Nerd-Bucket

Valentine Love Letters Decoration

2012-01-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

The last week has been a lot of fun to find little love notes randomly throughout the day in our own envelope on this banner that I made. A few weeks ago I began sketching out this idea. Originally I was going to make it into an advent calendar, but my sister had a great idea to turn it into little pockets to keep love notes in. So I sketched it out and she did color tests and we decided on this! Man alive, I love that sister of mine and how fun it is to create stuff with her. Someday we'll live by each other again, but it's wonderful to be able to create together via the internet. :)

I have enough materials to custom make 3 more for anyone that would like to purchase it. I posted it on my etsy shop at: http://www.etsy.com/listing/91563034/owl-valentine-love-notes-banner

So here's the full view...

...and a close up on those two cute little love birds :)

This is the heart pocket that holds the papers to write on and the little red envelope holds our small pencils.

I LOVE the new embroidery machine I got for Christmas. It was really fun embroidering all our names and little designs on it and writing "Be Mine" with it. Those little Christmas tree advent calendars took about 3-4 hours just to embroider the numbers below the pockets. Now it's a cinch.

Another Needle Book (For My Little Sis)...

2012-01-05T04:24:00.000-08:00

I decided to make another needle book especially for my sister. She loves owls and hedgehogs and the colors green, turqoise, browns, oranges, etc. I just sent it yesterday so she should be able to start using it in a few days. :)

More Needle Books and Another Advent Calendar

2012-01-01T14:14:00.000-08:00

Okay so that was pretty fun making the little birdies hugging needle book and I decided I wanted to make a bunch more. I have no idea why I made so many. And I've sketched a few more ideas to make more. They are fun and fairly fast. It just feels good to finish something instead of it taking a month (or a few years... ahem... my cross-stitch). I really love working with felt. It's so fun and bright and easy. Anyway, here's a bunch more little needle books I made this last weekend.

And here's the side view. Look at all that fun color?!

Princess and the Pea Needle Book. I used some of my mom's old Victorian trim she gave me. :)

Closeup of the pea. :) So I may just keep this one and give the rest away. I have to keep this one because of a funny story between Seth and I. Here goes... a few years ago while living in LA Seth was teasing me about being such a princess about something. I decided to make a joke of it. Without him knowing just before bed I put a pea under our mattress on my side. When we got into bed I tossed and turned and pretended like I just couldn't get comfortable to the point of driving him crazy. Finally I stopped and said, "It feels like there's something jabbing into my back. I just can't fall asleep. Hold on... I'll check..." then I lifted up my mattress edge and pulled out the pea and said with relief, "OH! That's why! A princess can't sleep on a pea." He looked shocked and then laughed so hard at me. I felt very clever of course, well, because I was. :)

Cherry Blossoms Needle Book

Little Red Riding Hood Needle Book (This one is Seth's fav)

Froggy and Mushrooms Needle Book

Night Owl Needle Book

Leafy Branch Needle Book

... soooo which one is your favorite?

You never know- it may just end up in the mail on it's way to your house. :)

Now onto the not-so-quick project. I still can't figure out why I could make that other little advent calendar for the missionaries in our branch on a lazy Saturday and this calendar for Seth's sister and her family took me all month. It was slow and go for some reason. I think I must have put a lot more time and thought into each little pocket. I made it go to 31 instead of 25 because they have a daughter who's bday is on the 31st.

Close up of the top half.

Close up of the bottom half. It was fun to invent so many more little pockets since it went all the way to 31. I also decided not to make some of the pockets I had made for the missionaries.

This was the little bear on a stick that goes from pocket to pocket as the month wears on. I made a bear because I'm cheesy and their last name is Bair. Get it? I know, I'm a nerd. :)

The very good news is that my hubby bought me an embroidery machine for Christmas so I don't have to spend 4-6 hours hand embroidering all those numbers if I ever want to make another again! Now I could even start making my Halloween calendars again and selling them. At least that's the plan. Yipee!

A Few New Things (plus an update on an old thing)

2011-12-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

I'm always losing my needles as I work on my different little projects and my family is always finding them in not very fun ways, so I made this little book out of felt to hold them for me. :) I liked the book so much I've decided to make another one and send this one on to a friend for Christmas.

I went to a little craft day with some friends and made these two framed pictures. Everyone else made calendars, but I decided to turn mine into a weekly menu (which is now hanging in my kitchen) and a conducting help for Young Women's on Sundays. You put the permanent information under the glass and write on top of it with dry erase markers. Super cute and easy. It's always fun to mess around with pretty papers and actually finish something in less than 20 minutes.

I have a niece staying with me while her momma is sick and she wanted me to take pictures of the fun snow flakes we made and put it on my blog here. I learned how to make them a few years ago and every year have made a few more and laminated them to keep well and add to the collection. We have about 40 of them now. Someday I'd love to have a couple hundred, but that's a lot of laminating and I can't get myself to use more than 10 sheets on snowflakes every year. :) They are really fun to make and super addicting. We have enough of a collection to hang from our family room ceiling. :) For instructions on how you can look back at my blog where I wrote about it here.

And last of all: My yearly update on my cross stitch. :) Remember this sucker? This is such a monster. I wrote about it here. It may not look like a lot of progress, but when you have to make 625 per inch and the entire project is 18" by 22" it's takes a long time to make a noticeable difference. I'm still working on it in the evenings for an hour or two every night while catching up on shows with Seth or him reading to me. I'm guessing it will be done by next Christmas. I'm itching to start a new cross stitch pattern. I'm getting pretty sick of oranges, browns, yellows, and reds. I have 8 more Scott Gustafson patterns waiting for me to make. I'll probably go blind before I finish them all when they take me 3 years each. I know, I'm crazy. It gives me something to do. I just don't like sitting still. It feels unproductive. Probably I have adhd or something. haha

Here is what it looks like now:

Here is what it looked like last Jan:

(seeing them side by side

helps to see progress)

Here's a close up.

And here is an even more close up. :) My cell phone camera doesn't take the best pictures, but you get the idea of how tiny the little stitches are.

Matter Unorganized :)

2011-11-29T06:44:00.001-08:00

Our whole family likes to be artsy-fartsy and a lot of the time we spend together is artsy type stuff.:) My husband is much more professionally artsy-fartsy than I am, but I still find much joy in it even if I'm not a professional artist. :) I just put some of his "lunch bag" art work up on our family blog here. Anyway, few things give me greater pleasure than to create something out of a mess. :) I really relate to the words of this talk by Pres. Uchtdorf: "Happiness, Your Heritage". I love to look at an empty canvas or a pile of fabric and wonder what life is inside of it and will emerge as I play with it. I have bags of felt scraps and on Saturday I threw them all over my table and stared at them wondering what they would turn into and at the end of the day I had this...

My sister and I made these huge calendars a few years ago to give as Christmas presents to family and I realized I had enough stuff to make a small one. It's about a 1/3 of the size. I looked at the one that I made a few years ago for reference, but decided to make a bunch of new pockets. It was so fun to see all my scraps before me and start cutting and gluing and creating each individual pocket.

This particular calendar I made for the missionaries serving in our area. My husband is always making fun of me for wanting to be such a mom to them. I know they are adults, but they are still 19-21 year old boys, who are away from family, learning about themselves and the world, and trying to share what they love most with others- the message of Christ. So maybe I'm a dork, but I made this for them. I put little slips of paper in each pocket with assignments for them to do each day (i.e. make the ugliest Christmas ornament they can out of paper, read a certain section in the scriptures, write letters to their family, do something secret and nice for their companion, call us on Penelope's birthday and sing "Happy Birthday", drink hot cocoa, build a snowman -on P. day of course :), etc.) A lot of families have these types of traditions in this season. I just thought that this time of year could be a hard time to be away from family. I wanted to help them stay focused on their work, but know that they are loved as well.

If you look closely you can see that I made two penguins (like the other calendars), but they have name badges- just like the missionaries. haha

The 13th has an angel on it because that's Pip's birthday. We actually had the elders over for Thanksgiving dinner and we had a surprise from one of the elders. He had been in contact with the other elder's family secretly and they had sent a letter from them for us to read aloud at the table. The letter was in a card that had three beautiful little angels on the front of it with each angel representing one of our girls and they were named. The mom had written "your angels"- so that's why I put an angel pocket for Pip's bday. :) The parents thanked us for reaching out to their son and his companion and told us it gave them comfort to know they would be eating a good meal even though they weren't together. Then the mom quoted lines that her son had written about our family in her letter. He had described each one of us individually and why he loves us. I bawled, of course. :) Between that, having Seth's sister and her family over, and our buddies the Falconbridges visiting us for Thanksgiving it was one of the most special Thanksgivings that I can remember.

Instead of Santa on the 25th like my other calendars I put the baby Jesus (and Santa on the 24th) :). I didn't have my sister's embroidery machine so I hand stitched all the numbers. I added extra touches too like the blanket stitch around the tree, trunk, and star. This little calendar turned out so sweet and was so fun to make. I've been scared to made another one for a while because I got really burnt out that year I made Christmas calendars and all those Halloween calendars and sold them. It is much more fun to make them as gifts. :) It makes me much more happy than making a few extra bucks.

Just for fun here's a picture I took on Thanksgiving of the two elders. We are thankful for their service and sacrifice. For those of you who may read this and not know- when a someone chooses to go on a mission they don't get paid for it. In fact, they pay for the cost of the mission themselves. They put a few years of college (and dating- haha) on hold to go out and serve. How could you not love someone willing to do that? :) Whatever all our differences and beliefs are it is a respectable thing to see anyone follow their heart and convictions like that.

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and do things that bring you joy and remind you of why this time of year is so special and fills your heart. :) Merry Christmas!

Halloween Sewing...

2011-11-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

Here's this year's costumes. :)

I love that Penelope is the pretty little princess between two scary big sisters. Her pose cracks me up. Her costume was the most time consuming this year. Kendyl wanted to be a scary ghost. It had to be "real looking"- so I made layers and layers of sheer fabric and finished all the edges to with a lettuce edge so it would ripple.

Makenzie wanted to be a dead fairy. I just used a fairy dress of mine and altered it a bit. It was actually very easy and fast- about 5 minutes at a machine. We put a battery pack of led lights in her hair do, add wings, dead looking makeup, typical Makenzie attitude and wah lah - we had ourselves a dead fairy.

Wish I could claim I sewed this. Truth is... last year while I was planning out an Edward Scissorhands costume and looking up prices for material, buckles, etc. online I came across this costume. It was 50% off because it was during December I'm guessing. So here it is, a costume that looks just like the movie and for about $80 cheaper than all the supplies would have been to buy it before sewing it. :)

I did help with the make up though. :) Oh my Seth Scissorhands. He makes Halloween... be Halloween.

George and the Birds

2011-10-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

Penelope and Seth named this one "George and the Birds". :) This has many of the same elements as the previous painting, I just focused on the deer more because I liked him so much. I gave this to my dear friend who took care of my kids while I traveled to Boise for my brother's wedding.

It's All About Rapunzel Around Here

2011-09-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

As you can see from my previous post our world revolves around Rapunzel (at least for our youngest it does). Sewing her costume, thinking about her bday party that she'll have in December, and Penelope picking that movie to watch almost everyday puts it in my brain too. I happen to love the colors and design of the movie myself. I don't mind that she picks it to be honest. When I saw it in the theater I went home and wanted to start painting my walls and furniture in that same flat, folk style. I find myself jumping from hobby to hobby and interest to interest all day long. I wake up so excited to work on a million different projects or ideas and can't wait to finish a few responsible type things in the house just so I can steal some time to bake or create things. I have too many interests to ever live even close to a balanced life. If I could just love one or two things and focus on those hobbies I'm sure I would become most excellent, but as it is, I love EVERYTHING~ :) So I'm doomed to be ok or pretty good at a lot of things and still feel like I never have enough time.

Well just for my little Penelope I made this painting this morning while she sat on my lap and made her own painting. It's 8"x10" and is in the style of the Rapunzel movie. How I'd love to be brave enough to make large scale paintings all around my world. It would be so fun. Then when I got sick of them, I could just paint a wash over them and make more. Maybe someday, for now little is fun and do-able. I feel like I get something done when I paint small scale.

... and the real masterpiece

...................Pippy's painting!

And the artist herself.... in her red and gold shoes and snow hat in perfectly nice weather.....

And her sweet neighborhood friends.

My Little Princess

2011-09-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

Halloween is around the corner. For month's my little Pip has been begging for me to make her a "Tangled dress" as she calls it. She hardly knows her name is Rapunzel, she just always calls her Tangled. It's pretty cute. :) With three kids I begin Halloween sewing in the summer so I can make them as fun as I want and not feel stressed. So here's one down and two more costumes to go... :)

Penelope with her best little buddy.

The back of the dress.

Close up detail of front. I had to let that lace soak in bleach water so that it wouldn't be yellow anymore. I've never done that before and I was pretty proud of myself. haha

So on to Kendyl's ghost costume and Makenzie's dead fairy. I think I'll be Mother Gothel to go with Rapunzel since I've got a long red dress and black cape already.

Glove Story Telling

2011-07-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday night I had a fun idea of how to teach my Sunbeams (3 and 4 year olds) in church the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the firey furnace found in Daniel chapter 3 in the Bible. My mom had a little glove story like this when I was a kid, but more fancy. Anyway, I had a bunch of these gloves, eyeballs, and felt in one of my craft boxes and made a glove for each kid in my class. They were simple to make just a little time consuming. It was sooo worth it though. I told them the story with one of the gloves and then let them help me make theirs for them. I had all the little people ready and they told me which fingers they wanted them on while I hot glue gunned it. Then they put them on and told and retold the story. One of the moms told me that her son was still playing with it an hour after church and wanted to teach Family Home Evening the next night. Totally worth the work. :o)

THE FRONT OF THE GLOVE:

King Nebuchadnezzar, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the Angel. The fire can be removed and reattached with velcro.

THE BACK OF THE GLOVE:

This is the idol that the King wanted them to bow down to and they wouldn't so threw them in the furnace, but they didn't get burned or hurt because they were obedient and an angel came to protect them.

Muy Updates on Projects...

2011-01-25T11:23:00.000-08:00

A few years ago my sister and I were delighted to discover that one of my favorite artists (Scott Gustafson) had cross stitching patterns. I know- super dorky! We both love to cross stitch at night while snuggling with our hubbies and unwinding from the day- usually for an hour or two while catching up on shows we like or sometimes Seth will read to me (currently the Hunger Games Series). It's very grandma-ish of us.I have to brag about her because here is her finished cross stitch. This is crazy big. Mine is as well, but I am only about a 1/3 of the way done. (We tease that she lets her grandma out a little more than I do to finish so quickly- the truth is that she is faster than I am) If you'd like to see close up details here's a link to her blog (here). So you can get an idea this is on 25 count fabric and both of our designs are 18" by 22"(625 stitches per inch). The pattern is 36 pages! I know- we are completely nuts. The truth is, it is more about just having something to do than anything else. In fact- both of us don't ever keep our cross stitches. Once they are done we just find someone to give them too. Well with these I think we'll keep them. In fact- I'm hoping to create a little collection so that someday when I have grandkids I can give them each one when they are born.

Usually we will mail our cross-stitches back and forth just to mix things up, but with these we haven't. Here are some pictures of my progress after 2 years.

This is the full view of what I have done so far...

It will someday look like (th is)

Here are a few close ups of the detail.

I'm super excited about this find. We have been table and chair-less since October. While driving

home from the library on Saturday I took a wrong turn accidentally and drove past an estate sale which had this 7 piece set for only $100! I am currently stripping it down, sanding it and re-painting. I do like the black- it's just horribly beat up. So I'm gonna make it pretty! :) This sure beats paying 10 times as much. I'll post pics when I'm done and it's in th

e house and I've sewn a pretty table runner or something for it.

