The Splendidly Imperfect Miss M!

Project Life Update - Week of 1/22 - 1/28

2012-01-30T13:29:00.002-07:00

Each week as I finish my Project Life layout, it occurs to me how much more I like it that the one from the week before. I hadn't really scrapbooked anything in a really long time before starting this, and I think it showed in the first couple of pages. I was having a bit of a hard time making my pages look visually interesting. Sure, I had the important elements of photos and words, but the pretty wasn't really there yet.

My pages aren't as amazing as some of the Project Life stuff I've seen out there (check out my PL board on Pinterest for a ton of inspiration) but I feel like looking at these other pages and reading other people's blogs about how they're approaching this is really helping me to find my mojo, so to speak. I've dug through drawers and my PSB (remember those?) to find more little flattish embellishments for my pages. I also busted out the old Royal again and did a better job with typing evenly, so all the letters are the same heaviness.

This week's layouts didn't happen quite as quickly as the past ones because I had an issue with photo sizes this week. Normally what I do is edit all my photos in Photoshop CS3 before sending them to be printed. Since photos don't come out of your digital camera being able to just print at 4" x 6", it's necessary to crop them to the correct size first, otherwise, the developer will do it for you. Since they're not really known for paying a whole lot of attention at Ye Olde Walgreens (I got one print that had a GIANT pink smudge across one side, yay) this means that sometimes it's cropped in an unfortunate place and you can lose important bits of your picture. Best to do it yourself!

The problem was, this week I got LAZY. I didn't feel like editing them. I knew that I could order a special size of print that would include all of my digital file, so I figured I would order those and then just crop the excess myself at home. What I missed though was that the print was 4" by 5.3". Yup... each of my photos was 2/3 of an inch short. When you've planned for every square inch of your page, that creates a problem.

What I ended up doing was laying everything out like I normally do, then filling the space across with a slightly wider piece of patterned paper as the base for my journaling and smaller photos. This worked great with the first page, which was pretty much all horizontal stuff.

The second page, however, was a bit more tricky. First off, I had way more stuff than spaces. I didn't even realize until after I was done that I never even printed off the cards with my Tweets of Note this week! After messing with it for a while I realized that those short photos could work to my advantage. I managed to cram everything on there, but ended up with a couple of awkwardly shaped spaces that were not the right size for a journaling card or another photo. The biggest space I filled with a scrap of patterned paper and titled it "Week Of." That left me with a teeny little square right of center.

I wracked my brain with it for a bit, and here's what I came up with. First, I dug through my scrap pile and found a patterned paper that had all these fun arrows on it. I picked one and cut it out from the page. Then I trimmed a teeny scrap of patterned paper to the size of my empty space. I actually did this a couple of times, because I didn't like the way my first few selections looked there. I adhered the arrow to the top of that scrap, and outlined it with a black pen. Then I went through a stack of really old Stickerkins sheets that I got from my friend Suzy and found that camera sticker. That went on the bottom. Finally, I went through my roller stamps and found an old 7Gypsies Express Stamp that had the days of the week on it. The baby socks were brought home on Wednesday, and luckily Wednesday fit on the scrap!

So yeah. A lot more work and measuring and scrambling to figure out things, but in the end it all worked out!

One thing that I did want to mention about the finish of my photos. I personally prefer matte prints to glossy ones. I think they look nicer on the page and they don't show smudges from fingerprints quite as easily. However, if you order prints online from Walgreens the only way you can get matte prints is to have them mailed to you. One - I like instant gratification. I'm not waiting a week to get pictures in the mail when there is a store a half mile up the road. Two - where I live, we have those awful metal cluster mailboxes at the end of each block instead of regular individual mailboxes in front of each house. While I'm sure this is awesome for the mail carrier, it's less than convenient for me. The boxes are at the end of the block, in the middle, so I can't see when the mailman comes. Also, the metal box is in full sun. This makes it heat up like a little oven. I ordered prints ONCE to be mailed to my house and they all melted together into a huge solid lump by the time I got them out of the box!

So no photos in the mail for me! I just had to suck it up with glossy prints, and I have. However, when I got my prints yesterday, all the ones that I ordered in the special digital print size were matte! What happened to them not being able to print matte prints in store??? This wouldn't have been an issue though, since like I said I prefer matte prints, but the ones I did edit? Yeah... those were glossy. My OCD is far too advanced to have a mix of finishes on the page, so I called them about it. Turns out, you can't order matte prints online. HOWEVER, you can take your memory card or USB stick into the store and order them there if they have a machine that prints that finish. Also, you can call them right before you submit your online order and just let them know you have an order coming in that you'd like printed in matte finish. I thought that was good to know and thought I'd share in case you like matte better too.

Here's this week's free printable:

Just like the other ones, these are available free of charge when you "Like" The Splendidly Imperfect Miss M! on Facebook. Please download them only for your own personal use, and not for redistribution or sale. Thanks, and enjoy!

Hi, My Name Is Miss M...

2012-01-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

...and I'm a teeny, tiny dress addict.

Yup. I see them and I just can't help myself! Yesterday there was a flea market in downtown Mesa that I wanted to check out, so I hauled my behind out of bed early and headed over there. Bubba stayed home to hang out with his father. Check out this cute little vintage camper that someone had:

I wish I could have seen inside! That short wall right inside the door was wallpapered in vintage Valentine cards, and everything was done in pink and white.

While I was there, I popped in to say hi to my friend Dorie. They were doing a historic home tour and her house was one of the ones on it. The flea market was also conveniently on the little greenbelt in front of her house.

I know we're not supposed to take these types of photos at arm's length, but hey! Sometime's a girl has to do what a girl's gotta do.

After I left the flea market I was supposed to go see one of my friends from playgroup. She invited me over to go through the clothes her girls had outgrown, but I wasn't scheduled to be there for another few hours. What to do, what to do?

Check out Goodwill because it was 50% off day, duh! I didn't buy a whole lot. I found a Ralph Lauren dress shirt that was three dollars and a royal blue Ralph Lauren Polo shirt that was a dollar for Bubba. I also scored another vintage Vera Neumann scarf for a dollar as well. There were two new little dresses added to my collection:

This one is cute, but mostly I got it because Bubba likes ladybugs.

Another Little Bitty dress. I love the smocking and the eyelet lace on the arm holes.

My big purchase was this:

Oh man. This thing is HUGE, and kind of heavy. I placed a quarter against the glass and it's nice and thick, with beveled edges. The frame is completely intact. There are no nicks or cracks in it. It was marked $39.99, but since it was 50% off day I got to bring it home for a mere $20. I love it! I'll probably leave the frame gold for now, but won't totally discount the idea of painting it in the future.

After my thrifting adventure I went over to my friend's house to look at more baby clothes and hang out and chat a bit. Here's what I brought home from her house:

Another Little Bitty dress.

I love the patchwork on this one. So sweet!

This one is newborn sized. I can't get over how tiny it is. I love the peter pan collar and the teeny bows on the sleeves.

Another Little Bitty dress. I love the scalloped trim with the eyelet lace. Such a nice detail.

This one is more of a cotton like the fabric of polo shirts. It has a matching diaper cover too.

I also got a few more diaper covers, including that white one with the lace ruffles across the bum. I think that is my favorite out of all the ones I've gotten so far! I also got some hats, some mittens, a few elastic headbands, and a pair of ruffly socks. There were also some teeny newborn onesies (seriously, so so freaking tiny) and some newborn footie jammies. Oh! And teeny diapers too.

Love.

You NEED this!!!

2012-01-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Confession: I like to watch those "how to do your makeup" videos on YouTube. Love them! I could sit there and watch them for hours if I have nothing better to do. I used to watch them a lot, then stopped in the past few years. In the last couple of months though, I did pick up watching one of the girls I used to watch before. In one of her videos, she was talking about this product and how awesome it was:

So, I decided to try it. I didn't use a primer under my tinted moisturizer mostly because I don't like the feel of using a lot of stuff on my face. Hence, the tinted moisturizer with spf included! She swore it made your face look awesome though, so I figured what the heck, right? At twelve bucks it wasn't exactly going to break the bank if I hated it.

I don't know about it making my skin look amazing, but I'll tell you what unexpected thing it did do for me. I have really sensitive, combination skin. Most of my face is dry and tight and prone to flaking if I forget to use my toner, but the t-zone is a nightmare of extreme oiliness. I can wash my face, and an hour or two later it's greasy enough in that area that you could probably fry an egg. I've tried lots of different (and some expensive!) mattifying products, but none of them delivered what they promised. Eventually I'd be all oily again.

I'm an expert at blotting my face. I always have blotting papers floating around. I know that brown napkins, like the ones at Starbucks, are the best for blotting your face for some reason. In a pinch, those toilet seat liners (ass-gaskets!) are amazing for blotting too.

But today? I put this stuff on at nine in the morning, and here I am twelve hours later and my face isn't greasy AT ALL. I've only blotted once today, at about 1pm, and there was nothing on my Starbucks napkin either. AMAZING!

