(Who am I kidding? I will never truly accomplish #2 and #3. The latter two might happen, though.)

After being forced to endure way too many viewings of Charlie Trash Truck, we decided to be the most awesome parents of the millennium and take Brady to the landfill. The staff there seemed slightly mystified by our request for a tour, but thankfully, they humored us.

The excitement started right away, as dozens of garbage trucks rumbled past our car while we waited in the parking lot for my sister-in-law and mother.

A can! A BLUE CAN!!!

OMG!!! Another gar-gar is driving by!

We went inside the main building to watch an informational video. While the class of summer campers we accompanied watched with glazed eyes, Brady wriggled in his seat with glee. “Oooh… Gar-gar!”

Then our guide opened the blinds so we could check out the sorting action.

Another kind employee loaded us in a van and drove us all around the landfill. We even got to go down into one of the cells where they were dumping trash. Super cool!

When it was all over, Kyle took the kiddos home while I introduced Mom and Miki to the wonders of the DI and American Discount Foods. At the latter, I loaded up a cart with rice, flour, and pasta to give to the Arizona Hunger Campaign, which I dropped off with Kimberly Jarman on the way home. I felt a bit foolish dropping by her studio unannounced while bearing heavy bags of foodstuffs, but she’s a lovely person and graciously took my donation. (If you’re local and would like to make a difference in our community, you should definitely pay her a visit. She’ll be accepting food through tomorrow.)

Asher came over today and introduced his pal Ian to Yo Gabba Gabba. (How else are Jax and I supposed to get any crafting done?)

My birthday. When it comes to a choice between blogging and food, food will triumph…and my birthday was all about food. I love baking and I love cupcakes, so I spent the morning of my birthday making these delicious strawberry lemonade cupcakes from scratch. (Except for the lemon curd, which was store-bought. My zester and I don’t get along.)

My dear husband reminded me halfway through the day that I had forgotten the Birthday Trifecta, a cherished tradition involves scoring free birthday meals from three local restaurants.  Starting at a disadvantage, we ran to Joe’s Real BBQ for my favorite jumbo baker topped with pulled pork and a red cream soda. On the way to my family birthday dinner, I picked up a Farm Salad and sweet potato fries with pineapple-serrano dipping sauce at Joe’s Farm Grill, which I enjoyed while everyone else dined on pizza. (Yes, I’m mean like that.) My intention was to hit Liberty Market for a second dessert on our way to bowling, but everyone’s motivation to bowl fizzled out as the evening progressed. Two outta three isn’t bad, though!

Illness. First, there was some gastrointestinal thing that struck two of the kiddos. Right after we recovered from that, I was felled by the flu.

But the biggest distraction of all is this thing my husband is doing:

His departure for training is quickly approaching, so we’ve been thrown into a whirlwind of preparations. Mounds of cheap Ikea bedding, conservative suits, and boxing gear are piled around our bedroom. Nearly every day brings another trip to the bookstore to get more moving boxes or a stop by Goodwill to drop off our excess stuff. And egads, the paperwork!

Once Kyle is gone, I’ll be on my own with FOUR BOYS for at least six months. (Pray for me.)

Brady found this action figure in a drawer and claimed it for his own, dubbing it “FBI Daddy”.

And yes, I am a big geek with multiple Mulder and Scully action figures sitting in drawers throughout our house.

Aidan took this photo of Brady and I during an impromptu photography lesson at the Phoenix Zoo.

So, Jax at Aly & Ash and I made these fabulous jewelry organizers at the inaugural Crafty Crafty Ladies Night in February. You’ve probably seen this project around the blogosphere- wood frame, chicken wire. Loved it.

Mine soon met with a grave misfortune, however, in the form of a toddler armed with a bottle of bathroom cleaner. Rather than go through the effort of removing the chicken wire and repainting the frame, I chucked the whole thing out in a fit of pique.

My jewelry has been resting in a soap dish ever since. (I took a photo to illustrate, but decided it was too pathetic to post.) Weary of sifting through a jumbled heap of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, I turned an inexpensive wood shelf into a pretty and useful jewelry organizer.

Materials

• Unfinished wooden wall shelf
• Printed scrapbook paper
• Textured cardstock
• Mod Podge
• Acrylic craft paint
• Clear acrylic sealer
• Foam brush

Instructions

I purchased this unfinished wooden shelf at Dollar Tree, but something similar can probably be found at your local craft store. Use a screwdriver to remove the hooks on the back and paint all of the exposed areas.

Trim your patterned paper (mine is “Black/White Dots” by Paper Pizazz) to fit all four exterior sides. Adhere the paper to the sides with Mod Podge.

