Put Up Your Dukes

wild thing(s)

2013-05-09T15:25:00.003-04:00

i still have the first caterpillar that i ever met bronzed and displayed on my trophy shelf (false) so recording this magical milestone for layla was crucial. actually she just looked adorable and i kind of cant stop myself from documenting her little face off.

spying the beast (and in a not-too-shabby athletic ready position)

identifying the beast as the same one from her favorite book, "ah moh-day he eat wuh appuhl..."

"whoa! WTF kind of daredevil is this guy?!"

terrified and thrilled all at once by his death-defying hijinks

"oh wait, now that i look at you, you're kind of gross"

"i am, like, SO over you."

"haha j/k capper-tiller, i'm gonna touch and pet and hug you til your guts come squirting out!"

"starting with this"

peep a 'bu!

2013-05-08T10:38:00.004-04:00

yall! 3 of my genius designer friends from Georgia Tech have been inventing, refining and basically rockstar-ing this project for the past three years. AND ITS FINALLY HERE!

a year and a half ago i actually helped garrett sew one of the super-rudimentary prototypes. that was the last time i saw the product. and now....oh man...now it is just so much better than my stupid hands could ever make.

what am i talking about? well, it's called Lalabu (unrelated to Layla Boo, but, weird connection, huh?) and it's a baby carrier the likes of which i have never seen before (and i own, have bought, and have made about 9 different babywearing devices).

its a nursing tank and it's a baby carrier all at once and without trying too hard. and when youre not wearing or feeding a baby, its a shirt that doesnt look stupid or all "HEY WORLD I MAKE MILK IN HERE!!!" with all those medieval clasps and such.

my friends have self-funded this project $25,000 already and they are ready to start production! they have partnered with an american factory and are using indiegogo (like kickstarter) to fund the other $15k they need to get this first run of carriers made.

PAUSE: **i will NEVER put a product on my blog that i dont believe in. while i sometimes get paid for reviewing products, even then it's only for things i would legitimately want to spend my money on or try out under normal circumstances. i am telling you about lalabu because it's awesome and i think its a perfect fit for yall. straight up; no fluff. i am doing this FOR FREE, without being asked, and not just because these guys are friends (i was prepared to donate to them just bc they're friends but was hesitant to say "hey i'll blog about it!" without really believing in the finished product).** okay. RESUME

i gotta be honest, when i helped garrett with the prototype i was thinking this was kind of just a generic baby bjorn. i was thrilled to help because these jokers are friends, but i wasnt sure, as an actual mom, what kind of edge this thing would have over what was already available.

after i watched the video for the completed product, i joke you not, i was not only sold on the utility of the carrier but was so stoked that my first insane thought was, "i like this thing so much i need to make a baby to fill it up with!"

i kicked in $80 to their funding campaign which also scored me 2 preordered lalabu's in my color choice AND a $20 giftcard to their store once it goes live. if they dont raise the $15k, my money comes back....though i will be way sad because i think moms are going to go bonkers over this thing and i want to be all, "yeah, i was in on the ground floor" and braggy. i'm all heart.

here's the coolest part about this business. these fools LOVE jesus. they arent trying to get rich on the milk of new moms (ew...sorry), they are committed to giving back. one day every week they serve exploited women in the atlanta area and $1 of every sale goes to microfinance campaigns targeted at empowering and equipping african women in their business endeavors.

their mission statement is everything; "Our focus is making great baby products and helping women transition into better lives. We work for new lives."

peep this short video on how cool this thing looks and spy my buddies!:

are you sold like i was? here's a breakdown of what funding Lalabu today can get you (again, if the 15k isnt raised in 30 days, your money comes back...this is more of a preorder than a donation).

i'm so proud of my friends and fellow yellow jackets for following their dream...and then for catching up with that dream, jumping on its back and rocking its socks off. i hope this awesome invention ends up helping tons of yall (or your momsy friends) bond with your babies in a really cool and fun new way. huzzah!

mélange printemps

2013-05-07T14:24:00.001-04:00

a mess of springtime random. ready set go.

i was inspiredly (a real word?) gaga over this coat stand. and then immediately reduced to fits of laughter over its $219 price tag. that kind of oppression makes me madder than the stamp act, i say!

so i decided to make my own version (ana white with the assist, as usual). and by that i mean, "get jesse to build us one."

total cost: $9 (with lots of paint leftover).

if loving this is wrong, i dont want to be right

we had our first ~~meal~~ side dish from the garden. the spinach was getting so big that the leaves were growing into un-spinachy shapes so i harvested those beasts before they could flower or turn into a tree or whatever spinach does unattended in the wild.

it was good. a little scary at first to be like "this was in dirt out back and now it goes in my mouth." but then i realized i am an american who has never thought about where who food really comes from. duh, crackhead, all your food comes from dirt...probably dirtier dirt than out back.

it might have been wishful thinking but it legitimately tasted greener than the store bought stuff.

i just snipped off the leaves and left the stem bundle. was that right? or did i just decapitate my spinach terminally?

got a mess of gorgeous fabric for this season's run of big mommy beach bags (make one yourself from my tutorial or grab one from my etsy) and have NOT been disappointed by the demand. holy moly, i have made about 20 of these in the past month. get your beach on, folk!

this tiny man is only going to be 3 for a few more weeks. he continues to be super fun and extra weird (which, if you know me well, is how i prefer kids). his latest idiosyncrasy is putting a little calling card on any artwork or schoolwork that he does.

regardless of the subject of the picture or craft (otters, the zoo, yo-yo's, his name practice sheet) you will always find one of these on the back.

he is the rainbow raider! his teachers say that if its time for carpet time and he hasnt finished all ROYGBV lines (no one tell him about indigo, it will crush him as he is fixated on 6 colors) of his callsign, he will be adamant that he is not coming until his rainbow is complete.

and heaven forbid you try to draw a rainbow around the child and you want to include pink or brown or black or gray in it. THOSE ARENT RAINBOW, YOU FOOL!!!

i love his love for color and for leaving a little logo on everything he does.

on saturday night judah and this sweet baby thing hung out at their grand parents house so we could have a date night (truth: amazing grandparents are worth their weight in gold). they stayed up late bc thats what you do at grandparents' house. we picked them up at about 10 that night and put them straight to be when we got home. i turned off their night light so that they would have uber-dark and hopefully stay asleep longer.

at 2:30 am judah came SCREAMING crying into our room. we jolted awake and realized layla was screaming crying back in their room.

we run in and flip on the light and there is blood EVERYWHERE. definitely more of my kids blood than i have ever seen before combined. we start asking them questions and trying to figure out who is hurt and what is happening.

turns out layla had busted her lip BAD. like almost bit all the way through it. it was HUGE and swollen and ragged and just gruesome. and it was all my fault! she had gone to get out of her bed (about 2.5 feet off the ground) and since it was dark (because mommy is an evil light-extinguishing genius) she hadnt seen that their step stool was right there and so she hopped down, jacking her chin on it and making her bite her top lip.

oh so much guilt.

i was so proud of judah for coming to get us but also hated myself even more for making her wait in dark, bloody terror because we didnt hear her. also: hello?!?! making him climb down the rock wall in pitch black?!?! STUPID. so yes. never ever ever ever will i turn off their night light again. sheesh.

thankfully it stopped bleeding right away and was not a complete puncture. after a popsicle and some snuggles she was back in bed (de-crime scened) and no worse for the wear on sunday (besides not enjoying salty things).

she looks like we took her for a little collagen tune-up at the plastic surgeons.

never a dull moment. brought to you by: life.

the cheapest love i ever made

2013-05-02T15:52:00.000-04:00

alternately (and less open to sketchy interpretation) titled: DIY pallet statement sign tutorial. so cheap, so easy, and makes a huge impact on any wall or space.

what i call this little number is my shine sign. or just the diminutive m'shign if i'm feeling caffeinated and friendly.

my inspiration was this pin which i was instantly ready to love full blast, and then was SUPER confused by. like, why are we embedding the intimate song of solomon verse on our privacy fence? then i realized it was actually created as a wedding backdrop (brilliant!) and thought, "shwew." and my full on love for this idea proceeded as planned.

knowing that i wasnt gonna nail any words into our beloved fence (because of , #1: pretty and #2: forehead punctures on children), i sought about for a way to adapt this idea. my eyes fell on 4 pallets we had snatched up about a year ago when pinterest convinced me that gold was worthless and the true specie of the american crafter was now PALLETS. SO MANY PALLETS.

i have used one plank so far in a year. i want my gold back.

but this time, the pallets were mad handy to have. and even my stubborn refusal to get rid of them despite their being neglected was perfect. since we had dumped them next to our driveway (for classy) nature had attempted to reclaim the wood for her own, so the planks i harvested have a nice weathered look that i didnt even have to work for.

everything else that went into this project was on hand and free (and even if i hadnt had the stuff i could have bought it all for maybe $10).

this is how [montell jordan and] i do it:

MATERIALS:

-4 pallet planks (or any wood 5"x44" ish)
-2 pieces pf scrap wood about 14-18" long and 1" thick
-a mess of little nails (with at least a bit of a head)
-hammer
-various colors of yarn
-paint and a nice little paintbrush
-pen, paper, tape.

i put that "4 pallet planks" up there in the material list all casual like it was nothing. if you've ever deconstructed pallets you know it isnt NOTHING. it takes muscle. and grunting. grunscle. i am actually a little offended that no one on our street called an emergency veterinarian to tell them that a muskox was in labor when they heard me waging war on my chosen pallet.

if you feel like you are about to herniate a few organs, dont worry, you are doing it right. also: try harder.

line up your 4 planks in a pleasing fashion

take your two scrap pieces of wood and trim them down so the edges wont be longer than the width of your sign. these are the crosspieces that wont be seen but will bind your 4 pallet pieces together.

nail the pallet wood onto the cross pieces. nothing exact or precise needed here. save your OCD for a later step.

we only had long nails, and i wanted it super secure, so i flipped it right side up and nailed front to back into the cross pieces, and then bent off the extra nail length with my hammer on the back so as to avoid tetanus.

print your main statement word (mine is SHINE. we have always loved that verse from phillipians and thought it perfect on several levels for this project since the sign is destined to go outside in the shiny sun and under the stars).

print out the big honking letters and lay them out on your wood to make sure you like the size and look. one letter per page (maxed out to the edges) was the perfect size for mine.

we used the font BEBAS NEUE (free from dafont) at size 900 or something monstrous like that. and i printed with the embossed format to save ink.

cut your letters out carefully and place them in the exact place you want them. you can tape them down if you're working someplace breezy.

trace your letters with a sharpie (dont sweat what color it is. it's gonna be all covered up in the end anyway).

toss the paper letters and peep your outline.

grab your hammer and nails (grunscle optional). dont just start hammering like a mario bros. bonus level villain though.

first you need to nail the corners of each letter. these will dictate the spacing of the others and we KNOW we need the corners of our letters to be defined so nails definitely go there before anywhere else.

here is my E completely cornered

ok once everything is cornered, go ahead and put your midpoint nails in. the spacing is going to vary here. for the mostly straight letters, it's very straight(HA)forward and you just want to halve or third each straightaway by adding another nail or two along each line.

the bottom of my E. i decided it only needed one more nail. the more you add the more colored in and less string-y your finished project has the potential to be.

for the curves, it's kind of a pain because you want them to LOOK curvy, and that means lots of nails (and flashbacks from pre-cal where somehow straight lines turn into a curve).

our S had more nails than the other 4 letters combined i think. i cannot say that i recommend picking SASSAFRASS or ROCOCO as your statement word, but it's your funeral

once everyone is nailed in check to make sure all your nails are about the same height and not crazy wonky bent. (yes, michael crichton's timeline is a pretty good read)

congrats! the burly hardware/woodworking portion is over. now we get to be indoor/creative-y types.

select your color scheme and lay out your yarn/string. i always have to do this to make sure a red/green havent sneaked next to each other (even though i didnt have red in this project...accidentally making christmas decor is always a fear). i still had all of these leftover from other projects and this one hardly made a dent in my skeins. my yarn lives on for more DIY!

to start winding, tie off your yarn on a nail.

as you make a turn, wind all the way around the nail heads you pass along the way for extra security (but dont pull anything crazy tight).

i would always do the outline of my letter first

every now and then, push your yarn down to the wood (rather than up high on the neck of the nails.) you'll get more depth this way.