I swear, if they ever discontinue this stuff, I will cry like a baby. This teeny little jar is worth every penny of the twelve dollars I paid for it. L'Oreal isn't asking me to tell you this either. They didn't send me any (although I wouldn't hate it if they did!) and didn't promise me anything if I sang it's praises. I spent my own (okay well my husband's) hard earned money on this.

Try it. You'll like it. If you don't... well then you can send me the rest of the jar you didn't use! HA!

That Mythical 2nd Trimester Energy

2012-01-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

I know you've all heard about it, and maybe even experienced it - that burst of energy you're supposed to get when you enter your second trimester of pregnancy, after you've been exhausted for the first three months. I'll be nineteen weeks on Sunday so I'm well out of the first trimester, yet I've still been dragging. I just keep telling myself, ANY DAY NOW! Any day now I'm not going to feel like a poop sammich! Any day now I'm going to want to get off the couch and DO something. Any day now I'll be able to leave the house without needing to stop and sit every so often.

ANY DAY NOW.

Seriously, if you want some idea of how much energy your body uses to grow a baby and its little baby house in your belly, think about this: For the past four months, I've been almost completely sedentary. Some days, walking across the living room into the kitchen for a drink of water just seemed like entirely too much work. I find myself starting to think about nap time about an hour and a half after I get out of bed. My child has been watching entirely too much television and YouTube (ooh, but he's learned a LOT of letter sounds!). It's horrible.

Now let's consider my diet. I've been living on takeout almost exclusively, with the exception of the past two weeks. I've had some serious food aversion issues. Everything sounded absolutely disgusting. Also, I didn't get the feeling of being hungry or full like normal. So what would happen is that I'd be grossed out all day by the idea of food, but then one thing would start to sound okay. The more I thought about that thing, the better it sounded. That's how I'd know when I was getting hungry.

If I tried to eat anything besides that one food, it would taste weird, like a chemical, almost soapy taste. It was bizarre and frustrating. When I did eat, I wouldn't ever get to feeling full. What would happen is that whatever I was eating would totally start to gross me out again, so I'd have to stop.

What this meant was that we pretty much stopped going grocery shopping. We'd get staples like milk and cereal here and there, but for the most part, if I bought something that sounded okay it would sit in the fridge forever because it wouldn't sound okay the next day and would go to waste. This also meant eating out almost every day. This is bad on so many levels!

So I went from living on 1200 calories a day and exercising regularly to all of a sudden being a slug and eating take out for four months, and do you know what? I've only gained three pounds since Halloween. Crazy huh? This baby is taking everything and putting it to work! I wish my metabolism was ALWAYS this good!

Of course, the tiredness and the food aversions had to wind down eventually. In the past two weeks I've been able to eat more normally, thank goodness. Yesterday I even managed to have a pretty productive day. I did more yesterday than I think I've done in the past two months combined!

I finished another bib for the baby. I'm totally into monograms for this little girl. I did a Google image search for "K monogram" and found this one. I used my Glad Press and Seal method to get it on the bib.

I started to tackle the second bougainvillea on the side of our house. These things are seriously overgrown weeds, I tell ya. I should take a picture of some of the massive thorns this thing has. Some are about an inch long! It's awful and I hate it.

I watched the boy ride his bike for a while. He's gotten pretty good with it. He can coast almost the whole length of the driveway now, as well as when he turns onto the sidewalk from the driveway. I tried to teach him to put his feet back on the footrest, but he hasn't quite gotten that part yet.

(please pardon messy garage kthanxbye)

Bubba and I made cupcakes after I fixed us lunch and we had eaten. The poor kid was struggling with that hand beater, and then I realized that I showed him how to use it with his right hand. I'm going to get used to adjusting for my little lefty eventually, right?

I also did five (!!!) loads of laundry, a few pages in my December Daily album, printed and cut a few more journaling cards for my Project Life album, pulled weeds in the back yard, and filed my nails. Whoa.

My husband came home with these the other day. MELT MY HEART, why dontcha? Bubba is obsessed with them. He carries them around and talks about how they're for the baby, and they're baby sister's socks and they're so cute. He asks where they are at least a couple times a day. I love it.

Signs you are a Pyrex Nerd

2012-01-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

You're watching old episodes of Mad Men on dvd and you can't help but notice that Trudy Campbell is serving dinner from a Pyrex casserole dish, so you open up the page you have bookmarked on your iPhone to see what it's called.

Yup, I really have a cheat sheet bookmarked on my phone to identify patterns of vintage Pyrex.

I know. Nerd. It's this page right here in case you want it available for reference too. Just open it in Safari on your iPhone, scroll until what you want to be your thumbnail shows on your screen, then click the little square with an arrow leaping out of it in the bottom center of your screen. Click ADD TO HOME SCREEN, then give it a name (it will let you type a lot, but only show 12 characters including spaces on the thumbnail) and click ADD in the upper right hand corner.

In case you're wondering, it was a Cinderella casserole (model number 575) and was a promotional pattern from fall of 1961 called Green Wheat. I have to tell you, it's amazing the amount of research the prop people have done for this show. This was in season two (I think?), which was set in 1963! I bet the Campbells got it as a wedding present, along with that chip and dip...

While I know Betty Draper has a few Pyrex bowls around (you can see them in a few scenes here and there) the ones that show up most in her kitchen are these:

Fire King, aka NOT Pyrex but pretty dang similar. You don't see them in the first few seasons, but the sugar bowl gets shown a lot in the later ones. I couldn't find a photo online, but when I see it on the DVD I'll take a picture of the tv and post it or something. This pattern is called Wheat. I don't collect patterned Fire King, but I do have several of the plain pieces of milk glass in my cupboards.

Now, that Joan Halloway, SHE is a girl after my own heart. Check out what's on her cutting board:

That's right - the pink daisy casserole I have been hoping and praying to come across for a reasonable price! One day, it will be mine. Just you wait!

It's soooo pretty! I love it.

And that concludes my Mad Men/Vintage Pyrex fangirling for the day.

More baby clothes

2012-01-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we attended a birthday party for one of Bubba's friends from playgroup. I love these things because the kids get to run around like fools and burn off some of that crazy toddler energy they seem to have in excess. The party was pretty early, so by the time it was done a little after noon we still had all day to do stuff. We tossed around ideas like going to the zoo, but who are we kidding? I don't have the energy or stamina for that sort of thing yet. Last week we went to the Walmarts and I had to take a break halfway across the store because I was tired!

So, we decided to hit up a couple of Goodwills. I would like a few more maternity tops, and another pair of pants wouldn't hurt either. Seriously, I cannot bring myself to pay $30 for an article of clothing I know I won't really love and am only going to wear for less than six months. The older I get, the cheaper I get I guess, because when I was pregnant with Bubba I bought a $200 pair of jeans!!! Of course, then we had dual incomes and a smaller overhead, but still.

I didn't find anything for me, but I did find another Polo shirt for Bubba. Gotta love getting a Ralph Lauren shirt for $3 when I know they retail for almost ten times that much! Even at a consignment shop I would have paid about ten for it. Kick butt.

I also (big surprise here) scored a few more things for Miss Kelly. Considering the fact I hit three stores and only found six things, as opposed to a few weeks ago when I hit four and got 21 tells you how lucky I got that day!

A pair of Ralph Lauren footie pajamas, size six months. These hopefully will fit her just in time for the weather to cool off.

The only Newborn sized thing I've bought so far. This is seriously TINY. The underpants are separate from the top and have two rows of ruffles across the bum. Perfect for my June baby. From Carters.

Pink gingham dress, size 0-3 months. That scalloped hem is precious! This had the original tags on it too, which means it's never been worn.

Pink vintage dress, no tag. I love the smocking on this.

Carter's one piece romper. Pink and green and nice and cool for when it's still 100 degrees out in October. I'm liking these onesies that are disguised as dresses, but not the ones that are jersey knit. This one is a cotton... what would you call it? Calico? Well, like the dresses. Not stretchy at all. No stupid words or little animals on it. I hate when an otherwise precious piece of clothing is ruined by a little label proclaiming "I <3 MOMMY!!!" Yuck.

Best find of the day?

Oh yeah. That right there is genuine Lilly Pulitzer. I was just telling Muffy Martini on Twitter last week that Miss Kelly needed some Lilly in her life, and the Goodwill angels heard me. It's pink and green and has the cutest little monkeys in the print. I think the print is called Mommy and me and is in perfect condition. LOVE. And it was only three bucks! They retail for about $50 new, but that's with the matching bloomers included. Unfortunately, those were nowhere to be found, but I'll live for that savings, you know? Besides, they were just plain solid pink and not the matching fabric, so I'm sure I can just find plain pink ones somewhere. Ooh... or maybe white with a pink monogram?

Project Life Update - Week of 1/15 to 1/21

2012-01-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

I've been working on getting my Project Life stuff organized this week. I haven't put a whole lot of work into it, but it's nice to have everything in one place when I go to work on my pages.

