Welcome back to another week of our Summer Spotlight series!
This week it’s my turn to shine the spotlight on one of my favorite bloggers. I can’t wait to show you all the awesome Jenny from The Melrose Family has to offer!
The Summer Spotlight is a collaborative effort to showcase great ideas from a different talented blogger each Friday throughout the summer months. Follow my co-hosts and I online to see the great ideas we share year-round:
Amanda of Dwelling in Happiness
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Carrie of Kenarry: Ideas for the Home
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Courtney of Crafts By Courtney
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Ashley of 3 Little Greenwoods
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Kristi of Making It In the Mountains
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Katie of View from the Fridge
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Hello everyone! I’m Carrie from Kenarry: Ideas for the Home and today I’m excited to share one of my favorite bloggers with you — Jenny from The Melrose Family. If you’re already familiar with her, you might be thinking “Hey, wait a minute! I thought Jenny’s blog was called The NY Melrose Family?!” While Jenny IS a born and bred New Yorker through and through, she and her family moved to North Carolina earlier this summer. With a fresh start for her family, Jenny also thought it was time for a fresh start for the blog. She dropped the “NY” from her name and recently launched a new and improved blog design to better showcase her crafts, delicious recipes, party planning ideas and her passion for essential oils. She also shares useful tips and tricks for parenting, travel and cleaning.
My first encounter with Jenny actually had nothing to do with her great ideas for the home, but rather her expertise with social media. I was just starting our blog and kept hearing how I needed to get involved with Google+, especially for the search engine optimization benefits. I quickly discovered Jenny is THE go-to person when it comes to learning the ins/outs of Google+. Jenny has an entire series of helpful video tutorials which explain why you should be on Google+, how to maximize your posts, etiquette and benefits of sharing others posts and so much more. I watched each of the videos eagerly to soak up all of her valuable insights (while I was folding laundry, I might add!) At that point, Jenny was approaching 200,000 followers on Google+. While I thought that was impressive at the time, today she has over HALF A MILLION followers on Google+! What most impressed me about Jenny though, was how friendly, approachable and quick she was to respond whenever I reached out to her with my blogging questions.
As I’ve gotten to know Jenny through her blog, I’ve come to appreciate her heart for inspiring others and especially her love for her husband and two young girls. Jenny recently “retired” from teaching to live out her dream of focusing on her family while building her business. I just love how both her focuses have the same title: The Melrose Family. Jenny sums it up best in a recent post called Why Moms Need to Dream:
“Whether you are a working mom that does the 9-5 or a stay at home mom that wrangles multiple kiddos all day long, do you get the feeling ever so often like there’s something missing? Do not get me wrong, my girls are my world and I would do everything in my power for them, but is there a piece of you that wonders where ‘you’ went. Their world becomes yours the second that you give birth and hold those tiny little fingers in your hand, but you can lose yourself in that world and this is why moms need to dream.”
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the amazing recipes, crafts and other inspiring ideas Jenny has been dreaming up on her blog. As always, if you like any of the ideas we’re casting the spotlight on today and want to save them for later, please click through and pin or share them directly from The Melrose Family.
Great Ideas from The Melrose Family
If you’ve got a sweet tooth, you’ll want to start by checking out some of the amazing desserts on The Melrose Family. These Lime Cheesecake Shooters are a particularly popular recipe. I’m sure you can see why.
You can also tell Jenny’s recently moved to a hot southern state since many of her recipes lately have been delicious popsicle ideas, like Peanut Butter Banana Pops, Strawberry Shortcake Ice Pops and these Watermelon and Blueberry Popsicles:
This past year, Jenny has shared a lot about how she’s been preparing healthier meals for her family and exercising more. One of her favorite healthy treats is this recipe for Cranberry and Pomegranate Energy Balls, which are packed with good for you ingredients like flax seed.
Rather than always indulging in sweets when she needs a special treat, Jenny has started to make sugar scrubs that remind her of food like this Orange Creamsicle Sugar Scrub.
On The Melrose Family, you’ll also see some of the cutest, most clever ideas Jenny has when it comes to throwing parties for her daughters. One of the ideas I love is this Art Party for a kid’s birthday, with “painter’s popcorn” and a special craft.
With two boys of my own, I never really get to make anything fun and girly. I guess that’s why my eyes were drawn to the bright pink Dip Dyed Photo Back Drop Jenny created for her daughter’s baptism. Can you believe she used old khaki pants?!
Jenny also shares great tips for maintaining your home including things you don’t normally think of that need cleaning like How to Clean a Front Load Washer and How to Clean a Shower Head.
This gives you just a little taste of the great ideas and home tips you’ll find over at The Melrose Family. For more great ideas like these, you can follow Jenny at The Melrose Family and on social media:
Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest / Google+ / Instagram
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If you enjoyed this feature about Jenny from The Melrose Family, you may want to check out the other bloggers we’ve featured in the Summer Spotlight. You can also visit our Summer Spotlight Pinterest board to view all the great ideas we’ve shared in this series.
Visit Ashley @ 3 Little Greenwoods’s profile on Pinterest.
I link up with these fun parties!
Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and/or is a sponsored post. I may receive compensation in the form of monetary compensation or product compensation in exchange for my review. I take pride in reviewing only products that fit my brand and will be beneficial to my readers. And while this post is sponsored or contains affiliate links, all the opinions are my own. Why do I do this? It will help me keep this DIY’ing Mama crafting for another day! For more on my disclosure policy click here.
Thanks so much Ashley! I appreciate you ladies taking the time to do this series and I’m humbled to be a part of it.