Kids' Art Display Board

Today marks the midpoint of my 3rd week of my new journey as a full-time working mom. My schedule runs Sunday to Thursday so today, Tuesday, is my Wednesday. Lots of change in my life. It's been almost 17 years since I had a full-time job and it's been never since I did it as a mom. Even though I'm working from home I still find the whole balance thing to be tough. Makes me have mad respect for those of you who do it away from home. The time you spend commuting in the morning I spend doing laundry and sweeping my floors. And your evening commute is my time to start warming the stove up for dinner. Other benefits:

If I forget to turn off the iron I can just run into the other room instead of worrying about it all day. Of course, that would require that I actually ironed my clothes.

I can run in and stick homemade bread dough in the oven. I just have to prepare it the night before.

I get to talk to my husband in person because he's here, too.

I can wear my pjs; However, I don't. I've been making myself get dressed, although it be in holey jeans and hoodies, and put on my make up every morning before I start work.
And that's about all I've come up with so far. I know there are more.

There are not-so-good things, too.

I can no longer check in on Facebook at my leisure.

I haven't figured out how I'm going to do the whole gardening/canning thing this summer. Big problem. Mainly because it means I'm going to have to bribe my kids who both loathe gardening.

I really never leave the house anymore. I've always been a homebody but now I can't just leave when I want. And since we live so far out of town, it makes sense gas-wise and time-wise to just have Caelan do the grocery shopping after school.

I can't go back to KC to see my family as easily.

I have to schedule my time to complete my projects for Fiskars. No more 9 a.m. to 3 a.m. crafting days the night before. This one I should actually add to the good list. If I do that, my good list will be longer than my bad list. So we'll do that and end my list making right here. I'll stay true to my goal in my last entry of not making bad lists!

And I'll close out today by sharing a new project I have up on the Fiskars website.


I'll start with full disclosure. This is a cleaned up version of what my fridge normally looks like. On my blog I could frighten people by sharing a photo of what it really looked like. When you're taking photos for the website of a business you can't do the I-should-be-on-an-episode-of-Hoarders photos. Imagine this with about 50 more pieces of paper piled on. Drove me absolutely batty. Love my kid's artwork. Love the excitement on his face when he brings something new to me. Don't love the clutter on the fridge.


So I made this. Is it ironic that I hated all the random layering on the fridge so my solution was to make a board with a cover that has random layering on it? I read one a rant from someone one time on the internet that the word ironic is most often used incorrectly so I'm always timid about using it. And then there's the whole Alanis Morissette thing. I think she now owns the rights to the word ironic. I still start singing the song in my head when I hear the word. And that leads to thinking about when we lived in KC and my favorite DJ there, Kelly Urich, played it one time and said something about dancing around naked in our radios afterward so it leads to massive internal giggles when I hear the song now. I'm sure you're getting a better mental image of what my fridge really looked like. Much like the thoughts in my head, it was a cluttered mess of randomness.

More full disclosure, I made this awesome (most overused word but still my favorite happy adjective) board and I still haven't hung it. We're wall-hanging challenged. Shawn wants things to be hung one time forever and ever. In a stud with a screw or, if it meets a certain weight requirement, it can be hung in the drywall with a plastic anchor. I want to buy and move things around all the time. You know, lots of holes and buy a giant tub of wall putty. See the texture of the wall? It only looks this funky and overpowering when you bounce flash off your ceiling onto it. But it's still texture and I'd send him over the deep end if I was constantly making random smooth spots on it with wall putty, so I try to choose my hanging spots carefully, which I haven't done with this board yet.



But I can still start filling it. If you'd like to make an art display board for your kids (or your lists or whatever your choice of paper piles happens to be), you can find a tutorial for making one on the Fiskars website.

Crossing List Making Off My List

I was list making earlier this morning. It wasn't the good kind. It was the kind where everything on it was something someone had done to irritate me, inconvenience me, take advantage of me, broken a promise they made to me, things like that.