I got the idea to use this Ikea organizer from Pinterest, and luckily, I just happened to have one laying around! Since I told myself I'm not going to buy anything for this beyond plain old page protectors, this will really help me to keep my stash of supplies for this reined in. If it doesn't fit in here, I don't need it!

On the left, I have a section for scraps of patterned paper that I think will make nice filler cards, or embellishments to filler cards. Toward the front I have journaling cards.

I spent some time this week browsing Pinterest for links to free journaling cards. This picture shows a few of my favorites. Sure, you could buy the kit, or you could buy downloads, but if you're on a strict budget like I am, free cards that other crafty people are sharing are awesome! If you want to see what I've found, check out my Project Life Idea board on Pinterest. I have page inspiration, links to different design elements, and of course, all those freebies I've pinned.

I printed out my cards on plain white cardstock. If you buy it at an office supply store, 110lb white cardstock in the 250 count package is waaaaay cheaper than getting it at a scrapbook store, and it's still acid free. I just printed them, trimmed them, and then rounded the corners on a few. I think I have a style for just about every occasion at this point.

Another thing I did was to sit down with my bag of patterned paper scraps and some blank white cards. I just cut the cards from more white cardstock - nothing fancy. Then I embellished them using various bits and pieces of patterned paper, sticker labels, and a few small embellishments. Some are simple and some are a little more involved, but none of them took more than a few minutes to do. I looked at some of the pages I had pinned for inspiration and ideas on what to do with these.

Sometimes you'll find that you have a blank spot on a page and nothing to fill it. I've also found lots of free printables online that come in handy for this. So what if they're too big? Most are sized for photo frames to use as part of your decor, but with photo editing software it's no big deal to size them down to 3" x 4" to fit your pages. You can use quotes, subway art, etc to help supplement your mood that week. Also, how cool would it be to recreate some of the stuff you have in your house for your book? I know not all of my printables will survive into the future otherwise and it would be fun to look back and say "OH! I remember that!"

In the back of the center section I have larger journaling cards, along with larger bits of paper I may want to use later.

Again, these are all free printables that I found on Pinterest and you can find links to on my idea board there.

In the front section I have the "this week" bin. Any ephemera or notes that I've filled out that need to be included go in here. This way, when I go to work on a page, those things are ready to be mixed in with my photos. I want to be sure to include plenty of bits and pieces of paper from every day life in there. I know how much I like seeing what old packaging and logos looked like long ago, so maybe my grandkids will too. Who knows?

This week I have part of the box from my lunch, stickers from all the clementines I ate one day, a business card from my OB visit, some of my Twitter statuses, and part of the wrapper from some frozen soup I tried for the first time. The wrapper was washed VERY thoroughly and then stuck to a piece of cardstock before I trimmed it down and rounded the corners. The box from the burger was actually pretty clean, but I did wipe down the inside with a baby wipe before sticking the pieces to my cardstock.

In the last section I have miscellaneous page embellishments.

In here I have things like labels, small rub ons, stickers, etc.

When I get to the end of the week, it's time to print some pictures. My printer at home is being a turd, so I've been having to send them out to get printed. I tried Target this week instead of Walgreens like I've been using, and totally regretted it. My Target does NOT print nice photos! Walgreens has been printing them dark, but I can fix that by just making them lighter in Photoshop before I send them off, no sweat. Luckily since I only have been getting five to ten photos printed at a time I was only out of a couple of dollars.

One thing I do to save money is to print two 3" x 4" pictures on one 4" x 6" photo. Ali Edwards did a video tutorial explaining how to do this, if you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about. She used Photoshop Elements, while I'm using Photoshop CS3, but it's basically the same concept. If I find that I have an odd number of photos when I go to print, I'll fill that spot with a title, or a quote, or even a pretty pattern that I've found online. The one on the left is actually one of the iPhone backgrounds that Becky Higgins put on her website!

As soon as I get my photos home, I pull them all out and trim them. Since I'm not using the page protectors, I need to trim 1/8 inch off two sides of my photos so they'll fit on the 12" x 12" page with a bit of the background page showing. This goes for both the full 4" x 6" photos as well as the smaller 4" x 3" photos.

After all my pictures are trimmed, I lay them out on my table, along with anything from the "This Week" bin of my organizer. I move them around until I like their placement and everything fits. Any blank spaces get a journaling card, because of course documenting with words is just as important as photos!

Once everything is laid out, I stand back and look at the colors. Is there any common thread through the items for my page as far as color goes? This week I had a lot of reddish orange, but since that was the predominant color, I knew using it for my background would be overwhelming and somethings would be lost. I did notice a bit of aqua in several photos, so I decided to go with that.

I lay all the items onto the sheet of cardstock and stick everything down. After it's in place I add journaling. If there isn't a space for it, then I add a label sticker directly onto the photo so that I can jot down a quick note about it, or add a date.

One of my favorite things this week was this mini Twitter feed. I went back through my tweets from this past week and cut and pasted the ones that I felt related to this project into a Photoshop document. From there, all I had to do was resize and add the Twitter logo to the top. Easy! I got the idea from Cathy Zielske, who actually did it with Facebook statuses instead of Twitter posts.

On this page, I decided that I didn't like the journaling card I originally selected so I swapped it out. After I took this photo I used an old 7Gypsies roller stamp to add a row of teeny arrows in aquamarine ink to the top of it. I also decided that the business card looked lost floating in that space, so I anchored it to a bit of patterned paper. The photo of the boy in the lower left corner had the journaling added in Photoshop and printed right along with the photo, but the other ones had stickers put on them for notes.

So there is this week! I have another freebie for you too:

Same as the last few - if you become a fan of my Facebook page, you'll have access to these whenever I add them. This one is a nice big 4" x 6" size, but you could always cut it down to make smaller cards if you needed. As always, this is free for you to use in your own personal books, but please do not sell or redistribute my work.

Also, it has been brought to my attention that if you try to access the hosting service I use through Facebook, it may give you that little pop up asking you to grant it "permissions." Generally, when you click the link it takes you directly to the download page, and all you have to do is click the green DOWNLOAD button in the lower right corner of the screen. However, I don't know if you have to have a Scribd account in order to access it since I already had an account to upload.

I can tell you that my FB account is linked to my Scribd account (meaning I have granted it those "permissions") and has been for over a year and I've never had any problems or spam. I've done the same thing with my Pinterest too actually since I hate trying to remember passwords and it's just easier for me that way. If you really really really still don't want to do that, you could try copying the URL and going directly to Scribd without clicking the link. Paste the URL in there or in a new window and see if that works. Hope that helps if you're having issues with it.

Finally, I want to say a million thanks to everyone who has pinned or repinned my stuff on Pinterest. Since I added these documents to my Facebook page two days ago instead of linking directly to my blog like I used to do, I've gotten EIGHTY new likes! That may not be a lot to some of the bigger blogs out there, but for a small blogger like me, that's amazing! And in two days no less! Talk about making my day. So thank you, thank you so much! :)

And so it begins...

2012-01-21T16:15:00.000-07:00

What, you didn't think I'd be having another baby and not start doing crafty things on her behalf, did you?

I loved the bibs I did for Bubba, so since I still had a few blank ones in my stash it was a no brainer to start off with a few of those. I did a Google search for vintage embroidery patterns, and when I came across this one I knew it would be one I did for Miss Kelly. See, I joined this sorority in college, and our mascot is a lion and our flower is a violet. Also, if you have a daughter, she's considered a legacy when she goes to college. Not that I'd pressure her to join, of course, that's up to her. However, I think it would be supremely cool to get to pin her with my badge if she did join. Just saying.

Our colors are azure blue and white, so adding her name in blue was also a no brainer. It's one of those things that unless you know and understand the symbolism behind what's going on here, you'd just think it's a cute vintage style embroidered baby bib. I think that may be one of the most fun parts about the whole sorority thing. :)

Either way, it's cute and that's what matters most, right?

SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-17T22:57:00.000-07:00

Piracy is bad. I don't feel like it's okay to steal ANYTHING, and that includes music or movies online. I know a lot of people think it's harmless and still do it, but the fact of the matter is that stealing is stealing. PERIOD. Regardless of what justification you come up with in your mind to explain why it's okay, it's not.

Stealing is stealing.

However, two bills that are coming before congress (SOPA - Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA - Protect IP Act) that are supposed to protect people from piracy are just way over the line. They would seriously censor the internet and affect ALL of us in a negative manner.

Please take a moment to do a bit of research on these two bills, and if you can, sign the petition to urge congress to vote NO on SOPA and PIPA here and here. The senate will vote on these January 24th, so we need to speak up for our voices to be heard. A lot of websites will be dark tomorrow in protest of these bills.

This is kind of a big deal.