once youve wound a base outline, go wild and start connecting all of your nails. bounce all over the place. just make sure you go back and define the outline of the letter every few layers.

when you have the coverage you like, cut the yarn and tie a tiny loop at the end of it. then you just find the nearest nail and hang your loop around it at a tension that isnt too loose or too much of a stretch.
.

go back and snip your starting tail off if you can see it flapping around and it bugs you.

feel free to grab a studly buddy and have them string a neighboring letter to make the work go faster. (give them the curvy letter just for fun).

as you're getting all geometric connecting your points, just make sure you dont join two nails that are forbidden lovers and which would break the perimeter of the letter outline. you think this is an "n'doy, keight, like i'd ever let that happen!" but once you start crazy winding up in those letters, its like youve dumped out a box of superballs in a bathroom stall and things get a little chaotic.

i like to think the bird knew that i would use this exact area for a WHAT NOT TO DO example and he pooped on it to drive the point home.

from foundation to penthouse, you can see how you want to make these nails and yarn build up into 3D lettering.

when everyone is tied off, check your results. i spotted the top of my E was a little convex and some other wonky areas that looked distorted because of nail bend.

this was easy to fix by just tapping lightly on the offending point so that the line straightened up.

next pick a font and print out your subtitle words (we used the font ANDROGYNE). tape down each word to get a feel for proper spacing and such.

i laid down a thick stripe of tape to be the "line" that all of my letters would sit on. once i made sure the tape was level, i didnt have to worry about my letters sagging if i made a mistake eyeballing their float height.

i used a pinterest tutorial for painting perfect letters on wood to do my lettering. this was way easier than cutting out my script-y font. (of course if the gods have smiled on you and you own a vinyl cutting robot slave, then you just go ahead and use that. but you wont feel as awesome as us free-handers when its over...maybe).

i just took a cheap old ball point pen and retraced the outline of each letter on top of the paper. i pushed down really hard to kind of engrave the outline into to wood below

when you pick up your paper, you should see your outline. this will guide your painting AND provide little riverbanks so that its harder to paint outside the lines. the imprint acts as a dam to stop the flow of paint right at the perfect outline of your lettering.

because my wood was weathered, some of it was HARD and didnt want to take the imprint very deep. but i could still see it, so i just traced the outline with a pen in these cases to be sure i didnt miss the border when i painted (good light will be your friend here).

PAINT! this is where your OCD can be fun. i am a terrible painter and have shaky hands and i still pulled this off with a lot of satisfaction. (p.s. we used exterior paint since our sign will live outdoors).

if you do mess us, no worries, you have and eraser...its called sandpaper.

admire your work. no one ever needs to know you cant just freehand paint like that.

and youre done! now you can just feel extra happy and inspired and colorful every time you walk by your sign (after you hang it...i dont have pics of where we hung ours bc thats a later reveal with another project).

in the words of layla-boo: i LOBE it!

dancin' in the light of the shed

2013-04-30T13:37:00.002-04:00

this weekend jesse finished the shed that he and his dad built last summer. for months it has been a dark cube of space that was both helpful and terrifying.

but NOW, after jesse wired it for electricity (all by HIMSELF!!!!), added a workbench, and brilliantly enlisted my old sewing space shelf castoffs, it is such a happy space of outdoorganization (eh, eh?).

the way he was maximizing vertical space in there with stuff we already had around the house was almost indecent. he really knows how to push my buttons, lemme tell ya. there is now a place for EVERYTHING. dog food, fertilizer, saws, hammers, wood, everything.

and what better place for a princess dance recital than an enclosed shed filled with blades, chemicals, and raw lumber?

i'm just as thrilled as layla because now jesse WANTS to be back there working on projects and building things. pinterest and i are willing and able to help him in that department.

on vulnerability

2013-04-24T11:35:00.000-04:00

it's amazing to see how all-in kids are. how wholeheartedly they live. if we discipline layla, she immediately says, "you huht mah feelins!" its precious and humbling to know we have that power and to see her hand it over to us so readily.

but oh how quickly they learn. how quickly this effed up world teaches us to harden our hearts. judah, at almost 4, has already learned to put on armor and not show "weakness." if we spank him (because, yes, we spank) he has started to go, "that didnt hurt me," even if i can see that his little lip is trembling from the guilt and conflict.

i can remember learning the elementary school lessons of never let them see you cry, and just pretend like it doesnt bother you. granted, if someone calls you a doo-doo face, this is a pretty expedient way of dealing with the dummy booger head. i dont fault the teachers and parents who taught me these things at all and i know that those lessons will probably be part of our parenting in some form too--just to get our kids through those magical doo-doo face years.

and it makes sense. this world is not a safe place for a tender, innocent heart. but i wonder if this is one of those things-that-dont-make-sense that jesus wants to call our hearts to.

but as i have grown and matured, i have regretted this lifelong practice--which has now become an instinct--of putting on emotional armor. it took several years of back-and-heart-breaking work in my marriage to realize that i wasnt actually a crazed rageaholic-anger-monster after all, but that anger had become the armor i used to hide the fact that jesse's actions or words hurt me.

telling someone that they have hurt you gives them power. plain and simple. this is the essence of vulnerability. you are exposed because they now know HOW to hurt you. uh-doy.

i had to learn that i can trust jesse 100%. when i hand him my squishy, fragile heart, he does actually have the power to squash it and pulverize me. but, yall he never ever does. because a broken and hurting wife is about 50 million times easier to love like christ does than a snarling rage-demon. uh-doy

here is how an interaction would go:

1. jesse would say or do something that would hurt my feelings (unintentionally because he's a boy, uh-doy), but INSTANTLY (before i even acknowledged in my own brain, "ouch that hurt") i would get angry. anger was my armor.

2. in my head he would become the playground bully, so i couldnt give him the power of knowing that he had/could hurt me, so through my anger, i would now have the upper hand by being the aggressor first.

3. my anger would catch him off guard and he would immediately throw up his own walls to protect himself from my salvo.

4. this defensiveness would seem to justify my anger (if he's defending he MUST be guilty) and we would carry on fighting about the aggression/defensiveness for hours and completely miss the little sneaky heart issue that sparked it all off.

this method of escalation is insane and frustrating beyond belief and never (or only after 3 hours of teeth-gnashing and crying) gets to the heart of the matter...which IS the heart.

as i learned to slow down ask myself the question, "why the crap did that make me so angry?" i began to realize that it was HURT that i was really feeling, and not the ensuing anger. i had learned in my first 20 years to hide hurt so it had become a knee-jerk thing: feel hurt-->get angry.

so i decided to slow down the process, to cut the fuse between the teensy spark and the powder keg. i told jesus that i had no hope of doing this through my own efforts and told him to step up and please make it happen in me (obviously he loves a good pep talk).

the first time i tried this with jesse was terrifying. saying "you hurt me" in a darwinian sense is stupid and a great way to not get your DNA passed on. animals come with all sorts of camouflage, behaviors and instincts to AVOID letting predators see their weak spots, and here i was broadcasting mine. soft white underbelly has never been such an apt phrase...

but jesse isnt a predator, he's a knight in shining armor. so instead of his walls going up to protect himself from the she-dragon, when he saw that i was actually a damsel in distress he immediately threw down the drawbridge and came riding out to rescue me. it was tender yall. AND SO EFFECTIVE. and more than a little bit Aragorn Sexypants.

rather than talking about himself--the way you do when you are defending--he was able to come to where i was, address my wounds, and say, "oh my gosh, i hate that you are hurting, i completely didnt mean for that to happen. i am so sorry." this was great because it always made me SO mad that he wasnt hearing MY problem first and addressing it before moving on to his stuff (his stuff being, "I DONT KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT!").

so thats where we've been for the past few years. it doesnt always go perfectly like that because there are scars and hurt on both sides of this marriage (jesus is like deep tissue massage a lot of times and he softens you by letting you be hurt and tended to by him), but it has brought us to SUCH a deep and real place where we dont feel like we have to walk around in a full set of plate and mail all the time, waiting for the other one to thrust and parry. (i read game of thrones...and i had coffee...sorry)

taking off armor has started to feel much more like taking off chains. living with my whole heart has made me so much less cold and shut down. dropping my pride and the facade of being bulletproof has been beautifully humbling and freeing.

since it worked so well in marriage, i have started trying to apply it to almost all of my relationships. observation #1: SCARY! holy moly. i know jesse dukes' entire story and trust him with my life...branching out to people who arent this intimate (even closest friends) is straight harrowing because they've probably never taken a vow to love and protect me the way that my husband has.

observation #2: being vulnerable with unhealthy people (aka anyone, but specifically people who dont value maturity or chirst-like living) can be DANGEROUS. truth: i have gotten stomped a few times by doing this. and it hurt.

but ever since i stopped making my priority "dont let them (or yourself) see your hurt" it's okay. crying stinks. and getting your heart broken is almost the worst. but at least i get to walk away from those moments knowing that i shared my real self and my real heart. RATHER than those interactions where youre like acting all cool and collected and just passive aggressively trying to back door zing one another. no one wins after those and you just walk away harboring poison for the other person that will eat you right up.

no matter how unhealthy the person i am dealing with, i am betting there are very few relationships where the other person cares so little for me that hearing, "i am feeling hurt by something you said/did" makes them salivate and want to go in for the kill. observation #3: if you hand someone your gelatinous, helpless heart and they--fully knowing that they can--stomp it, that is probably a relationship to get away from for now.

*disclaimer: there is a middle ground between "oh i never wanted you to be hurt," and "AVAST YE! I KILL YOU AND YOUR HEART!" where even well-intentioned, mature, jesus-loving people might not be ready to receive your vulnerability. in these instances, i just try to power through with, "i want you to hear me...this isnt about you, i am not saying you did something wrong, i am only talking about me and wanting to share with you where i am." it gets hard not to escalate or jump aboard the anger expressway when they dont get it immediately. stick with it. like playing dead with a grizzly. when they see youre not trying to fight, they usually stop trying to defend. either way...its not their fault.*

one of the first times that i decided to be vulnerable in a situation where i WANTED to be angry (outside of my marriage) was with one of my BFFs raechel. yes, it is weird at age 30 to be getting into "fights" with your friends (especially those that you met on the internet), but people are people and we are complex and i dont think there is anything to be ashamed of.

aaaaaanyway, we had been through some conversations where we both left feeling dinged up and un-cared for. my instinct was to just come after her and show her all the ways that she had done things wrong. but instead, we both decided to go to that mushy place and just share our hearts and where we were hurting.

it was HARD and it was pretty awkward at first, but it was AWESOME (that's what she said!...coffee).

rather than one of us having to be declared wrong against some outside standard of right/wrong/rude we just got to care about each other. i decided to put my stuff down and really care for my hurting friend, and she did the same. it came to a point where arguing about the facts of what happened or what was said was irrelevant. because in the end, even if raechel 100% hallucinated it all (she didnt), she had still been hurt.

i had to decide that i cared way more about her heart (and sharing mine) than about being right. period (underlined, italicized and bolded...because yeah).

and thats really where i've landed on this thing. my whole life i have been fighting tooth and nail (and brass knuckles and sawed off shotgun) to be right. to feel vindicated and to feel justified. and it got me nowhere but stressed and frustrated and ANGRY. when i stopped trying to be enough in some way where the judge in the courtroom rules in MY favor over others, i was able to just say, "here's where i am. how i'm broken. where i need love." somehow me being up front with how jacked up and broken and breakable i am has given me the ability to love others and help them in their brokenness better. and the ability to say, "i probably did hurt you! i'm an emotional hot mess, after all!"

its beautiful, but it makes no sense. it's backward jesus magic.

i'll never prove my way into god's grace by being more right than jesse or raechel or anyone. but i have his grace poured out and lavished on me when i say, "i am broken. i am hurting. i need to hand my heart over to YOU."

jesus is the model. he didnt care about being right. in fact, to the letter of the law, it often looked like he was wrong a lot of the time. he said again and again, "yall are missing it. its not about living up to some standard or being right. it's about your heart." he did the greatest thing in the history of all the things when he lost his trial, was declared wrong and then unhesitatingly gave us all his very heart.

that's where i win. that's the only victory i am supposed to boast in or seek after. and it's his. so is my heart, and he wants me to give it away no matter how it hurts. i'm working on it.

making room(s) volume two: when 1 becomes 3

2013-04-23T12:16:00.002-04:00

i really wanted to wait until i had the entire project finished and looking sparkly before i posted this. but since we know dukes project completion timelines occur in either rightnowthisinstant or mostlyprobablynever categories, i figured it was safer to go ahead and reveal the room rather than waiting until it's perfect because no one may care by then and the internet might not even exist at that point.

but youre not allowed to judge the incompleteness. that's my one demand for showing you this. i know it looks like that and will get to it. just give me grace and let me show you how it works before i make it pretty. mmkay?

recap-

-the problem: we have a tiny 3 bedroom house. these bedrooms consist of the master bedroom, judah's room, and layla's nursery.