I hate list days. The whole time I'm list making, I tell myself I'm being ridiculous. I irritate people. I inconvenience them. I take advantage of them. And I know the things that are so terrible that they land on the list, if I shared them, everyone would say, "Really? What a princess." And yet, the list keeps growing. When broken promises and dog begin populating the list, I start getting embarrassed at the level of crazy going on in my head. I'm glad I've learned over time to keep my mouth shut when I'm doing crazy. Eventually, but not soon enough, I think of Someone who is entitled to a list longer than any of us could even begin to fathom, a list thousands and thousands of years in the making, a list that I contribute to daily, and how, instead, He forgives. Not only does He forgive, He sacrificed for those whom He could put on the list. And, I've been called to sacrifice, not make lists. Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice . . . be transformed by the renewing of your mind . . . do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement. And then . . . whoa. There is a list. Serve. Give generously. Lead diligently. Show mercy cheerfully. Love sincerely. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another. Honor one another above yourselves. Serve the Lord. Be joyful, patient, faithful. Share with those in need. Practice hospitality. And lest I be tempted to think, "Yes, but the people on my list . . ." it wraps up with bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. The people on my list weren't persecuting me. They were irritating me. Inconveniencing me. Taking advantage of me (and this one is a big stretch). Surely that means I'm not supposed to be cursing them either.



Now that I've erased my silly list from my mind, I'm thinking of Will. He came to me yesterday morning and said, "Ethan broke his lunch bag and had to bring his lunch in a brown paper sack today. He was embarrassed. I would like to take my lunch in a brown paper sack tomorrow so he won't have to be alone." That story is what I planned to share here this morning. It was a last minute request so I didn't have time to take a sweet photo of him looking at me while holding his brown lunch sack yesterday. I thought I would just grab a quick one of him this morning while he was packing his lunch. My flash wouldn't cooperate (operator error), and he left before I could figure it out. I was irritated that my blog post wasn't going to be the same without that photo.



I started looking through old photos of Will, trying to find one of him looking at the camera with his sweet, full-of-joy smile. Instead, I started by opening a folder containing these photos. They are over 3 years old but they illustrate what is most beautiful about him better than what I had in mind. His sweet heart. His concern for others.



We used to have this rooster. His name was Fuzzy. Fuzzy's dad was Cogburn and Cogburn was driven more by his king-of-the-cock (as my mother-in-law describes him) instincts than his fatherly-love instincts. He terrorized Fuzzy so much that Fuzzy left the flock. He wouldn't even go into the chicken coop at night. He felt safer in the woods with the coyotes than in the confined quarters of the coop with his father. Will was only 6 at the time, but it made him sad and angry that Cogburn treated Fuzzy the way he did.



Will discovered that Fuzzy liked to hang out under the hickory nut tree and pick up little pieces of nut that he could get through the shells that had been broken when run over by the tractor. So he started going out, every afternoon, and breaking open hickory nuts for Fuzzy to eat. When Fuzzy saw Will walking toward the tree, he would come running across the pasture.


I felt sorry for Fuzzy, too. Maybe my child heart would have made me do differently when I was 6 years old. I don't know. I'd like to think so. But at almost 40, even though I felt sorry for Fuzzy, my reasoning told me it was just instinct and I walked away. Will served. He gave generously. He showed mercy cheerfully. He loved sincerely. He clung to what was good. He honored another above himself. He shared with one in need. He practiced hospitality. He didn't need a list to drive him to do those things beforehand and he didn't make a list to think more highly of himself than he ought to afterwards.

I don't want my love your neighbor as yourself to be as simple as feeding a bullied rooster hickory nuts. Compassion for animals is a wonderful thing, and Shawn says you can tell a lot about people by the way they treat animals. But I want my love to mature, much like Will's has, to looking at everyone around me, to do things in the name of making them feel loved that may put me outside of the circle of comfort and conformity. I want to love better. And I want it to be a part of me, not something that I can't remember to do without a list.



And for the record, one of Will with his full-of-joy smile. That dimple slays me.

Quilting Goals Album

I have a new project up on the Fiskars website. I have, for a very long time, wished to be a quilter. I think it's fascinating how many different ways fabric and thread have been combined into works of beautifully textured art generation after generation. And the fact that someone invests so much of their time into making one and then hands it over to others to lie on while wearing their everyday grubby clothes, to picnic on,to make tents from, to pull one other around on the hardwood floors while giggling, to downright use and abuse, that is a labor of love. I want to be like that, to look at my time as an investment in something bigger and more important. But I over think things, including quilting. Expensive. Tedious. I don't have a free-motion stitching foot. I don't have crazy-clever design skills. What if the fabrics I order don't look good together. On and on. And I never learn more about quilting.