Moving right along:

What do you do with such scrumptious fabrics????

For starters make a hair clip board for my 3 girlies.:) A friend taught a bunch of us last weekend how to make these. Super easy- super cheap- unless of course you want to buy expensive stuff. :) Now all I need to do is learn how to make those cute flower hair clips....

Also I think you should buy this (book)-

which of course I did and sew some new, funky clothes for your kids that they will adore! It's a fabulous way to use all my scraps. I just ordered the book and it's on it's w

ay. I can't wait!

Last of all: (for the time being)

This chore chart that I put together has made a HUGE difference in our house. I drew up a basic design, looked up images online of kids doing chores, designed little cards, printed, cut, and laminated them. Next I went to the store and picked up some poster board, put it all together, attached velcro to everything and voilà it's finished!

The girls will do am chores and pm chores- and when they are done they un-velcro them and stick them in the pocket waiting for me to decide what they will do the next day. There is a section for extra chores other than their normal to-do, which they can be paid extra for and a little chart to check off how they've done that day. They earn a bonus by being ready by 8am everyday as well. Each Monday night after Family Home Evening we look at their week's progress and pay them accordingly. They actually get excited to wake up and unvelcro their cards and check stuff off. The key to the success of this is for me to fill up their chore chart every morning before they wake up or the night before. Makenzie was finally able to earn enough to add to her savings from this past year to buy her own bike! Kendyl bought a pillow pet- and mom doesn't feel so stressed out about asking them to do each chore they need to that day. They are responsible for themselves! Hooray! :)

Here's a few upclose pictures of Kendyl's chart.

Well I'm off to go scrape some more paint off the top of that table.

I think the paint stripper has been sitting on it long enough. :)

Happy project making to you! Tell me what you are up to...

I FINISHED- and just in time for Christmas :)

2010-12-26T05:39:00.001-08:00

Hooray! I stitched my last stitches at 9:30pm Christmas Eve. I have put probably over 50 hours into this baby designing, sketching, sewing, stuffing, beading and embroidering! I'm so happy it's such a hit with my sweet little girl who loves to sing her ABC's :)

Penelope finding it under the tree

Excitedly flipping through it and pulling her favorite little turtle guy out of his pocket shouting "A TOORRRDLE!" (She rolls her r's and d's) :)

Back Cover

Detail on back cover.

For closer pictures of the little figures look at these posts here and here

HOPE YOU HAD A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

A little something for my niece

2010-12-23T06:31:00.000-08:00

This is something that I sent my niece for Christmas. I'm pretty sure she doesn't read my blog- so I'm not worried about spoiling anything ;)

She loves LOVES to read and write. She keeps a journal with her where ever she goes so she can write down her poetry as inspiration comes. Her favorite colors are red, black, and white so when I saw this journal at the store I had to get it for

her. I added little quotes and drawings inside it and made this bookmark for her out of felt. The little red-headed girl was inspired by one of my felt pieces I made for Pip's book. Instead of making her holding an xray of herself I added pretty embroidery and bead work. :) This little present was a fun way to spend a day and now it's on her way to her for Christmas. I'm crossing my fingers it gets there in time.

(Detail on the little red-headed girl)

(Back inside cover) One of the drawings

I put in with a favorite quote of mine.

More ABC dudes

2010-12-23T06:04:00.001-08:00

I have now finished the little ABC figures and made the pages and pockets of the book. I just need to sew it all together! I hope to be finished by Christmas so I can give it to my sweet Pip! I have put so many hours into this project and it has been very fun and fulfilling.

ABC fun

2010-12-02T18:46:00.000-08:00

Well it finally happened... I got the urge to start a project after quite the dry spell. :) And of course it has happened the way it usually does- I get knocked over with a few ideas at once and it consumes. I'll post as I finish, but for now here is one of the projects I am working on. I want to make a present for my little Pip for Christmas. She absolutely loves when we sing the ABC song so I am going to make her an ABC felt chart. Well at least it was going to be a chart until about 2 hours ago when my friend suggested I make it into a big felt book- PURE GENIUS! :) Then she can take it with her where ever. I have a feeling church will be more bearable with this book.

So the way it's going to work is that each letter has it's own pocket. Inside each pocket will be a felt plush object stuffed with cotton. That way she can play with the pieces and they'll hold up well. She can put them in and out of the pockets all she likes and they wont get lost because they will be attached to their own pocket by a string. I can't tell you how tempted I am to buy an embroidery machine because of this project. I usually do these sorts of projects with my sister (she's got an embroidery machine) but I think she has sworn off this sort of madness for a while.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the little felt objects that will go in the pockets. They are much more 3 dimentional then they appear in the pictures with detail on both sides. It's fun because I can get as detailed as I like because I am only making one of each- not like my advent calendars where I was making anywhere from 4 to 12 pockets at a time.

My Life Turned Upside Down

2010-10-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

This Autumn Witch was illustrated by my fabulous husband and all rights go to him.

It's my favorite time of year (well besides Christmas- and I do love spring) :)

Anyway- I would have usually began designing and sewing costumes for Halloween June or July-ish. I would have been making Halloween paintings or some Halloween craft beginning in August because I would be just too excited and have the house decorated by the beginning of September. This year we have been living out of suitcases since May. My husband had a contract job at Blue Sky Studios in New York/Connecticut area animating on the movie "Rio" that comes out this next year and my girls and I joined him for a lot of it.

It was quite the experience seeing as how up to this point I had never been more east than Denver, CO. I didn't even know how to imagine so many trees. I absolutely loved it! We were crammed in a one bedroom apartment just outside of New York City in a sky-rise corporate temp housing. The girls and I spent quite a bit of time in upstate New York with family in Palmyra visiting many wonderful/historical/church sites. I took them to New York City many times on fun outings as well as Boston (several times), Concord, Salem, Sleepy Hollow (a couple of times), Niagara Falls, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Virginia while living on the east coast. We went to the beach every week as well. They got very use to car rides and traveling. We stopped at many wonderful places along the way out east and back again to the west hitting all the historical church sites we could possibly fit in. In all I have driven almost 11,000 miles in the last 6 months and most of that was all by myself with my girls with no dvd player, cd player, or game devices for the majority of that. We talked about life, my girls wrote stories, made up songs, and talked about beautiful trees and rock formations. For the first few trips I thought we'd all want to hang ourselves with how boring and hard it was to get use to driving, but by the end we absolutely loved our time in the car. We'd be settled somewhere for a week or two and then I'd say, "How about a road trip?" Within 30 minutes my girls would have packed their suitcases and be ready to bring it all out to the car. hahaha. We felt like little pioneer/vagabond/gypsies- free to go where the wind blew us.

Needless to say our stuff has been inaccessible and for the most part my life has been too crazy to do my normal Halloween celebratory traditions and activities. I wouldn't trade the last 6 months for anything though. My husband's next contract job is in Albuquerque, NM working on the movie "Green Lantern" which he started almost a month ago. A few days ago we joined him. What a beautiful drive through southern Utah. It was breathtaking. It was an 11 hour day in the car and even my almost 2 year old did fine. She began crying the last 20 minutes- thankfully we were close. Our pod was delivered a few days before I arrived and Seth (along with the help from many man from our church out here got all the boxes and furniture in the house and garage) I'm trying to unpack things as quickly as possible so we can get to some of our Halloween decorations. I didn't get to sew any costumes this year- almost unforgivable for my children. I had to buy them- gasp! :)haha We do have our little Halloween advent calendar out that I made last year and we started to sew some Halloween trick-or-treat bags in Palmyra at Grandma's house before we left. We will have to finish those up this week. I'll post pictures as soon as they are done in the next day or two. I keep receiving emails asking if I am selling those calendars again this year or a pattern. I'm afraid not- we'll see about next year though.

We loved our time living on bare minimum and having nothing but each other's nutty company- but it's nice to get settled into somewhere, have our internet up and running again (as of last night), have more space, be reunited with my art supplies, sleep on our own beds, and enjoy our possessions again. (My girls are so excited to have their toys back) :)

I thought I'd share this little note I made this morning to put on my new neighborhood doors in case any of you would like to use it. Our family goes to church on Sunday and tries to keep it as a day of rest. We don't go to parties or go shopping. We don't participate entertainment like going to movies/amusement parks, or exuberant outdoor activities like swimming etc. We try to really focus on the Savior and our family and have fun things we do together at home on Sundays or invite others to dinner. My girls are really bummed about Halloween being on Sunday this year so I've created these little notes that we are giving to our neighbors to let them know that we will be trick-or-treating a day early on Saturday. If they are home and have candy and would like visitors they will flip the note over to show the drawing of the monster and put it on their door to let us know we can come for a candy visit. As a side note my husband made the pumpkins and monster illustrations on the notes- I just grabbed them from the computer and created the notes in Photoshop. You are more than welcome to use them- just not for sell in anyway. If for some reason these don't work let me know at my email kiazi44(at)hotmail(dot)com and I will email you the pdf.

(Front View)

(Back View)

Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween!

A few more fairy shoes

2010-07-19T04:49:00.000-07:00

After giving my mom her fairy shoe for Christmas she gave me a little bin of fabric, lace, trim, flowers, thread, ribbon, beads, and buttons from mostly the Victorian era, but some are older and some are from the 20's, 30's, and 40's. She is an antique doll collector and has an entire room dedicated to doll supplies. She hand sews and repairs many of their clothes to be authentic to that particulars doll time period. She has shelves and shelves and bins of wonderful, yummy supplies. Whenever I go home to visit I play in that room by sitting on the floor and open bin after bin looking at the wonderful pieces that she has admiring the handiwork of someone 100-200 years ago. She gave me some of her prize smaller pieces so that I could make her a collection of antique fairy shoes. I love using her stuff. It's like opening a treasure box each time I open it and reminds me of being home with her.

My mom's birthday was a few weeks ago and Seth's mom had her birthday a few weeks before that. I decided it was time to make some more fairy shoes for my two moms. :) To see the other shoes I made you can click here.

This is a blue lady's fairy shoe for my mom. Isn't that flower exquisite? This blue silk was the most wonderful fabric to work with. It came in the form of a HUGE ribbon. I like to paint a lot of my shoes with a gold, copper, or silver metallic paint on the inside to hide stitching and give it a more rich feel. You can see that slightly in the picture on the left. (just ignore the chipped off pink paint on my nails- it's time to play beauty salon with my girls and get another manicure) :)

The blue polka dot shoe is my mom's other shoe for her b-day and the gold and red shoe is Georgia's (Seth's mom). Georgia's shoe isn't made from all old materials, but has some old tatting and lace on it. My mom's polka dot shoe has such a wonderful old black button that seems very art deco to me. I remember when my mom gave me that button and I couldn't wait to see what shoe it would appear on that I would make. The black beads were stitched to some old netting and the tassels on the back of the shoe are from a Victorian fan.

Frabjous Day, Callooh, Callay

2010-07-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

Our mighty Kendyl turned 7 last month and we had a Frabjous party in her honor. She was so proud of her daddy animating on Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland" that she wanted to have a Mad Hatter's Birthday Tea Party. I must say I was quite inspired by the theme I didn't know how to hold back. Everything I thought up I created. It was so fun. And while someone (a-hem Seth's mom :) ) called me obsessed I chose to think of myself as enthusiastic and inspired (like all great geniuses are- haha).

We started with a gathering of the guests and proceeded to drink some mysterious liquid which shrunk us so we could be led down the rabbit hole by the white rabbit (Seth's mom) until we found Absulum (my cute husband- Seth sitting under a tree "smoking" on a garden hand shovel). He gave us wonderful words of wisdom and showed us the Oraculum (a 9 foot scroll that he drew). The Oraculum was drawings of the events of the party. First was a drawing of Alice peering in the rabbit hole. Next was Absulum sitting on a mushroom. After that was a fun looking tea party and then croquet with the Red Queen and last of all was slaying the Jabberwocky.

(Sorry the picture of the Oraculum is not a good one- I need a better camera)

Since we had been down the rabbit hole and talked to Absulum we knew next we needed to go to the Tea Party. The girls had such a fun time talking silly and eating yummy treats. (It's hard to see because it's blurry but the bottle has a tag that says "drink me" and the strawberry's sign says "eat me".

These little snails are so cute and fun to make. You take tortilla and wrap up cream cheese and ham in it. Slice it and stick it to a pickle with a toothpick tail. Then toothpick green olive eyes on top. The kids loved them!

I love this sweet little butterfly tea set I found online. Each cup and saucer are a different color.

After consulting the Oraculum again we joined the Red Queen (me of course) for a fun game of croquet.

Next we proceeded to slay my poor Jabber-baby-wonkey. :) I forgot to attach he amazing wings on him for the picture and slaying (darn) this cool pinata.

After candy was spilt we celebrated by fudderwacking most vigorously and then watched the movie until parents arrived.

What a fun day. Later that night we had a topsy turvy cake. I have never made one before, nor have I tried using fondant, so I think it turned out pretty great considering. :)

yipee!

2010-06-21T06:49:00.001-07:00

In my search for inspiration to create a most marvelous Mad Hatter's Tea Party (with much muchness) for my daughter's 7th birthday party I found this... for me...

....... um....YES PLEASE!

I can't think of a more marvelous thing to see everyday as I put on makeup than a popup book scene of one of my favorite stories. There's even a website to show how to do the makeup of the different characters from the movie using this box of shadows.

Okay so I didn't really buy it for me ($52), but if you'd like to here's a link. And in case you are wondering I wouldn't be offended in the least if you gave me one of these too. hahaha

Beauty and the Beast Jr.

2010-04-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

Our Makenzie was in her school play this last month. We were so happy for her and proud of the wonderful job she did. We put a lot of work into the production as well. Seth and I spent quite a bit of time painting the set and I was a busy bee with sewing! Below are pictures of the play and our creations. :) Even though it was a weekend mostly about Makenzie, Kendyl found a way to get involved. She just jumped right in and grabbed a pile of play bills and stood by the wall and started passing them out. They were in a box by the door for people to grab on the way in, but Kendyl decided to be in charge of that. :) She loved it! What a sweetie pie.

The cast (above)

Makenzie with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Ron's family (below)

The Belle dress I was sewing. A big thank you to my friend Melissa who put the zipper in at the end. I'll sew them in if I must, but they tend to scare me to pieces. In this picture it was only part way through, but Makenzie wanted to try it on and pose in it. :) Cutie girl.

Here's the officially finished Belle dress on the official Belle. She's about 6 inches taller than Makenzie so that's why it was drowning her in the above picture. :)

Here's some of the other costumes I sewed or pulled out of our costume closet.

Cogsworth (I didn't make the clock- just the jacket. I threw in the complete costume picture so you could see how great it looked all together. The clock was made by the music teacher at the school and is make out of foam).

Makenzie's Sausage Curl Girl Costume (the apron was made by my terrific friend Melissa when I was in a pinch. I just added the ruffly trim around it) :) and this Villager Boy's vest is one that I made to go with Seth's pirate jacket years ago.

Monsieur Dark's costume was actually Seth's vampire costume a few Halloween's ago. I just altered it a little to fit this guy. Not too much though. He was a tall boy.

These other two costumes I had in my costume closet- neither of which I had sewn (actually the green one Seth's sister Holly sewed years ago). A lot of my fabric was made into many more costumes or made a part of the set through curtains, rugs etc. I probably donated about $1000 worth of fabric to the school. I have had it in bins and have needed to get rid of it for years. I thought I would use it all the time and I don't. We are moving soon so I figured this went to a really good cause and helped me clean out a little.

Here's the set pieces that Seth designed during one of the practices. He would have loved to have been able to spend more time and make them 3-dimensional and have the time to paint them himself, but he's a busy guy. A bunch of people painted them, but I thought it would be fun to show what he came up with.