-the breakfast area (ersatz dining room) was taken over by me as a sewing space when my business starting growing/paying the bills.

-the living room then by default became the play room, family room, AND dining room.

-i took over layla's nursery in february and made it our office space/studio and then added a mind-blowing accent wall.

that may seem like a lot of information, but it still left one vital piece out and many of you were pretty concerned that poor layla was out on the streets. rest assured, she is safe and sound, and snuggled happily in the pin that started our house-wide rearrangement.

for mostly all of 2012 we were feeling pretty bummed about our house. despite pouring a lot of DIY love into it and making huge improvements, we still felt we had outgrown our space. i was lustfully trolling zillow for bigger homes while knowing we could never sell our house in this market (note: this is unhealthy and leads to more house-hatred).

with all of the above mentioned space quandaries, it seemed like our options were to upgrade (fairly impossible), add on (financially implausible), or deal with it (yeah...thats what we did).

and then i spotted a pin from my friend kate (who needs space-saving ideas as she and her husband are missionaries living in a tiny flat in scotland) that changed everything. in that one instant i knew it was the key to getting years more HAPPY use out of our little gem of a home until we move or expand.

it was like i had been playing Tetris for the past 2 years and my blocks had all piled up and were a wonky mess. and then, from on high, descends a new, never before seen piece that fits my pile of impossible JUST RIGHT and it solves everything.

i give you my tetris piece in pin form:

this is a picture of the original pin

built-in bunk beds IN A CLOSET SPACE!

so you take two bedrooms worth of sleeping kids and sleeping furniture and you put them into one single closet.

in our case this was an unused and DETESTED closet that we never used because of its weird layout. it has one single door that opens (into the room, mind you, taking up floor space) onto a shallow (like 2 ft) wide space which is simultaneously about 8 feet wide.

the 8 feet part sound awesome, but since you cant even access it due to the small opening and the shallow depth, it's kind of useless.

this was how we had it set up before judah was born. and after rescuing useful items from its depths when we realized its dysfunctionality we mostly just abandoned this space for his entire life.

HATED

SO the thought that this nightmare closet could become our saving grace was a little mind-boggling. but then again, "the stone the builders have rejected has become the capstone." yeah, the psalmist was mostly referring to jesus here, but maybe a little bit to this DIY project too? or is that blasphemy. if so, strike it from the record, please. i'm just saying...

i pitched the idea to jesse and he was instantly on board. that almost never happens, but the glaringly obvious utility and simplicity of the idea cannot be denied. even by husbands terrified of pinterest-wielding wives.

after about $30 worth of wood and maybe 2 hours of jesse tinkering, measuring, planning and building, it was done! (not like pretty and photo-worthy done, but functional and life-saving done...seriously dont judge the form, just the function)

OUR take on the pin. my feng shui lifesaver

at first i was a little nervous about shoving my kids into coffin shaped sleeping quarters...would they feel degraded or abused? would people think i was awful? and then i remembered what it was like to be a kid and how much fun small, enclosed spaces are for them. especially ones that grownups cannot easily get into.

a freaking NOOK was what i lived for as a little kid and this is what we have given them. as predicted, their tiny minds were blown.

we removed the door and chucked it in the attic because, you know, i dont need to be tempted to close off the 6th side of their nooks...ever...i just dont (i wouldnt sew the top of their sleeping bags closed, right?). and unlike the original, we didnt have the width of double doors to utilize as a place to put a ladder. we didnt want to do any demo and widen the door at all, so to accommodate a climbing device we pushed the two sleeping platforms higher and built handholds into the weird triangular space on the far right at the foot of their beds to use as climbing aids.

so the kids get in their beds (judah is in the penthouse because of birthright, sexism...) by scurrying under the bottom bunk and over to the right, where their mattress platforms end and the handholds are secured to the walls. they climb up until they reach their desired level.

again...dont judge the unfinished-ness. but you CAN judge the fact that one of these was what judah cut himself on (shown in this post) because we didnt sand or paint these. lesson learned.

layla went straight from her crib into her custom made bed, so she got a guardrail. this makes tucking her in super uncomfy for us, but lord have mercy, if that's the worst part of all this, it's still so very worth it.

the "mattresses" are actually leftover foam from a cushion project we did. it fits snug as a bug and made me so happy to use "waste" in such a useful way.

so with both kids sleeping in the closet, the rest of the room was free of most of your typical bedroom furniture (except the one dresser that they share for their clothes which starred in this horrifying episode) and was wide open to become their play space!

all their toys, their craft table, their treehouse, their play kitchen...EVERYTHING kid-ish that drove me out of my mind sitting in and scattered around our otherwise grown-up living room is now contained in here. and it is magical.

its not the prettiest playroom or shared kids room ever...not yet. i will get to a place where the patched walls, old paint and non-decor bother me. that makeover and reveal will come. but i am not there yet. i am just reveling in and enjoying the mess out of the function of this room and the balance it has restored to our house.

heck, i bet we could even fit another kid in there. triple stack anyone?

just one tiny pin and we were able to make a girl's bedroom, and boy's bedroom and a playroom out of ONE existing room.

i am so happy. call off the search for layla's sleeping quarters.

*i know i have left out something about these tricky tetris moves. feel free to ask any questions about the where/how/"but what did you do with the...?" aspects that i have forgotten in my bliss.

story time

2013-04-17T15:42:00.003-04:00

do you like surprise endings? well, read on, because this story has a good one.

this is a true story.

its the 80's: boy meets girl. they both love jesus. they are cute (well, 80's cute) and charming and they fall in love.

who ate sushi in the 80's!?!?! only the coolest of cats, yall (look at all the differnt button styles on that ONE shirt!)

they get married.

a tiny-waisted stevie nicks lookalike and her bearded groom!

two years after graduating college they have their first child--a boy-- in 1987. a little girl comes along two years later followed by a surprise baby boy 18 months after that.

necklaces are worn outside of turtlenecks and there are un-ironic mustaches. it was a different time.

a four year old rocking the turtleneck/blazer combo. swagger.

in the next 22 years this family raises these 3 kids. they model a christ-centered marriage and a kingdom life. they serve, they go, they give, they do, they serve some more, THEY LOVE.

and then the kids all turn blonde spontaneously.

the family has their struggles but they all come out on the other side loving jesus and each other more.

yikes. awkward tween years are a perfect example of what this family has overcome (no worries- they all end up quite handsome)

told ya.

the oldest son graduates from college, marries a perfect ballerina and they have a little girl, the first grandchild, 2 years later.

this little branched-off family loves jesus madly.

i mean...

um, hi, are you kidding me? grandparents are NOT allowed to look like this.

the middle child, the girl, grows into a beautiful, magnetic, passionate young woman. she graduates college and decides to become children's minister. she meets the boy of her dreams. he is handsome and funny (and mind-bogglingly good at Ruzzle, dangit) and he loves jesus. they get married.

more proof that awkward teens make GORGEOUS adults.

at this couple's wedding, their parents get a spontaneous STANDING OVATION upon leaving the ceremony from all of the wedding guests because it is so clear the model they have laid down for this couple and how deeply rooted the new bride and groom are in christ already. (has that ever happened before in the history of the world!?!? )

this january, the surprise baby boy that our couple had back in 1991 turns 22. he is graduating from college and becoming a teacher. oh yeah, he loves jesus too.

still looking for that special lady...any takers? (hahaha sorry nick, this was the most representative picture)

these parents have raised their flock to adulthood.

they have stewarded the hearts of the children that jesus entrusted to them and they have done a beautiful job.

their kids' faiths have strong, independent legs that will stand wherever they go. this family is rock solid and is one that we can all look up to and learn from.

on their recent 28th wedding anniversary. and they lived happily ever after. their hard work of parenting is over...right?

by almost any standards of "good parenting", our couple should get a "great work! you did it. now go enjoy YOUR time!"

the end...

roll credits

except--bonus footage TWIST!--this couple gave their entire lives to jesus a long time ago, not just their 20's, 30's and 40's. so as long as they are living they are listening for his voice and following him.

turns out when you follow jesus, he leads you straight to his children.

right around new years, this couple began to understand the next chapter jesus was leading them towards and they obeyed.

are you ready for this?

jesus told them that they had 3 more kids. 3 teenage kids currently living in an orphanage in the Ukraine.

these three kids:

sophia, natasha and ura

they are now deep into the process of adopting all three kids and becoming their forever parents.

do you get that? at 50, with 3 amazing adult children freshly raised, they are expecting again! 3 kids! teenagers! who dont speak any english!!

you may be tempted (by the minions of lord voldemort himself) to think, "so what? they already did 3 kids, what's 3 more?"

to you, dear lunatic, i say *face slap* because you are clearly a hysterical drunk who doesnt realize how hard parenting even ONE child is, and the relief that comes with getting each child to a new level of independence and the sheer terror of going BACK and giving up a single fingernail of freedom that you have fought for (do you sense my personal feelings coming through?).

these two people, ann and greg creighton, are mentors to me and jesse. they are ministers, caretakers and idols to our kids. they are our close friends and they are our brother and sister in christ.

yall, they are my heroes (despite their unfortunate collegiate affiliations).

so here's where we get to be a part of this story.

as probably everyone knows, any adoption (or parenting venture!) is expensive and scary. it can be overwhelming and filled with pitfalls and brokenness.

now multiply that by three.

as their friends and as fellow members of the creighton's chuch (church with a little c, as in the building we meet in) we are standing behind them and this path jesus has called them to. we are saying "you are not alone" and promising to walk the road with them.

but we the Church (capital C...as in the body of christ) can help on a way bigger scale. because jesus was pretty clear about taking care of orphans, and this is a beautiful way to be his hands and feet rightnowtoday (even if youre not sure about jesus yet...i think we can agree that a loving family and home is preferable to an orphanage).

here are 3 things you can be a part of:

1. PRAY. for the creightons, for natasha, ura (pronounced yuri) and sophia. for the paperwork, the hearts, the communities. PRAY. you can learn more about the specific needs of everyone and updates on the creighton's adoption blog and their twitter account.

2. make a donation right now! towards the out-of-pocket-costs of the adoption (over $40,000!). no limits, no strings, and 97.1% of the donation goes to the adoption (the other 2.9% goes to paypal).

3. come out and meet the family at a special fundraiser concert that jesse is leading! it is this saturday and you can donate and buy shirts that evening.

4. ~~buy an adoption t-shirt!~~ SOLD OUT! you guys, i designed these (braggy, yes) and for only the second time in my life didnt use microsoft word as my design platform. for such an idiot, i think they're kind of spiffy sweet.

the design is the word LOVE superimposed over a map of the Ukraine with its flag colors. there is also a tiny heart over the city where the kids' orphanage is (Kherson). the back is an acrostic of the word LOVE inside of a bible verse (idea stolen --in love--from this family's adoption shirt).

modeled by the big sister to be!

the shirts are the softee cotton blend type that are all the rage (NOT the ultra thick beefy tees) and are a beautiful charcoal grey.

i know internet stuff can be sketchy...so let me say loud and clear that i put my name, my blog and my own integrity behind the legitimacy of this adoption, this family and this fundraiser.

i have given to adoption fund raisers in the past through weird bloggy friend-of-friend connections, to strangers or even just to be entered in a giveaway. no matter how "random" the family was when i first learned of them, i still feel connected to these families and those adopted children in a really special way that i never expected-- even years later.

i hope you will choose to support the creightons and be blessed by a similar connection!

under normal circumstances i would not advocate trusting people in a picture like this. but in this case, i can personally vouch for (and make fun of) them.

feel free to tweet, facebook, pin, share, carrier pigeon or just yell about this adoption/post/funraiser/family. the louder the better.

let's bring the rest of this family HOME!

because we were orphans too when He adopted us. and because with jesus, happily ever after becomes happier ever after.

any further questions about this process, the shirts, etc. can be directed to me or stephanie (the kids' future big sister, our children's minister, and a BFF of mine) at putapuredukes (at) gmail (dot) com or stephanieanndavis20 (at) gmail (dot) com.

you are more beautiful than you think

2013-04-16T14:13:00.000-04:00

i needed this today.

these past 2 days i have felt like i was being crushed under a two-ton pile of stinking garbage telling me how not good enough i am.

in my job, as a wife, as a mom, as a friend, on the scale and in the mirror.

and then my friend emily posts this on facebook.

and of course my heart takes it even farther to what jesus' description of me might sound like.

what a beautiful illustration from dove of how brutal we are to ourselves as women. on the lies we've been told and sold.

gone but not forgotten...

