Thirty One Newsletter

Be the person you want to be! Here at Thirty-One we are all about Celebrating, Encouraging and Rewarding people. I invite you to browse through our exciting site to learn how YOU can create fun and fashion for yourself and your family. Also you will find out how you can earn FREE Thirty-One products and half price products, along with our great monthly specials.
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like more information any of our products.
Celebrate / Encourage / Reward

Shannon Porter
Phone: 623-451-2305
Email: Shann@DreamTheArt.com
Website: www.mythirtyone.com/ShannonPorter



Healthy Lunches are "In the Bag"

With the kids back to school, many Moms are finding themselves packing daily lunches again. Lunches from home can be healthier and less expensive than cafeteria food, and many kids prefer packing to save time at school. Third-grader Jacouri (son of a Thirty-One home office employee) states that while many of his friends buy their lunch, he likes packing because he doesn’t have to wait in line, and he doesn’t like the cafeteria food.
“My mom packs the stuff she knows I like,” Jacouri said. “I like my sandwiches grilled because it tastes so good.”
Choosing foods that kids will eat may require you to think “outside the paper lunch bag” for tasty alternatives to the standard peanut butter and jelly. This may mean including foods that need a little “TLC” in terms of temperature. Keeping cold foods cold and warm foods warm is one way to appeal to even the pickiest eater!
Many times kids resist certain items if they’re not kept at the appropriate temperature. And not only can a warm cheese stick or yogurt be unappetizing, certain foods can be unsafe if not kept cold. According to a USDA Article, harmful bacteria can multiply rapidly when cold foods are not kept cold. In fact, they recommend that food not be kept at room temperature for more than two hours. The best way to ensure safe temperatures is to pack foods in an insulated bag that includes an ice source such as a re-freezable gel pack or ice cubes sealed in a plastic bag.
Likewise, hot foods can be kept in an insulated bag to preserve their temperature. Soups and hot sandwiches can be kept warm for quite a while when packaged correctly.
With the selection of Thermal Totes available from Thirty-One, Jacouri and his mom are sure to find one that will be perfect for those grilled sandwiches! That’s good news for Jacouri – he can have his grilled sandwich along with the other stuff he likes, and his mom can rest assured that he’s eating a healthy sandwich!
As for Jacouri’s other request for lunches, we may not be able to help with those….
“I can be greedy,” he shared. “All I want is the sugary stuff!”

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You name it; these durable totes will help you do it. Organization on the go for even the busiest people! Take our totes along with you to holiday parties, sports outings, church functions, or even on year end vacations.

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New Job

Ok I know most of you probably already know about this... but I have signed on to become a Thirty One consultant. Thirty one is a company that sells purses, bags, home organizers and such. They have great products, that can be personalized. You can check out my web site by clicking here. With the upcoming holidays if anyone is interested in hosting a party or placing an order, let me know. I would love to help out.
Thanks so much!!

I will be posting the October and November specials her later today too, so make sure you check back soon!

Ramblings, Park days and Teddy Bears

Sorry for the delay in posting. Seems like time has gone by so fast this last month or so... You know I say that, but time seems to have sped up exponentially since we had kids. It's always fun to go back and look at the beginning of this blog. I still cannot believe we have had this thing for 4 years now. Alexa was the same age then that Erika is now. It still amazes me to look at the photos. I could swear those early pictures were Erika and vice versa... they look so much alike.
As I was looking through and reading some of our early posts, it occurred to me that we have posted a lot of the things that go on here in the Porter house, mostly good. There have been a few rare glimpses into the bad or crabby, as the case may be. :) It made me think about how things *really* are here in our house. Yes we have lots of good times, but there are hard times too. We have had our share of sadness, anger, frustration, loss and any other number of adjectives along those lines. We have experienced financial difficulty, lost jobs, broken bones and hospital stays.
Through it all there have been two things that have been constant through out. The first being God. We never could have made this far with out our faith in God. He has been gracious, and merciful all these years. Mike and I do realize that God has protected us even during our hard times.
The other consistent has been our family. We are EXTREMELY grateful to be so blessed with great parents. We both have heard stories of people that do not get along with one side or the other of their families. We do not have that problem. Both of our parents have gone out of their way to help us out when they could (and sometimes made things work even when all appeared lost). I just wanted to take this opportunity to say "THANK YOU!" We could not have gotten this far with out some help, you all mean the world to us!
Not sure where all this is coming from, I guess I have been thinking a lot, and just really wanted to get all my thoughts out.

Ok, sorry for the rambling beginning, now on to the good stuff... PICTURES!
We have has some fun days with our home-school group, but it was fun to watch the kids do PE. They have had to do push ups and run relays... it's pretty fun to watch.

I mentioned in the last post that Tim had some loose teeth. He finally lost one just this week. He was so excited that the tooth fairy came and left him a whole dollar under his pillow. :) He still has one more loose in the front, should be any day now for it to come out as well.

Erika is now officially 11 months old. I cannot believe that in one more month she will be a year old. It really does not seem like that much time has passed. She is still cruising the furniture, but loves to grab hands and walk all over the place. She finally has some top teeth in as well. She is now in the mimicking stage. She loves to watch her bother and sister and try to do the things they do. It cracks me up about the bear. every time I try and get a picture of her with the bear she would put her feet up (see what I mean about mimicking... LOL). She really is such a good baby though, for the most part she is pretty content and she is just generally a happy child. We are so blessed.

Anyway that is all for now. I will leave off with a fun pic of Lex hamming it up for the camera.

Thanks for reading, and take care!

Me

Ok this is for everyone who gets mad at me for not posting pics of myself. I cut my hair yesterday and wanted to show off the new style. Here ya go!

I will have more to post later this week, but wanted to get this one up. Thanks for stopping by!

Random stuff

Well things are good here. We started school this week, officially we are now homeschooling. :) Our first week went well. The kids seem to be picking things up well, and we actually managed to keep to a decent schedule this week. So all in all it was a good and productive week. We had our first home-school group meeting on Friday too. Mike was off and so we all went to the park and met a bunch of other homeschooling families. It was fun, the kids played and then Mike and some of the older kids helped the younger ones to set off some model rockets. It was pretty cool.

Well, not much else going on this week, although we did manage to make it to an indoor play area to let the kids get some energy out. This was the first time Erika was mobile enough to go exploring. She loved it.

Because it has been warm still we have been eating a ton of Popsicles. Erika has taken to licking things now to see if she likes it. Here she is deciding on the Popsicle I am trying to give her. I love her expression. LOL

Today we just took it easy. We decided to make something different for lunch... so we made hot-dog octopuses. We got the idea from some friends. The kids had fun putting them together. They came out cute and the kids even ate them up too.

Anyway, that is about all for now. For a really cute picture of Erika you can check out my other blog here.

Thanks for stopping by and take care.