by Miss June 2017, Renee Birchfield

I am sad that this is the last time I will be sharing with you during my time as Blogger of the Month. I have enjoyed being Mrs. June! Today I am going to share some of my favorite posts. I do talk all about food so it will be a pretty recipe heavy, but I think you will enjoy it!

I do a lot of healthy recipes that follow a diet plan called the Trim Healthy Mama plan and really it is a lifestyle change not a diet. I and so many others have found easy success with it and I love sharing new recipes with followers. Healthy does not have to mean lacking in anything especially flavor!

Sugar-Free Strawberry Cheesecake is one of my favorite recipes. No one would know that it isn’t bad for you. If you really wanted to you could eat a slice for breakfast and have no guilt, not speaking from experience of course 😉

Dinner for Two Stuffed Chicken Breast and Green Beans I am proud of this recipe I didn’t have any source of inspiration except for what I wanted to eat. It turned out great on the first try too!  It is the perfect weeknight quick dinner for two.

10 Spices Every Kitchen Needs My top ten lists of spices you should have. I love giving kitchen tips on the blog too.  This was one of my more popular posts on Pinterest.

Grilled Veggies Perfect for summer. This couldn’t be a simpler process and they turn out great every time!

I have had so much fun hanging out this month and sharing with all you lovely ladies! I hope you have enjoyed too.  

Miss June 2017, Renee Birchfield

As a teacher my days are always a little different, but now that it is summer a typical day is usually much more relaxing. I am now watching a 4-year-old, we’ll call him T, four days a week and he keeps every day exciting. Here are some pictures of how our day unfolds.

After getting Hubby off to work I take care of the animals and head off to T’s house. We start our morning playing with trains, train tracks, bow and arrows, cars, books and whatever else he can drag out of his playroom.

This was a favorite this week

Then I try to have some learning activities. Right now we are learning to recognize letters and to match them.

Followed by some fun arts and crafts.  This week we were talking about tractors, one of his favorites, so we were making

Some days we go to the library for story time and shows. After sitting still in the library for half an hour we head over to the park so he can run and get some (lots) of his energy out.

When we get back it’s time for lunch. Which is a little break for Mrs. Renee when we watch TV and chill.

We spent a lot of time going on walks. Which really means I walk behind him as he rides his “four-wheeler” all around the neighborhood. At least I am getting more exercise haha.  

After he is played out and it’s about 1:30 he gets to go take a nap. Then I read chapters and work on assignments for class.

After I get home I normally have some animals who are feeling neglected and need attention. Tesla shows this by laying on my feet so I can’t go anywhere.  

I work on more school work, pick up the house, and start dinner before Hubby gets home from work. After dinner we like to relax and watch Netflix or in the office, him playing games, me getting blog stuff finished.

Chester was tired of me not paying attention to him so he sat on my book and notebook while I was writing.

Summers are a fun break from the school year for me since I get to work one on one with one of my favorite kiddos. What do you do on these summer days?

by Miss June 2017, Renee Birchfield

I think that it is only fitting that I get an N’SYNC song while I am blogger of the month. I’m a 90s baby and of course love boy bands. There was never a contest for me N’SYNC always beat the Backstreet Boys. I mean look at them, they are so cute!  It is also my birthday month and Bye Bye Bye is perfect as I say bye to being 24 and moving on up to 25!

It’s funny how those ‘old’ ages don’t seem to be that old the closer you get to them. When I was a kid and in love with Lance from N’SYNC I was sure that 25 was like an old lady! Now though I’m still not sure it should count as an adult haha!

Some things have changed over the year and some have stayed the same. Let’s take a short look at the year.

We are still living in the same house. That may change in a year or so who knows. We did upgrade our carpet floors now we have nice wood floors. After some getting used to they are awesome. Maybe I am in the adult mind when I’m excited about new floors. Ha!

My blog hit new highs and reached more people than I could have ever hoped. I have had a few of those great emails saying that I inspired someone to start a new diet or that a recipe was their kids new favorite. If Spoons Could Talk has been more successful in many ways than my other blog ever dreamed of being.

We did lose my Grandpa on Easter. That is still hard to adjust too. That is one of the biggest things that has changed while I was 24. My grandma died when I was about 8 so life without her wasn’t such an adjustment for me. But Grandpa has been there for everything and since we moved to Conway I saw him most of the times I went home, so now knowing I can’t go see him is hard to get used to.

My little family is still Hubby, me, Tesla the dog and Chester the cat. I dred the day one of the fur babies isn’t in my life.

Somewhere around February, I decided it was time I go back to school. After almost 3 years of subbing, I was ready to have my own classroom. Since then I have studied for the first time in 3 years and took 2 standardized tests over content I haven’t seen in closer to 8 years. I passed the test better than I had imagined and got accepted into Grad school and the MAT program.  Within two years I will have my own class. Who would have thought my mom was right when she told everyone I would be a teacher when I was a kid. This is the most exciting and nerve-wracking thing that my 24th year held.

This year has been a year where doors have opened and dreams have begun to come to life. It has been great and while I don’t quite want to tell it bye I can’t wait to see what 25 has in store!

How do you feel about birthdays passing by?