I made this little book hoping it will keep me encouraged to experiment more with quilting this year. The goal seemed more authentic and convincing when I began piecing together fabric remenants and buttons and lace and burlap to create the cover. Not that I would ever use burlap in a quilt! But all those pieces of random texture, visual and tactile, pulling together to create something that is both scattered and harmonious. I'm excited about filling it with samples of my journey into the world of learning how to connect them in more intricate, interesting ways than the simple blocks I've worked with to this point.

The tutorial for making this quilted book cover can be found on the Fiskars website.

New Year, Renewed Spirit

We're 7 days into the new year and each day that's passed since it started, I've sat here tweaking a blog entry. The same one for 7 days and I can't seem to get my thoughts hashed out clearly enough to make it flow right. So I decided it was time to set it aside and move on. Maybe I'll come back to it later. It a nutshell, it explains why I, who, much to the chagrin of my poor family, am normally the bearer of all things personal and embarrassing, was such an aimless blogger for most of last year. Very difficult year. From start to finish. But as the year wrapped up, I found myself feeling good about where I am in life. As I mentioned, I tried to put it into words, but some of what I'm feeling good about is new revelation and I haven't been able to fully process it all, to figure out where I go with it. I do know I've found the desire to write again. Apparently not enough to be able to make a blog entry cohesive enough to publish. But enough that I found myself writing a sappy, sentimental article about canned tomatoes for my latest assignnment for Fiskars. I think I toed the line on crazy, but I was pleased with it when I finished and it works.

A few things from the past few weeks.

I finally got a job! Such a frustrating, discouraging, icky process. The whole resume, sell-yourself-as-more-capable-than-Jesus-himself thing just feels dishonest to me. Everyone knows all the applicants are plumping up their resumes with important-sounding adjectives and deception about how irreplaceable we were at our last job. And yet we still have to do it. Shawn went through this midway through last year and I was getting irritated with him not selling himself better, but I had to eat crow when it came time for me to do it myself. I spent an hour filling out an online application for one company and I got to the last question. "If we met your former boss at a picnic, what would he say about you?" Really. I typed one sentence, looked at it, and wondered if I really wanted to work for a company that made me answer such a ridiculous question, especially for an entry level job. I just closed out the application without submitting it. You can call it pride but it felt more like preserving dignity.

The company I eventually got a job with has been awesome to this point. I don't actually start work until Monday, but I've been treated very professionally so far through phone interviews and paperwork signing and such. No silly questions. I didn't even have to test with them. For those of you who don't know what I'll be doing, it's medical transcription. Every other company I applied with requires you to test, and I have no opposition to that. But this company accepts that I just finished training through one of their preferred schools and trusts, based on past experience with others, that I am worth investing time and resources in. And I'm assuming that there was the most important element, common sense. I just graduated so I have the experience of a new graduate. No humiliating hoop jumping required for explaining why I'm qualified when I have no experience yet. The pay and benefits are more than I hoped for. And I got a sweet schedule! I expected to have to work nights for at least a year. I was literally depressed about it. Instead, I got an 8 a.m. to 4:30 shift. Unbelievable. The whole package is such a blessing I'm still pinching myself. The only thing that didn't work out in my favor is my schedule is Sunday through Thursday. And that means my church services will be experienced through podcasts. I'm hoping that, after working there for a while, my Sunday schedule can be adjusted. I've heard a lot of good things about their flexibility with scheduling.

Moving on. A few months back, the David Crowder Band announced they were dissolving. I don't think that was the word they used, but I know I read somewhere that they clarified they were not "breaking up." I guess (hope) that means they are keeping their options open for future albums together! So, knowing that their touring would cease, I started looking online to see if they would be touring in our area. I found they were going to be in Branson 3 days after Christmas. Even better, they were performing at a youth conference with other bands. Caelan was excited because one of his favorite bands, Switchfoot, was going to be performing as well. There were several other bands, including Toby Mac, but we were both anxious about our 2 favorites being there. I knew a few of Switchfoot's songs (more than I actually realized) but I didn't have their music on continuous repeat like I did David Crowder. I came away from their concert a big fan. I've been to a lot of concerts and they put on one of the best performances I've ever seen. But that isn't what most impressed me, as much as it did.