2013-04-11T16:42:00.001-04:00

...as in me from my blog but hopefully not your hearts?

just popping in super speedylike to 'splain myself and my absence.

here is my 5-pronged excuse for my blog silence this entire week.

i have been:

1. being inspired by the spring like BANANASFOSTERTHECRAZYPEOPLE. yall the projects abound. sometimes i have to give myself a timeout to breathe and make a list because i will just start spinning in dizzying circles of creativity and end up making an immediate transition to the astral plane.

new firepit! the old one was our first ever pin project but we were sad to realize that the stones we got had a lip and therefore didnt lay flush. this was not pleasing to my OCD brain. well this year we cannibalized the firepit for a garden wall and got new flat stones that are gray and so lovely it's criminal

2. taking care of this chick. she has had 4 or 5 ear infections in the past 3 months. we are probably going to be getting her tubes. the thought of that is dizzying in a whole other way. my baby in a tiny hospital gown (albeit for a miraculous and pretty harmless procedure)?!?! i cant even cope.

also: a mega black eye from her big brother swinging a plastic 9-iron. sweet lil bruiser looks so tough with this

3. getting a spray tan from mother nature. unfortunately, instead of "sunkissed" she set her nozzle to "jaundiced" instead because the yellow is inescapable. it's beyond gross, even if you dont have the allergies that come with the pollen (i do). i mean do the trees think that my sinuses/cars/patio/life are ovulating so they need to spray as much of their reproductive material in and on them as possible to ensure the proliferation of their species?!?! why are they so spermy!?!?!

i had thrown a doormat onto our walkway to sweep and when i moved it 2 days later this was the difference:

so much yellow. the good news: it just vigorously downpoured and i got to watch the rain wash a lot of it away.

4. getting ready to host these jokers!

it's a RaeKeightion!...plus kids and husbands. so excited to have these pretty faces in my clutches...or something less threatening.

5. aaaaand laughing nonstop at this little gem. i love him just so much.

i hope these reasons are somewhat palliative to whatever angst (doubt it) youve been experiencing due to my absence.

arrivederci!

p.s. one last chance to enter for a $100 visa card! here

the bone i picked

2013-04-04T13:36:00.000-04:00

the wall project in the office that i teased you with a glimspe of is all finished (actually it has been for about 2 months...i am forgetful and a poor sharer! forgive me?) and i am in hard luuuuurve with it.

so now i give you my sexagonal, vaulted-ceiling, herringbone accent wall of glory:

it makes me happy-happy with a hint of dizzy too. so glad we chose the wall that our backs face while we are sewing/working. your brain tends to try to slip into crosseyed-ville if you look at it too long.

i need to get some stuff on the wall to break up the mind-swirl that it is now. a chic, sexy, perfect mind-swirl...but nevertheless. needs stuff.

so much tape was used to create these ladders climbing up to graphic heaven.

this was ALL the paint i had left over. a quart was perfect.

pulling off tape is always very pleasurable. but with this mammoth project, this last pull deserved its own photo. the feeling i had here was nothing short of sublime.

did i just give you vertigo? sharing the wealth, yall.

i am a happy girl.

as you can see in the margins above, we still havent done much of anything to the other 3 walls. right now i am thinking a cool mint or a cheery coral...but i just dont know.

also wondering if these pics are enough or if a real tutorial is needed on how we did this.

i saw herring fish fillets at the store the other day and i reached down and thanked the little guys for their anatomical inspiration.

in conclusion: schwing.

dont forget to enter the boudreaux giveaway. somebody is getting a $100 visa giftcard soon!

backyard birdwatching

2013-04-03T08:53:00.003-04:00

my favorite species to spy in their natural habitats are these two strange birds

only truly enlightened pirates understand the importance of lawn maintenance

judah shows the octopus who is boss (10>8) but he feels conflicted about it

change of plan(t)s...

2013-04-02T13:45:00.002-04:00

naturally, we managed to fail before we even started.

i'm referring to the garden. you know, the one where all we have planted so far is delusions.

well after a thoroughly charming tsunami of impulsivity and sunk costs, i spiraled into sickening regret and denial.

we were NOT going to be able to do this.

the fencing-in of an area to keep the garden safe from the dogs alone was going to be a HUGE undertaking. and that didnt even address the garden itself and all the awesome points yall brought up last time about soil and toil and money and HARD and such.

as i sat dejectedly pouting at my hubris jesse came to the rescue. let's keep in mind that he begs me not to do these things. he sees this coming. but i am like a hopeless addict when one of these inspiration attacks grabs hold of me. i cant hear my sweet husband pleading for rationality and patience and i plunge forward.

(jesus is working on this with me.)

so jesse gets one million gold doubloons for being the agent of my rescue when he could totally choose to just be captain of the USS I Told You So.

he said: lets just do a few raised beds instead.

ahhhhhhh, sweet relief. and like a kid who hasnt planned adequately on his magna-doodle, my downward spiral immediately hit a wall and was finished prematurely.

so on with his day off my husband (while fasting for easter!) built us 4 beautiful raised beds on the humans-only side of the fence. it is in a totally unused,neglected, and raw area of the yard.

when i got home we set about the toil of weed protecting them and filling them up with nice dirt.

not everyone's attitude was immediately eased by the new plan

layla and chopper look on in concern as judah amps up the drama

oh the injustice...of something.

oh its funny now...

i call this face "im trying to still be upset but my heart isnt in it."

meanwhile layla uses the ladderballs to choreograph her circus routine. like you do...

*insert circus music here*

dee dee deedle deedle dee dee dee dee...

polka dot, polka dot, polka dot afro!

layla in her element (as in the element from captain planet..earth!) as clifford snuggles chopper's hindquarters.

as you may have noticed, judah's mood is inversely related to the amount of clothing he is wearing. a quick recovery was on hand when we let him go nakie-digging

all the best summiting moments in history involve underoos

we attempted to leverage their willingness to work in the dirt and have them haul their wagon along with our wheelbarrow:

this lasted about one half of a wagonfull before they got wise and returned to progress-blocking.

at about 8 pm i finally felt the crushing hunger and decided we were too dirty to go inside to eat and too hungry to cook ourselves. we opted for a pizza picnic which was beyond sublime

...except for that moment when i said to jesse as i opened the steaming box, "is there anything better than hot fresh pizza when youre starving?" and he replied, "um, being able to eat it would be nice." i had forgotten his fast. oh, but i felt bad, yall.

here's someone who has never fasted, i assure you. couldnotlovehermore

and here's some awesome progress on the sprouts i bought WAAAAAAAAy too early:

yeah. i'm awesome.

so it snowed one day last week and the day before i was being a good plant mommy and covered up the seedlings with black plastic. well i forgot to remove it the next (sunny) day and even though it was freezing, the sun still scorched the mess out of EVERYTHING above the soil. je deteste myself.

hopefully, since the roots were nice and un-singed, these will grow new healthy leaves (somebody tell me if that is likely or not) if i keep watering and sunning them appropriately.

so here we are. about 160 sq feet of raised beds in 4 little rectangles, weed-shielded and filled with high quality soil.

we nixed a few of the plants we had planned for that are super cheap in the store (carrots, corn, onions, watermelon) and focused more on those that we eat a lot and can get pricey (tomatoes, okra, peppers)

we added in sunflowers, bay laurel, marigolds and cucumbers as well.

is this right? my planting robot does not tell me how much of anything to expect upon harvest (assuming everything turns out) and i dont know if i am going to literally end up with ONE cucumber or what. the triangular parts point northeast, for the record. and every square is one square foot.

what's my most important next step?

you people were RIGHT ON with all of your attempts to talk me off the ledge (ever so gently) before and hearing your words in my ears did eventually manage to rein this in before it got completely out of hand, so i am turning to you now for more wisdom.

this is hard.

Resurrection Eggs: Bridging the Gap Between American & Biblical Easter Celebrations through a Christ-Focused Foundation

2013-03-28T13:36:00.004-04:00

that's by far the longest, most boring looking title of a blog post by me ever. i wanted to say all of that front and center, but i promise, we're headed somewhere fun.

see?

you probably hear it every year at christmas and again at easter. the difference between how our culture celebrates these holidays and what these holidays themselves are actually supposed to celebrate is huge.

christmas seems to get away with it more. its pretty justifiable to say that we all give each other buttloads of gifts because christmas is jesus' birthday and we want to show his love. the tree, the songs, stockings, santa...these all are at least partially rooted in biblical or jesus origins...even if you have to stretch to make it so.

but something about easter pushes the poles even farther apart. the resurrection is the whole flippin' point of christianity period forever amen. so while we are awed by the virgin birth, it is because we see the cross in that baby's future. the passion of christ is actually the heart and soul of everything that we have put our hearts and souls into.

so it seems like, if anything, the easter celebration should be MORE jesus-y than christmas.

and yet pastels, magic bunnies, plastic grass, candy eggs and heinous peeps are what we get. (though i do realize a lot of the easter traditions have cool links to new life, eternal life, etc. but i think these are much less well-known and easily secularized than st. nick's christian back story, for example).

easter is a bigger deal--the biggest--and yet it feels like the tendency is to make it a smaller or cheaper one.

ok that is my cultural report as a wanna-be sociologist or whatever. now here's how jesse and i have decided to parent in light of where things stand in suburban america in 2013.

first off, we completely understand families who decide to eschew entirely all the non-christian trappings of holidays. seriously: get it. love it. considered it ourselves. but we just landed somewhere a little to the side of that...probably because we're too lazy to actually be so vigilant.

this is NOT saying our way is right. this is saying our way is our way and it's the one we've arrived at after prayerfully considering and discussing how exactly to raise our american kids in the year 2013 to be passionate followers of an eternal god who came to live and die in israel 2000 years ago.

um, yeah, figuring this stuff out is almost as weird as it sounds.

we love both kinds of the magic of being human: the parts you need jesus for and the parts some would say you dont (atheists have joyful, loving moments too, after all). we want our kids to be part of the culture they live in and to experience both kinds of magic.

that said, we are dead- (or eternally alive, rather) serious about them knowing what is fun fluff and what is rock solid truth, and how to sort through--or even chuck out--all the sugar-infused, retail-supercharged, stimuli bonanza of holidays--to find their focus and their center in christ.

that is our mission statement and we are constantly working out what this looks like practically to a 2 and 3 year old.

we got an really spectacular tool for doing this yesterday. i went to judah's preschool (he goes to a christian preschool run by our old church) class easter party, and i watched and delighted as those little goobers did their egg hunt and played games and ate sugary snacks. then judah's wonderful teacher announced that coming home with each kid was a set of "resurrection eggs" and FYI there were some nails in them so maybe keep an eye on them.

when we got home and the kids were having snacks, i cracked open the carton having very little idea of what to expect and was THRILLED with what i saw: numbered eggs with little props inside each egg that told the story of easter.

i was about to cry when judah popped open egg number one and picked up the leaf inside. he immediately said, "mommy, dis is da palm leaf. jesus disciples put these down on the road so he didnt get dirty and dusty, and all the people yelled 'osanna! osanna!'"

i mean really.

after the kids went down for naps i went through the whole carton and was more and more enamored of this activity. exactly why i love it is in the epic title of this post.

we want to lay a foundation with our kids first and foremost so that all of the silly, fun things that arent overtly biblical about holidays, and life in general, always have strong roots in christ. it's not "taking back easter" because no culture or tradition could take that away from us, but it is saying, there's a super big, important, magical-beyond-comprehension reason that we do all these fun, celebratory things in life. it's giving our kids roots. and eventually they will realize that the "other" kind of magic that doesnt seem jesus-y on the outside, actually does come from him. all of joy and nature and love and everything that makes life HD and worth living is rooted in him also.

so in this example, we want to do the resurrection eggs with them every year, multiple times, so that these are the first easter egg memories they will have, and so that hopefully every egg they ever hunt for fun will remind them of jesus. we think this will be easier than trying to drag jesus into the egg story at 10 years old when all they care about is the snickers inside.

we feel like planting jesus seeds grows jesus fruit. will the fruit sometimes taste like jelly beans or sound like an action figure? maybe sometimes on certain branches. but the DNA (RNA, i guess, in the metaphor) of the fruit will be and point to jesus. it seems a better choice than growing little sugar-crazed, self-centered materialist sprouts first and then trying to just put jesus paint on top of them later and hoping it sinks in and sticks.

