanted to. That’s kinda how I roll on this blog anyway. And I really love this product (“I love your product, man,” in my best Melissa McCarthy voice).

‘Tis the season for giving, right? Well the folks at Fair Trade Services are giving to the readers of MollyPiper.com!

[image via]

Anyone want to win a copy of the new Sara Groves album Invisible Empires?

Yeah, I thought you might.

I have 10 copies to give away this week!

Here’s how you can win:

Simply “Like” the page for this site on Facebook.

You can visit the page or just click “Like” below!

See how easy that was?

On Friday I’ll pick 10 winners from the people who’ve “liked” and send you a message with your download code!

If you had already “liked” my blog page on Facebook, but don’t want the album download, just give the code to someone who does! Merry Christmas!

I’m very excited about this particular giveaway. I first heard Sara Groves at a concert I went to back in 2008, right in the early days of fighting through depression and PTSD after losing Felicity, our daughter.

As I moved through that very painful stuff, God ended up bringing particular songs into my life that hit me right where I was, right with what I was dealing with. I ended up compiling quite a playlist of these songs and they were a lifeline for me. Not surprisingly, for those of you who know her music, Sara Groves made it onto that list a number of times. I love that she doesn’t bypass really hard things in her lyrics. She even takes on bioethics on this album. Not many people singin’ about that, I imagine.

You can hear for yourself what was on her mind in crafting this new album:

PS-She gives props to Laura Ingalls Wilder in the interview. Remember how we love her???

My favorite songs on the album are “Miracle,” “Open My Hands,” and “Finite.” Any of you want to share your faves?

Thanks so much for reading and supporting this blog. Hope you win!

My husband Abraham started a new blog. You might know that he’s run 22 Words for a long time, but just recently he started a more personal blog where he can be more of a…well…person.

Anyway, he wrote a really funny post about how he’s been trying to manage the incessant potty humor going on between our two oldest boys.

BONUS: There’s a short video, too!

Happy Friday, everyone. Next week I’ll have a fun giveaway, so be sure to check back!

I had no way of knowing that asking a simple question about hand moisturizing would yield such response! Wow, y’all really came through on that one.

WORLD LEADERS! BE ADVISED!…you need some help out of a jam you’re in? Just ask a bunch of women.

(We would at least have lots to say about how they should deal with their dry hands anyway… And who doesn’t need help with that? Come ON!)

It just struck me funny that response came out of the woodwork! And the more I reflected on it, it reminded me of a couple things about people:

• They generally like to be helpful.
• They love to tell their experiences.

Isn’t that what communities do? They help each other and share their stories. Most times, they help each other by sharing their stories.

But seriously… I’m thankful for this little (maybe not so little?) community here. You all wanted to help me with my dry hands. It’s sweet. It really is. Thank you.

I hope you got as much help as I did from those answers. May we all have healthy hands this winter!

Who knows what we’ll help each other with next?

I have horrible dry patches on my hands in the winter. There are a couple isolated spots that get really irritated and sore (probably eczema).

Of course it doesn’t help that I have to wash my hands every time I turn around, changing 2 sets of diapers and taking Morrow to the potty (and then there’s cooking, doing dishes, taking myself to the potty…). You get the picture. My hands are wet all the stinkin’ time.

I’m trying to use rubber gloves while doing dishes to see if that helps at all.

But I’m also considering trying those overnight moisture gloves. Have any of you tried them? Do they work? I think you put some lotion on and then put the gloves on?

I have to be very careful with what lotion I put on my hands, as well. It can’t have any fragrance or dyes. If I use regular lotion on my hands in the winter it burns like crazy!

A friend of mine suggested shea butter for lotion, but I don’t know if that has fragrance. If so, it’s a no-no. (ha! a rhyme!)

Anyone have a good fragrance-free, dye-free lotion for hands they’d recommend?

Also, don’t forget to weigh in on the gloves! Should I try them?

from left: Superman, Mario, Princess Peach, Luigi, Spiderman, Batman

I can’t stop laughing at how portly Morrow/Batman looks in this picture! He’s actually pretty small for his age, so it’s just killin’ me!