It was such a great experience and I have to say I'm grateful it's over. It was very time consuming :) Such is the way of the theater though.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Fairy Shoes

2010-03-23T08:02:00.001-07:00

Where in the sam hill have I been? :) To be honest, life has taken over. Seth was living in California for 3+ months this last fall-winter animating on Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" that was just released a few weeks ago. He was interviewed by Fox 13 and KSL channel 5. Here's a the link to the KSL interview. Look closely because when he's signing autographs at the premiere you can see me sitting next to him helping to roll up the posters with my new red hair color :)

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=9911331

I didn't want to write about being alone for few months here on my blog while he was gone in case anyone yucky reads this blog. It was hard being a single mom 24/7 and missing him and I had all I could handle to keep up. I don't know how some of you women do it, but I have a greater respect for you and want to bring you all dinner every night and babysit your kids so you can get a nap in and at least 6 hours of sleep a night. SERIOUSLY! Anyway, while he was gone I'm afraid my creative juices were zapped. I was however able to sit down and sew up some sweet little fairy shoes by hand. They were small enough and didn't require a lot of stuff so I could bring them along with me anywhere. I made them for family and a friend or two. I have plans to make many more because they are so fun, but am already onto my next project of course which I will show pictures of in a few days/weeks when it's finished :).

I gave the fairy shoes for Christmas, but didn't finish some of them in time for that. :( I was reading a lady's blog that invented them and I bought the pattern for them. You've got to see her blog here- she's amazing! She only sells the pattern for one type of her shoes. The ones on her site are so incredible and I'm trying to figure out how to alter the pattern to make others as amazing as she does. Wish she'd sell me all her patterns. :) I've had the best time playing with fabric, beads, lace, etc. They take a lot of work and many hours! They are so sweet only 3 inches long or so. Each one is a little work of art and a piece of magic. I like to combine them with a little painting when I give them away. Here's a few of them below. Check out all the tiny details and hand stitching and beading. I gave my mom the purpley pink ones with the hand tatted flower under the red flower. She was so excited she sent me home with a HUGE box of trims, lace, fabrics, beads, thread, feathers, silks, flowers, etc. all from the victorian era and earlier. I can't believe I've got all this fun stuff to play with now. She dresses old composition dolls and has an entire room of supplies. She has a small tree that I'm going to make enough fairy shoes for her to hang all over it. Can't wait! :)

Halloween Costumes for '09

2009-11-01T23:08:00.001-08:00

I've written about our Halloween adventures on our family blog, but for the sake of showing my sewing projects I'll put up our costumes here. :)

This was by far the most simple year for costumes....

My oldest was wrapped all up in cloth- super easy!

My middle child wanted to be a "beautiful witch- not a mean ugly one." So I cut up a princess dress and inserted orange spider material and sewed on a spider! 15 minutes- easy shmeasy!

I didn't need to sew a new costume for my baby- she looked great in one we already had- woo hoo! And as for me- I had a witch hat and a skirt from a previous year as well. I also grabbed stuff from my closet that I like to wear anyway (striped tights and cool boots).

I made my hubby that Neil Diamond costume a few weeks ago for the roadshow that my ward put on that I was in charge of. He sang a Neil Diamond song for the finale. I'm so glad that's done. It was so fun, but also a lot of work! I've never been in a play before let alone written or directed anything. So it was an interesting and crazy and fun and stressful experience and took up about 6 months of my life. :) The theme was "God Bless America". If you'd like to see the video that our friends Scott and Nancy made of our performance you can find it here...

http://www.jexdigital.com/video/KiowaValley1st_RoadShow.mp4

Anyway, for Halloween Seth decided he would just be a "dead" Neil Diamond and use that same costume. :) Here my daughter is showing me how to pose more scary.

52Q: What's your favorite holiday?

2009-10-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

I suppose this one's a no brainer. Actually my friend, Emily asked me to make this prompt for her art journal challenge for this week. She's had her adorable little baby boy, Banjo and has had a few guests fill in while she spends mommy time with him and her girlies. I feel very honored! She's a sweet friend and an amazingly talented and creative individual. So here's my question going out to all her 52Q friends....

What's Your Favorite Holiday?

and here's my painting...

Seth sketched out a witch like this in the summer time when I was designing my Halloween advent calendars and I asked him for some inspiration. We have very different styles so his sketches didn't quite fit into my calendar, but I thought it would be fun to resurrect his witchy sketch and make it more my own.

My reason for picking Halloween...

"I've always loved Halloween!
My birthday is in the month of October (born on Friday the 13th!)- so as a kid I was pretty sure that made me spookier than others. Each year I get the "Halloween itch" around July. It starts with little sketches that become paintings or other projects like the Halloween calendars that I made with my sister this year.
I love sewing elaborate costumes. We have an entire closet of costumes in our guest room. My husband loves Halloween too so it makes it even more fun. I love seeing the creepy little drawings or books that my kids make up this time of year.

It's definitely a family affair in this house."

For fun here are some past Halloweeny stuff around here.

Seth enormous Halloween family portrait (3 feet by 4 feet)

A vampire family (probably my favorite costumes I've sewn)

Only mom's happy in this one I guess. :)

The two that like to ham it up the most...

Here's Seth famous pirate costume I sewed for him back in '05. This year Penelope is going to be that same kitty that Kendyl was. I can't believe how quickly time flies...

fun with decorating...

...and a silly spider that finds his way around our house to scare unsuspecting victims.
(This is our little on-going family prank. We move him around the house and try to freak each other out- Seth was awakened by him hanging above him one birthday breakfast day.

And just so you can see we are pretty normal the other 11 months of the year- here's a regular looking family photo. :)

ALL SOLD!

2009-10-06T10:05:00.001-07:00

Hooray! My calendars are all sold! I wish I could have made 100 more because it's so fun to send them off and picture all the little happy fingers playing with them. I'm so happy to have pieces of my heart sent all over and to have it connect with people's childhood memories the way my mom's Christmas advent calendar did with mine. I feel so lucky. :)

Today I am sending off the last 3 I had for sale to Hawaii, Canada, and California.

Guess I better get crackin' on that Christmas design. I'll work on it throughout the year instead of making a month of intensity and sleep deprivation. :)

Thank you for all the emails telling me how much you like them!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Advent Calendar

2009-09-14T23:29:00.001-07:00

I'm so excited about this! Starting in July I began sketching out ideas for a Halloween advent calendar. My sister and I had so much fun making Christmas calendars last year that I knew we'd love making Halloween ones as well. It's been a wonderful experience to see it come to life and be even more beautiful than I had anticipated!

I designed the calendar and sent Kristie the sketches while she digitized each drawing and put them to life by picking the color pallet. We spent a lot of late nights "skyping" and working together on this. She ordered the fabric and embroidered the numbers and the "trick or treat" banner while I cut out the houses for the street at the top of the calendar. We split up the work of the pockets and split up the calendars for sewing! There's been a lot of sending back and forth between here and Seattle where she is. I always think we make such a great team. We are both anal about different details and have our own areas of expertise and creativity. We're sisters so we can hit a rough patch and then call each other dorks and move on. I'm so lucky!

Below are the pictures of our calendar. They are 30 inches wide and 38 inches long (including tabs). They are made from high quality wool felt for color vibrancy and durability. Each pocket is 3 inches wide and 4 inches long.

It has been my hope of how I can help our family. I haven't written about it, but 6 months ago the company Seth work for went under. We have been okay living on our savings and are so lucky to live by such generous people. Seth has interviewed everywhere under the sun from China to Canada, but nothing permanent has come. He has had a few freelance projects that have been great blessings as well- but with our little Pip not weened I couldn't take off for full time work to help out. My goal in creating these was to find a way that I could be home and help pay expenses. I created an etsy shop (it's called THE LOST BUTTON- how cute is that?) :) and I am selling them there. Each calendar has taken us about 30+ hours. It would break my heart if someone copied this design I have come up with. I want to remind all that I own the rights to this. I hope you enjoy the pictures. I wish you could see the detail in person like the embroidering and beads sewn on the different pockets. They are one of the most beautiful things I have ever made and I'm so excited they are done! If you'd like to order one come on by or go to my etsy shop here...

http://thelostbutton.etsy.com

Here's my cute girls counting down the days to Halloween by discovering candy, treats, and presents along the way. :)
I've also made a little trick-or-treating ghosty attached to a string (so he wont get lost) that can be used to count down the days till Halloween if you don't have a sweet tooth.

A Few New Paintings and Penelope's Smile

2009-04-11T09:16:00.001-07:00

I've been working on these paintings, but was only part way through on all of them and then I just finished these three around the same time so here's a few at once. I have a couple more that are part way as well that I will post in a few days when I finish. These are for Emily's Art Challenge this year of 52 Questions...

52Q- Week 6: If I could do it all again, would I change anything?

I took a photo of the miniature grandfather clock that the the clock store owner gave me when I was a little girl. I still have it and love looking at it. It's one of my favorite things.

52Q- Week 8: What was the last thing that made you laugh?

Here's a photo of our little Penelope laughing and I threw an extra one in of the look she always gives us when we are holding her. She's just so darn cute!

52Q- Week 11: What keeps me awake at night?

This is now found on Kristen's blog. :)

Krisser's and My Latest Adventures

2009-02-07T12:26:00.001-08:00

Winter time, sitting around a lot, and all the major holidays are done for a while make prime ingredients for two bored sisters who itch to do projects together. So what do we do?.... start a new project? No- start WAY TOO MANY PROJECTS- and yes we are in over our heads and so excited. :) We like to do cross stitches together from time to time. Here's a link of the last one we did together here. Kristie just finished one for my mom you can check out here. The way we work it is that each of us will take on a cross stitch, work on it for a while, and then switch for a few weeks at a time. It's fun to send something off and get something new and fresh to work on and then a few weeks later get yours back with a bunch more done on it. The cross stitches we've chosen this time are Scott Gustafson designs and SO SO wonderful. Kristie is starting the "Frog Prince" one and I'm making "Pat-a-Cake" nursery rhyme one. They will probably take us at least a year, but when we are done with those I have 3 more patterns waiting right in my craft cupboard. :) I guess it'll be a Scott Gustafson gallery when it's all done.

Here's the other 3 that are waiting for us when we are done with these. Probably what will end up happening is that we will be sick of this style for a while, get into a different sort of hobby like sewing to exchange and then come back to start these other ones in a year or two. Below are the paintings of "Snow White", nursery rhyme of "Owl and the Pussy Cat", and "Golilocks".

Must admit that even though I haven't purchased the pattern for this one yet, it's so sweet. I'm tempted to get it because I think it would make such a great present for someone sometime.

52Q- Week 5: "How Do I Feel Today?"

2009-02-06T12:40:00.001-08:00

52Q- Week 4: "When I look into my eyes, I see...."

2009-02-05T15:27:00.000-08:00

To view all the other people's entries you can click on this link to the flickr group here.

52Q- Week 3: Do I Believe in Fairies?

2009-01-27T12:48:00.001-08:00

This painting is described in my journaling on the back, but it basically says that I believe in fairies with all my heart. :) The painting is of Christmas Eve 2007 when Makenzie lost her tooth and we had two visitors to our home that night. We wish we could have been there to see Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy sit down to a quaint tete-a-tete over hot cocoa and sugar cookies. I'm sure the Tooth Fairy decided on drinking herbal peach tea while Santa enjoyed his hot chocolate. In the journaling I mention video footage that we caught that night of Santa Clause. If you'd like to see that you can follow this link to it here.

Makenzie and Kendyl's 52Q Art Challenge Tags

2009-01-18T16:53:00.001-08:00

Makenzie and Kendyl have joined in with me in Emily's art challenge this year. They are doing them on little tags and linking them with a ring. Here's what they've done so far. It's so fun to do it with them at the table and see what they come up with and how their little minds and hearts work. I know they will cherish this little journal when they are older. It will be a little chunk of themselves to remember and giggle at.

Makenzie's first tag: Wishes for 2009?
I love her spelling- adorable. Looks like we'll need to get her a pony this year to make her wish come true. :) Anyway, here's a translation of the back of her tag:
Ponies have been my favorite animal since I was a baby. I guess you could say I'm pony crazy.

Makenzie's second tag: Are you Afraid of Change?
On the front of her card she drew a picture of Daxton (one of her best friends) scoring a goal in soccer in the snow. She's on the edge by the chain link fence building a snowman all by herself. On the back of the card she says that yes, she is scared of change because she hates that now Daxton plays soccer during recess instead of playing with her.
(Don't worry too much though- they've worked out a deal that he will play with her 2 days in the week and she has 3 other boys that she plays with everyday so she's not alone- just missing one of her favorite buddies.

Kendyl's first tag: Wishes for 2009?
She of course wishes for a unicorn and for her birthday to be everday. What a wonderful idea. :) On the front is a drawing of her and her sister holding balloons and wearing their pink flower dresses- how lucky. I like how she made the horse stickers turn into unicorns by drawing them on.

Kendyl's second tag: Am I Afraid of Change?
The front of the tag is of her thinking about that question and then on the back she did her best to spell out that no she wasn't afraid of change. Her reasoning she told me was that she wasn't afraid of butterflies changing to have wings or for princesses to turn into other princesses that were their friends. hmmmm I'm sure it makes perfect sense to other 5 year olds. :) Too cute.

From here on out, I'll just post their cards on the posts that have mine. I'm so happy they want to join in with this. We're having a lot of fun together.

52Q- Week 2: Am I Afraid of Change?

2009-01-15T12:27:00.000-08:00

For my art journal card this week I tried something new. First I painted the picture on the left for the front of my card. I wanted to use butterflies to represent change and how it can teach you new things, helping you to grow and become a more beautiful person. I also painted a "looking glass" that I ended up putting this week's question inside. I wanted to represent how change leads to adventures (like that curious Alice has). Next I used this painting that I made of stripes and superimposed it behind my butterfly painting in Photoshop, erasing some parts of the painting and messing with the opacity. I found I liked the color scheme better when I changed the hue and saturation of the top painting.

Combining the two gave me this...

It really was fun to learn more in Photoshop and try new things. Below is the back of my card with my journaling for the week. I put Penelope's footprints on there too with an ink pad. I'm so glad I thought to do that so I will always have it as a keepsake. She really is the sweetest most beautiful baby.

New Year= New Art

2009-01-07T12:22:00.000-08:00

In Jan of 2007 I participated in my friend (Emily's) art challenge called "A Deck of ME" where we journaled once a week by creating a piece of art around a topic about our lives. It was so fun to push myself to figure out what I would do for her topic, sketch, paint it out, and then journal about it. I love looking at my pile of paintings from that year. In 2008 I didn't keep up with my art as well and so I've decided to join in again this year with Emily. This time she is asking a question a week. I'll answer the question with a painting and journal my answer on the back of my little 4"x6" watercolor post cards. Seth keeps challenging me to paint in a bigger format and I am tempted, but the nice thing about the post cards is the size. I actually finish something that way. I'm so use to it by now and I have all these nice quality tiny brushes. I've always loved miniature things and so I'm really drawn to this format. I'm sure bigger would make it so I could add more detail and push myself color wise, but for now I really enjoy small.

I would love to invite anyone to join in with us. Here's a link to her challenge explaining how it works this year here. Most participating are scrapbookers and create the most lovely things. I want to keep improving with painting so I chose to join in that way. It's open for anyway of interpretation though. Come on... it's fun. Let me know if you join too.