*note:this analogy isnt airtight. it's not one or the other. example: i am sugar-crazed, self-centered materialistic fruit. i was not raised with a constant rooting of christ in my life. he was something i chose to put on later in life. the cool thing about jesus though is that when i did, he just straight up transformed me into him-like fruit. he still is.

so the eggs! i'm sure this isnt a new idea by any means, but it was our first encounter and i wanted to share them here. i changed up a few things that the class set had and added some extra stuff. this activity is so deep and meaningful, yet it is cheap (i mean, ours was made for free), fast, easy, fun and reusable. it's the mother (mary) of all easter crafts in my book.

ours came already in the carton, but it would be even more fun to hide these like a "normal" egg hunt and have the kids find them first and then go through the story. this would make a great activity for a sunday school class or just one kiddo. okay i cant stop talking about the awesome possibilities of this thing so i'm just gonna show you:

decorate the top of the egg carton to make it spiffy and cover up all the egg carton words. you can let your kids help for more ownership, or be a control freak like me and make it simple. i went with the font i imagine the romans used at that time. because of theme, yall.

and since it's what's on the inside that counts, let's break it open!:

12 easter eggs, numbered (go wild with sharpies, stickers, whatever) and then the key taped or pasted inside the lid so it doesnt get lost. here is my printable version of the key that fits a standard carton top if you prefer to use it.

and really it's inside what's inside that REALLY counts here:

the 12 eggs-fillers we have in our set are:

leaf

cup/bread made from tinfoil and triscuit

3 dimes or silver washers

a thorn branch

a piece of braided rope with tinfoil spikes and tape handle

little wooden cross (we have a prefab one, but obv, you can DIY one easy)

3 nails

a piece of purple cloth and a die

a piece of white cloth sprayed with perfume or yummy smelling oil

a rock

nothing!

a little piece of paper folded like a book with THE BIBLE on front and a verse inside

but here again you can get creative. maybe you want to leave out the flogging of jesus for little ones that are easily disturbed. or maybe you want to add in another element of the story like praying in gethsemane or peter cutting off the guards ear and jesus putting it back on (a hit with little boys, surely!). go for it! the combos are almost limitless and allow for years of variation.

and here is the key (download here) to what each object means and you can tell your kids about (and they will quickly start telling you...it's amazing how much these visuals sink home the story.) along with scripture references for each element if you want to read along in your bible.

fun fact: judah's teacher sprayed his white fabric with some stank-ass nana perfume. it's very 1970's nursing home and so judah thinks you wrap dead bodies in stinky clothes now. also: that smell is all over my fingers!

we plan to do this every year and add and change elements in it to keep it fresh and exciting. seeing the kids open up each egg, not knowing what's inside but knowing they are going to hear or tell a story for each one is really fun for everyone involved.

it is for freedom that christ has set us free. we believe he wants us to live life and experience fun and eat the yummy treats that he gave us the power to create. but we want to make sure that in every magic moment of their childhood our kids can spot a thread running back from it to jesus himself. all good things come from him.

gang's all here. except for jesus in egg #11...dat tomb be empty, yall!

do yall do or know of any other cool activities to help kids keep jesus the focus of easter?

blendsday

2013-03-27T11:52:00.000-04:00

hows about a nice random brain-shrapnel post today?

-i recently received the best spam comment ever: After reading your book, I've been hemorrhoid-free for almost two years.

um, congratulations! my heart's cry is to write to relieve rectal arterial swelling.

-my son miiiiiight be a literalist:

Judah: "we did a fire drill today"

Jesse: "oh yeah? How'd it go?"

Judah: "wooo-oooo woooo-ooooo"

#thatshowitgoes

-i have been running SO behind on my etsy orders lately. like always getting them out at the last possible day in my "will ship by" window. so monday night i woefully skipped my girls small group and toiled like a house elf to finish up and actually get ahead.

this afforded me the unknown (for a few months at least) pleasure of sewing for fun last night! i used an Oliver + S pattern i bought forever ago and made layla an easter outfit last night.

i didnt start until 11 pm (brilliant) and then i shocked myself by staying up until 2:30 am (without really noticing) working on these and was not even tired this morning. as i woke and realized i could finally fit it on my lil' peep herself, all desire to keep snoozing left me. creativity and passion do wonders for work-ethic.

the buttons arent sewn on because i think i'm gonna get another color. what color do yall think would be best? i like the light blue and the pink in the floral patter, but am notoriously bad at these decisions.

-jesse and i went to a wonderful friend's wedding recently and they had the coolest programs i have ever seen. john, the groom, is one of only 5 males i know who read the blog, so naturally he is cool like ovaltine and was on board with these bad boys:

i would be a little nervous that they would have to requisition a "full figured gal" silhouette for me!

-so in my recent weight loss adventures i had been noticing that my scale was acting weird. like i would weight myself on the way to the bathroom (for mathtime funs...you know) and then weight right after. sometimes my scale would say i had GAINED 1-1.5 lbs during the interval.

our scale was like $10 from rite aid, purchased in 2007 and has been subject to myriad drops, stomps, kicks and jumpings on-and-off by the kids. so i decided to retire her and get a decent one. this baby had crazy good reviews and looks slick and was not bananas expensive my any means

it arrived last night and i was excited to get my new spiffy weight in .2lb increments and to see if maybe the old clunker had been shorting me some lost pounds.

well, well, well. turns out the old scale was actually quite friendly and had been reporting me 4 lbs less than i actually am.

so all aboard the wambulance. i KNOW the number doesnt matter. i KNOW the differential of total loss is still the same. but even so i am struggling against big-time discouragement to find out this unhappy little surprise that i was heavier to begin with and heavier now than i had realized.

-but on the uptick of that emotional spiral: i am on level 3 of jillian's 30 day shred. i started it right after my scale debacle and it was great to have a new routine to focus on. i am still doing the beginner moves for the most part, but even still level 3 is haaaaaard and it felt good to thrash myself...especially my secret 4 lbs.

-my boudreaux post on must-haves for baby has a $100 visa card giveaway at the bottom. getcha odds on!

-i am eating these two dishes like a ravenous monster lately. i seriously cant get enough: arugula and (optional) avocado with the DELICIOUS mustard herb dressing here.

and then a family staple that we eat once a week (yet a pinterest pariah since no one EVER repins it...only one repin in 26 weeks!): mushroom and farro salad. yall. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT IT!

from whatsgabycooking

if farro scares you, just think of it as rice or pasta...though it is so much yummier and healthier than both. it is SO GOOD. we get ours from amazon and cook it in our rice steamer for this recipe. the kids even love it (judah once pitched a fit for farro...hilarious!) and it's great reheated the next day. go the distance and get real fontina from the deli counter.

and with that, my mind grapes are sufficiently squozen. i'm off to judah's class easter party!

reaping what we sow

2013-03-22T13:17:00.002-04:00

i sew. but until this week i have never sown.

on monday we were gardening virgins. today, we have the supplies and plans for a 300 sq ft vegetable garden.

any bets on how much/if we will harvest?

here's how this adventure sprouted (eh?) in my head: i follow ashley ann on instagram. shes got chickens. i love eggs and decide i want to raise chickens too and that i am certainly qualified. [normally here is the point where i order like 25 baby chicks and they all end up dead in two weeks]. but since i'm so mature, i decided to see if i could keep another food source alive before moving up the food chain to poultry.

i bought and planted cilantro seeds (aka coriander...i'm learning already!) on tuesday. that went so well (i mean, i successfully covered up seeds with potting soil obviously i am a green-thumbed prodigy!) that i went ahead and decided that the next step up from wunderkind seed-planter was straight to organic backyard farmer.

jesse is a really lucky guy.

so we are taking back some of the land that the dogs have. they have like an entire acre fenced in back there and it's totally theirs and wild and you take your life (and your unstained clothing) in your own hands when you venture back there amongst the beasts.

but lately, jesse and i have been looking hungrily at that land and have designs on taking many square feet of it for our own. the garden is the first step. dont worry, in the tradition of fair trade demonstrated by our esteemed forefathers, we have given the pooches gifts of beads and firewater in exchange for their homeland. #facepalmforhistory

i used smart gardener to plan out my garden based on where we live, our yard's orientation, space and what we want to grow. they churned me out a to-do list by week and an optimum layout based on planty science or something.

so a robot planned my garden. i'm sure this is just like how my ancestors started out.

we're trying for:

okra

eggplant

spinach

red peppers

jalapenos

basil

carrots

watermelon

spaghetti squash

zucchini

onions

tomatoes

i am kind of ignorantly excited about all the work this will take. we plan to just jump in with both feet (though not on our garden because we dont want to compact the soil) and figure it out as we go or just sink and fail miserably. this is the dukes way.

so okay hippie people with experience...advice for a gardening noobs?

dreaux, dreaux, dreaux your butt: a list of must-haves for baby

2013-03-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

so unless you are one of those alternate-universe-dwelling creatures from "i didnt know i was pregnant," you have a good 8 months to plan for and prepare for this tiny incoming (or outgoing, as it were) human to fall (haha, you wish) into your lap.

i read and read and read. jesse and i took a 3 hour class weekly for 15 weeks leading up to judah's birth. i even went so far as to ask my mom advice!

despite being pretty intelligent people with decent expectation-management strategies and a lot of book-knowledge on babies, our first night home from the hospital had me SOBBING in bed between an utterly flummoxed and sleep-deprived jesse and the tiny wailing nugget that was judah.

judah at 3 days old. so cute...and yet so capable of destroying us.

i think this feeling of being utterly clueless is a rite of passage for new parents. no article, list or product can save or prepare you for when it's your baby, your life, your sanity, your perineum all seemingly falling apart around you.

a lot of our confusion could have been avoided because it stemmed from having TOO MANY options. "do we put him in the swing, the bouncer, the moses basket, the sling?!?!" having so much information at hand and, for most first time moms blessed/cursed with many baby showers and an empty registry, so many things can make you crazy.

it wasnt until we had figured judah out and were expecting layla that i started to realize that we as a species (humans, that is) have survived for thousands of years (whether that is 5 or 5,000 thousands is a whole 'nother post) without all of these options. i found a peace in the fact that almost all my baby needed to get from single cell to functioning human life form in 9 months was ME, and that the same was pretty much true for the months after birth too.

that being said, there are definitely a few shining all-stars that were the glorious backup dancers in the feature performance of "mommy is all i need." whether i was a mama as a cave woman or a victorian wet nurse, or an empowered hippie mama of 2013, these gems would be getting crazy use in my cave/castle/wigwam(?) if i could get my mitts on them.

the rash-fighting heroes over at Boudreax's Butt Paste have asked me to put together a few of my go-to "secrets" or tips for new moms...all of which we learned the haaaaaard way. this works out nicely as their tubes of baby-healing goodness were already a part of our starting lineup of must-haves.

one caveat: the thing you hear over and over again is "every baby is different." that's totally true. but yall, i have had TWO WHOLE BABIES and these things worked magic on both of them, so, um, i dont know what more we could want, statistically, before declaring these recommendations LAW.

0. MAMA. like i said, this comes first. your boobs, your body, your smell and your intuition. even though you left the hospital and it felt like "are they really just going to LET me take this baby? without a permission slip from my parents?!?!" you are equipped genetically and biologically to care for this baby and to know what's best for it in almost every situation. dont doubt yourself.