Project Life Layouts

2012-01-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

I don't really take a lot of photos. Not a lot to add this week, besides my 12 of 12 layout. Here's the first one:

Just a general hodge podge of stuff that happened over the course of the week. THIS is why I like this project. If I had done a separate layout for each of these items, it would have been about SIX pages! Well, probably not, because I wouldn't have documented Bubba being a couch potato or what Brad made for dinner that night. But here, I can add those little details that would otherwise be lost. I mean, come on. How cute is it that my son likes to stick the stickers from his clementines on my forehead?

There's a big empty spot in the middle because I'm an airhead and forgot to add the ultrasound photo to the ones to be printed. Did you know they give you a cd of images now when you get an ultrasound instead of just that strip of heat images? So cool.

I busted out my old Royal to type the labels on these, as well as the journaling. When I took my Olivetti in for repair this week I mentioned it to the man in the repair shop. He asked why I didn't use it, and I told him it was because I thought it was too nice and I was scared to mess it up. He told me that was silly, and those machines could take a beating! He encouraged me to use it, so I did.

I don't know HOW anyone ever wrote books on those things. Holy clumsy and slow. Also, I can't find the exclamation point because there is no number one key. I also noticed that the ribbon doesn't advance, so eventually the Royal will be headed to the repair shop too I guess for a tune up. I am excited to get the Olivetti back though because it's small and cute and will sit nicely on my desk compared to the beast that is the Royal. He said he may not even be able to repair it though, so we will have to see. I just think it will be perfect to type journaling for these little cards.

The journaling cards are my own design. The days of the week card is part of this set:

and the notebook lined ones with the red label are here:

Just bop on over to my Facebook page and click LIKE if you haven't already to access the links for free download. You are welcome to download them for your own personal use, but please don't try to sell them or redistribute. You know.

My second layout. Yup, I took every photo I took of those baby dressed, cropped them to size in Photoshop, and made them into a layout. It's so awesome to see them all on one page like this! The journaling card is my own design also (will post that with my next PL post), and I wrote the text with the awesome green pen I scammed from my friend D'Arcy at knitting club last night.

All the photos are 2" x 3" which means I got four of them on one standard 4" x 6" print. The title was done in Photoshop and just printed along with the rest of them. I did notice that Walgreens was printing my photos a lot darker than they appeared on my computer and in my camera, so I bumped up the brightness on these and bumped the contrast down a bit. That seemed to solve the problem because they all came out bright and beautiful!

Hooray for two more pages in my book. :)

Twelve of 12 - January 2012

2012-01-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

Usually for my 12 of twelve photos, I take them and then just post them on my blog. Nothing gets done with them beyond that. This year however, since I'm doing Project Life, I figured I'd make them into layouts and add them to that album. I had to tweak my basic template a bit to get them all to fit on the page, but here they are:

I used the Instagram app on my phone to take the photos this month. I figured that 3" x 3" squares would be easier to place on a layout. I like how some of them have the funky little retro frames. I don't like how Walgreens cut all the dang frames off most of my photos when they printed them. Losers.

I didn't really do anything fancy to the page beyond cutting out the 12 from the title block. I just wanted it done and documented, and now it is.

Here are the individual shots.

1. I just love waking up to his face next to me.

2. Breakfast. I'm not even going to pretend this is healthy. That granola is AMAZING though.

3. Sixteen weeks! My entire outfit is thrifted from Goodwill. I paid $5.99 each for the indigo maternity top and maternity jeans, and $6.99 for the Ann Taylor LOFT cardigan. I've gotten so many compliments on that blouse already. SCORE.

4. I finally got around to putting the extra shelves in my beauty cabinet. I love how organized it all is! I look forward to being able to add the second one to make it a knockoff of that PBTeen one I posted about before.

5. Blogging. Definitely part of my day.

6. Lunch! I had some leftover Chinese (mu shu pork over rice) while planning a page for my PL album.

7. I'm so addicted to this stuff it's not even funny. I had been sending my husband to buy me one almost every day for a week. Finally I decided to just splurge and get the gallon. I did the math and it actually costs about a dollar more to buy a gallon than the individual cups (four 32 oz cups with no ice, approx $8.50 = 1 gal, approx $9.75), but at least we're not driving back and forth each day.

8. The boy and I headed outside to practice on his bike for a bit. It helps to get him nice and tired for his nap. He is starting to be able to coast around corners (like from the driveway onto the sidewalk) with his feet up, which is pretty cool.

9. My Christmas decorations are ALL still up. Shameful.

10. Dinner. My nutrition today has been downright shameful too. I love these fish sandwiches from Carl's Jr. though. SO YUM.

11. I got out some stuff to take to knitting club tomorrow. Time to start thinking of baby bib designs!

12. Bubba watched some trash truck videos before bed. Yup, videos of trash trucks collecting trash. Weird kid.

And there you have it! If you want to learn more about 12 of 12, or if you want to try it yourself, be sure to check out the Facebook page. It's helpful because they send out reminders the night before so you won't forget to have your camera ready. They also share ideas for what to photograph and templates if you do want to end up scrapbooking your photos.

Twenty Teeny Dresses

2012-01-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

Confession - when we first started trying to have a baby, way back in May, I bought this:

I know, I know. Buying baby clothes when you're not even pregnant yet is kind of crazy. Buying gender specific baby clothes when you're not even pregnant yet is REALLY crazy. However, when I rounded the corner at the Goodwill that day, these were hanging on the end of the rack, right at eye level, beckoning me. Yellow, gingham, and vintage? I couldn't resist!

I picked up the romper, and then put it back. I knew I was crazy to consider it. What would my husband say? Then I picked it up again. The tag was blue, and items with blue tags just happened to be on sale 50% off that week. If I bought it and we had a boy, I'd only be out a buck. I could live with that.

Then I noticed what had been behind it on the rack.

Y'all know how I feel about yellow seersucker baby dresses. Daisies are also my favorite flower, so because it too had a blue tag making a dollar, it was coming home with me. I took the two items, wrapped them snugly in their plastic bag, and tucked them far into a back corner on the bottom shelf of my accessory cabinet. My husband would never find them there. I was having my "if you build it, it will come" moment I guess.

Well, two nights ago, after finding out we are having a girl, I finally pulled them out to show him and confessed how long I'd had them stashed. He thought it was more funny than crazy, thank goodness! Then he asked the magic question - "Are you going to get more?"

When we went for our second trimester ultrasound with Bubba, we both took the day off work for it. After the ultrasound, we hit the mall and bought baby stuff. Lots and lots of blue and green baby stuff. It was fun, and it was something we did together. We were both working and had a bit more disposable income than we do now though. Also, my husband's company is rolling out new software and he's one of the trainers, so taking time off work right now is not an option. I felt kind of bad that we didn't get to do the same thing for Kelly that we did for Sawyer.

So, yesterday, I grabbed the boy and we went thrifting.

I've watched MANY episodes of Bewitched in the past year, and I've just become enchanted with the little dresses that Tabitha wears in the show. For little boys, I think it's cute when they're dressed like little men. I know a lot of people disagree, but I think little baby legs in jeans are adorable! However, for little girls, I think they should look like little girls for as long as possible. I don't like clothes with words for either gender, and I think leggings should be worn under dresses when it's cold only. I don't like leggings with tee shirts, and if it's not cold, I think a nice diaper cover or tights are just right. That's just me.

That led me to start thinking that I'd really like to have a bunch of vintage baby dresses for this little girl. She won't wear them every minute (at home I'm sure it will be onesies and footie jammies) but I think they're just the sweetest thing on a little girl. I looked on eBay and Etsy, but at $15 an outfit, I knew I was going to have to look elsewhere. Hence, thrifting! I scored big time at my favorite store, as well as at the Deseret Industries store. When I got home (after stopping to buy a bottle of Dreft) I realized that I had bought twenty dresses, ranging from 3mo to 24mo. Not all of them are vintage, but they all have those vintage elements that drew me to this type of dress in the first place.

Pink seersucker. What's not to love?

Did I mention that smocking is a bit of a weakness too?

Hmm... and apparently Peter Pan collars. This one is not vintage, but the teeny bows on the sleeves and the matching diaper cover reeled me in.

This one not only KILLED me, but it made the cashier at Goodwill squeal too. Like, she was waving it in another cashier's face and saying "THIS is why I need to have a little girl. THIS. DO YOU SEE???"

I mean, look at the back! The frills! The lace! The bow! I can't blame her. I die.

Yellow seersucker with pink ric rac trim. LOVE.

This one I initially passed by due to the spaghetti straps, but further down the rack I found the matching diaper cover. They had been priced separately. Since finding the diaper covers with the dresses is kind of hard, I picked it up and asked the manager if I could get it for the same price as the other sets. He said yes, and it was sold!

The perfect shade of green.

The trim and the bows on this one are velvet. My husband actually really liked this one. The tag read $9.99, but it also said 2 of 3 on it. I looked, but could not for the life of me find the other two pieces. I took it to the manager again (different store) and he knocked the price to $2.99. It never hurts to ask if you have a good reason!

