Five On Friday

1. I spent last weekend in a place I’d never been with people I’d never met, and it was the most amazing weekend ever. Specifically, Tybee Island, GA with a group of adoptive mamas. Not just any adoptive moms, but moms whose kiddos are all at the same orphanage as our daughter! At least if all of our kids get to have fun together we should too right?! One of the girls Blogged about our weekend and did far better describing it than I could possibly do!

2. Adoption Update- For a while now we’ve had a pretty good idea of who our daughter is going to be. Recently we got news that even though it’s still completely “unofficial”, that it’s actually happening! It’s amazing how much you can love a child you’ve never even met. This week I asked if we could send her our family picture and I got an amazing response saying that we CAN send it, but even better if we’d like to send her a baby doll that she’d love it! Yes… we get to send her her VERY first baby doll. Probably the first thing that she will ever own! You can bet this doll is going to be hugged and prayed over before it goes to Haiti to be in her arms!

3. My sis blogged about our weekend in Minnesota a few weeks ago. Makes me mis my nephews. Too much. Dang… first I talk about missing our daughter, now missing my nephews.

4. Sponsored Posts. I know they are the everyone’s least favorite posts, and aren’t always engaging and inspiring. Here’s the thing…. you pay for magazines, books, and newspapers. You listen to ads on Pandora and watch them on YouTube and Hulu. Blogs are TOTALLY free content and all you need to do is read an occasional sponsored post or view pesky sidebar ads. Blogging is not free. I pay a lot of money for web hosting, technical support, and equipment. I spend a lot of time writing posts. The least I can hope is that my readers won’t leave over an occasional sponsored post right?? Anyways, I’ve also been inspired recently to try EXTRA hard to only write sponsored posts if they are relevant. My friend Amber summed it up perfectly when she said:

1.  products I would buy in real life
2.  fit DIY projects that were on our “to do” list
3.  budget friendly if I were paying out of pocket.

On that note just know that I am striving to only post sponsored posts if it REALLY makes sense (or pays a crap TON of money meaning I could ditch sponsored posts for a while afterwards). You also WILL see a few more sponsored posts in the coming weeks that I committed to a long time ago. But Know this…. I have REALLY upped my expectations on sponsored posts recently. Ok. Back to the fun stuff.

5. International Delight Caramel Macchiato. Words are not even needed, but let me try. This stuff is amazing. So good. Better than any coffee shop macchiato at a fraction of the price. $3.99 a carton vs. $3.99 a cup. I highly recommend you try it.

So there it is, my Five on Friday. How about you, what’s your morning go to drink? Your favorite coffee shop splurge?