1. SWADDLE. your husband is going to feel all awesome when he becomes the champion of origami-ing your newborn into a tight little glow worm of love just as well as the nurses as the hospital did. but youre both going to feel like crazy people when the little thing, despite being grown in anti-gravity fluid and having no muscles to speak of, hulks right out of that blanket like it was wet toilet paper.

skip the receiving blankets, pass on the velcro closure ones and just get the miracle blanket. it looks like a straight-jacket but it's secretly your best friend. because those little arms that you thought were so adorable on the ultrasound are actually out to destroy you. when the baby startles during sleep the arms that are so used to being tightly enclosed in a uterus with flail about, scaring and waking the poor tot up.

we used our first miracle blanket for months with judah and then again with layla until it literally started falling apart. we bought a new one and i made layla one from scratch so that we would never be without one. if we didnt have the swaddler, we didnt have a sleeping baby. simple as that. we held clinics one teddy bears to educate the grandparents and babysitters on how it was done.

lay-lay leaving the nocturnal to the owls.

2. WHITE NOISE same idea. it was really ambient-ly noisy in the womb. blood rushing, heart beating, constant muffled noise from outside. pure silence is not a friend of a sleeping babe (or anyone, really). we are white noise machine addicts. we have owned probably 6 different models of machines and by far the best one is this one by homedics. i dont think they are even sold new anymore, but we got our first one as a hand me down and then snagged up one for layla's room on ebay.

think about how easy it is to fall asleep on an airplane or a train. thats white noise. during dead silence any little noise disrupts your brain. but when there is constant LOUD ambient noise like and engine or an ocean, the little creaks of a house, a car passing, dog barking or adults taking in the living room dont disrupt sleep because the brain isnt startled by them since it is constantly "hearing" the white noise.

we had travel versions of these machines when the kids were in infant carseats that just velcro'd right on.

we use these every night still in both kids' rooms. if we forget to turn them on, the kids are up as soon as jesse and i open a door or speak above a whisper. i will not be held prisoner in my own home. i have earned the right to scream about "project runway" or to have 1.5 glasses of wine and run into the wall while dancing up on jesse without my kids waking up. this is america, dammit.

3. BUTT PASTE. diaper rash. it just plain happens. and it is awful. you've never felt your ovaries clench up in anguish until you've opened a diaper and seen a little nut-pouch or tiny-vaginie bright red and irritated. the horror of the diaper rash monster, "Rashadon" with its electric red laser is perfectly illustrated by Boudreaux's in its attack on Butt City.

thanks to the aforementioned baby showers, we had every possible diaper rash cream conceived by modern science.

in the end (see what i did there?) our favorite has been the boudreaux's. it doesnt have that screaming-loud diaper rash cream odor (which is nice and baby-ish at first but then just smells like PAIN), it goes on so much smoother, softer and in a lighter coat than the old school stuff, and seems to immediately soothe the fire down below for the babies. i also love that it isnt bright white (it's skin tone) and cleans off super easily

when we started getting the kids to sleep through the night (no longer waking up every few hours to eat and change diapers, i would anticipate the burn from the pee being against their skin for so long and swipe on some Boudreaux's in anticipation of impending flames. i love that it prevents and protects against the rash even starting.

the hippie in my loves the all natural version of the butt paste for little flare ups (like the time layla discovered lemonade and peed citric acid for 2 days and had just a little scorch) and then we use the regular or extra strength stuff that has the zinc oxide in it for the really bad cases (like when they are pooping lava during a stomach bug).

with layla hilariously adamant against potty training (she literally will poop one raisin-worth in the potty, bring the potty to us, demand her treat and then proceed to drop the remaining 90% of the deuce in her diaper after assuring us "i duhN!"...little mercenary) we are still well-stocked with the Boudreaux's at our house. we even still use is on judah when he "forget" to tell us he has pooped and doesnt get wiped. a few hours later he will be sporting some wicked skid marks and when he calls "baby rash," and then he gets a dose of the good stuff where it counts.

BlogHer is giving one of you a $100 VISA GIFTCARD.

Leave a comment with your best diaper rash tips, and read the rest of the rules here:

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This sweepstakes runs from 3/18/13 - 4/15/13
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tipped off

2013-03-15T10:52:00.000-04:00

.
.

yesterday (or as judah calls it, "last day") we had our scariest parenting moment to date.

jesse was with the kids and i was getting ready for work in our room. he was starting to load them in the car and they were all three going back and forth from the garage and driveway into the house. if we are less than militant in watching them, the barrier between "what we're trying to do" and "oh hey look over there" or "oh i remember something shiny in my room" become very permeable and they will sneakily slide right back down the hill of productivity. as usual, it was very reminiscent of a cat-rodeo. mini meltdowns, screams of glee, running feet, etc.

i hear judah start to cry in his room and i am thinking that layla must have licked him good or snatched a toy while he wasnt looking. but it lasts past the first scream-wave so i know he isnt doing it just to express frustration. i hear the second and third ones and i am thinking maybe he had to get a spanking since i dont hear jesse comforting him or asking what's wrong.

i start to listen a little more carefully (maybe 10 seconds having elapsed this whole time) and i detect a hint of panic and hysteria in his cries.

so i bolt from my room, down the hall to theirs, and on the way he just goes completely silent--which scares me even more-- and i see the worst site thus far in parenting: judah pinned at the chest under their toppled big, wooden dresser (how did i not hear the fall!?!?!).

i happen to know that this piece is one of IKEA's few real wood items, so i knew it should be heavy, but when i threw it off of him it might as well have been a feather. i feel confident i could have easily tossed a chevy across the room in this situation.

i am checking him for crush injuries (because i have sadly read at least 3 blogs of parents whose children were KILLED by tipped furniture) and screaming for jesse, who comes running in about 10 seconds after me.

judah was pretty scared (understandably) and his chest was a little red from where the thing had landed (that sentence turns my stomach just to read), but praise jesus he only had a bruise on his arm. i am actually not sure how he wasnt hurt more. we did take him to urgent care to get his arm looked at when he kept complaining about it and it swelled up a bit. his X-ray was clean (and the doctor checked his chest and head too just to be sure) and he got a soft cast to wear for a week in case there was a sneaky growth plate fracture not showing up on the x-ray.

let me pause here and say that we are pretty hardcore free-range parents. we make a point to not live our daily lives in fear of or preparation for the one-in-a-million thing (i've written about this before) that can happen. we want to teach them how to live in the world, not to be afraid of it. we dont assume there is a kidnapper around every blind aisle in the grocery store, we dont expect halloween candy to be poisoned, and we know (and have seen) that gravity and fire can teach the kids through experience much better than our constant words. learning the hard way on some things is super-effective. we try to say "what do you think will happen if you do that?" and "is that a good decision?" more than we say "DANGER!!" or "be careful...."

so i dont love the fear-mongering culture that is pretty prevalent in parenting and media today and dont want to be doing that here, but there is certainly a time to scream "FREEZE!" rather than having a conversation (like when they're about to run into traffic), and situations where taking a precaution every time seems like wisdom and not paranoia (i.e. seatbelts).

since everyone but the most ardent hippies owns furniture and since kids are natural climbers, this one seems like a good one to maybe invest some time on preventing (even though a serious injury or death is obviously still pretty rare). because unlike touching an iron or jumping off the couch, sadly, in these tipping situations--just like a car accident--just one incident can be irreversible so.

the sickly ironic thing is that we have actually always been really good about anchoring our tall/climb-able/tippable furniture. most of our stuff is IKEA and they almost always include the hardware for it. the dressed had been anchored in layla's room, but when we converted it to an office in january we moved it to judah's room and just didnt re-dock it. i was thinking they were old enough to know better.

turns out, bigger kids are more likely to have these incidents since their weight and strength is substantial enough to get these big pieces moving to their tipping points. judah actually had pulled out the bottom drawer and used it as a step to try to climb up higher (the whole thing is only waist high on us when we are standing beside it) and that is what started the imbalance.

so i'm not trying to be scary lady , but maybe take a minute and look around your house to the things that are tall or heavy and could tip if a kiddo started gamboling on them. the anti-tipping kits are super affordable and easy to install.

funny story: when i was pregnant with judah i was decidedly more paranoid (and had more time on my hands to dream up insane scenarios). he had this little hip-high shelf made for holding little baskets in his room. it was like $5 from michaels and i think it maybe weighed 2-3 pounds total. i totally anchored that thing to the wall like it was the washington monument casting its cold shadow on my unborn child's crib and many seismic events were eminent. so yeah...you can take this too far.

static cheesing on the jump-o-line in his new "power sleeve"

getting fixed v8.0 (aka goal: keepers)

2013-03-13T12:17:00.003-04:00

i might have guessed that my 8th stitch fix would turn out to be my number one stunna, just because 8 is (obviously) my totem spirit number.

but i DIDNT guess, therefore this was even more fun because i didnt see it coming.

yall, stitch fix is ON. THEIR. GAME. i was feeling blah about them there for a while last summer, but they have done nothing but impress me since. i feel like their inventory is better AND they know me, my style, and--dare i say it?--my body (ooh la la), so much better now. they have LISTENED to my feedback and made awesome adjustments.

i feel this side-view of the stack just LOOKS like me! a great sign.

well now, let's just see what we have here:

a silky cream sleeveless blouse with some cool details (pintucking! applique!) and a long length (which i love and requested for hip-coverage) i'm thinking its a great layering basic for fun cardis and coats plus will look good by itself in summer when i get a ~~tan~~ mess of freckles

ah! a peachy-coral chevron top! the granny buttons make me nervous, but i am excited to get a chevron statement piece for my body since i declined putting them all over my wall. i am digging the color.

a soooooper long heathered cream and navy striped scarf. i know i will sew this one into an infinity scarf (and remove the great honking tag) if i keep it so that's why i showed it this way. love it immediately. willing it to be worthy.

a fun dots n' stripes top with some cool sleeve and neckline action. think it's totally gonna be a winner.

a dress! flowy and soft. navy and colorblocked will coral-pink at the hem. i feel like i will really like this if i can style it right and make it not potato sack-esque

okay. into the clothes i go! didnt have time to really get gussied up and think hard about the styling of these, so it's just simple ensembles and post-workday hair/makeup this time. if the clothes can work on this, i'll know they're winners.

oh, hey, what do you know? i just so happen to have a visually interesting cardi that could use a cute underlayer that doesnt compete with it (thank you fix #7!) ! i went full bore on the triangle theme. digging this, but the hem tapers a bit and is not elastic, and it's a little tight on my hips. hopefully my hips will soon be yielding, but in the interest of clothes that fit me NOW, i asked if they had a large. they did and i got it! (free shipping on my alternate sizes). the medium is pictured.

VERDICT: KEEPER

this dress is mad comfy and i love its simple bodice/top that give lots of blanks canvas for an awesome statement necklace (which i dont have yet). i belted the blousy-elastic waist because it was feeling baggy and sacky. even still i felt it was too big. i looked at the tag and it was the one large item in my order. i asked if they had a medium and they did! double luck! it came, it fits, i love it and wore it this weekend to a great friend's wedding (hi john!)

VERDICT: KEEPER

at this point we are 2 for 2 and headed into unprecedented stitch fix territory. the most i have ever kept was 2 items out of 5.

let's all remain calm.

i tried to recreate a spin on the outfit i put together for my tide post with my boots, mint jeans, yellow necklace and navy F21 trench ($13!!!). i really like this look and the top especially, but the medium is a little tight on the bust and tends to squash me there and/or ride up (as you can see happening above).

why, no i am NOT pressing up against an invisible pane of plexiglass. why do you ask?

VERDICT: maybe. i do know that my bust is one of the first places i lose weight from, so i sort of want to hold onto this top because it will be a gemstone as my healthy weight continues to approach. (they didnt have a large available)

i love this scarf. love it so. it's more expensive than i would normally pay for a scarf, but might be worth it if i keep everything since when you keep all 5 items you get 25% off everything (on top of the $20 credit included with every fix). strategy is becoming a factor

VERDICT: solid maybe

last is the dots n's stripes top featured in a horrible picture. i wanted to love this but it just kind fell flat on me. its a dressy fabric, but the cut and style come off casual and so it was kind of clashing for me there.

VERDICT: leaning towards no*.

okay so this post-game decision-making required a little thinking. more accurately, it required an excel spreadsheet where i ran through the scenarios of keeping 2, 3, 4,or 5 items. i knew that i was keeping at least the first two, wanted the scarf too, would feel great in the chevrons soon and then would maybe keep the dots/stripes just to get the discount and could sell it or give to a friend.

after running the numbers i decided to...KEEP EVERYTHING! the dots top that i wasnt in love with ended up being essentially free once it kicked in the 25% off everything discount as the 5th item.

i am just so buzzed to have joined the keeper club (fictional...just made that up) of stitch fix! it feels awesome to have gotten 5 outstanding pieces that are pretty unique and all for less than $200 (for 3 blouses, a dress, and an awesome scarf from boutique labels, i call that a win).

i usually like to ask yall what i should keep and reveal my choices later, but i left you hanging so long last time, that i had to get it all out there this time. but what do you think? did i make the right choice? what would you have kept or had me keep?