Week 1 Question: "Wishes for 2009"

Before you think I'm super corny and that I'm wishing for world peace when you look at my painting- hear me out. Of course I wish war would stop, especially with all that is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, etc. etc. and of course I wish violence would cease and people would be more giving, but I can't really do much about that. What I'm wishing for that I can make a difference with is having more peace in my heart and in my home. I chose to make my painting reflecting the recent Christmas season because it brought my family and myself so much peace and happiness. We were all a little more relaxed, focused on our Savior more, and relished time with our new little angel girl- Penelope. What a special spirit she brought to our home. So as I think of what I want for 2009- I see that I just want it to feel like it did at Christmas all year long. I have asked myself what can I do to bring greater peace to my home and life and have decided on a few things that are my resolutions for this year:

1. Study from my scriptures everyday and spend time praying and meditating.
2. Use more kindness and patience with my children.
3. Build more on our emergency fund savings.
4. Give back to myself by:

~painting at least once a week
~exercise 3 times a week
~attend the temple at least monthly

Some of these things I'm already doing pretty well and have established habits of, but can increase my dedication to and some I don't do well with at all (ahem... exercising). I feel all of these things answer my question of what will give me greater peace.

Just for fun here's a picture of our beautiful little 3 week old baby girl having tutu fun with her big sister.

Okay- and some more. What? I'm a proud mommy. :)

Family Christmas Presents

2008-12-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

For Christmas this year I made 14 of these puppies for all my siblings and Seth's and both our parents. Around October I started compiling all the anniversaries and birthdays of everyone and their current emails, addresses, home and cell phone numbers, etc. I then separated them by family because obviously Seth's family wouldn't want my family's birthdays and vice versa. I chose a painting for each month that went along with that season and then put three addresses pages on the back with paintings and a cover so all together everyone in our families gets all the family information compiled and put with 17 of my paintings from 2007 and 2008. I then went and bound them and sent them off to everyone. We have ours hanging inside the pantry. My favorite thing about them is that it's good for every year since it doesn't go by days of the week. You can just flip it to the next month and turn to the back where all the information is to be able to call, email, or send a card to the family member with a bday or anniversary.

Below are some pictures of what a few of the pages look like. You'll notice on the month of December there is a little Penelope's birthday on the 13th of that month. :) We put some photos of her and a few videos on our family blog here and here. She's such a sweet little baby. We feel so blessed.

Finished Result

2008-12-09T14:42:00.001-08:00

I finished the calendars for my sister and brother's families on Thanksgiving so that I could mail them out the next day in order to get them to their houses by the 1st to start counting down December. I didn't quite finish mine that weekend. I was worried about getting the others out in time and put work into theirs first. After I got theirs out I realized I had lost a bit of steam. Also- the Saturday after Thanksgiving I spent in the hospital thinking I was having problems with my blood clot and found out I was just contracting a lot. The nurses thought I was in active labor and kept me for a bit monitoring me, but I was released in the middle of the night with a shot of Demerol in my back side. Needless to say I have still been contracting and uncomfortable and the last thing I've felt like doing was sitting on a chair for another hour to finish sewing up calendar. (Good news- my inducement date is set for the 13th instead of the 15th now... THIS SATURDAY!) Finally today I finished my calendar. My little girls have been just getting the ornaments that would have been in the pockets each day to hang on the tree without actually grabbing them from the pockets- that is until now. :)

Here's some close up pictures as well. My sister did such a great job on her pockets (#3, #5, #8, #12, #13, #15, #16, #21, and #23). She embroidered the tree as well and put our name on the bottom. After making the rest of the pockets all I had to do was sew on all the pockets above her embroidered numbers and sew up the trunk and star and sew the back of the tree to the front. I think we made a great team. I loved calling her and working out details and it was fun to work with my own little girls here. They had a great time gluing the characters on the pockets and helping me to make these trees. I loved being able to spot something at Pottery Barn and make our own version. It was more fun that way and cheaper. I'm excited to think up a cute Halloween calendar in a few months and work with Krisser again.

It's coming along...

2008-11-22T19:23:00.000-08:00

Here's what my little work space looks like. Like my art table? Seth gave it to me for my bday this year. :) It's matchy-matchy with his on the other side of the room. So hanging up is Pottery Barn's super cute advent calendar and on the table are my pockets I've been making. My sister Kristie and I have split up the work. We figure that if you have to make one pocket than you might as well make more, right? So together we are making enough for 4 trees. One for each of us and one for each of us to give away for a Christmas present. Krisser has just finished embroidering the snowflakes and numbers on the trees with her fancy new embroidery machine and has sent them to me in the mail with her pockets today, so I should get that in a few days. I will sew on all our pockets and sew the tree front to back and add the trunk and star at the top. Hopefully this will be done to start counting down the beginning of December. I wanted to show some of the detail of a few of my pockets. The fun of making your own stuff is that you get to change it to fit you better. I've had great time making alterations and adding more details. So in each photo I have Pottery Barn's pocket on the left and mine on the right. (Mostly I'm showing this because Kristie keeps asking how they look and telling me she wants to see them- so here you go Kris)

Snowman

Rudolf

(Seth sketched the design of this one for me to make- thanks honey)

Red Skate

Pink Skate

Christmas Tree

(I changed the shape to mimic the advent tree that these pockets are all on)

I didn't do much to change the Santa except add a nose and a little snowflake (can you tell that I like snowflakes?) :)

And here is just one I made up for fun. There were a few designs that repeated and were simple and I decided that I wanted a wreath. It replaces one of the green stripey pockets (pocket #9 in the top photo). Also Kris- I added little bow ties to our penguins, but didn't take photos of them. The #19 penguin has a red bow tie and the #14 penguin has a green bow tie.

So here is my progress. I'm pretty excited and have been having a great time. It's been a good way for me to relax since the nesting phase is setting in and I want to attack every part of my house. I keep over working and then contractions set in for a few hours- ug. So this has kept me sitting for long moments and I still feel like I'm getting something done. Only 3 more weeks and our little Penelope will be here!!! Man alive have I got a lot to do- but at least this will be one thing to check off my list that I really wanted done. BTW- I've had 3 people in the last 2 days tell me that it looks like she has dropped, which might be a nice way of saying I'm looking bigger. I sure feel bigger and more uncomfortable. Thank goodness there's an end in sight!

Halloween Costumes

2008-11-22T19:20:00.000-08:00

I just read my cousin Jill's comment about checking in often to look for Halloween costumes. Since I didn't really sew any- except my Igor one and it wasn't that amazing I just put all of our Halloween fun (including costumes) on our family blog. Sorry if it's confusing with these two different blogs. I'm trying my best to keep this one for projects and art stuff. Speaking of I'm just about to post some photos of the progress of my advent calendar...

THE Advent Calendar

2008-11-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

I grew up looking forward to the first day of December with much anticipation- because my mom would hang up a hokey craft looking similar to this (but of course ours was better). :) Everyday leading up to Christmas my siblings and I would take turns pulling out an felt ornament from it's pocket and deciding where to put it on the tree. It was so exciting to get the day that had the ballerina or the rocking horse and you were most lucky of all if your day was the last and you got to put the star on the tree. I've been wanting to make a special Christmas advent calendar for many years now. I have a sketch book filled with ideas of what the different ornaments would look like and have had a pile of felt stashed away waiting for me to actually do it. At times it was going to be a tree like my mom's and at times I was turning it into a nativity type scene where everyday you'd put a different animal or person on until the last day you could place baby Jesus in a manger. I even have patterns of cross stitch characters that could be put with the manger scene.

I had also considered different kinds like these two. All I knew is I wanted to make it myself and I wanted it to be something magical my children could anticipate every year.

This year I got more serious about it. I decided to locate a pattern somewhere and put feelers out with friends. My sister came across this at Pottery Barn's website. Not 24 hours later I drove 40 miles to the nearest Pottery Barn Kids and bought it to use as a start for a pattern. Kristie has joined in the fun as well. We are splitting up the pockets to make and she has even ordered herself an embroidery machine (so jealous!) It costs with tax close to $75 at Pottery Barn and Krisser and I are making them for a little under $25 each and having lots of fun at the same time. I hope these get done before the first of December. We're sure trying.

Here's another photo of it. It is just too cute! Although I do love the idea of a simple one that is just hanging ornaments up I didn't know how I could refuse making this. Everyday there is a little gift in there. What I think I will have to do is put a clue in there everyday leading our kids to a different place to find a little treasure instead of stuffing it with 3 presents in each pocket. We are going to put a bit more detail into it and make pretty stitching around each pocket and more embellishments. I'll post pictures when it's complete.

Just for fun here is a cute idea for Halloween. Well you know us... if we are going to have an advent calendar for Christmas, we better have one for Halloween too. I love the Christmas one so much more, but this is a good place to start for ideas for a Halloween one.

Thriller video

2008-10-23T18:11:00.001-07:00

Well I made our family blog unprivate again because it was just a big 'ol pain in the patootie. I found myself posting family-ish things to my projects blog here just so everyone could see and that ruins the whole purpose. So I've posted my video from our Thiller performance on our family blog and hope to keep that as family stuff from now on. Here's a link to the exact posting here

My Baby Bump and Thriller Projects

2008-10-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post a pic of the baby bump. We finally found our camera cord for uploading pictures and so here's a snap shot Seth took just before church two weeks ago. It's nice to be on the ending stretch of this pregnancy. :) Only two months and a few days left! (I'll be induced Dec. 15th)

Different news... here's a silly montage of my "Thriller Group". Some are missing from it in these photos because they missed this particular practice that I got my little girls and Seth to photograph, but you get the idea. All of the original boys have dropped out of the group except for our Michael (we have put too much pressure on him I suppose-hehe). There was a ward basketball group that started around the same time so they switched over to the dark side I guess. Oh well, it's really fun doing it as a bunch of girls too. We've had a few practices and really have it down. We perform it next Saturday and I'll see about getting someone to video record it. I keep telling them to watch Michael Jackson's video because I just can't do some of the moves as well with this big belly in the way. In fact this coming Monday (after the kids are in bed) we are meeting at one of their houses to watch the Thriller video and "13 Going on 30" while putting together our zombie costumes. I'm bringing my sewing machine, fabric glue, and gobs of Gothic fabric and trims and we'll be cutting up and dragging our costumes through the mud and adding to the clothes we've bought to be zombies. Sounds like most have picked out nasty 80's prom dresses. Mine is a big white dress that I hope to use double task as Frankenstein's Bride for Halloween night since Seth is going to be Frankie this year. It wont look like the original Frankenstein's bride, but a weird sort-of pregnant Gothic bride. I hope that by making my hair all crazy up and sprayed black with a white stripe people will get the idea.

It's nice to find some people who like to have fun in the same geeky way I do. Whenever I think about what we are doing and how excited we all are about this Thriller dance, I can't help but remember my group of friends from LA that I took a car trip to Arizona with a year and a half ago dressed up for a vampire prom. Then I always hear in my head Mr. Bennett (from Pride and Prejudice- speaking of his daughter Lydia) say something to the effect of that she will never have a problem making friends as silly as she is because she always makes such a spectacle of herself where ever she goes. I haven't lived here as long as I did in LA and since moving here I have either been working or trying to get through a rough pregnancy making me fairly anti-social. With all of that of course I have not made as good as friends with people as I did in LA, but still it's nice to have let myself out of the bag enough to make a "spectacle of myself" and have the beginnings of some "silly friends".

Well- maybe another one...

2008-09-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

I know. I know. I said I wasn't going to post more of my Halloween book, but one more can't hurt. :) This illustration is harmless enough, but the words that go with it much grosser (if that's even a word). Maybe I will post a few more as Halloween gets closer. It's kinda fun and mysterious to not know what's going on in them- like my little secret or something. Okay so a few people have seen my rough drafts of words from this summer, but mostly my little secret. Maw-HahaHA.

tsk... tsk... That Naughty Alice

2008-09-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

This innocent looking little girl is not quite so innocent after all. :) This is one of my paintings for my "little" Halloween project I began a month or two ago. The bottom half has some lovely little words that I took out to post on here. I thought I'd just show my painting. It doesn't give too much away. I was going to post a page/painting every day starting at the first of October as a count down for Halloween for fun, but have changed my mind. It's turning into a really lovely/morbid book and I think I might just try to submit it to some publishers. I hope writing that doesn't jinx myself. I like low pressure. Art for the sake of art. If I feel that I am on time constraints or people counting on me than I get all freaky and back away, but this project has made me so unbelievably happy that if I could get it published it would make me even more happy to feel like others would enjoy it too. I'll understand if no publishers are interested because it's more for the age of little kids, but at the same time has become too macabre to get many parents interested to buy for their children. This "Alice" painting is probably the most tame of all 27. I can't get myself to tone this book down at all. I feel that's where its charm lies. ~sigh~ I think now it will only appeal to those who like Tim Burton. So grown ups who are kids at heart, are a little twisted and like things playfully dark. If no publishers are interested by next Halloween I'll post them as a count down by then- sound good? It just wouldn't be a good idea to post my words, illustrations, and ideas if it were to actually be considered. Wish me luck. I've never tried anything like this before.

Songs from this summer

2008-08-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

Well it's hard not to feel a little silly posting this, but I've decided to try to not feel dumb anyway. I guess the other videos of me singing or with my guitar have been messing around with my kids and it's a little weird to show these videos of me just by myself. I keep thinking things like, "huh, do I really do that with my lips when I sing?" Anyway, here's a fun song by Ingrid Michaelson called "The Way I Am," that I figured out this summer. I play it almost like a bass guitar and tap the guitar at the bottom with my hand to give it some percussion. (Ignore the vibrating of my low E string that needs to be replaced. :)

This second song is by Brandi Carlile and is called "The Story". I love how she sings softly and then gets really loud at points. I tried to do that a bit, but I guess I'm more of a folky singer than a rocker. :) I've been really into Sondre Lerche as well, but he's so amazing on the guitar I'm not brave enough to show my versions of his songs.

Ahhh- Life returing to normal.

2008-08-19T05:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a terribly long time since I've posted anything on here because I've been absolutely boring. :) Long story short, this pregnancy turned out to be so much worse than I had anticipated even when I was as morning sick as my last post 3 months ago. After needing to be hospitalized with an enormous blood clot and severe dehydration and bed rest with I.V. I am happy to say I feel pretty normal now! For a while all I did was lay in bed and read or play the guitar. I haven't felt like painting and or sewing. Since this is my projects blog, the only project I've been working on is our little baby- which we now know is another fun girly!!! I guess I could post one of the new songs I've learned on the guitar. hmmm- yah maybe.

Well just know that I'm not dead and now that I'm feeling better there's some fun stuff to post soon. I've been working on a Halloween surprise the last 2 weeks. Come on, you know me- Halloween excitement starts in August. I wont have it finished anywhere near the point that I'd like for this Halloween, but I'll post what I've got as it gets closer to normal Halloween time and hope to have it all completed next year. It's actually a pretty big project with 26 separate paintings. I'm just glad I feel like being creative again.

Here's how you know that I'm really doing better.... on September 6th I'm going to be teaching my neighborhood how to do the Thriller dance so we can perform it in a big talent show Oct. 18th dressed up like zombies. I have to teach them in Sept because the try outs are the 12th of Sept. I just know we'll get it the talent show though. It's going to be so awesome if we get a big crowd. I've talked with about a dozen people about my idea and they are all excited so I figured why not invite everyone. I made invitations yesterday and reserved a gym to teach them in and will pass out those invites Tuesday and Wednesday to 100 neighbors or so. If I get a big enough crowd I'll host a Utah event for "Thrill the World". They are trying to break a Guinness Book of World Record for the most people dancing the same dance at one time (Thriller of course). It's scheduled for October 25th at 10am our time here, but no one has volunteered to head it up for Utah. I figure if I'm already teaching a bunch of people, I might as well host an event for here. Check out the website here. There's information for where different events are held all over the world and how to get a hold of that person hosting it. Also there's videos that very easily break down the dance for you to learn. I'm pretty excited in a very typical, me geeky way. Email me if you live nearby and want to learn the Thriller. :)

An Addition to the Family

2008-05-18T12:41:00.001-07:00

Presenting "Princess Buttercup" the newest member of our family. (The name might not stick- we are also trying out Pepper Pots, Fire Cat, and Sarah- but the girls seem to like Princess Buttercup the most) She was born about two months ago and has 5 siblings. Yesterday we got the call from our friend that their kittens were old enough now for us to come get one and so we rushed right over. The girls picked her out and named her.
They were so excited and spent all evening playing with her. She has a very comfy bed and a blankie that Kendyl (our blankie expert) was sure she'd love and you guessed it. She spent a little bit of time in it, but when it was time for bed she would have nothing to do with it and slept on Seth's head and neck all night. :) It's just a little ironic since Seth was fairly adamant before we got her that she would sleep and have her litter box down in the basement in the storage room and here she was, two floors above the basement sleeping on him all night. hehehe (I may have enjoyed that too much)

Okay so we have more news than that. Actually bigger news!