Trim your solid colored textured cardstock to fit each compartment. This is a little tricky; I laid my cardstock on top of the shelf and made little tick marks where I needed to cut. Adhere the paper pieces to the bottom of each compartment using Mod Podge.

Seal the entire thing with clear sealer. Once your sealer has dried, fill it up with all of your pretty baubles and enjoy!

Don’t forget to check out the sites that this tutorial is linked up at!

1.  Melissa from Those Northern Skies has been making super cute bandana bibs using my tutorial. I love seeing what you’ve made!

2.  My gorgeous necklace from Cap Creations arrived this week. Yay!

3.  I’ve downloaded way too many fonts to use with my new Silhouette after reading this helpful post at Clever Someday. A font for making boxes? Brilliant.

4.  No luck stalking thrift stores in search of sandals suitable for making these adorable Pom-Pom Sandal Flats at For the Love…. I did find a $68 Lucy hoodie jacket for $1.50, though.

5.  Oh, how I am salivating over these Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes from ISLY. Perhaps I should make my own birthday cupcakes next weekend…

6.  I’m still a relative newb at Photoshop, so these handy type tips from Design House Digital were all new to me.

Thanks to It’s a Hodge Podge Life for featuring my clothespin memo board. I’m also grateful to Nikki at Nikki’s Nifty Knacks and Ginger at Super Stinky Boys for passing on the Versatile Blogger Award (even if I’m horrible when it comes to passing these things on…) You girls are the best! 

The frenzy of 50 percent off Saturdays at Goodwill can cause one to make rash decisions. So I can’t really blame my husband for buying a Cars sheet set that is (a) too big for Brady’s bed and (b) has a mismatched pillowcase with a tractor on it. He didn’t even notice the issue with the pillowcase until days later, when he commented, “You know, I don’t think that is even a tractor from Cars…”

With some creative tucking and safety-pinning, I managed to fit the twin size sheet to the toddler bed mattress. Brady thought it was fabulously cool to have Lightning McQueen et al. on his bed. But what to do about the problem of the pathetic tractor pillowcase?

Inspiration struck when I saw a bolt of fabric emblazoned with the same Cars images found on the sheet. Some quick searching on my handy-dandy iPhone yielded this tutorial for making pillowcases on Mormon Chic, and I went home with the materials to make a matching pillowcase.

This was a pretty simple sewing project. I wish that I had started with pillowcases when I was learning to sew French seams! My blind hem foot had never seen the light of day prior to this and my sewing machine manual disappeared years ago, so it did take a bit of trial and error to finish it off. Other than that…a piece of cake!

I think I love it even more than Brady does.

I do realize that I don’t require use of my lower extremities to type, so this is a pretty weak excuse. However, being confined to my bed (that is, when my 97th-percentile-for-weight-and-height baby doesn’t need me to lug him around) does not make for interesting blogging material… Today I ate Market Pantry Thin Wheats, which are a shameful excuse for crackers. Then I pondered why we don’t have a television in the bedroom, because I am super bored and would like to watch Glee.

One day I was feeling ambitious enough to hobble around the house, artfully staging pictures of the projects I completed before my leg went kablooey… a t-shirt, a pillowcase, decoupaged wooden boxes. As I snapped the very last shot, my camera displayed an error message: “This memory card cannot be used. Card may be damaged. Insert another.” By the time I had determined that my photos were irretrievably lost and convinced my husband to buy a new memory card for me, it was too dark for picture-taking and my motivation had waned.

So it was back to my exciting routine of surfing the Internets on my ridiculously slow netbook and reading The Lady in the Tower. Fingers crossed that I survive my MRI (scary!) and get back on my feet soon.

So it wasn’t terribly surprising when our pediatrician declared that he had dermographism, a condition in which raised patches of skin or welts materialize when the skin is lightly scratched.

(Bizarre childhood skin conditions must run in our family…I suffered from polymorphous light eruption, which resulted in itchy rashes due to sunlight.)

So the dermographism has caused all sorts of interesting side effects. Ian gets red welts on his torso when he wears outfits that button up the front. The other day, an applique on his shirt left the red imprint of a dinosaur on his chest. And now, we’ve had to contend with this:

Contrary to appearances, Ian was not attacked by a psychotic kitten. Those are actually scratches he inflicted while reaching to grab his chubby little feet. Regular fingernail clipping was not solving the problem. It’s getting a bit hot for pants here in Arizona, and they make diaper changing a pain. Baby Legs were too tight on his chunky thighs and left more red welts. So I came up with this:

A trip to Goodwill yielded two pairs of soft, slouchy socks for 50 cents. A bit of cutting and hemming, and now his legs are protected and starting to heal. Making some kind of Flashdance-inspired fashion statement seems preferable to the alternative.