This did. Crummy photo but worth sharing. Jon Foreman walking through the crowd of teenage kids shaking their hands, touching them, and looking them in the eye as he sang Restless. We're talking about a man in his mid-30s and teenagers, so if you don't know anything about him, I should mention it wasn't creepy or seductive-like! It was moving. He could have stood on the stage, looking out over the crowd singing, and they would have been screaming and cheering for him. He could have taken it a bit farther by reaching down and slapping a few hands. Instead, he connected with them. He made them feel like they matter. I can't share all the photos I took of him working his way through the crowd here on my blog. But if you're interested, you can see them on my Facebook or Flickr accounts.

Caelan bought their newest CD while we were at the concert because it was autographed. In addition to countless You Tube videos, we've listened to the CD nonstop since we got home. Curious to know more about them, I looked up their website and found a link to articles Jon Foreman has written for The Huffington Post. Amazing writing. Rich and deep and though provoking. Don't those 3 descriptives together read like a cliche book review??? It's the best I can do right now. It's nearly 2 a.m. and I'm too tired to be creative or even search a thesaurus. I'm being a bad work geek! Go read some of the articles and you'll understand what I mean. I'll be cliche again and continue with, but I digress.

I finished reading through all the articles Thursday and found the consistent theme of loving others, especially the unloved. He seems to have found the delicate balance between not just being able to speak to Christians and non-Christians through his obviously God-centered music, but also being a unifying advocate for the need to help others (and exmplifying it, not just preaching it) without expecting that it has to be or can be mandated. I understood it to all stem from caring for everyone he comes in contact with, appreciating every audience, doing free acoustic aftershows in the parking lot for teens, in general, from having the kind of heart for other human beings that the bible tells us we should. The whole idea that someone seems to be genuinely fleshing that out is part of what my typically skeptical mind is processing. I struggled so much over the last year with what it means to truly love others and how often I fail at it. More accurately, with people who have character traits that make them hard to love. Really struggled. I even asked Shawn early in the week if he thinks that being intolerant with people who annoy you, for whatever reason, is something you ever overcome in your character and he said no. He thinks it only gets worse as you get older. Not what I wanted to hear. And not how I want to be. It just seems the older I get, more I feel I don't belong in this world. Or at least I don't want to belong in this world. That probably sounds really gloomy and may even concern someone. I don't mean I don't love life. I actually fit in quite well here, in ways other than my struggle to love the way we're supposed to. I love my peeps, my dogs, my hobbies, I love the miracles and the awe of things that cannot be explained. I love the beauty of knowing that there is Grace in spite of our ugliness. I love all the little details of my life. It's just disheartening feeling there's no hope that humanity as a whole will ever get love your neighbor as yourself right, even if we were challenged to try it just for 5 minutes. And it's oddly liberating to know that, even though I fail at this miserably on my own every single day, I no longer revel in the moments of, "I showed her." They make me regretful and sad and longing for the day when it won't be like this.

And I have one final tidbit of my life to share, one that I am both terrified about and completely honored to be a part of; I've been asked to co-author a book. That's as far as it progressed to this point. I'm praying that it's something that grows wings and takes flight. I suppose I could make some little mechanical wings, How To Train Your Dragon style, and force it off the ground. But it's not my story to share. I'm simply there to pull it all together and dress it in words that help people feel as much of the raw emotions my friend has had to work through as possible. Her story is so full of pain, but it is also full of her love for God and her patience with Him and her acceptance of the life He has allowed for her.

So, like I said, that's it in nutshell. It may not seem very pithy to you, but if I fully explained all that was going on in my mind right now, you'd agree this was the abridged version.

Pinterest Inspired Week 2

Whew! This one was hard to photograph! It didn't matter whether I used natural light or bounced flash, because the surfaces are mirrored, I got reflections from the light. Natural light seemed to work better so here it is. DIY mercury glass. I found this months ago on Pinterest and it was linked to Martha's website so I used that tutorial. Here is a link to my pin.



It's really easy. Clean your glass well, protect the outer surfaces with newspaper (don't try to skip this step!), spritz the inside of the container with water, apply light coats of Krylon's Looking Glass paint. Paint that you, of course, buy with a 40% off coupon because it is expensive! I didn't take a photo of the can but it's smaller than the average can and has a silver mirrored cap.

I paid $4 for all of my glass at thrift stores. I was lucky to find these glass trees on the same day at 2 different stores in town. Sad that they are always sterotyped as vessels for red and green Hershey's Kisses or M&Ms, I decided to show they can be dressed up fancy for the holidays, too.