AaaaaaHHHHHhhhhhHHHh! :) We're a little over two months along!!!! So of course I am spending a lot of time with this....

I'm actually not as sick this time as with both my girls, but still pretty sick. You know, maybe throwing up a few times a day instead of a few times an hour. (I know, too much information) So, we are thinking maybe it's a boy or else my body is older and doesn't go through the same amount of trauma. Hopefully it wont last for 7 to 8 months like my other pregnancies. Keep your fingers crossed. :) Anyway, this is why I've been MIA for a while and will probably be for a while more. I'm just doing all I can to try and let this baby grow inside me and make a meal every once in a while for the kids (and cute man) that are already here.

Baptism Dress and more...

2008-04-24T21:04:00.001-07:00

I finished it... well almost. I still need to hem up the underneath layer and add the horse hair to the lining to make it a better finish, but I was too excited once I tried it on her that I yanked her into the bathroom, played with her hair and made her go outside so I could snap lots of pictures. (phew- what a run-on sentence!)

Here is the front and the back

And here are some pictures of detail on her dress. Embroidering all those little pearls and crystals on her sleeves to make little viney flowers took almost as long as sewing the rest of the dress, but it's one of my favorite parts- so I feel it was worth it. I actually really enjoy doing embroidery work though I understand it drives some people nuts and they think I'm nuts if I go to the work to do it. For me, it's fun. I added a tulle (tutu material) slip to push out her dress just a touch in between her lining slip and her silk underskirt (that is just below the organza black viney layer). The waist has a beautiful silver and black trim with embroidery through it of flowers and vines and we added the little pearl broach to the center.

I'm so happy with how it turned out and I'm happy for her that she has made this decision for her life. It has taken her a while to decide if she wanted to get baptized. She told us last spring that she wasn't going to get baptized if she wasn't sure that the church was true. We were proud of her for wanting to think for herself and we told her that it was her choice and we wouldn't pressure her one way or the other, but gave her advice for studying it out for herself to find her testimony. So since then she has been reading the Book of Mormon on her own every night and with us and she has been writing in her journal things she learns and praying to know if it is true. I'm happy to have a child so determined to find truth for herself. I told her I'd make her a pretty dress for her 8th birthday no matter what. :) I'm happy she has received her witness. That will be a strength to her all her life.

On a much lighter note... our littler one decided she needed a fancy dress. Would you believe the girls sewed this? I helped in places, but the two of them designed it with the scraps of other projects.

It was cute to see Makenzie cutting out the bodice in the shape of what you would draw on a stick figure for a shirt. She asked me to sew up the side and top of the arms. Then Kendyl picked out other fabric and said how she wanted it layered. She even designed a puffy silk part along the waist like a princess dress. She found some scraps from our vampire dresses and tried to sew an apron into it which is completely crooked and starts in the middle of the dress and ends near the back. One girl would push the peddle below and the other would guide the fabric and then they would switch places. I would help guide their hands and shout for the peddle pusher to start and stop. Kendyl also cut out an old bratz valentine and attached it to the front of her dress completing the disney store look. All she needed was a parasol and tiara and she was ready for a night on the town. :) Fancy!

This dress took about 20 minutes to make- which is a very nice alternative to how long Makenzie's took. :)

Hooray for Mommy-Daughter-Dates, Girly Movies, and Art!

2008-04-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

Our family absolutely adores this movie. I think I adore it even more than my girls if that's possible. We went and saw it in the theater and couldn't wait until it came out on DVD.
This is a picture from my favorite part in the movie when she sings to him in Central Park. She is simply delightful to watch.

Here are some of the drawings my girls did after watching the movie. They loved it so much they sat right down and began drawing. Kendyl had a stash of stickers that she added to hers. She said Gissell was dressed up for a birthday party.
Makenzie drew her favorite part of the movie where Gissell had cut his curtains and made a dress. You can see the material cut out.

Anyway, we had a mommy-daughter date where we watched this movie and played with scrapbook paper. I haven't ever tried scrapbooking before, but I love all the yummy paper and so sometimes I just buy it and have a stock pile of it. My girls like to get into it with me- like when we made our little journals. Actually Kendyl didn't make a journal that night so she did with me the other day and here's a photo of that.

Here's what I did while we watched Enchanted. My Relief Society needed some binders for the role, announcements, sign up sheets, etc. I couldn't just let them be plain white binders- so I got out my paper, scissors, and glue and made these. One binder goes to Primary, another to Young Women and 3 go to Relief Society because the room is split into 3 sections of chairs and that way they all get around.

It's fun to spend time with these cute girls and create stuff. I love to see what they come up with. I wish we could just do this kind of stuff instead of chores. I'm looking forward to summer when I get them more. We have plans for a science day, cooking day, craft day/art, and swimming the other two days of the week. They have been making a "family camp" plan for me to submit to. I must add that I am cheerfully submitting. :) I want to invite others to join in the neighborhood though. I think that would be lots of fun and a good way to use up our summer.

And the winner is...

2008-04-14T06:52:00.000-07:00

Melissa- from back in Wymount days! Sorry I didn't post yesterday. We did the drawing at Seth's parents' house last night (aka the brothel to some of you - hahaha don't ask). Anyway, we didn't get home til late and then I forgot about it until now. Sorry. Well Melissa. I'm so excited to send you the painting. Use my email link and email me your address. I'll get it to you really quick. Sorry to the rest of you guys that didn't win. I can't feel too bad because you did have really good chances. 1 in 13 (since Seth didn't need one and James (aka Brittany) wrote two comments). Thanks for all your support with my art. It really does help!

My Painting for Janelle

2008-04-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

This isn't a post of who the winner is from my post below. I'll post that on Sunday. It is the design I was waiting to post until I had given it to my friend. This design is inspired by the dress that my friend Janelle bought to wear for after her sealing ceremony. I framed it and gave it to her tonight when we were out to dinner. Her husband (Nate), herself, and her son (Bart- Makenzie's age and buddy) took our whole family out to dinner to The Melting Pot for one of the most delicious dinners we've had. We were there over 3 hours eating and talking and having such a great time (and the kids did great- so that was wonderful- yeah for older children). If you haven't gone there and you've got some major cash to blow I highly recommend it. DELICIOUS! Thank you Nate and Janelle!
So anyway, about the design. It's the first I've ever done in photoshop and I feel like I totally cheated and loved it. Fun to try new things I guess. I have a few other designs I want to try in photoshop that could coordinate with this particular design. I sketched the flowers etc. and put marks on it of where I'd place black, scanned it, and colored it in photoshop. It took a total of 30- 40 minutes. Way quicker than my paintings that take days and days. Janelle's dress is black and white like this with tropical flowers and has fuchsia colored satin ribbon along the bottom and across the top part of the bodice. It's so cute. I can't wait to see her in it. :) I studied her dress to figure out how to make this kind of a pattern. I wanted to make it similar to her dress for her specifically, but now have other ideas in mind to make it more my own. So those will be fun to make. Also, it goes along with my tropical thinking lately, not to mention I've been really in love (secretly) with this shade of pink since about last summer.
Well there you go Janelle. :)

Happy 100th Post

2008-04-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

I'm actually pretty proud of myself for reaching 100 posts on this blog because that means I finished 100 projects (paintings, sewing projects, decorating things, playing songs on my guitar, cross-stitches, crafts with my girls, big school event things, etc.) I use to never finish projects! I use to never feel brave enough to show my art to ANYONE- even Seth. I didn't even draw or paint hardly at all for about 8 or 9 years (shortly after meeting Seth and becoming majorly intimidated of him - no matter how much he encouraged me) ;).

So here is a compilation of the 40 paintings I've done since starting this blog. I'm excited to see what my compilation will look like at 200 posts. What will happen in my life by that point. Maybe I'll be brave enough to try and sell some of it... nah. :) But to celebrate I want to give away a copy of one of my paintings. Any one of them. You choose. Just put your name in the comments and tell which one you'd like. Go ahead, anyone put your name in- even if I don't know you and you are a lurker. It's okay with me. :) Hopefully this wont be embarrassing and I discover only a few people look at it. I guess that would be okay, because mostly I'm just happy to have 40 paintings done and see the progress I've made. Last day for putting your name in will be Sat. April 12th and I'll post on the 13th who wins.

Tropical Themed Painting

2008-04-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Well, here's a painting that's not for any sort of art challenge, but just because I seem to be thinking about tropical things lately :) and spring. Today my daffodils offically opened all the way and it's very exciting. This is my first garden since getting married and it is beginning to bloom. I feel so blessed and happy to see what will come up next. I spend an hour out there several times a week pulling weeds, trimming roses, clearing the ground, etc. It's so fun and reminds me of my momma. I'll post pics of my garden I'm sure as I get more progress done, but for now here are some of my daffodils.

Someone has got to stop me...

2008-03-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm addicted. :) I can't stop myself from making these cute snowflakes. I wanted to make a few for my classroom door at school in January for a decoration and I just can't stop. It's so fun to wonder what each one will turn out like... I fold... cut randomly... hold my breath as I unfold it... and wallah... each one is beautiful and unique and I can't believe I could make something so pretty without trying. :) Sure, as you make a few you understand a little more what to do to get what sort of effect, but it still surprises you in the end and is so serendipitous. Here's a few...

They were hanging and dangling and taped all over my classroom and now I have taken them home to dangle here. (I have now put up Saint Patrick's Day decorations that I made and will put up some Easter stuff shortly in my classroom). In case you want to know how to make such splendid snowflakes, here's a guide. (The yellow snowflake isn't so pretty, but it's a good simple design to teach you how).

btw- you can also use coffee filters and fold them up to cut.

Here's a fun website that you can make snowflakes with online. http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/ or click here. It's quicker and just as pretty, you just don't get to keep them in the end. :)

Probably because of all these snowflakes around here the weather has decided to become chilly and stormy again, just when the snow was melting and looking close to spring. This is what I saw from my backdoor two days ago. Isn't that incredible? It was so cool to see that storm coming in on such a pretty day? I guess I better make some kites or butterflies or something to dangle from my entry way balcony to entice warmer weather. :)

Thankful Journal

2008-03-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

Well I finally did it! I've had plans for making this since November. I was going to start at the first of the year and that came and went, so what better day to start it than today (March 2nd). The girls and I messed around with paper, glue, ribbon, markers, and cardboard last night for a few hours and made our own creations. Makenzie wanted to make a journal like me and Kendyl wanted to make a "shooting heart" and an "ornament". What fun. The way this "Thankful Journal" works is that every day for a year I will record a few words of what I was thankful for that day. Emily Falconbridge thought it up and made one of her own that you can check out here and my friend Kristen made one too that you can check out here. It's a fun simple idea and easy to keep up with. A lot easier than a painting a week I'll bet, but I'd still like to keep painting. :)

Anyway, here's how mine turned out. Here's the front and inside the cover. I just glued it all together not really knowing what I was doing, but so happy trying something new.

Here's what all of our creations look like together. Kendyl's "shooting heart" is the gold creation protruding from the top and her ornament is that paper wiggly-squiggly creation on the left. Makenzie's journal is to the very most right and I thought she was quite inventive to make a clasp to keep it shut with that cute polka-dot paper. They are resting against our "Tinkerbell lamp". It's this cool lamp that opens up and we've filled with little paper slips of "happy thought" memories. Seth and I started filling it up when we were first married so it has memories from dating all the way to our crazy kids. It's fun to look through together sometimes.

Here's our cute Makenzie writing in hers today. She wrote last night too. She was so happy as she was making it and writing in it today. She kept telling me how fun it was to be creative and that I was being like her Aunt Kristie who always makes neat cards and sends them to us. Sweet girl.

Anyway, I'm excited about this new journal. I think it's a beautiful gift to be thankful and probably one you have to work diligently for. What a great idea to end each day thinking about how the Lord has blessed you and what you are thankful for. I feel it's very important. President Eyring gave a great talk last conference called, "Oh Remember, Remember" and I feel this journal is a spin off of his counsel. I've attached a link to his talk here. Read it. It's wonderful. Go ahead and make your own journals too. It's so fun.

Makenzie's Baptism Dress

2008-02-26T15:12:00.000-08:00

Okay Kristen, here is the fabric that I called you about while I was in the fabric store today. For everyone else... you are looking at the fabric that will become Makenzie's baptism dress(not what she will be baptized in of course, but the dress she'll wear after in celebration of such a great event in her life). The underneath fabric is a shantung and the skirt part will have this organza black finished lace fabric over it. The bodice and sleeves will be the shantung with regular white sheerish organza over it. I haven't quite decided all the embellishments yet and trim, but the beads are for the embroidery work I'm going to do on the bodice.

Here's a closer look at her dress. Sorry if it's still hard to read. You can look up the pattern online. It's McCall's 4286. It's the dress to the left. I love the one to the right, but it's a bit fancy- more a wedding reception- flower girl dress I think. Anyway, I love the flowy airiness of this dress and it's sweet empire waist and slightly poofed sleeves. It feels Jane Austin-ish to me.

When I finish the dress I'll have her pose in it and post it to here. Of course I can't even get to this dress until I finish a series of books I'm reading (which should only take a few more days) and get my house back in order from our lovely vacation to LA. I should probably switch the order of those things to get done, but I most likely wont. :) Her baptism is still 2 months away so I'm not too stressed. "Still 2 months away"!!! Can you believe my little baby is so big? Already 8. Before you know it I'll be sewing her wedding dress. Oh dear, now I have to stop typing. For some reason my computer screen is all blurry. Waaahhhaaa haaa.

Week 49: Time Flies

2008-01-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

Emily's Challenge for week 49 was "Time Flies" and boy does it ever. Time has flown from when my girls were babies and I would sing to them at night. (Okay so we still do that, but they aren't babies anymore.) :) Time has flown from when Seth and I got married 8 1/2 years ago. Time has flown from when we were dating and in college.

I remember taking a trip in college and visiting my friend Katie's house and listening to her dad (David Golden) play the guitar for hours while we sung along. This is the way she grew up and I knew that was the way I wanted to raise my kids too. So I decided to learn the guitar. I practiced a few chords and the next trip we took he taught us a very special song he wrote the music and set to that old dutch lullaby/poem "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" by Eugene Field. (My absolute favorite) It's so beautiful and magical and I knew I wanted to learn his version the best I could. I learned it from him when I barely knew anything on the guitar so please don't judge the song by how I play and sing. If only you could hear him. He's an amazing musician and such an incredible person as well. I was so blessed to spend time in their wonderful, loving home. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing the song here. Any credit should be given to him, except for much more because he'd play it much better for you than me. :)

I play this song for my girls all the time. They know the words even though in the video Kendyl is more interested in showing her gum to the camera than singing every word, but she's such a cutie, what can you do? We're mostly just messing around in the video, but you get the idea. It's nice to me though because it's just how it sounds in our home instead of being professional. Might remind some of you of another video Kendyl and I made singing together almost two years ago...

I made plans 10 years ago to make a painting for this poem and made sketches etc., but didn't feel confident enough to complete anything. It was so special to me I was worried about making a painting that couldn't show how much I love this poem. Well, with this challenge I wanted to try and I think it's safe to say I spent the most time on this painting than I have on any of them in this challenge. I'm happy with how it turned out so all the time put into it was worth it. I'm so thankful I can express myself with art and music. It makes me happy and it's wonderful that I don't have to be the best artist or musician to find joy in it.