Another impossibly girly number. You know what's funny? When I was a kid, my mom used to want to dress me in yellow all the time and I HATED it. HA!

This one is so sweet, but the diaper cover was what sold it.

More yellow seersucker, smocking, and a Peter Pan collar. Gotta love that eyelet lace trim too.

This one needs the hem to be ironed. I'm tempted to use my hair flat iron because I am a bad housekeeper, and besides - who irons baby clothes???

Pink and green and seersucker and eyelet lace. *sigh*

The pleats and the lovely seafoam green color were the selling points here.

Of course, I have a bunch of coordinating diaper covers too. Some came with certain dresses (see the one for that blue dress right in the middle???), and a few I bought individually because I figured I could pair them with dresses that didn't have them. I would like to find some more though. Ruffled underpants are just too flipping cute to resist.

I did notice that I have a fondness for clothes with this label. Of the 22 outfits hanging on Kelly's side of the closet right now, seven have this label. No other label is repeated in there, with the exception of a couple of Carter's items. The outfit I had admired on Etsy also had this label.

The only other baby item I bought yesterday was this teeny cardigan. At two dollars, it was too cute to pass up. It's not vintage, but it's simple and cute. I love it. I also picked up a pair of maternity jeans for $6. My bootleg Target BellaBand knockoff (seriously, last time I bought the real thing and they're a million times better) isn't really wanting to stay put anymore, so they came at just the right time!

Looking at this, one can tell that I love baby pink, pastel yellow, and bright apple green. I'm okay with blue, but I don't seem to care for purple AT ALL. I also passed up quite a few white dresses, because while they were pretty, I'm not totally insane. Also, notice the nice miniature wooden hanger in the last photo? All of Bubba's clothes are hanging on those. I went to Ikea to get more yesterday and was informed they discontinued them. WHY IKEA??? Why keep the ugly multicolored plastic ones and get rid of the tasteful wooden ones? WHY???

Whew. Rant over.

Today I have gone and stood in front of the closet about five times so far, just admiring everything within. Sugar and spice and everything nice, indeed!

The Numbers Game

2012-01-10T13:33:00.002-07:00

So, I had my ultrasound this morning. They considered it to be my second trimester screening (aka, the BIG ultrasound) even though it was a couple of weeks earlier than usual. The doctor said they normally aim to do it at about 18 weeks, but if there are any potential problems, they do it at sixteen. This means, because the baby is still so small, there are things that are harder to see so I'll probably have to have another in a month.

I am okay with that, because really, can you peek at this too often?

The baby is measuring right on schedule, to the day. Even though, according to the doctor, it's usually hard to get good photos of the baby's heart this early, they got great shots. Finn has a good, strong heartbeat at 152 bpm. Everything appears to be measuring normally, and the doctor sees no signs pointing to Down's Syndrome or anything like that from the ultrasound.

This is where we start to play The Numbers Game.

The first blood test and ultrasound I took was called a Nuchal Translucency. If your odds came back less than 1 in 250, then your test is considered "negative" and you go on your merry way.

Mine came back 1 in 175.

This is technically considered a "positive" result, but really if you do the math, it means that my baby has less than one percent chance of being born with a chromosomal defect. As my friend Brian put it, if you were in Vegas, you wouldn't even bat an eyelash betting on those odds. Still, a positive result is a positive result, and therefore requires more testing.

That brings us to the extra long, extra thorough ultrasound that I had today. Based on the photos and measurements they took, the doctor deciding there were no indicators for a CD triples your odds. So, now I'm bumped up to 1 in 400 to have a baby with a CD. That's a quarter of a percent. At this point I had three options.

One - I could take a second blood test. This sequential screening takes the results of the first screening, the results of this ultrasound, and three new indicators into account to give me a new risk factor number. If it's over the magic 250 mark this time, then I'm considered to have a "negative" result. Even then, it's not 100% positive, because even at 1 in 250 odds, one woman who was told that she was negative for this will still have a baby with a CD. Either way, I still get to triple that number due to the good ultrasound to find what they consider to be my true risk.

Two - I could have an amniocentesis. This is the only way to 100% know for sure about those CDs. However, it doesn't rule out any other defects, but really, I'm not worried about those right now. The problem with the amnio is that it carries it's own number game. There is a 1 in 400 chance of miscarriage due to either fluid leaking at the injection site, or bacteria entering the uterus through the injection site and causing an infection. There is no antibiotic that can treat that.

Finally, Three - There is a new blood test that they consider to be 99% accurate in detecting CDs. It's so new in fact, that insurance doesn't cover it and it's $1900. I heard that and sort of stopped listening.

So, after discussing it with the doctor for a bit, I decided to go with the sequential testing. If the risk comes back still elevated, then I'll do the amniocentesis. This crap is kinda scary, y'all. I'm still kind of freaked out even though I know worrying does nothing to help the situation. I'm praying a lot, and so far, things look good.

The silver lining? Well, besides the fact that I only appear to have gained one pound in the past two months (WHY can't my metabolism ALWAYS be this awesome???), the tech was able to finally get that squirrelly baby to give up the goods:

AW YEAH!!! Another win for the Chinese gender calendar! I am so gonna start scouring Goodwill for vintage baby dresses and plenty of yellow seersucker. I think I also have some stuff I need to start embroidering in pink!

She was so funny - she was wiggling all over the place! The tech would hold the wand in one place and you could see her rolling - face up, face down, face up, face down. She also not only had her legs closed through the whole thing, girlfriend had her ankles crossed!!! The tech finally sat there and just wiggled the wand while applying pressure to get her to move enough so she could get a photo.

I know the photo isn't very clear, but if you look just to the right of where it says "GIRL" you will see two little lines that kind of look like an equal sign. They're darker white than the surrounding area. That's her girl parts.

So, as of today, Finn is now going to be known as Kelly Lynn Fehling. You know, unless we come up with something better. Kinda hard to beat that monogram though.

After all, everyone knows KLF is gonna rock you. :)

Fears

2012-01-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

(Finn, 12 weeks)

Tomorrow is my ultrasound. The one I've been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading. I've been doing a pretty good job for the past three weeks not losing my shit worrying about this. There have been a couple of slip ups, but really, for the most part I've tried to just put it out of my mind. Of course, with it now less than twelve hours away, it's getting harder to fight off the freak outs.

My OB said that they would do this at the same time that they did the "big" ultrasound. You know, the one where they take all the measurements and when you get to find out the sex of the baby. Generally that is done at 17 or 18 weeks, and sometimes as late as twenty. However, when I called to make the appointment for the ultrasound I was told they did it at sixteen weeks, and they were very specific about getting me in during a certain window of time.

So, instead of being excited about getting to find out if we're having a boy or a girl, I'm worried that we're going to find out that our child is going to have a chromosomal abnormality. Hell, as long as we're working on worst case scenarios here, I'm worried that they're not going to find the most important thing of all - Finn's heartbeat. I have freaked out about that every ultrasound I've ever had though, so it's nothing new.

What I am super freaked out about? That they're going to have to do the amniocentesis, and I'm going to have to be lanced by a giant needle. I'm scared I'll flinch, and they'll hit the baby and hurt it horribly. I'm scared of the pain, even though I know they'll have to numb me somehow, right? Most of all, I'm scared of what that test might tell us.

That means that once again I'll be asking for you to keep us in your thoughts tomorrow if you're the praying type. Hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep tonight.

Project Life

2012-01-09T02:59:00.000-07:00

My friend Lindsay has been posting on her blog, Twitter and Facebook about Project Life lately. I knew what it was - heck, anyone who has ever been a serious scrapbooker knows what it is. Basically, it's a simplified way of documenting your every day life, as a way of leaving a record. Rather than your kids and grandkids being left photo albums full of pictures of people that barely have names, let alone stories about who they were, they'll be able to really get a feel for who you are and how things are now. I mean, I know I'm not the only one who has looked at old black and white photos of long gone relatives and wondered about them as people, am I right?

Sure, there's traditional scrapbooking. That will always be my first love. The thing is, since Bubba's been born, I haven't really done a whole lot of it. I have photos that I can go back and add to his album, but the truth is that with time, a lot of the details in my memory has been lost. That makes me sad.

With Project Life, every thing is simplified. There's no pressure to come up with unique layouts and titles. You can put multiple random photos on one page. There is no matching papers or searching for the perfect embellishments. You're simply documenting your life.

Of course, they sell kits for this. You can get them on Becky Higgin's website. They have fancy page protectors and pre-printed cards on which you can write your journal entries that are all nice and color coordinated. All you have to do is print your photos, write out your journaling, and slide everything into it's own little pocket in the fancy divided page protector. Wham, bam, DONE.

The thing is, it's not cheap. You start adding up the cost of those cute little cards and all those nifty divided page protectors, and you're going to be spending QUITE a bit of money by the time the year is through. Some people have that sort of disposable income, but unfortunately with a baby on the way, I'm not one of them. They do offer a digital version of the kits as well, with downloadable templates that you can use over and over again, as well as files for the different journal cards. This is considerably cheaper - until you factor in printing out those layouts. My printer at home cannot print 12" x 12", so I'd have to send them out. Again, by the end of the year, this will get really expensive.