As you can see, Orison was ready for action and couldn’t wait to get started conquering trick-or-treating, but Morrow obviously didn’t remember the experience from last year and took a few houses to “get” what was going on.

For instance, after he went to the first house, I said, “Okay! Go get some candy!” to entice him to chase after all those big kids. He holds up his haul (one piece) and says triumphantly, “I already got candy!”

He would’ve been thrilled with one house. But his candy-craving-kid gene was activated very shortly and today as I was putting him down for nap he looked at me all sad and serious-like–”I want to go trick-or-treating again.”

Here’s another pic of our superheroes (and Morrow looking more excited):

The babies spent the evening being fawned over and photographed by Grandmama and Aunt Talitha. Don’t they look so cozy?

I found this on the table this morning.

This past weekend we took the family to central Wisconsin for a few days away. Now that we have a school-aged kiddo, our time away has to coincide with fall breaks and such–still getting used to that.

We left Wednesday night and I drove while everybody slept. I typically do the lion’s share of driving on road trips. I don’t mind it, I can stay awake pretty well, and then I don’t have to be the one turning around every 10 seconds to hand something to a kid in the seat behind me.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful, which was just what we needed. No internet connection, friends. NO INTERNET CONNECTION! (Which I believe is directly responsible for us getting 9+ hours of sleep every night. Glorious!!!)

I found out that Orison’s a kid after my own heart, a true lover of Little House on the Prairie DVDs (which Morrow calls “House on the Fairy”). We watched a good bit of Season 1 together.

Funny about my love for Little House… I thought it was horribly boring as a kid and never watched it. But then after I was married and had Orison, Abraham went back to school full-time (and was working full-time). Needless to say, I had a lot of alone time that year and a half.

Since it was in the days of yore (pre-Netflix and streaming video, dontcha know), I had to busy myself at night with these things called DVDs. A friend of mine owned all the seasons of Little House and convinced me to take the first set.

I had no intention of liking it, but then how can you not shed a tear when the man who can’t speak makes a bell for the church with the help of all the children of Walnut Grove? Or when Pa makes a prosthesis for the girl with the limp? How does that not get you right.there????

Anyway, just thought I’d confess publicly that I’m a Little House junkie. And I’ve turned one of my sons into one, too.

(He’s kind of a sensitive kid, but I have to say both Abraham and I were a little shocked when he started openly weeping and lamenting during Stuart Little when Stuart decided to leave. He also laughed the hardest I’ve ever heard him laugh during the final wrestling scene of Nacho Libre.)

In other news…

-The twins went on their first hayride at the local pumpkin fest thingy.

-We played a lot in the yard because the weather was sublime.

-The kids went crazy in the open cinder block basement at night.

-And did I mention that I slept 9 hours each night?!?!

It was a super good weekend. Hope you all had a good one, too!

Remember a looooong time ago when I posted a tutorial on how to use Google Reader? (Actually, why would you remember that? Dumb question.) Anyway, I posted about it a long time ago and you can read it if you want.

I still use Google Reader for subscribing to blogs, but just recently discovered something nifty about it!

I was scrolling through my “All Items” view, and Abraham pipes up, “Hey, did you know if you hit “J” it’ll take you down to the next post?”

I tried it, and wow are my scrolling fingers ever-so-glad I did!

Of course you’ll still scroll through a post you actually want to read but if you see the title and it doesn’t interest you???

Just “J” it on your keyboard and you’re onto the next!

[flickr photo via photosteve101]

And I’ll throw in one bonus tip for you, just because I like you:

If you accidentally pass one up and go, “Doh! I actually wanted to see that one!”, no worries! Just “K” it on the keyboard and you’ll go back to the previous entry in your feed!

Cool, huh?

Do you have any Google hacks I/we should know about? Do tell!

A friend tweeted about this SNL skit and so I watched it. It has Melissa McCarthy in it. ‘Nuf said.