*if youre in love with that last top and are a M, email me and we'll work something out for you to own this bad boy...otherwise, i'll probably try it again in 10 lbs in case the shape looks different, and if not i'll just ebay it

my past fixes:

fix #7

fix #6

fix #5

fix #4

fix #3

fix #2

fix #1

ready to schedule your first box? give us a click!

crayla

2013-03-12T11:56:00.001-04:00

jesse and i have often noticed that posts solely about layla dont get a lot of comment love. this used to make me sad, but not anymore. i know she is a fan favorite and am confident that her charms translate through binary so i shall happily continue to publish her antics and know that comments or lack thereof (always fine! no pressure!) do not make my lil' lady special. she just is.

girlfriend is straight up hilarious. she is a gorgeous, loving, witty, sassy little button of a kid who brings us to our knees in awe, love, hilarity and thankfulness.

here's a nice assortment of some of her most recent capers in cuteness (some of which i instagrammed and some not):

feeling fabulous in her tutu while testing out some accessories at baby gap

what's cute on judah tends to be even more cute and hilarious on her

ahhhhhhhhhhg shes amazing.

pretending to eat soup out of an economy tin of im-not-even-going-to-tell-you-whats-in-there.

apparently iron[woman] conducts electricity

rocking mismatched wedges and most likely a wedgie.

tiny miss thing charmed a full pack of m&m's out of a church worker. i took them away and said she had to wait until after lunch to enjoy them. she immediately assumed the pouting position.

just checking to make sure her petulance is still being noted.

it's possible that she likes her big brother. hastag understatement.

fuzzy yoga-kins is BEAT and passes out in the car.

um yeah. she gives everything her all. even "potty theory 101"

sometimes she's so cute she has to pinch her own cheeks

she's riveting (get it?)

ah yes. this was about 2 months ago i think. her talking has come a loooooong way. i need to record a convo with her soon. but this captures her speech patterns perfectly.

it's possible that his amazing daddy skills are a turn on. hashtag signmeupformore...practice

okay. i get it. i see why people want little girls. even our wild little lady would rather sit and talk than wrestle around. meanwhile, judah just body slams the walls, runs in circles around the house and growls and snarls. it's a little bit nice to have this relational nugget in the midst of the naked dervish and his path of destruction.

i love her so much i could eat her up. dear layla: please stay amazing and weird and feisty and loving. amen.

Real TOMS vs Fake TØMS: Spotting the Differences

2013-03-07T15:18:00.002-05:00

we love TOMS. love their brand, their mission, their customer service, all of the above. always have. for awhile there judah and layla were the only ones who actually wore any (i wasnt sure those pointy little slippers could hold up against my legframe...whatever). but i finally got a pair of my own over christmas and i love them. they are perfect when its freaking cold outside but i just want to wear a t-shirt and not look stupid with ballet flats or boots on.

here's the thing though: they are pricey. like $50 for adults and $30 for kids. we are okay with this because buying a pair of shoes for me means another pair is given to a kid who wouldnt have access to shoes otherwise. i'm down with that.

after i loved that first pair, i wanted to get a second. so i went to america's yard-sale: ebay. i figured i could get a retired, hard-to-find, or expensive style for a bit cheaper, and since they came from the TOMS production chain (even if i was farther down the road on it than if i had bought them directly from them) i could be assured that the One-to-One thing still held true.

well it turns out that real TOMS arent just pricey because youre really buying two pairs. these suckers are pretty well made too, (which is good for me and GREAT for a kid who lives somewhere with lots of parasites and no sidewalks, no?) which of course drives us production costs. i found this out the hard way.

long story short: i had accidentally bought fake ones. good fakes. but cheap and totally not giving anything to any kids. luckily i was able to return mine to the seller (she had actually unknowingly bought them from another ebay store which then disappeared..sketch!), but before i did i took some pics so that no one else would make the same mistake.

(note: i love a good knock-off. if someone can produce a necklace that looks exactly like jcrew or a quilt just like an anthro one for a fraction of the price and people will buy it, that is awesome. but OBVIOUSLY if you start putting the jcrew logo on your stuff to pass it off as theirs, not giving them credit for the idea and pretending to be a part of their benevolence efforts then you have strayed into seriously uncool territory--called a big fat lie--and possibly illegal?)

even if you dont have a real pair to compare yours to in side by side fashion this little rundown should still help you know what to look for if you are buying your shoes aftermarket. (of course you can always go on TOMS website and find a 10)% authorized retailer...but if youd rather deal hunt on eBay or somewhere, then make sure you know what to look for and ask for when it comes to pictures).

first, a few really easy to spot signs that i'm pretty sure will always hold true for the real ones:

and then a few more that may be harder to spot, but are still pretty tell-tale

it is pretty out of character for me to do a post like this regarding a consumer warning, but this one just felt really below the belt and i wanted to put the info out there in case anyone else got punked or needed to avoid doing so in the future.

i think on this kind of thing no one wins if you end up with the knock-offs because your money is staying utterly outside of the production-giving chain where kids get helped and the people who have worked so hard to make this mission work dont get paid. and then self-interestedly, your shoes are crappy and will fall apart in about 10 minutes (mine even came with stretched and busted seams).

PSA complete. go about your day.

*i have literally nothing to say about "BOBS" by sketchers. just a colorful facial expression.

all the loose ends

2013-03-06T12:41:00.000-05:00

wowie zowie. my brain has reached that point thats like when all those little piles of paper or piles knick-knacks on your counter or floor that you have passed by for months just all of a sudden become intolerable in their space-takingness and worthlessness and just push you over the edge and it ALL HAS TO GO!

so in that spirit, my loose ends:

the past two weekends i have stayed in a hotel. this is a first since my volleyball days at tech. both trips were SUCH fun to go on with m'man and yet we are just getting back to our normal (re: abnormal).

the first jaunt was to an atypically cold, wet and grey charleston, SC. my cousin got married and jesse did the wedding! jesse has been ordained for about 5 years now, and this was his first wedding as the officiant. he's been a groomsman and the singer probably 20 times, but never the pastor. it was SO special that his first one was for my cousin billy and his beautiful bride!

way to not bring the hotness quotient down, preacher man!

what does it say that my cousin booked us a hotel room with separate beds? what kind of picture of marriage did jesse give them in premarital counseling!?! (you know it was a CUH-RAZAY night in the hotel room when theres a hello kitty coloring book in the sheets)

thank you, global weirding, for giving me the chance to wear this cute trench for only the second time ever since purchasing it in august of 2009. (p.s., christine...the secret to getting your nails painted is a 6 hour car ride...easy!)

jesse did an amazing job (fast, personal and jesus-y) and people for some reason lost their minds over the ceremony. people we had never met were demanding his card saying they didnt know WHO they would marry, but they knew who they wanted to marry them. preacher for hire! sounds good to me.

i took my inaugural turn as "pastor's wife at a wedding" and accidentally decided to wear the highest shoes and shortest dress that forever 21 sells. take THAT, all your preconceived notions of a ministers wife! and possibly propriety?

with my parents and the sexy minister

my beautiful cousin (sis of the groom), aunt (mom of the groom) and mama (mom of the me) at the STUNNING reception

in perfect "us" fashion, jesse was also scheduled to preach at church on sunday morning...AND for the first time ever he had decided to still do the music even though he was also the speaker. SO we went up for the rehearsal friday, did the wedding saturday at 6 pm, chowed down at the reception (there was a sushi bar!!!) and hoofed it 5.5 hours back to atlanta, getting in bed at 2 am so jesse could get up and sing-preach-repeat starting at 8.

for the record, he was amazing and pointed people back to jesus in all 5 of his events.

it was like an insaney-pants ministry triathalon: the "iron sharpens iron-man."

and then last weekend, as you know, we were in austin, texas. jesse attended the verge conference and went along using our skymiles. one of my top 5 favorite humans on the planet earth, blair, lives in houston so she came up to hang with me while jesse was getting conferred upon.

first time flying with this hunk since this pregnant surprise insanity

riding in a bicycle rickshaw like crazy fools.

turns out i would NOT make a good pharoah, because being conveyed by someone else's pure manpower makes me feel uncomfy in my "white-guilt" regions (regardless of the color of my paid conveyors). this was magnified by the fact that our driver (peddler?) had one prosthetic leg, which jesse was super up-front about and was all like, "so man, what happened to your leg?" i cant decide if that was the best or worst thing ever to say. jesse is now friends with the guy and has his cell#, so evidently his charm is working.

it was fun beyond fun. austin is SO cool and yalls suggestions were amazing! that is a city i would definitely go back to. (things you HAVE to do in austin: shop SoCo, eat at Torchy's Tacos, East Side Kings and Gourdough's food trucks...we missed kerbey lane and are SO bummed!!!).

the capitol building at night was GORGEOUS!

(note for future-this is blair. not carmella.)

fun fact: if you are not me or blair, you WILL hate being around us. it has been this way for 11 years and we are very sorry to everyone we have annoyed along the way. we are trying to find a way to make our brand of humor more inclusive, but it just seems to not work. in the meantime, we are having literally the BEST time being royal stupidasses together in our own little world of "we're pretty sure we're the cleverest." my sense of humor is in an interracial marriage with blair's. they are soulmates.

one of the coolest things that happened was when we "coincidentally" (not) met a homeless woman friday night. i was feeling sick and blair couldnt come to dinner like we'd planned, so jesse and i stopped to get some stuff at CVS and were gonna turn in early. as we were walking back, this lady asked if our CVS bag was a doggie bag and if so if she could have it.

"randomly" enough, jesse had been praying all weekend for jesus to show him someone that needed food (because he had gotten TONS of free snacks at the conference). hilariously, he didnt seem to notice that this was the answered prayer and was like, "oh, no, my bag is back in the hotel, i am so sorry." i was like, um, jesse! this is it. take her back inside and buy her whatever she wants.

turns out, what she wanted was BBQ. i was feeling rough and not hungry at this point, so i told them to go to dinner and i was going to bed. well, jesse spent 3 hours at PF Chang's (BBQ was closed) with Carmella, aka C'la, aka Selah aka daughter of the king. over 3 hours he wept with her as she shared her story of rape, abuse and addiction. they got free lettuce wraps, were allowed to stay way past closing, and jesse prayed with her and gave her his number. he was only the second contact in her phone.

we have already been so blessed by this new relationship and are wondering if it was the true 'conference' that jesus sent him to. Matthew 25:35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,

at willie nelson's feet the next day when we had to go before she could meet up

i am the leaving-est of hangers! i never told yall what i kept from my last stitch fix....SO sorry!

i had TOTALLY already picked this geo cardi as my keeper before yall (almost unanimously chose it too). yeah, awesome people think alike.

i wear this bad boy weekly and get mad compliments wherever i may roam.

speaking of washable clothing (and of awesome segues...) have you entered the $100 visa card giveaway here? there's only like sixty something entries so far...them's good odds...courtesy of tide pods (rhyme FTW).

some injuries in the kiddo department for documentation purposes.

first, a few weeks ago judah sustained a wound in his new sleeping mechanism (yes, it's still sort of a secret where all the shifting ended up until i can make it pretty and blog-worthy). we thought he might have broken his collarbone because of the way he was holding his arm all night. but it didnt seem that bad so we left it until morning to decide on the next step.

well, it still was bothering him the next day so i decided to take him to urgent care. i went to help him change out of his PJ's since he didnt want to lift his arm and spotted this little beauty:

and then my ovaries clenched up in abject horror. "oh, hello, INSIDE of my child!!!"

yikes...okay so THIS was what was hurting him and we never even noticed. how? well, there was NO blood or a tear in his shirt, so we thought it was a bruise/bone sort of injury and not a cut. he HAD kept asking for a bandaid, but we thought it was because thats what he asks for no matter what kind of sick/injured he is. we did put a placebo bandaid on TOP of his shoulder and totally didnt see this gash hiding in the backside of his arm pit. poor guy probably thought we were idiots with terrible band-aim.

the thing was so gaping that i obviously would have taken him to the ER if i had seen it the previous night. but since it was 9 am, i took him to urgent care, so embarrassed to have missed it for 12 hours!

i was sure he'd have to get stitches, but the doc said that after 12 hours they didnt want to close it up in case bacteria was already in there, though she said they would have if we had gone to the ER. she gave him an antibiotic in case it showed signs of infection (never did, so we didnt have to take it) and cleaned it out.

it turned out to be a blessing that we didnt have to subject him to a night time ER and stitches episode and that it was a $50 copay instead of several hundred. they cleaned it and gave us a bunch of huge band-aids.