So what's a girl to do?

Well, if she's like me, she already has a crapload of paper in her house. She has adhesive. She has a corner rounder, a color printer, a date stamp, and a pen. She has a Walgreens a few blocks up the road that offers 19 cent prints that will be ready in about an hour. AND - she has Photoshop. She is creative and cheap, and will find a way to do Project Life for a fraction of the cost. After all, it's about documenting the memories, not about buying stuff!

The first thing I did was to make my own cute little journaling cards. I printed some out on white cardstock, and some out on kraft colored cardstock.

Then I cut them apart. I stuck them in a little tin on top of my desk so that when I'm doing this, all I have to do is reach in there and grab one. I also cut rectangles of the same size from plain white cardstock to use for the same purpose. I figure I can embellish those with bits of patterned papers from my scrap pile to jazz them up a bit.

You like? Visit my Facebook page and click LIKE if you haven't already to access the links for the free download so you can print your own. I'll post more in the next few days.

Last week, when I decided to do this, I sent some photos to be printed at Walgreens. Some I left 4" x 6", and some I made 3" x 4". The beauty of a 3" x 4" is that you can put two on a standard 4" x 6" canvas using photo editing software, and get two prints for the price of one! While I was working in Photo Shop I also went ahead and typed up some little titles to go with some of the photos and sent those to be printed too.

Why those two sizes that I mentioned? Well, that's part of what makes Project Life so simple:

It's like a formula. Each page follows the same basic design, with tweaks here and there to make things fit. There's no trying to figure out how things will be placed on each page - that part is pretty much done for you. As you can see, I took some liberties with that basic formula in a few places, such as filling in those blank spots on the race car layout with patterned paper because I didn't have enough photos. I also used a combination of my pre-printed journal cards along with plain cardstock cards that I embellished with patterned papers. I did add a couple of simple embellishments to some of the pages just for fun, but it wasn't anything special or that took a lot of time.

I did all four of these layouts in under an hour. I just trimmed a 1/8 of an inch from the top and side of each photo (so there would be a little border showing around each), rounded the corners, wrote out my journaling, and glued everything down on sheets of cardstock. DONE. No need for fancy page protectors or kits here!

I'm hoping I can really stick with this since it does take a lot less time, and finally get back to the business of preserving some of our family memories. Knowing that there are so many spaces for smaller photos means I can use iPhone and Instagram pictures on these too! Thank you Lindsay for the little push in the right direction and the encouragement to do this! I'm scrapbooking again!

Bubba Vlogs

2012-01-04T23:42:00.001-07:00

If you've spent any time at all on YouTube, you know how popular vlogging (video blogging) is. Vlogs can be anything from an older woman showing how to cook, to a younger guy talking about video games, to a girl talking about makeup, to a kid showing off his collection of cars.

Oh man, do little kids like to collect things! The only thing they seem to like more than collecting things is showing off the things they've collected. I've seen so many videos of kids showing their collection of fifty Thomas the Tank Engine trains and naming them off individually, or their figures from Disney's Cars, or all their trash trucks. Seriously - one kid had a collection of toy trash trucks! And of course, Bubba watches them all. I guess looking at other people's cool stuff on the internet is as much fun as playing with your own sometimes. (Pinterest, anyone?)

Tonight, my husband was playing with him in his room when I heard him start to crack up laughing. He came out and informed me that Bubba was ready to start starring in his own YouTube videos. I grabbed my camera and he got really excited to make a video.

I now present to you, Bubba's Vlog.

He has his intro and in sign off down. Now he just needs to work a bit on his content. :)

Day Two with the Strider Bike

2012-01-02T23:44:00.001-07:00

We were out all day yesterday, so Bubba didn't really get a chance to try out his bike again. Come this morning though, it was all he could talk about! We started off by letting him run around the back yard with it for a while and then decided to move to the driveway. My husband figured he'd be able to get the hang of coasting there because it was a smoother surface than grass, and boy, was he right!

The boy started off just running up and down the driveway, pretty much like he had been in the back yard. Eventually his father convinced him to sit on the seat and lift is feet, and he just took off.

(Please pardon my messy garage. It's due for a serious cleaning!)

I could not believe how quickly he picked this up. Remember, when he first got it on Saturday he could barely stand straddling the bike without losing his balance and falling over. Within 30 minutes he was running around with it in the back yard as fast as his little legs could carry him. He rode it for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half on Saturday, and then another half an hour today before we moved out to the driveway. That's how long it took my three year old to be able to balance and coast on a two wheeler.

WHOA.

He would get a running start, then lift his legs to coast for a few seconds at a time until he got wobbly, then he'd simply put his feet back down. No need to lose confidence, because he always was in control. After about 15 minutes of this he got to where he could coast about half the length of the driveway. My husband would stop him at the end so he wouldn't roll out into the street, so we don't really know if he can go farther than that yet.

This kid is never going to have to use training wheels. That just blows my mind.

Oh, and just so you know, no one asked me or paid me to do a review of this. My mother in law bought this as a gift for him with her own money. I'm just in total awe of it right now. It's flipping awesome.

Of course, after all that running at full speed and coasting on two wheels down the driveway, when does the boy fall and split his lip? Trying to turn the bike around so he could have another go at it. You know, the slow, clumsy part. He lost his balance turning the handle bars, they slipped out from under him, and he hit his mouth on the handle grip as he came down. There was a lot of blood but he's fine now. I'm guessing it's not the last injury he's going to sustain on a bike in his lifetime either, so I'm not terribly worried about it.

After all, he was demanding to go ride it again just a few minutes ago. Way to get back on that horse, kid!

January. WHOA.

2012-01-01T12:03:00.001-07:00

I can't believe it's January already. Let's just forget that it's freaking TWENTYTWELVE already. Dang. We were out in the car last night driving around and I just kept thinking to myself, "It doesn't feel like New Year's Eve!!!" So bizarre how time simultaneously passes so fast and so slow.

My mother in law is here visiting. If you've been wondering where I've been the past week, that's where. I think most people know that when you have houseguests coming, you clean your house really well, but when it's your husband's mom, you clean it REALLY well. Not that she'd say anything; it's more for my own peace of mind.

Of course these days my method is to do one thing, sit on the couch and rest for an hour, get up and do another thing, sit on the couch for another hour and rest, etc. Hence a week to clean my house. UGH.

Since we knew Grandma was coming to visit, we saved all the presents she sent and the ones we bought her for Saturday morning. This meant we got to have Christmas round Two! I hope the boy doesn't think we're doing it again next weekend. He'll be sorely disappointed!

Grandma got him this awesome Strider Pre-Bike. My friend Lindsay posted about these on Facebook a few weeks ago, so I checked out their videos on YouTube and knew this would be awesome for Bubba too. When she asked for ideas for his gift, this was a no brainer.

Let's just say it was a winner!

When he got on it for the first time, he could barely stand straddled over it without losing his balance and almost falling. Within thirty minutes, he was out in the back yard chasing after his father at full speed. He hasn't figured out to pick up his feet to coast yet, but that will be coming soon, no doubt. What an awesome thing for a little boy with way too much energy to burn!

Of course, it's a New Year, and I can't let that slide by without addressing resolutions, right? Well, here's what I've decided. Once again, instead of making resolutions, I'm setting goals. Also, because it's so easy to set a goal for the year, then give up halfway in, I want to work on Monthly goals instead. My thought is that I don't want to focus on the bad parts of me, but rather, to focus on how I can be better. I prefer to be positive!

Here, for January, are my goals.

1. Take better care of myself.

This means showering and doing my hair even if I have nowhere to go. This means putting on makeup because it's true - when you look good, you feel good. This means taking time to pamper myself with nice smelling soap and pretty lotions like I used to do. This means shaving my legs more often than twice a month. (gross, I know, but I wear pants all the time!) This means no chipped polish on my fingers or toes. It doesn't take that long to remove it, even if I can't get around to painting a new color right away.

2. Floss EVERY DAY.

I posted about this before, and I was doing really well with it too. Then I got sick, and the last thing I wanted to do were all those little self care tasks. The new habit I was working toward was lost and I never started up again. I want to be sure to floss, brush, and use the whitening mouth rinse every night before bed.

3. Take off my eye makeup before bed.

I think everyone universally agrees that it is so bad to go to bed with eye makeup on, yet I do it ALL THE TIME. Once I'm sleepy, I just want to go to bed. I don't want to stop and take time to do anything else. I'm getting older though, and I need to start taking better care of my skin. The first step toward this would be to just take off my dang eye makeup before bed.

4. Get organized!!!

I know this sounds odd, coming from me, but things have gone to pot around here. If I don't keep up on things, my husband (who is not naturally organized) starts to let things slide. My beautiful pantry is a mess, under the bathroom cabinets is full of random mystery crap, my accessory closet is a disaster, my beauty products were all over... UGH.