Something so interesting about planning out my painting was looking through my notes and my sketches. Back in college I had known I wanted Wynken to be the oldest with long brown hair that would have a caring personality sitting back amazed at all she was seeing and be holding a baby. I knew I wanted Blynken to be more of a curious nature with shorter blondish hair and holding a lantern that she had stuffed a star into that was lighting their way. Blynken had the personality of touching everything around her to experience it all whereas Wynken was happiest seeing it all play before her. The baby Nod I knew I wanted to be a little boy in green in his big sister's arms and feeling safe and close to her. I spent hours thinking about this in college and felt like I really knew these little characters. I have pages and pages of notes and sketches, so much that I had to put them all in a folder. Now as I looked over these 10 years later I realize that Wynken looks and is so much like Makenzie, Blynken is Kendyl, and Makenzie is holding a baby Nod...... no we aren't pregnant. :) Did I get you? :) I'm just pretending we are for the painting. hehehe But maybe we have a little Nod waiting. :) That's what our joke is anyway. (btw- the blue polka-dot fabric around it was Makenzie's idea and a nice touch too- thanks kiddo) :)

So here we are... a blink later, when actually it's been 10 years, with a painting finally done and two kids that sing along with us at night. Time sure flies....

New Sunday Dresses!

2008-01-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago while going through some fabric I found a little plastic bag of this cute embroidered corduroy material that I had already cut out to make simple little jumpers for my girls. I had cut the material and the lining and never sewed them together. I remember doing this a year ago last December when we were still in LA and thinking I would whip those out before Christmas. I guess I stuffed it away and never got it out again. Thankfully I cut the pieces too large and so now it fit the girls perfectly this year. :) Anyway, I set up my little machine downstairs and watched "Stardust" with Kendyl one day last week and sewed the pieces together during the movie. I'm so use to things taking weeks and weeks because I don't get inspired to sew unless it's something extravagant and complicated, that it was so fun sitting down and creating something new just during the time of a movie. I may have to do more simple little projects like this. I had fun looking at them during church and thinking to myself that I made those cute dresses for them. It's nice to see my handiwork more than just once a year at Halloween. :)

Merry Christmas Seth

2007-12-26T06:55:00.000-08:00

Well I finished it and here it is. I killed two birds with one stone so to speak. I knew I wanted to paint a sweet nativity for Emily's challenge for week 29:Define perfection. Also I wanted to make Seth a painting for Christmas. We have a favorite Christmas book with the most lovely illustrations. I study it all season long trying to figure out the illustrator's techniques and then we put it back in a box not to be able to enjoy for 11 more months. In the book is a wonderful two page painting that we love and I decided that I would make a little miniature version of it to be able to practice some of the illustrators techniques but also so that Seth wouldn't have to wait till the end of November to enjoy the serene nativity scene again. I only wish I was as good as Jason Cockcroft. :) I found this really cool frame. It's intricately wood carved design reminds you of something a carpenter would make eh? I was so happy to see Seth love it so much. It is now displayed in his art studio on one of the shelves for the computer desk area beside a pirate head and under Jack Skellington. Very nice. :) Isn't Seth's annual beard just lobery? He grows this every year around this time. It began in college when he'd go home for winter break and the roommates would see who could grow the best beard by the time they got back. 10 years later he is still doing it, only now he's competing with my leg hairs. hahaha. Makenzie has decided that he grows it this time of year because he wants to be like Santa. She may be right.

Week 32: Quiet

2007-12-22T19:24:00.000-08:00

Week 32's art journal challenge was "quiet". There's nothing like the morning after it has snowed through the night. It is the most beautiful quiet I can think of, well except the wonderful quiet that you have when babies are sleeping. Oh blessed moments! Although my girls are older and don't take naps, I can still remember the relief of when they were younger and were down for a nap. ahhhhhhHHHhhhh. I set up this snowman the way I did and used the colors and border and style for the same feel as my other two Christmas paintings I have made this year. Just for fun here they are all together. The Santa one is actually the same size as my other two, but to have it be the same height I enlarged it. All my paintings are on small little 4x6 inch water color post cards.

I'm about to get some quiet around here in just a minute. I'm stalling putting my little chiquitas to bed so I can post this, but after I get them down I'm starting a new little painting that's a surprise for my hubby for Christmas. I couldn't find a perfect gift for him for some reason. I found a few nice things that I got for him, but I also wanted something perfect and I refused to spend more money unless it was something great. Why spend money just to spend it because you feel like you are "suppose" to have a certain number of presents? I hope my painting turns out the way I want it to and that he will love it. I'm sure he'd love what his sister gave her hubby for Christmas more, but this is a little more economical and definitely from my heart.

Merry Christmas!

A Sweet Little Note...

2007-12-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

"Mrs. Hippen,

You can still be funny because all the kids in our class will laugh. Because it's funny and kids like when stuff's funny. Everyone like you. All the kids like each other."

Is that not the cutest note? It was a Christmas present from one of my preschool students. I have it out in the open and have read it at least a dozen times since she gave it to me on Monday. It's true that I'm a complete lunatic with the kids and love to make them laugh. Her note basically meant to me that she has fun in class, that she feels loved and safe and has a class full of friends.

Week 31: No Regrets

2007-12-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Emily's week 31 challenge way back in August was titled "No Regrets" and I knew then what I wanted to make and began sketching it out, but got frustrated with it and erased it and didn't go back to it until yesterday morning. No regrets.... well, first of all I have no regrets about putting a halt on my career for beginning my family. I find a lot of joy and fulfilment in teaching, but even more in teaching as a mom. I have loved being home with my little kiddos and wouldn't have given it up for anything.

This year since my youngest is preschool age I have begun teaching at a very wonderful preschool (just not the same class that my little one is in) for a few hours 3 times a week. It was quite the adjustment having a strict schedule again and planning etc., but the rewards followed as well. So the other thing I have no regrets about is starting teaching again. Oh sometimes I gripe or it's hard to work things out if my kids are sick, but for the most part it's been so wonderful. Of my 12 students only one could sound out 3 letter words the first week of school, now 4 1/2 months later 11 of my 12 students are reading! More lovely than that, they follow direction, adore me (which is wonderful), and share with me the most delightful stories about their lives and their families which I'm sure would make their parents cringe some days.

I see so much potential in those sweet little stinkers. My biggest goal is that they will feel loved and feel what I see in them so that even if they have failures it wont sting. I hope they will believe deep down that if they keep trying, whatever it is that they are trying, than they will have success and I hope beyond hope that they will feel they can do anything and not be afraid to try. We outlawed the words, "I can't" at the beginning of the year. We had a funeral and everything for that nasty phrase. I have taught them to replace it with the words, "I'll try." When they remember to say, "I'll try" when they feel frustrated they almost start giggling because they know I will jump around the room cheering for them for trying. I expect a great deal of these little 4 and 5 year olds and they are accomplishing great things. What a blessing it has been to teach in a classroom again and see how much they've grown.

Yup, no regrets! (I just wish teachers were valued more monetarily) :)

Week 44: Home

2007-12-07T15:59:00.000-08:00

Emily's challenge was "home" for week 44 and I have to say I was quite charmed by her sweet little bird picture she used and wanted to put a bird on mine too. So here it is....

I've been having so much fun day dreaming about what we'll do with this place. It's a slow process, but I'm glad that we have an art studio now. That is so fun for me. Since I was a kid I wanted my own room for art and now I have one and I get to share it with an amazing artist who inspires (and sometimes intimidates) me. Last week I left my mark in there and it makes me happy. Here's some pics of the mark I left. :)

I decided to hang all my little paintings from this year in the corner where the drafting table is. I had a bit of ribbon and some small little clothes pins, but had so many paintings I had to use old hair clips of the girls that are too small for their thicker big girl hair. I must admit it makes me quite happy to look at these paintings and remember what has happened this last year in the most unigue journal I've ever kept (and believe me, I've filled a lot of journals- around 20).

Curly or Frizzy?

2007-12-06T16:14:00.000-08:00

So.... I woke up this morning to my hair looking like this and I can't figure out if it's just frizzy or if it really looks curly. I went straight to bed after a bath and put a towel over my pillow and wrapped it up so it would dry. I guess I usually fall asleep way after my hair has dried, but anyway, this is what happened. I was very surprised to see curls. My hair has always been straight except when I tried a few unsightly perms back in the day. Maybe I'm just excited and hopeful they are curls when really it's just frizzy. That's why I need your help to tell me if I should leave the house looking like this. :) Thanks.

P.S. Sorry the pic is super geeky.

Week 46 and 47

2007-11-29T19:49:00.000-08:00

woo woo. I'm naked! :0) My first nudie painting. hehe Week 46's theme to do an art challenge around was "Rejuvination" and Week 47's theme is "Happy Place". This is exactly how I give back to myself and fill up my little "mommy store" so I can have energy and patience to keep going. It is my happy place as well so I thought I'd combine the two since I was behind and they go hand in hand for me. (Other happy places are the beach, the temple, cozy by a fireplace with a good book... so if I have time after I'm all caught up more on these challenges than I'll do one of those, but for now this'll work.) Wanted to try a different sort of face shape and style, but feel I look a little Latina. It's fun, but just doesn't look too much like me. That's okay though, it's good to try new stuff.

I LOVE bubble baths! I could take them everyday. It is how I cope and move on. I grab a good book, sometimes light candles, fill it up with salts, bubbles, oil, whatever yummy smelling stuff I've got and soak and soak and soak. Sometimes I set up a small tv/vcr in there and watch movies. It's ridiculous how much I love baths. When we lived in our ity bity house in LA the bathroom was so small it couldn't fit a tub. I had no bath for 2 years and I thought I would go crazy some days. It's so fun to have a jetted tub in my new home. I get quite a lot of use out of it, as do my girls. :)

Week 28 and 39

2007-11-29T00:29:00.000-08:00

Well I combined these into one post even though the weeks between were spread so far apart. I'm playing catch-up. I feel like I go in cycles of creativity. I've just got bit again by the painting bug when before that it was the decorating bug and before that the sewing bug. Okay so anyway, about the art challenges, that is what this post is suppose to be about anyway right?

Week 28 was "Goal of the Week". So I'm totally cheating, but I figure it's okay to if I admit it. The truth is that I really just wanted to paint a little Christmas tree and use glitter and get into my hubby's gold leafing. :) So I pretended that my goal of the week was to get my Christmas tree up. (It's embarrassing to admit, but we put our tree up two weeks before Thanksgiving- gasp! I know, poor Thanksgiving. ) So I guess my goal of the week was to pretend to need to put the Christmas tree up. There, that sounds legit.

Week 39: "Someone Spesh" Well since it's Christmasy time and I'm pretty sure that's why the painting bug bit me I painted a picture of Santa Claus. I'd certainly say he's special, wouldn't you? Since I had so much fun with Seth's gold leafing I used it again (on the star and bells on his hat and scarf). Don't you just like his beard? :) It makes me happy to look at it. I love those little swirls. Seth had the great idea to have the shape of the beard mimic his hat but go the opposite direction. I had made a slightly different shape to a beard and I'm so glad I changed it. I'm married to such a smarty pants. :)

Well I'm off to probably catch up some more while I'm in the mood. This is sure fun. Actually no, I just looked at the clock and realized I'm an idiot and I'm going to bed. Tomorrow (oops, I mean today, but when the sun comes up) I'll paint more I'm sure since I don't have to work, but first I better tidy up the house so I don't feel icky all day. It must be late because I'm writing down my thoughts. Ok, goodnight before I write something even more dumb. Like that.

Hickory Dickory Dock

2007-11-25T14:22:00.000-08:00

Emily's challenge for week 30 was "Not Anymore". With my children being 4 and 7, I don't have any babies anymore. I cannot turn back the clock and have my growing big girls be so little again. It makes me realize how much I need to cherish my time with them at this age because that is slipping quickly just like the time of when they were babies. It seems to be slipping even faster. That's why I have so much fun keeping our family blog and my own family journals so I can record and remember the wonderful and stinkery things they do.
I've always LOVED LOVED LOVED grandfather clocks. When I was a little girl my dad and I would look up grandfather clocks in catalogs and day dream about making our own in his garage. I was sure we were going to, just as I am sure I will get to it eventually. :) For many years I've imagined making a little painting of the "Hickory Dickory Dock" nursery rhyme using a grandfather clock. I'm glad I've finally done it. It makes me want to paint some of the other nursery rhymes I've loved like, "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". I guess keep your eyes out for those. They may be coming (depending on how long I continue to be baby hungry) :). Don't be surprised if my next paintings are Christmasy though.

Last Installment of Thankfulness (for now)

2007-11-21T06:33:00.000-08:00

V- Vacations- glorious vacations! Vacuums- although I love them more in the hands of my husband. Vampires- only the good kind like Edward and his "family" or else my family in our Halloween costumes. I'm thankful for VanDyke's too. :)
W- Wishing Wells, Wishing Stars, Wish Bones, Wishing on candles, Wishing on eye lashes, etc. I'm also thankful for the Weekend! I love playing and catching up on Saturdays and I love resting and going to church and eating Sunday dinner with Seth's family on Sundays!
X- Okay so it's going to sound obvious and dumb because it's the only X word in our language- well practically :) but I'm thankful for X-rays because we are going to the dentist this morning and so our girls will be getting x-rays of all their lovely Halloween candy cavities. I guess you would think I wouldn't be grateful for that, but you'd be wrong. I don't blame the X rays. I blame that darn capitalism-candy combo that I love so much.
Y- My YARD! Hooray, there are such things as yards in other places. It's amazing to realize after living in LA, but we have a yard. And not just one! It's true... we have 2! And you can run around in them and plant flowers and mow them.
Z- zzzzZZZZZzzzzz- I'm thankful when I can get some of those!

This has been fun for me. In all seriousness though, I feel so blessed and too often over look all the things to be thankful for. I have begun to realize that the past few months I have been spending too much time thinking of things that I want instead of things that I'm thankful for. It's interesting because we have been blessed to be able to buy a house. We have been saving and hoping for that for our entire marriage. We have lived in places smaller than my family/kitchen combined and been utterly happy with a bed that comes out of a wall into the middle of a family room or a bedroom so tiny and narrow we had to buy bunk beds to fit two kids in there. Now that we have a bigger space most of my thoughts have been how much I "need" to fill it with wonderful furniture, more toys, decorations, etc. My thoughts have turned from grateful to selfish. Isn't that interesting... that the more I've had the easier it has been for me to want more instead of realizing how blessed I've been? Well I'm glad I caught myself, so I can change things around. The blessings that I've always had no matter what I've had around me are still the same and that could make anyone happy if they would realize it and think upon it. We live in a beautiful world created by loving creator. We have a Father in Heaven who created us in His image and loves us and hears our prayers and answers them. We have His Son, who loves us, came to earth to show us the way, and gave his life for us. We have the Holy Ghost, our free agency, our talents, trials to humble us and help us, repentance, and an ultimate potential in each of us. We have scriptures, our families, the temple, the gospel, a prophet, beautiful sunsets, oceans, mountains, trees, pretty leaves and flowers, snow, and beautiful people who inspire beautiful things and reflect the goodness from whom they were created. These are all things we have no matter where we live or how we live. Maybe these are too tender of feelings for this type of forum and I have to admit that it's easier to be silly than sincere, but I feel I want to share my feelings of gratitude to any who would want to read it. Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Life.