2 weeks later and its a smooth scar and a cool story he will tell people at pool parties one day (or not...its hidden enough that you might never notice it).

i'm all set with ever needing to see farther inside of my child.

and then miss layla got in on the fun when she got an ear infection while we were in charleston. my MIL took her to our pediatrician and the gave her amoxicillan. the last time she had that RX she got some red welts on her belly around day 7. we told the dr. but evidently they didnt put it in her file and since my MIL didnt know about the first time, she just went with it.

well, like clockwork, on day 7 of giving it to her--we had kept it up even though we thought she might react just to be sure we at least killed the ear infection --we were by now in TX and my mom texted me that she was reacting again.

um...and HOW!

it got so much worse/redder/more defined. just trust me

(partially ketchup on the face)

um, yes. horrifying. huge red/purple welts all over her face, neck and trunk that were SO hot to the touch. i had a hard time believing the dr that it was "nothing harmful" and it just needed to work its way out of her system and to give benadryl if it was itching.

4 days later and she is finally back to normal. i think we should go ahead and get ALLERGIC TO AMOXICILLAN permanently in her file at the dr.

i gained 3 lbs in austin. i am at peace with this. i walked at least 15 miles over the course of 2.5 days and ate with abandon. thats what vacation is for, dammit. but i am home now and back on track.

in that same vein, after my weight loss post, i have been bullied (by lena) into doing jillian micheal's 30 day shred. this morning was my 3rd day and it's already so much easier and fun (especially since i muted jilly and play music while watching for the cues).

pros:

its seriously only 20 minutes

the moves require your body and maybe 12 sq ft (and dumbells if you want)

its something to do every single day thats fast but add up 2.5 hrs of HARD work a week

the download was $5 and i got it instantly ($7 for the hard copy)
no travel, no thinking, no cost and PRIVATE
cardio, strength and abs all in one.

cons:

ugh. working out, duh?

doing the same workout for 10 days straight (though i sort of like knowing whats coming) before moving up to the level 2 routine.
20 minutes is a long time when you dont take breaks.
old school jillian is awkward and not as hot as 2013 jillian

i call this PHASE 2 or "operation jiggle jam" of my journey ~~back~~ to a healthy lifestyle. ive sort of now got the hang of the food regulation (sort of) so i want to ease into seeing how to fit exercise into the routine too.

i had never thought home workouts were for me, but yalls comments convinced me. no membership, driving, looking good, or nice weather required! i seriously did a workout in my sports bra and underoos in my locked office this morning before brushing my teeth. and i love not having to think. just turning off my brain and doing what jillian commands.

ok i think that takes care of most of the stuff floating atop my noodle.

daylight savings is this saturday. did you know? even though i am not a summer-loving fool, i am excited to have another hour of daylight to play outside with the kids, and to feel the transition to spring. with its improved weather, the outdoor dining and the burst of productivity and DIY-ness that always seems to come along, winter---> spring is probably my favorite season shift. though i could do with out all the trees fornicating in my sinuses.

happy march, fools!

ATL--->ATX

2013-02-28T14:42:00.000-05:00

Jesse and I are in Austin for the next approx 50 hours. He's at a Jesus conference and i'm tagging along on skymiles, a dream and the miracle of free childcare (love you Dukes/Vincents!!!)

Okay so people who know, what must we see/eat/do?

Note: we're staying downtown and don't have a car while here. We must get our walk on.

So far: i have all day to myself and have binged (responsibly) on fabric and food trucks. In an ironic or perfectly hilarious followup post to the previous one, nothing about this is WW approved. but this is our first trip in 3 years...ill eat raw cabbage all next week...worth it.

I didn't wake up at 5 am to fly 12 parsecs to order grilled chicken. PLUS I've already walked 4 miles today and thrashed my abs during a coughing fit on the flight, soooo yeah...I'm committed.

{if the pic won't show it's bc the phone posting is so flipping persnickety...you can see the pic on my Instagram here: http://instagr.am/p/WSWwZGIYjH/}

1. Getting my fab on at StitchLab // 2. Torchy's taco truck...OMG // 3. Gourdough's ($5!!!) doughnut...not overpriced, FTR // 4. Pretty history or something

in #4 I cropped out the jolly bum that was in this pic and proceeded to follow me basketball-defender style for a half mile (I have a wicked swim move pivot step and evaded like whoa). He thought I was the funniest person alive when I called him "Texan" in response to him calling me "Georgian." He was also fantastically intoxicated and wanted to be bar buddies.

So far Austin is as perfect as everyone says. Give me more reasons to believe in the city that Stone Cold Steve founded!

my not so sweet 16

2013-02-26T12:21:00.000-05:00

i'd rather not talk about it because i'd rather it not be true. but since it IS true, i'm gonna talk about it.

when i went for my insurance physical i asked my doctor how much weight i had gained. i have never really cared about numbers, but i knew i had gained just because of how my clothes were(n't) fitting lately.

she looks at my chart and gets this squinty-pained look on her face and goes, "are you sure you really want to know?"

and i'm like, WTF!?!?! youre my doctor! if youre playing the "ignorance is bliss, maybe you DONT want to know" card on me, it must really be brutal.

and it was. since the last time i had been there (6 months prior) i had gained 16 pounds.

um yeah. that is embarrassing as all to even type. because there's no baby, no injury, no sickness, no depression to explain it away. its just a big old ugly number (although it is a perfect square, i'll give it that) that sits there unflinchingly berating me.*

remember last spring when i first started caring about how i presented myself? even back then, i was struggling with a healthy body image (and this is pre-16). when i started being more intentional about my clothes and hair and makeup, i decided to let go of hating the parts of me that i found imperfect.

awesome, right? yeah it so was.

but in typical keight all-or-nothing fashion, this quickly went from "i love me just how i am and wont be anorexic!!" to, "i deserve a lapful of PB m&m's, popcorn and milk after dinner NIGHTLY because i love me, yall!" and now here we are.*

so i joined the hive mind of resolutions and started weight watchers on new years. i had done weight watchers after giving birth to judah and within 3 months i was back to pre-pregnancy and feelin' fine. i wont lie, jennifer hudson is an awesome choice for spokesperson and her commercials really did motivate me.

even still, i did NOT want to talk about it. i think in the first month i maybe told 2 people total. i HATE giving off the impression that i need a fad diet or professional help in solving the non-mystery of weight. i hate that in my head i am still an uber-athlete but i'm signing up for a weight management program. that doesnt jibe with the stud i feel like i should be.

you know how far feeling like a stud but acting like a slob will get you? about 16 lbs far.

so i decided to live in reality, even though it hasnt been fun. better than deluding myself and still feeling miserable.

but i still planned to never ever blog about this thing. because of shame. because of, ugh, arent ladies on the internet supposed to have their mess together? to keep it tight no problem?

i made it almost 60 days of keeping a secret like this from the internet. thats a record for me. and it helps that i have had some success already so i can distance myself from that "before" chick so that it doesnt sting as bad (though after v1.0 is still bigger than i am in my head).

it's not been super fun. when youre losing weight youre supposed to feel hungry. this was not an easy lesson for me to learn. hunger is not an impulse i have a lot of practice suppressing or denying and millions of years of evolution have bred me to have a panic response to hunger and to stuff my face in times of plenty. thanks a NOT, darwin.

but i am really committed to this. we are absolutely not having (or at least TRYING to have...jesus is captain) another baby until i can honestly say i am happy with my weight, fitness and overall image. that's a tall order right now, but i know that assuming you'll deal with it afterwards never works out as planned.

and i realized that a lot of the heart-yuckiness i talked about here was coming up as a response to how i felt about my own body. that i was becoming bitter when i saw my fit or hot-looking friends or even just a random pinterest lady looking good. 16 lbs is one thing, but when my weight starts interfering with how i show the love of jesus (even in my own silent thoughts) then its time to do some soul searching and probably make some changes.

so that is where i am now. i have a whole set of BEFORE pics in various outfits (mega password protected for the skimpier ones) and am working daily of crafting my new afters.

let's be clear: skinny isnt the answer. living fully with what jesus has given me is. all the resolutions and works in the world dont matter if there isnt a heart change sustaining them (thats bible AND biggest loser, so you can believe it!). i already talked about the heart change i'm experiencing and 1/1 felt like the right time to start the outward work too.

i'll try to keep yall updated on how this process is going. these pics were taken at -9 lbs at the beginning of february. my realistic goal is -25 and then my super goal is -40. dang those look like insanely huge numbers when i write them on the internet.

if i look happier in the BEFORE pics, it probably because i just ate a whole pizza.

yikes. putting this out there is terrifying. truth.

finding the balance between healthy self-love and constant self-indulgence is extremely difficult for me. anyone been here before? (not necessarily a weight-specific issue!) verses, wisdom, experience to share?

*also, i have a theory that when i turned 30 on october 2, my metabolism downshifted by 20% and now i am fighting an even tougher battle.

dash & friends

2013-02-20T11:40:00.002-05:00

judah was invited to his church BFF's 5th birthday party on sunday. it was superhero themed and naturally i didnt think about what he might wear until 30 minutes before we had to leave.

luckily, we were more than prepared, still having all of the pieces to his amazing homemade incredibles costume. but since layla was coming to the party too, we needed to rig up something for her. i let her pick her favorite from a selection of heroes that i thought i could reasonably whip up in 30 minutes from stuff around the house. she chose, i made, we left.

dash is back...and picking his wedgie?

the party was so awesome. homemade, but EASY. laid-back but such fun for the kids. i will be taking a page from the bday mom's brilliant book and going the chill, sanity-preserving method for bday parties. unless i get a bananas delusion to build mega-slide again.

a bunch of bad-A little dudes. villains, beware.

the bday boy is seriously one gorgeous boy. (but dont tell him i said that...superman has an image to keep up).

judah decided to give his birthday buddy an added gift for free: the chance to practice grace--when he swooped in at the magic moment to blow out marc's number 5 candle for him.

the smoking ~~gun~~ candle. captain america and i could only look on in horror.

yall, but here's the proof that marc's parents are getting it right. instead of raging out on judah for stealing his birthday blow, marc immediately looked at judah and said, "now yowh five too!" freaking adorable and christlike! all points to marc.

after seeing that picture i went back and looked at the ones i took in the same candle-blowing sequence, and it turns out that judah DIDNT usurp the candle (though he 100% meant to). this photo-finish from a second before proves that marc did get the candle and judah was a little late on the steal. shwew:

thank heavens. as the awesomely biblical and hilarious parents noted, we almost had a jacob/esau situation unfolding here with a birthright being stolen from the older kid.

happy birthday, marc. we love you!

hmmmm, it feels like i am forgetting something. oh right! what did layla dress up as?

well, in perfect lay-lay fashion, she managed to upstage all costumes by rocking her ghetto-rigged one with her baby bod and firecracker personality.

yall, she was batgirl, and she was exquisite:

um, yes. a million times yes.

as i was taking the above picture, it's like she knew the exact character she was supposed to be playing and did the most flawlessly executed superhero-run-away maneuver and i am happy in my soul to have captured the athletic prowess of the moment:

there are no words. but i am dead. dead of cute.

actually, there is one word. and it looks like this:

whoosh indeed. that first step is lightning-quick.

and what is batgirl's super-power that strikes fear in the heart of all evil-doers?

the belly bounce! capable of knocking over small buildings and much larger children in a single arch of her back.

now a bunch more shots of how mother-freaking HILARIOUS this child is.

the game is afoot! follow me!

at terminal velocity down the hill.

she has cornered her quarry

but with her limited 2-year old agility and mask-impeded peripheral vision, he escapes!

batgirl must trudge back UP the hill alone:

our tiny caped crusadette learns that it's a little harder than going downhill.

"my back! oh my back!"

"i think i slipped a disc!"

a dollop (or more) of icing makes it all better

layla, please be my best friend because you are the funniest, sweetest, spiciest and sassiest little goofball i've ever met.