Well, then last week my husband was playing with his new XBox and happened to come across the YouTube function. He was scrolling through the top videos when one caught my eye. It was by this girl who's videos I used to watch before, but had stopped for whatever reason. She has posted a video of her makeup organization and vanity.

HOLY MOLY! Even though I don't have nearly as much stuff as she does, I was totally inspired to clean up my stuff. I had it in a little train case, but the case isn't big enough to hold everything so there was random stuff stashed here and there around my bathroom. With her method, everything is together in a central location. I quickly Googled the vanity that she has and my organized makeup fantasies began to die a quick death; that thing was over $2000!!! Kinda not in my budget.

But then I started thinking...

Ikea is in my budget... sorta. I looked on their site and figured out how I could recreate her piece on a budget. I'd have to buy a little at a time, but when all was done, I'd be able to do something similar for about a tenth of the price. So, to start out, I bought one bookcase:

Bubba helped his father put it together for me, and now it houses the majority of my stuff. I made a pilgrimage to North Scottsdale with my friends to visit the Container store and picked up a few organizational items, and also got some containers while I was at Ikea. I still would like to get a second one to house nail and hair stuff, as well as other girly things like soaps and candles, but this is an awesome start.

5. Eat more stuff that's good for me.

I started to write "eat less crap" for this one, but that's not very positive, is it? Also, I like eating junk food. Oreos make me happy. Cheetos before bed are one of the great joys in life. Don't even think about asking me to give up ice cream.

What I'd like to do instead is to try and incorporate more foods that are good for me into my diet. If I'm filling up on fruits and veggies, then by default I'll have less room for the junk, right? I don't have to cut it out completely. So, instead of saying NO to junk, I'm saying YES to more healthy food, and that's a great start for anyone.

So, that's what I've been up to and what my goals for the new year are. Thank you to everyone who dropped me an email to ask where the heck I've been and to be sure I'm okay. It really means so much to me to know that people care! :)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T11:30:00.002-07:00

It's been a pretty rough week around here, but you know what? None of that matters. What matters is that I have my family, our health, and this new little one on the way. We have a roof over our head, a car to drive, food to eat, clothes to wear, and presents under the tree. THAT is what matters.

So, from my family to yours,

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

I am off to hang out with my little family in front of our awesome fireplace. No cleanup! You know you're jealous. :)

Four Days Until Christmas

2011-12-21T17:05:00.001-07:00

This photo pretty much sums up how much I've done to prepare for Christmas.

As packages arrived in the mail, they were just tucked under the tree to be dealt with later. Festive, no?

No cookies have been baked, no tamales have been made, no family photo has been taken, Santa has not been visited, no cards have been mailed, no plans for Christmas dinner have been made, and no presents have been wrapped. Indeed - we haven't even bought all of Bubba's presents from us, let alone figured out what Santa will bring him. I only had to pick out four measly things!!! I feel like such a slacker!

It's not like Christmas doesn't come at the exact same time every year. It wasn't a surprise that was sprung on us at the last minute. I had all year to prepare. But did I? Nope! And now here I am.

I pulled out some butter to make some cookies later tonight. Nothing fancy, but something to have in our cookie jar. I was having computer issues earlier so while I was trying to let it recover I went ahead and opened all those shipping boxes and wrapped what needed to be wrapping. Yesterday I took a mental health day and just worked on editing photos (seriously, WHY must editing photos take so long if all you're doing is resizing???) and getting sorta caught up on my December Daily.

The most important thing for me to remember right now is that Christmas is not about cookies or presents or tamales or cards. It's about celebrating the birth of our savior and family and friends and love.

Today.

2011-12-19T23:53:00.002-07:00

Today sucked. Man, for someone who is supposed to be avoiding stress, I'm sure doing a crappy job. I didn't get enough sleep last night, had to get up early for a doctor's appointment where we discussed the positive results of my Nuchal Translucency and the tests that could be done about it, as well as the possibility of termination. Oh, and I'm peeing blood. No one knows why. (is that too TMI?) The event we had planned to attend all month to do our Santa photos was non-existent when we showed up, because my husband got his info from a two year old water bill. Let's not talk about WHY he had a two year old water bill laying around. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home because I needed something for a jam order I needed to fill, and despite repeating THREE TIMES what I needed, he still got the wrong thing. I was stuck in the car trying to get my internet on the phone to load while I checked on another Santa thing because Bubba was upset (understandably; we totally worked it up) that he didn't see Santa and I was NOT going to the mall. We had a huge fight on the way home in the car, then I had them drop me off so I could make jam even though I was bummed about missing him see Santa. I had to swap out the wrong can of pineapple for one I knew I had under a Pyrex bowl on top of my china hutch, and in the process, I FELL OFF THE CHAIR ON WHICH I STOOD, taking out SIX pieces of milk glass in the process. I lost four Bubble berry bowls (so freaking hard to find), a candy dish, and one of my large footed bowls got a huge chip in the scalloped rim.

The irony here is that I've been telling my husband I can't be standing on chairs because I might fall off and since I'm pregnant, that would be a very bad thing.

I sat there where I fell with all my broken glass, and that just did it. I cried, and I cried for about twenty minutes, then I got up and went into my office, and cried some more. Let's just say the jam never got made. My husband got home, and I figured, well, at least Bubba got to see Santa.

These are the photos I got.

Santa photos were from 3-8 pm, according to the website. My husband got there a little before five, and was turned away by security because the line was too long. Hey, what's another disappointment today, right?

We had another HUGE fight and now I'm just done. Today was so horrible that I want to say that I just can't see how tomorrow can be worse, but I don't want to tempt fate either. If you're the praying sort, I'm putting myself out there - I could really use some right about now. I left out some details, of course, but there was other stuff that happened too. I just can't see how that much crap can happen all in one day!

And I still have to make the jam.

Crafty Christmas

2011-12-17T12:44:00.003-07:00

Last night I had a few friends over for a little Christmas celebration. I hesitate to even call it a party, because I only invited three people and one couldn't make it because her daughter was sick. We got together, ate good food (if I do say so myself!), worked on our needlework projects, and chatted. There was even a mini White Elephant exchange. It was lovely. So lovely, in fact, that we chatted until almost eleven without noticing!

Here's a photo of my finished buffet with all the food on it:

From left to right, I had a platter with carrots, cucumber and naan to dip in hummus, chicken salad on mini croissants, deviled eggs, grapes, butter toffee almonds, fruit salad in clementine cups, peppermint wafer cookies, mushroom turnovers, and punch. Can I tell you how hard it is to find a non alcoholic punch recipe that doesn't contain pineapple juice, sherbet, or apple juice/cider??? I don't particularly care for any of those flavors, so let me tell you, I was all sorts of scouring the internet. I checked my vintage cookbooks, but back in the fifties they specialized in booze. Seriously, a punch recipe will read like this:

1 fifth of bourbon
1 fifth rum
1 fifth gin
1 can frozen orange juice
dash of bitters

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but still. SO MUCH BOOZE. The one I ended up using was a can of frozen lemonade, a can of frozen orange juice, 7 oz frozen sliced strawberries, 1 liter of ginger ale and two thinly sliced limes. It was good - flavorful without being too heavy or super sweet, and the ginger ale gave it a nice bit of fizz. I'll be making that one again!

The chicken salad and deviled egg recipes came from this book:

I picked it up this weekend at the Goodwill for three dollars. It was going to be a white elephant gift because seriously, molded salad and aspic photos in glorious 1967 color??? COME ON! It's awesome. Well, when I got home and decided to peruse the photos, I decided it was just too awesome to give away. After I made the chicken salad and the deviled eggs, it's spot in my library was cemented forever. That chicken salad was amazing - simple, with nothing weird or fruity in it. Just plain old chicken salad without being the teeniest bit bland like it can be. Good stuff. The deviled eggs were the best I've had in a long time too.

After a while, the party came down to this:

Signs you are getting old - everyone ends up around the piano at a party. Never mind that none of us were what you'd call "musically gifted," we had a good time anyway.

Some of us more than others!

J'adore... Vintage Milk Glass

2011-12-15T23:53:00.001-07:00

Blogger is messing with me tonight, and seems to want me to draft this post in HTML. NOT COOL, BLOGGER!

But anyway...

Y'all know that I love milk glass. I started collecting it a couple of years ago and have amassed quite a bit of it. I love the way the light hits it. It's not quite as heavy or opaque as china or porcelain. It's so pretty and even the sturdier pieces have a certain delicacy to them. I just love it! I don't think there is a single room in my house, with the exception of Bubba's bedroom, that doesn't have any in it.

Even the dog's dish is milk glass! Um... let's ignore the ugly water container for now, okay? :) It's kind of interesting; I found that dish at a Goodwill for a few dollars, so I picked it up, figuring I'd find a use for it eventually. Well, I saw the same one at the antique mall last week. Apparently it's a candy dish and it's supposed to have a coordinating lid. The handle/finial is a ball with a little pointy spire on it. Mine is missing that piece, so dog dish it is!