 

Hi, ladies! I am so honored to be blogger of the month! I feel fancy and the need to make a sash to wear all month. I want to start by sharing a little about myself. I am a born and raised Arkansasan from Springdale now in Conway. I went to the University of Arkansas to study Food Science and was one of the first to graduate with a Food and Culinary Science degree. I am now going back to school to get my masters in teaching. I am a Harry Potter nerd, and really a nerd in general. I love Chinese food. I love just chilling and hanging out with my husband. Amazingly I have been blogging for three years next month, and I am so glad I started!

Many of you know I started out at Married and Hungry where I blogged about marriage and food. I started blogging because life was changing. I was getting married and moving for the first time ever 3 hours away from home and thought it would be a way to keep me connected to family and to find new friends. Luckily I found ARWB and the amazing community and didn’t feel so alone.

I started Married and Hungry because the whole time I was engaged and planning my wedding I couldn’t find resources for new wives who just didn’t want to mess it up. We were both fresh graduates and still kids and there weren’t blogs with tips, ideas, or thoughts on what to expect. So I decided I would be that place to share some marriage tips as I figured things out and if nothing else a place where new wives could come and know they weren’t alone in the tricky moments.

I blogged there for about a year and a half. I really enjoyed many of the posts that I did there but as I wrote more I started to feel like I wasn’t being authentic enough and I wasn’t ready to put concrete life examples for the world to see. So I switched to what I loved talking about the most, food. So in February of 2016 If Spoons Could Talk was born. This time I knew more about what I was doing and got it started better and made a site that I am so proud of. In a matter of months, it was doing better than Married and Hungry did the whole time it was up. I still love this site and talking about all things food.

Sadly, I have gotten more and more relaxed as far as posting because life has changed a lot for me and I can’t do all the things all the time. I started out with three days a week posting and stuck with it for a long time. Over the summer months, I got to a point where food was the very last thing I wanted to think about so I took a couple weeks off then went to twice a week. Over the last few months, I have been happy to get one post a week out. I have decided to go back to school and get my master of teaching so I can stop subbing and be a full-time teacher. But with food being one of my true loves I will never let If Spoons Could Talk fall off to the side.

Be sure to stop by this month as I get to share more with you. Don’t forget to leave me a comment and say hi! You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest as If Spoons Could Talk and on Twitter as Spoons Could Talk.  And of course over at If Spoons Could Talk.

By Monika Rued, Miss May 2017

When Arkansas Women Bloggers asked me to be Miss May 2017, I was super stoked. And when I saw the theme is “Hangin’ Tough,” I thought it must be fate because this has been on my mind for some time now.

I’m a rock climber and immediately thought I could write about climbing and pushing through fear. I’d reluctantly admit that I’ve wept softly both during and after climbs as the adrenaline coursed through my body; that the fear of falling is much less than the fear of failing for me. I was going to be self-deprecating and relatable. I planned to make rock solid (see what I did there?) analogies about life, conquering fear, and finding your “climbing” partners you trust to help “get through this thing called life.”

 

I was going to show you this picture of me climbing a crazy hard 75-foot route, “Pepsi Challenge,” at Mount Magazine State Park; a route that is both mentally and physically challenging. OK, I’m still sharing this picture. Just give it to me y’all.

But, then I kept hearing this little voice in my head that wasn’t what I should share with this opportunity. That maybe I should dive deeper and share something more personal and outside of my comfort zone. I don’t know about you all but I hate it when that happens! I had a plan; a good plan that would be easy breezy for me to write. But instead, after prayer and asking several times, “Are you sure God? Really sure?” I’m going down and a different path.

Let’s think about this a minute. Answer these questions: What does a woman who “hangs tough” look like? What does she sound like? And most important, what does she act like?  Do you see yourself? We all know steel magnolias in the South. Women who get things done. Women who make herding cats daily look easy. Women who have Tim Gunn moments frequently and “make it work.” Women who seem to rally at all the right times.

My mother is one of these women. Someone you want in your corner. Someone who makes everything better. Someone who invited family to live with us when they needed a safe place to fall. Someone who—before my stepfather passed away—I had only seen cry a handful of times. She was always able to hide it from us, so we wouldn’t be burdened, afraid, or feel unsafe. If anyone was able to “hang tough” it was my mother.

Photo used with permission from Wren Bird Arts. 

Me on the other hand? Not so much when it comes to sucking it up. My tears will not be defeated! And I’m an ugly crier; you can tell I’ve been crying long after the tears have dried up. I found those hankies on Etsy and need that full pack. (Link’s in photo if you do too.) I’m a ginger and what starts as a pink rash spreading up my neck to my face and ears, ends up as red splotches all over my face for a good 30 minutes. It’s embarrassing. I actually feel disappointed in myself for not being able to control my emotions, a lack of “emotional intelligence.”

Grace is a funny thing. We seem to wrap everyone else in it but ourselves. I’m not sure what hangin’ tough looks like in the real world anymore. Maybe it’s doing the best you can in the moment. Maybe it’s cutting yourself some slack and letting go of guilt and regret. Maybe it’s knowing that if you’re granted a second chance with tomorrow, you have a chance to be better. Maybe it’s just finishing putting on your mascara after you poke yourself in the eye with the wand! Maybe it’s all of these things.