Thankful List part 4

2007-11-20T12:08:00.001-08:00

Q- My Queeny Tiaras. I love my little collection of tiaras that I wear around the house while I clean or cook or just because. I know it's super nerdy, but what can I say, I like sparkly things.
R- Rainbows and radio active spiders that bite and then the comic books and movies about that guy the spider bit.
S- Seth of course and my scriptures.
T- Temple Blessings- I stole that one from Heidi. Too good not to use. Although I'm very thankful for tax returns as well.
U- Ok so the only u word that's coming into my head is unleavened bread and I'm not exactly thankful enough for that to use so I don't know... Oh wait- The United States! Yes, I'm super thankful to live in the United States with all my wonderful freedoms that have been fought and preserved. Gracious- how in the world could I have forgotten that?

Well only V,W,X,Y,Z and I'll be ready for Thanksgiving dinner!

My Classroom Thanksgiving Decorations

2007-11-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd post pictures of some of the things I made for my class for Thanksgiving since we went ahead and moved straight onto Christmas in my house. (sheepish giggle)

I have a section of wall that I change each month for the season or holiday that month and so here's a picture of the little veggies and leaves I drew and cut out and glued to create a little border which I am pleased to say only took about 20 minutes to make. I was surprised by that. :)

The turkey is something I created while the kids were doing seat work one day after reading my friend Kristen's idea of making a Thankful Turkey. I went around asking the kids their favorite color and what they were thankful for. I saved room on the other side of the turkey for the other teacher who teaches in my classroom on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My favorite thankfuls are "dinosaurs" and "turkey". I thought those were so cute. Of course being thankful for moms and dads are wonderful, I would want my kids to say that, but I loved the kids that were thankful for more random things. I put it on the front of my classroom door so when parents wait for class to get out they could read what their kids said.

Even More Thankfulness...

2007-11-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

G- God. Of course. :)
H- "Herby the Home Wrecker", as my husband fondly refers to him. (My body pillow that I can't sleep without- where would I be without you sweet pillow?)
I- Imagination and Imaginary Friends.
J- "Jewels"- Kendyl's imaginary friend. I also love Jack-o-lanterns.
K- Kendyl and Kenzie :)
L- Lullabies, my Love machine hubby, and my Love machine hubbies lullabies.
M- The Moon. I love, love, love the moon. She has inspired many beautiful thoughts, stories, drawings, and songs in my life. Even more though, another M word is Mother. :)
N- No more being sick. Hooray. After 3 weeks I think I can safely say I'm on the upswing for good. I hate bobbing up and down out of getting sick and then feeling better to realize I wasn't completely better and feel awful again. This isn't a fun time of year with all the yucky germs going around (especially for a teacher).
O- Olive Garden- yum! One of my favorite restaurants. Feel free to take me out anytime to that place.
P- Painting. I'm so glad I rediscovered my love for painting again this year and stopped being such a chicken (hiding it under my bushel). And could I forget Pickle? NO, NEVER! I love pickles. I go through a jar way too quickly. I wish they had more good nutrients in them.

More Thankfulness...

2007-11-11T11:42:00.001-08:00

D- Diversity. I miss the rainbow of colors of faces that I would see in LA. Another D word is dancing. I'm thankful for silly, beautiful, uninhibited dancing. I get the biggest kick out of kids (or grown ups) that can just let loose. Whenever a really great song comes on, no matter where I am (home, watching a movie, in the grocery store) I can't help but start busting a move. There's nothing better to me than a terrible dancer who is just happy to be dancing (i.e. Elaine from Seinfeld).

E- Edward (yup- that Edward- sigh) Sorry if you are gagging right now Seth. Just know that you are my Edward. :)

F- Fall colors. I just love them. They are my favorite. That's why I decorate my Christmas tree with fall colors. Besides then I feel I have a good enough excuse to start decorating early for Christmas (yup- we already have begun- ekk). Other F words (NO! Not that one you stinker.) Food and Feast! Yum. I love food. Especially dessert. Ooo I forgot to say dessert in my D words. But the most important F word of all- my FAMILY! There would be no happiness without you!

The Pay It Forward Idea

2007-11-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

Here's the Pay It Forward Idea:I will send a handmade gift to the first three (3) people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. You may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog. (so, you must have a blog to participate.) I can't wait to see who I will be giving to. To join, just cut and paste this on your blog and comment away. So get posting.

My cute friend Amber has a really sweet list going and I thought it would be fun and good for me to think about all the stuff I'm thankful for- especially this time of year. Only I can't seem to be serious about any letter I try to think up. I'm going crazy here trying to be as sweet as Amber, so I guess I'll just put up the dumb stuff that's going through my head and maybe something sweet will come out every once in a while. I think I'll post a couple a day instead of just one so I can get it done by Thanksgiving. Join the fun, even if my 3 are taken of who I'll give something to and let me know if you're doing it so I can check out your blog too. :)

(Note: the pillow picture above is not what I'm making. I just found the picture googling and thought "why not?" I don't know what I'm making actually, but I will.)

A: Azcaban- I'm thankful there's a place for all those nut-job wizards and witches.

B: Brandy- Yah, I'm thankful for it. What? It makes me feel better at the end of the day. I'm just kidding. You know I don't drink the stuff.

C: Capitalism- Down with Communism! ooo ooo and candy. Nothing goes better with a little candy than Capitalism- YUM!

I'm the luckiest girl in the world!

2007-11-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

I am, I tell you.... because I have the best friends in the world! Last week I found this package on my porch sent to me all the way from some of my buddies in the fiery lands of southern California. I should have been sending them something because of the sad state of things going on there, but no, they were thinking of my silly birthday while smoke filled their lungs- bless their little hearts. So thank you Hannah, Kristen, Nanette, and Betsey. I sure love you guys and miss you more than you know. I was a wreck for at least a day because of your sweetness (more than my normal wreck-ness from missing you, that is). As soon as Seth got home from work and saw it all he said exactly what I thought he'd say. He looked at my presents, furrowed his brow, and said, "Well, let's move back" in his Eeyore sort of way. Of course we'll wait for the fires to be completely gone first. :) In all actuality, we are enjoying it here. We have the things we missed in CA- family close, our own home, less work hours, mountains, lots of roaming space... we just miss now the things in CA that we can't have here. Oh to have pumpkin cheesecake and eat it too. :) We'll just try to focus on the good things of each place that we live in and not dwell too much on the stuff we can't have- like you sweet friends a stroll away! Love you girls and all the rest of you still there!!!!

P.S. And thank you Jason for sending us post cards of Southern CA on our bdays too- so we could miss it more. :)

Our Halloween Costumes!!!

2007-11-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Well I can't believe I finished these in time for Halloween. Even though I have been sewing them for many weeks I had to stay up till at least 2:30 in the morning several times this last week to finish and I was sewing Seth's jabot for his suit 20 minutes before our Halloween Trunk-or-Treat party. I don't really think of myself as a talented seamstress, so I hope it doesn't feel like I'm showing these to brag like it took me so little effort or something. It's actually quite the opposite. My costume took me about 6 weeks last year, Seth's took me about 3 weeks, and the girl's costumes took about 3 1/2 weeks altogether. Even though I don't think I'm super talented or that it comes naturally, I do think of myself as determined and I feel that's a talent. It takes me about 4 times longer to sew something than my friend Kristen and by the time you see a finished product you can know that I've sewn, unpicked and resewn almost every seamline about 3 times to make it right because I screw up so much (and maybe I'm a bit of a perfectionist- but lets not bring that up). I find that every project makes me that much better with less screw ups though. Just in case you can't tell we are 17th century vampires. I was going to make a different costume for myself this year, but when my girls both told me they wanted to be little vampires to match my dress from last year how could I refuse but to use the same dress. :) So here we are....

Makenzie

(She likes to be very creepy so she really hammed it up for any picture taken of her in her dress. Notice her little spiders in her hair- her idea I might add.)

Kendyl

(Here she is waiting to see Kenzie in her school parade and the other picture is of her marching in her own school parade)

Seth

(He likes to be creepy too. I suppose that's where Kenzie gets it. :) I overexposed the picture to the right on purpose so you could see the detail and textures of the different pieces of his suit.)

Karalenn
(Well I really didn't have any pictures of me taken by myself since I made this last year. So here's last year's pictures.)

The Whole Fam

Better hope you don't run into us on a dark night.

Hope you all had a very happy and spooky Halloween!

The details of parties, events, and such will are on our family blog here. I just wanted to post the sewing projects that I've been putting my heart and sleep into the last few weeks here on my projects/art blog.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

We made these for the outside of our house. just kidding. We may just have to though. Too funny. We'd probably get in trouble with our HOA.

A funny story

2007-10-17T09:58:00.001-07:00

I just thought my friend told a really funny story on her blog of what happened to her at breakfast two days ago. I can't believe how out spoken some people are.

http://lisamarieandkendonjensen.blogspot.com/2007/10/im-so-sorry-i-spoiled-your-breakfast.html

A Witch's Birth

2007-10-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

I made this little painting a few days ago thinking of Kendyl and how much she likes to throw spiders into so many of her drawings. They are usually dangling in the air all over her characters. Toon club's topic last week was "Witches" and even though I'm not in toon club it made me want to make a witch painting. It also goes along with week 43's challenge in the art journal that is "scary". Although it's not very scary, it was to Kendyl. :)

At night sometimes we will make up stories and take turns going around adding on to the story until the story finds its end. Well this little painting spured a new story a few nights ago. Tonight Makenzie refined and dictated the story to me, so I put it on our family blog here. The girls are downstairs making drawings to illustrate more parts in Kenzie's story.

Week 36: Life Is Beautiful

2007-10-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

Awww. Finally I am out of my creative slump!!!! I'm so glad to be posting this and not have to look at my Jane Austen post anymore. I hate how I want to draw and paint and then I get in a slump because some picture doesn't turn out right and I freak out, throw it in a drawer, and vow to never paint again and tell myself I'm only fooling myself that I'm an artist. I have attempted several drawings and paintings and felt super annoyed. In fact my last post for the art journal I didn't like, but put up anyway because it had been so long.... but the family Halloween portrait I was working on made me so mad I didn't touch a pencil for two weeks. Finally this morning I was inspired by a fun children's Halloween book and wanted to make my own night time pumpkin patch.

So here it is: Week 36's Challenge was, "Life Is Beautiful" and although I'm behind this fits perfect with how I feel. I just love autumn time! Halloween, colorful fall leaves, pumpkins, whistling wind, crisp air, my birthday, my hubby's birthday, smells, pumpkin carving, walking through trails in the mountains, sewing costumes, picture taking, decorating, pumpkin pie milk shakes, parties, costume contests, making silly little crafts with my kids. Life is beautiful in the fall. It's my favorite!

P.S. A very happy 36th birthday to my biggest brother!

What Jane Austen Character Are You?

2007-09-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

Well this was fun. Try it out. I'm so happy I turned out to be my favorite character! When I think about it, I would probably have to admit that I am a bit of an Emma. I do just love Pride and Prejudice though. I know the book by heart in many places and definitely the A&E movie version is memorized. I always spurt out little lines that apply to life every once in a while. I go through my Jane Austen phase and try to reread her books every spring, but most of all Pride and Prejudice if I can't fit any other book in. I watch the 6 hour A&E version monthly and my girls groan, "Oh no, not Mr. Darcy again!" :) I like to watch it while I sew or catch up on backed up laundry. Believe me, it can take that long.

Anyway, try it out and tell me who you are.

Take the Quiz here!

Check this out!

2007-09-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

This is just too funny. I have been looking for a good black top hat to go with Seth's vampire costume I'm making him this year for Halloween and this ebay listing was just too funny to me. Most people will show one, maybe two pictures of the item and this wonderful person posed with his top hat 11 times! Some with a gun, some with a pool stick, some with a beer, one with a girl. It's just too good. http://cgi.ebay.com/CUSTOM-QUALITY-BLACK-LEATHER-TOP-HAT-MODERN-BEAVER-SILK_W0QQitemZ120161024212QQihZ002QQcategoryZ105399QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem I think this one's my favorite!

A few minutes later: I just found the same guy in almost all the same poses with a white hat just like this one. He's so cool! Here's the link to the white top hat pictures too http://cgi.ebay.com/CUSTOM-QUALITY-WHITE-LEATHER-TOP-HAT-MODERN-BEAVER-SILK_W0QQitemZ120163141951QQihZ002QQcategoryZ105399QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Okay now this is getting ridiculous. I just found him again on a different one. It's a girl posed a bunch of times in a top at and one of her last pictures is of her sitting on his lap and him wearing a big sombrero. He must be the top hat pimp. Here's the link. http://cgi.ebay.com/ROYAL-ASCOT-BLACK-LEATHER-TOP-HAT-PROM-FORMAL-WEDDING_W0QQitemZ120163142012QQihZ002QQcategoryZ105399QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Week 35 and 33's Art Challenges

2007-09-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

For Week 35's challenge it was strength. We were suppose to create something around what our strengths were. I know one of my strengths (and maybe weaknesses) is how easily I give my heart to others. I love loving people. I love to do things for others. In fact I live for it. :) I grew up always helping other people and loved being able to cheer them up or do some sort of secret little thing for them. Not to say I wasn't a stinker or that I was perfectly kind. I mean, we all have Emma moments right? (that's what I call them anyway- you know the scene in "Emma" where she says something horrible at the strawberry picking picnic and you just feel sick watching it and Mr. Knightly scolds her- "badly done Emma!" Oh how I hate those horrible moments) Anyway, my mom was a wonderful example of acceptance and my dad was an incredible example of service. I thought I'd make my painting into the Queen of Hearts card since everyone else is scrapbooking these and on a deck of cards. It made me feel like I was fitting in a little more with the rest of these amazing gals. For Week 33 the challenge was 10 minutes. Create anything and see what you come up with in 10 minutes. Although I forgot the 10 minute part and I remembered it as 15 minutes for some reason and then fudged for an extra 5. hehe I didn't have anything in particular in mind except to use a color that's in my head lately- cobalt. All because of a certain dress in my head right now. :) I just wanted to make a quick little painting of any sort of design that wanted to come out- so here it is. enjoy.

(My sister just asked me how I made it so I guess I'll describe what I did: I sketched out the lines of the borders and flowers, then put masking fluid over the flower vines and borders and went crazy with the blues and purple watercolor- painting over it. The masking fluid protected what I wanted to keep white so I could be as careless and dark with the blue as I wanted. Then I crinkled up saran wrap and stuck it on top of the blue to let it sit and dry. When I lifted the saran wrap it dried making that texture in the background. Then I took of the masking fluid with an erasure and outlined everything in black. I added touches of rusty orange when I was all done for a good compliment to cobalt blue. voile! So basically it's just watercolor and ink)

Well folks, the results are in...

2007-09-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

Stirring the papers.......

Drum Roll Please.....

And the winner is....

XENA!!!!!!

Of all the silly luck... Xena happens to be Seth's youngest sister (Hanna) and she was at Seth's parents' house when we did the drawing tonight!

This is a reenactment of Hanna hearing her name win.

This is her saying, "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo" to everyone in the contest.

For shame. :)

Thanks everyone for participating. It was super-fun. Now I don't want to hear any whiney-whinersons saying that the contest was fixed in any way. :) That includes you, John, who will now think that I have never liked you. hahaha

A Great Movie!

2007-09-07T08:10:00.001-07:00

Alright everybody, why haven't you seen this movie yet? I'm so surprised at its box office sales right now. It was such a good fairy tale- adventure, action, romance! The actors (Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller, Rupert Everett) were amazing. I loved Robert De Niro! And the "dead brothers"- hahaha. You just have to go see it. Seth and I went on a date last weekend (hooray- those are always great to have) and went to this movie. It was so fun, one of my favorites from the summer. I don't want to talk it up too much, but I really just want to encourage people to go see it. The official movie site is http://www.stardustmovie.com/ . Go to it and see clips of the movie or their photo gallery. Anyway, it's definitely going to be one that I buy and I don't say that often. In fact I think I need to go see it again for "research purposes". :) I fell in love with a certain dress of hers (Yvaine) in the movie. Actually both dresses she wears are FABULOUS! Although the silver one is amazing and is more true to her character of being a fallen star I can't help myself about her blue one! I mean come on!... it it must have at least 15-20 yards of my favorite cobalt blue colored taffeta and deep blue velvet. yummm. :)

So here are a two pictures showing her blue dress. Get ready to drool. I am going to make this dress for me for Halloween this year! (you can drool on me when I wear it :) I know I'm no size 2 like Claire Danes, but I think it could still look fabulous. I kept telling myself that I should use my vampire dress again since I spent so long on it, but again... I can't help it. :) Sorry Seth. I know I kept telling you that same thing too about wearing my vampire dress again. Did you really believe me? I think I might have for an few days.