I have noticed on Pinterest that there are a lot of photos where people have taken their glass and just stacked it. Do a search for milk glass and you'll see what I mean - stacks and stacks of pretty white glass all bunched together. It looks really cool, so I thought I'd try it with some of my pieces.

I took the dresser that used to hold the television and tucked it in a little space behind my sofa that was just blank wall before. I put a milk glass lamp on top, then lots of other bowls, vases, and serving pieces. With that pale blue wall as a background, it's just so pretty! I love looking over at that little vignette. It makes me smile.

I'm having a few girls over tomorrow night for a little holiday get together. Nothing big - some nibbles, some non-alcoholic punch, maybe a little bit of crafting. I started to get things ready tonight.

Just like Eddie Ross taught me, I've laid out my tablecloth and serving dishes to be sure that I have a dish for everything and space for every dish. I've used a mix of clear glass and my milk glass to bring a little visual interest to my table.

Aw, heck, let's be honest - I really really really just wanted to be able to use my punch bowl along with my pretty milk glass.

Isn't it GORGEOUS? This sucker is HUGE, and super heavy. Unlike the punch bowls they sell in stores now, this one is super thick glass. It also came with eighteen cups!!! I had been admiring the punch bowls at Goodwill for a while, but they were always too ornate, or only had a few cups. When I saw this one, and saw the price tag, I didn't even hesitate before snatching that bad boy up! It's perfect - pretty without being too fancy, and old and sturdy to boot. LOVE.

Of course, there was the issue of it not having a ladle, but a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond remedied that. Did you know you can get a pretty crystal Mikasa punch bowl ladle there for a mere ten dollars? You do now! I even used a coupon. :)

Almost everything on this table came from an antique mall, a rummage sale, or a thrift store. The crystal pitcher was a wedding gift, as were the water glasses. My mother in law got me the glass cake stand for Christmas last year and I found the matching plate and bowl at Goodwill a few months later. The teeny brass spoon is part of a set (five teeny spoons, five teeny forks, and five teeny knives) that my mother found somewhere and thought I would like. I saw just the set of spoons at an antique store for $20! They're made in Thailand. She literally found them, as in, she paid nothing for them.

The gold rimmed egg plate ($2)came from a rummage sale, as did the oval dish($1). The square milk glass dish is part of a set of five for which I paid a couple of dollars each. The napkins are from Pier One. I paid six dollars for the set of eight at a school boutique/craft fair. They were brand new and had the original $7 price tags on each of them. Oh, and those darling milk glass snack plates?

I paid a whopping dollar each at the DI last week for them. They only had two of the matching cups, but that's okay since I have my punch cups. They're very heavy, and so much nicer than just having paper plates would be, don't you think?

I don't really get to entertain much, even though I'd really like to do it more often. I'm so excited to get to pull out all of these pretty things that I've been stashing for a special occasion and use them! I'll post photos of what it looks like once I've got everything filled and ready for company.

It just goes to show you that you don't have to spend a whole bunch of money to have a pretty party! You can have a really nice set up on a budget if you take your time and build your collection slowly.

Dan Dan Mein

2011-12-14T00:01:00.001-07:00

This was one of my photos for this month's twelve of twelve.

I know it doesn't look like much, but let me tell you, this is one dang yummy bowl of soup! I got the recipe from a blog called Tranquility's Kitchen, which sadly, no longer exists. There were some seriously good recipes on there! The author's father was a chef in China, if I recall correctly, so these were recipes that she got from him. Real authentic stuff.

This soup is called dan dan mein, which according to that blog, meant bland bland noodles. That's pretty funny because these are anything but bland! If you like egg drop soup, you'll probably like this. It's fast and easy for when you want warm food in your belly right away. I took a few liberties with the original recipe (mostly because I don't like runny eggs, and the original recipe called for a poached egg, yuck), but mostly I stayed true.

Combine three cups water, one tablespoon chicken bouillon powder (we buy this brand), 1/4 teaspoon dashi granules and two green onions chopped into 1-inch lengths in a saucepan. My onions are sliced smaller because I forgot to tell my husband to leave them bigger and he was chopping that day.

You can find dashi granules at pretty much any Asian market. It seems to be a staple in broths and soups. Buy the smallest package you can find, because this stuff will last you forever!

While you're waiting for that to come to a boil, roughly chop up three little bunches of baby bok choy. I got mine at the Asian market, but I've seen it at the regular grocery store too.

Toss them in the pot when it comes to a boil and cook for one minute. While that's going on, scramble two eggs in a small bowl.

Using a fork with a long handle, or a chopstick, or something like that, begin to briskly stir your soup in a clockwise motion. Once it's all moving pretty quickly in the pan, slowly begin to drizzle in your scrambled eggs. The finer your drizzle, the nicer your egg flowers are going to look. If you dump it in big globs then you will have big blobby bits of egg in your soup which is fine if you're into that sort of thing I suppose.

Take a bean thread bundle and put it into the pot. Push it under the liquid and loosen it up a bit with your fork/chopstick as it cooks. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes.

Yes, you see two pots on my stove! There are two pots going because the thought of trying to serve this and untangle two batches of noodles while dealing with boiling hot liquid makes me nervous. I just make a pot for me and a pot for my husband at the same time so it's easy to dump each individual serving into a bowl all at once.

The bean threads come in packages that look like this. Our market never seems to have the same brand twice, but they almost always look like this regardless of the name on the package. There are eight little bunches of noodles in there. Sometimes they're individually wrapped, and sometimes they are all in one big bag like this.

After the noodles are done cooking, transfer the soup to a serving bowl. This makes a HUGE restaurant style serving.

Sprinkle a tablespoon of fried red onions on top and stir in. Allow them to soften and flavor your soup while it cools off enough for you to eat.

They sell them - you guessed it! - at the Asian market. They're not the same as the French's we know from green bean casserole, so I wouldn't try substituting those if you're thinking about that. This jar is another one of those things that just lasts forever.

I love this soup, and I'm so thankful that I got to make it and write down the recipe before Wendy pulled her blog! I hope someone else with a craving tries it. It would be a great thing for a Meatless Monday this winter!

Dan Dan Mein

Ingredients

3 cups water
1 tbsp chicken bouillon powder
¼ tsp dashi granules
2 green onions, chopped into 1 inch lengths
1 cup (two bunches) baby bok choy, roughly chopped
2 eggs, beaten well
1 serving packaged bean threads
1 tbsp fried red onions

Directions

Place water, bouillon powder, dashi, and green onions in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. Add baby bok choy and boil for one minute. While stirring, drizzle in beaten eggs. Cook one minute. Add bean threads and cook 2-3 minutes or until noodles are clear and tender. Loosen with a fork as they cook. Pour soup into a serving dish and add fried onions. Allow to sit for a few minutes so onions can soften.

Twelve of 12 - December 2011

2011-12-13T00:04:00.003-07:00

Hey! Look who did a better job at getting all of her photos done today!

1. Twelve weeks! Also, fat bottomed girls make the world go 'round. FACT.

2. Check it out! It's Finn! I had my nuchal translucency ultrasound today. Finn is looking more like a baby and less like a blobby bean these days.

3. It was a gorgeous rainy day. When I got home my husband (who was telecommuting) made me a nice hot cocoa. YUM.

4. The boy and I went to the Asian market to grab a few items because I had a craving for noodle soup. Bubba loves to look at the fish.

5. These are my FAVORITE. I had them the first time in Seattle, then would always lament that our Asian market didn't carry them. Well, about a year and a half ago, the started!!! I always grab one when I stop in. They're amazing.

6. Dan dan mein. It's like egg drop soup with noodles and greens. So yum.

7. Still raining! Bubba wanted to try out the umbrella, but decided he didn't want to leave the entryway.

8. The Bubs and I took a nap together, then when we got up and came into the living room afterwards he went right back to sleep on his father's lap.

9. My husband's group at work adopted a family for Christmas, so we headed out to Target to pick up a few things for that.

10. I do remember that my exact thought upon leaving the house was, "I don't need to drag my umbrella along! There's no way it's going to start raining again." Um... yeah. Whoops.

11. Got home and got comfy on the couch. We rented Friends with Benefits. You can see the shameful state of my "mantel." Shameful.

12. Dinner! Okay, so when we make a frozen pizza, we usually just put it directly on the oven rack with a cookie sheet under it to catch crumbs so the crust will get nice and crispy. We've been doing it this way for pretty much the entire eleven years we've been together, at least as far as I can remember. Well, tonight we had a first - the entire center of the pizza collapsed! Like, it looked like it just melted through the rack! Thank goodness for the cookie sheet underneath, but still, the oven is a total mess. The salvaged bits still tasted good though. :)

And now, with that, I'm ready for BED. Night all!