My friend Kristen, is going to make the silver star dress (here and here) for herself for Halloween so we'll make a cute pair. (If only we were in the same state still- sob, sniff, sniff.) Maybe I'll have time to make Tristan's (Charlie Cox) costume for Seth (here). :)

Anyway, I'm so excited. I'm going to get right to work as soon as I finish Kendyl's mini vampire dress. :) She wants it gold though so it wont be too spooky. She said she wants to be able to wear it at Christmas too. silly girl. My fingers and just tingling here imagining sewing all that velvet and taffeta. ooo ooo Maybe I'll even dye my hair platinum like Claire Dane's in the movie! eek... Oh I am such a dork! :)

Random Halloween Prize Give Away!

2007-08-30T22:04:00.000-07:00

Well I started working on a painting to get back into Emily's challenges, but then this came out. I can't help it! So I guess it will just have to fit with Week 37's idea for "Draw Something". There's something that gets me going as soon as school starts. Even though it's in the upper 80's and 90's, not a leaf has changed color, and I haven't even seen one little ghoul or goblin I just get so excited for Halloween to come! I like to start planning costumes and begin sewing at the end of summer so I can have a few months to get the costumes made in time (here, here, here, here, and here). Today the Halloween bug bit me! To celebrate the approaching fall and ghoulish delights I made this little painting.

I want to try something fun too. I'm ready to go get some candy! I'm talking the good stuff! (Not what people usually pass out at Halloween). I'll pick up some extra and send it to one of you! I'll also make a copy of this little painting and send it along. It's my way of getting everyone else nerdy-excited with me so I'm not alone in this. Leave your name (or more) in the comments. On Sept. 8th I'll draw a name of who to send some treats and this painting to. I'll post the winner on the 9th! Go ahead, don't be shy. Good luck to the only 5 friends that look at this blog. :) hahaha Oh- and one entry per person. :)

P.S. Kendyl says the kitty's name is Cat-tail and the witch's name is Pretty Spidery Girl. Just thought you'd want to know.

Some projects from last year.

2007-08-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post some of the projects that I did last year while we lived in L.A. all year long actually and just never got around to it. While organizing my photos on my computer today I saw these I thought I would put them up. :) Teacher Appreciation Week: I made this tree in the display case with Kendyl at Makenzie's elementary school. Every leaf has a different teacher or staff name on them. We just twisted up butcher paper and stapled it up. Angela got different kids to write thank you notes to the teachers and the PTA and she put them in there. I thought it was a great touch!

Here's a close up. :)

The Winter Luau: This first picture is of the volcano that we made for when you first walk in. I have a 5 light lamp that I put underneath. Then we put chairs around the lamp and covered the chairs and lamp in butcher paper. I taped different lava colored tissues to the top, put a fan underneath so it would be billowing the tissues, and draped orange lights around the volcano to look like lava pouring down.

This was how we decorated the front of the stage area where the dj was. Barb thought this one up! It looked so cool in the dark.

We drapped different colored blues and green crape paper ribbons twisting across the ceiling mixed with white twinkle lights so it would look like the ocean and light up the room. I made big palm trees for the front of the party and made huge 7 foot tiki god totum poles. Really I just drew tiki god faces on 4 foot wide butcher paper, cut out the eyes and mouths, put yellow and orange tissue paper behind it, and shone lights from behind to look like their eyes and mouths were glowing. I also hung these little asian parasols from the ceiling for fun. I hate to admit it, but I had a big stash of these because I found them for a $1.50 each in L.A. I always wanted them when I was a kid so that meant I needed to buy about 40! hahaha. I figure we'll find plenty of uses for them. Right now they are fun decorations in our girl's play room and I use them in my preschool class. :) In all it took way too long to decorate for this dance even with my committee of 10-12 people.

Halloween Dance: This was the entrance into the dance and inside we had a lights all over and a huge spider made from oversized garbage bags dangling from the ceiling. We used 50 feet long black table clothes cut into strips and attached to the spider draping out across the ceiling to the edges of the room to look like his long 8 legs.

Here's a picture of us cutting the rug at the dance. We had so much fun. We sure loved that school!

The Primary Bulletin Board At Church: Seth, Trista, and I made this for the Primary in our Los Angeles Ward. Trista found this great background paper and Seth and I sketched the people (mostly Seth). I outlined them, scanned them, colored them in photoshop, cut them out, laminated, and hung them up on the little brown path I made.

The theme this year is "I Will Follow Him In Faith" and so we pictured a bunch of kids on the path to Christ. :) At the end of the path is a painting of Christ and the Los Angeles Temple. It was so fun to work on. It was nice to not have to tear it down after a few hours like when the school parties were done and to see it every Sunday.

Running the Fall Fundraiser: This definitely took the longest time of any project. I ran the fall fundraiser and it was SUCH a headache I wont even go into details of how much work that was. Let's just say Seth was on 10-12 hour days and we worked about the same amount. :)

The reward was awesome though. Who ever sold at least 20 items won the limo ride lunch to Chuck E. Cheese. We raised over $37,000 total, which was about %40 more than any other year because of this incentive. There were 128 kids that sold over 20 items. One girl sold 144! I couldn't believe it. The kids were crazy! Because of school policy we could only fit 8-9 kids in a limo (depending on chaperones) so we did 16 limo trips! Of course Kenzie sold enough to go too. She picked out her own clothes so she could feel like a movie star. Her teacher kept teasing that she was going to Chuck E. Cheese that day to get married.

Kenzie's Classroom And Enchanted Eve: I spent every Monday playing the guitar for Kenzie's class and throughout a lot of the year I came in on Tuesdays and Thursdays to teach art. I loved these kids! (You can see me in the middle with the red hat on.)

For Enchanted Eve Heather Bradley and I pulled the kids a couple at a time and had them paint butterflies on a mail box and write letters about what they love about school. We put in a cd of Heathers that has the Cleo the Butterfly Song that she wrote and recorded.

Here is their little mailbox. We copied the letters and drawings and bound them and gave to their teacher Ms. Burns. It sold for quite a bit at the auction. It was so fun.

It's wonderful to be able to be involved in your kid's schools and lives. It doesn't have to be something huge. (You don't have to be quite as psycho as I am) :) You can spend an hour a week. Really that isn't much to sacrifice. Even if it's to help organize an event, grade papers in the classroom, serve on a site council, cut out pieces for an art project, be on a decorating committee, whatever. Just ask your child's teacher what you can help with. Let them know when you are available or join a PTA and actually go to the meetings and help in something. :) I know I'm on my soap box here, but I feel it so deeply! If more people were involved than 15 parents out of the whole school wouldn't be doing 100% if the work. I love being apart of my kids lives while they still want me apart of them and heaven knows the schools need us. :)

Funniest Mom

2007-08-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

This is the funniest ebay posting I have EVER read. That poor mom. Bless her heart. Bless all our hearts. Get a box of tissues. I cried to tears. (Partly because I know what she's talking about).

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130144061675&ru=http%25

ICMM (I Can Manage Myself)

2007-08-26T11:56:00.001-07:00

Am I being too ambitious? I don't think so. :) Can 4 year olds learn how to manage themselves? Meaning, keep their hands to themselves, not shout out over and over again during lesson time, push in their chairs when they get up so other kids wont trip, etc. I really think they can and after using this 1 day I can see the beginnings of it working. This is something that I made for my little preschool classroom. Some teachers at my preschool do this and I've adapted to be more "me" and fit my classroom theme. I drew and painted this big castle (3 feet tall) and attached velcro to it and little princesses and knights with photos of my students attached. I drew the little figures, scanned them in my computer and colored them in photoshop in my students favorite colors. Everyday they will take their little figure out of their cubby and attach it to the castle meaning they are ready to start the day and make good choices. I can't believe how excited they are to see their little person on this castle. It they are hitting the kids around them or trying to bug them or not listening during lesson time (which is only about 10 minutes) then I give a warning that they need to manage themselves and they know just what I mean. Quickly they straighten up, but if they don't then I have them walk over to the poster, take off their figure, put it in their cubby and sit in the "thinking chair" and think about how to fix their behavior. It's heartbreaking to see them so sad about taking their little person off, but quickly they change their attitude and modify their behavior. After they've decided to fix their behavior than they can put their little figure back up. (This makes them so happy they will jump up and down- it's pretty cute.)

This is what it looks like with all their figures on. The red knight is missing Payton's picture because he wasn't at open house when I took the photos, but don't worry... I took his picture on Friday and he will have it ready for Monday.

Here's a close up of their little faces. I'm so lucky to have such sweet little stinkers in my class.

The first day I used this I had to have two boys take their figures off and it was so shocking that no one tried to push the boundries. The two boys did so much better for the rest of the class. It's hard to be strict at the beginning, but so important so you can relax and have fun with them later without them pushing you and trying to get away with stuff because believe me, they will. I've nipped a few things in the bud and I think the kids will be surprised at how silly and fun I can be once I've "puppy-trained" them.

(P.S. Just so you know, I mostly give positive reinforcement like praising the kids who push in their chairs or sit well or are being kind and then those not doing so will quickly follow suit to receive praise as well. I just needed to make this for the special few who push and push and are too wild during un-wild times. :))

Blogs that make me smile

2007-08-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

I've decided to spread some love. I want to let you know of a few blogs that put me in awe or a smile to my face...

1. Seth's Blog: http://flippinhippenstudios.blogspot.com/ yah, I know. I'm a little biased, but he really is one of the greatest artists I know and I get to kiss him at night. woo woo. He hasn't updated in a bit, but look out because he's been sketching and is about to. Even when he hasn't updated I love looking at the same drawings I always do. My favs are his Halloweenish ones. The posts from last Aug-last Oct. are great! That really cool one of dead couple dressed up fancy about to kiss is one of my favorites (Oct. 20). The girl's dress was inspired by the one I sewed last year for Halloween and I wore on my geeky girl trip. He's won two world wide web contests with that one. One of the prizes was a 5 by 8 foot poster of the Nightmare Before Christmas which is hanging in our garage making us the coolest people on the street I'm pretty sure.

2. Shane's Blog: http://stlewis.blogspot.com/ This is probably one of the best blogs out there. It is hillarious to me! Shane is one of our friends I'm proud to claim. He's a most marvelous artist and so funny too. He will make these little drawings every week or so and have some random story or whatever about them. Seriously, it is fun to look at for hours and hours. Check it out, make it a regular stop, leave comments, have fun.

3. Sunny Smart: http://joesmartfam.blogspot.com/ This is my brother Joe's wife. She is one talented writer. She has a way of writing about regular stuff in the most witty way. She just begun it a few weeks ago, but already it's brought much joy and I am excited to read more posts from her.

4. Emily's: http://www.embers.typepad.com/ She's amazing folks! She's one of my friends from LA. She had just moved from Australia when I first met her and she's an incredible artist. She creates layout pages for several scrapbook magazines and teaches seminars all around the world. I love how she has no boundries with what she creates. She's started an art challenge this last January where every Sunday she posts a topic and creates a small card around that topic. I participate in this but with purely painting to the topic. She's a marvelous person.

5. Shannon Hale's (Austenland and Goose Girl Author) Husbands' Blog: http://www.dreadcrumbs.com/ He's an author too, but a different sort. I've just discovered his site, but may have found my new obsession. His "micro stories" are so derranged, funny, twisted. Anyway, he posts little stories that are 500 words or so and are crazy. You just gotta try it out. A "meat baby" so weird. You'll see. Everytime I read one of his stories and see where his mind went I wonder if he is socially awkward or if he hides it.

Of course I spend a lot of time looking at my friend's blogs reading about their families and happenings. I love all the cool projects my sister does and get a kick out of the way Kristen and Jessica write. If you know of a great blog let me know in the comments. I'm always up for an entertaining new blog to explore. :)

I'm Repenting... :)

2007-08-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

Ok. So I've decided that life has begun to settle down enough to try and get a painting in every week again. I just have to for my sanity. Yes, we still have things to do from the move, and the girls have just started school, and I have just begun a new teaching job (Preschool), but I've got to get back into my creative schedule again. I'm going bonkers. I started sketching a new painting and am going to set aside a little bit of time every night to work on it. I may not get one a week done like I use to, but if I at least work on something creative for a moment everyday- than I'll be a happier person. (My kids and dear Seth will love that). :) In honor of repenting and to get my creative juices going again I compiled this year's paintings so far to look at and get excited for my little moments everyday. It's fun to look at them all at once and remember what has happened throughout the year. I love keeping a journal this way.
P.S. The pirate one in the corner was Seth's... I just needed one more to make it even. :) Wish I could claim it. Still can't believe how quick he whipped that one out.

Week 23: Right Now

2007-07-05T14:08:00.001-07:00

Emily's Challenge for Week 23 is "Right Now". Basically what's happening right now in my life. You can look at hers here. I feel all I've been writing about lately is what the major things in my life that have been going on. Well, I'm sick of that. :) So I decided to do a card about what is going on in the lives of those around me. Baby girls!!! :) What fun. Is there anything more lovely than a pink baby? Well except a little blue one of course.

My brother and his wife just had a little baby girl last month named Allegra. They also have one year old twins and a 10 year old daughter from his first marriage. Needless to say, they have their hands very full right now. :)

Some of my very bestest friends in the whole world (James and Martha Willis) had a baby girl last month as well and named her Lindy Carolina. (The Carolina part is named partly after me (Karalenn) and partly after where James served his LDS mission! It's true! What an honor!) They've been telling me for years that if they ever get a pink baby they are going to name her after me. James was my swing dance partner through college and one of my best friends. I met his wife in college too and have grown so close to her that I consider her one of my most cherished friendships. She is an incredible woman! Martha discovered breast cancer in her back in winter of 2004. She was in her early 20's with no history of cancer in her family. After a long battle she has come out stronger and more beautiful than ever. She has two older WONDERFUL sons Phillip and Luke, but has struggled through several miscarriages. I'm so happy that they had their little miracle girl. What a great family!

I'm so happy for Emily, Mic, and Ivy with their new little Yindi Willow. She's so beautiful. Here are pictures of her. I just wish that I could still be in California to give my kisses. I'll have to through mail. :)

Last of all my very bestest friend, my little sister is pregnant with her third child- a little girl too! She is due in 5 weeks! I can't wait to hold my new little niece and play with her when she gets a little older. I'm going to teach her all sorts of annoying tricks to play on her mom so her mom can think of her wonderful, greatest, most marvelous older sister.

I'm so happy to know such wonderful people that are bringing sweet, strong, beautiful little girls into the world! I left the top of my card blank in that gold section so that I can print copies of this card and put the names of these beautiful new little girls in there and mail them off to you all. The quote around the card is a favorite of mine. I wrote it all over the walls of one of our homes in California. It is from the play/book Peter Pan and it says, "When the first baby laughed for the first time, it's laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about and that was the beginning of fairies." Isn't that beautiful? Those little glowy orbs are pieces of the baby's laugh that will soon make fairies with one fairy already made watching from the toad stool. I've been daydreaming this card for a few weeks and I'm so happy to see it done and out there. It's more whimsy and fun than what was in my head, which I'm very happy about.

P.S. I just counted an embarassingly large amount of times I used the word "beautiful" in this post. Feel free to give me any alternatives I could use in the future. :) Thanks