I have to admit that as I was waiting for the paint to dry, I was disappointed in how drippy the paint was. You dry the containers upside down which means when you turn them right-side up, the runs travel in the wrong direction. Not that I prefer runs to begin with! But I'm not sure you can prevent them if you're spritzing with water initially, which prevents the paint from sticking to the glass in spots and gives the mercury glass look.

I did find another tutorial that, if I do this again, I would probably try instead. Instead of spritzing with water, you paint the inside of the container first using 4-5 light coats, allowing them to dry for a minute or so between. I do recommend using several light coats regardless of what method of distressing you use. After you're finished painting but before it is completely dry, you spritz the paint with a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water. The full tutorial can be found through this pin.



And I'll close with a photo that shows even though they have a mirrored finish, they also have some opacity when strong light passes through. Here it's window light but you get this same appearance with a votive (battery operated for safety reasons since they have lids!) inside them.

If you have a Pinterest inspired project you'd like to share, feel free to add it to the gallery below.

Currently Recovering From Techinical Difficulties

I've had a morning of technical difficulties. Power was out for a while and the battery operated tea lights I bought at Target to go with my Pinterest inspired project for today are junk so I don't have my project photographed yet, but I should have it up later today.

I have a couple of my December Daily pages to share. Days 1 and 2 are complete with photos. Not at all happy with my photos so I may just wait until the end of the month and order all my photos at one time online. We'll see how patient I am with having completed pages and no photos on them before I vow to never use Walmart photo lab again. I do that every once in a while but honestly, our Walmart normally does a pretty good job and it's so convenient. I'll probably do like I normally do and pout for a few days, get my monitor calibrated, and make adjustments to accomodate for the way their machines are developing right now.


Here's day 1. This is actually Pinterest inspired. The daily scripture reading is from Tip Junkie, plus a few verses I added for Christmas Day. I put a tag with the day's verse in each ornament on our Advent calendar. In past years I've done the names of Jesus and a craft activity with the boys (not for several years with Caelan) and I have a tendency to over-do it and make it a lot of work which eventually becomes no fun! Will was even talking about how not fun making a new ornament every day last year was. This year it's just the verse and the calendar and a quick review each night of the characteristics we've already read about. I have a much happier boy who is remembering what I want him to remember. That is my goal!



And this is day 2. Hot cocoa and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

December Daily

I decided Monday evening that I was going to do December Daily. I've never done it before but earlier this year I participated in Week In the Life and I discovered something through the process. I used to scrapbook nearly every day. Through the years, I've gotten more involved in other crafts. The time to to do those other things has to come from somewhere and since I don't think my family will go for never having clean laundry or meals, it came from my scrapbooking time. I'm to the point where I'm lucky to scrapbook once a month. I really enjoyed spending a whole week focusing on taking lots of photos and recording the stories when I did Week In the Life and I realized if I do it and December Daily, I'm getting a good record of what goes on in our family twice a year. At this point, that's good enough for me!

So I started on my December Daily book Tuesday. I'm sure Shawn rolled his eyes when he saw the turquoise, red, and cream. He teases me about using that combination so frequently but getting started late, I didn't want to even try fighting it so I went with it. I decided I'm going to limit myself to spending no more than $5, not counting photo developing, and try to use some of the stuff I've accumulated over the years. I've been looking at the books of others and when I see some of the cool things being used, I realize now it's going to be harder than it seemed when I made that rule for myself! However, going through my stuff, I've discovered tons of stuff I'd forgotten about, so it's a fun challenge.




This is what I came up with for my base. I used an old damaged book. I ripped the guts out and just used the covers. Our local office supply store was out of 2 inch rings so it's held together with one defective one for now, and I'll see what it looks like to tie a couple of cheesecloth strips to both rings when I get them.




My inside front cover.




And my intro page.


I've cut pages from a variety of patterned papers for my base pages in the book, but that's it. I have a basket of embellishments and a basket of tools in my dining room to make things go a little faster each day, and I have a list of things I'd like to document. I started yesterday with our Advent calendar and today's page will be about us watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas as a family while we drink hot cocoa and eat popcorn. One of our traditions!

I know some people think a project like this only adds to the craziness of the holidays. I thought that would be the case with A Week In the Life but I found that it actually helped me keep things more organized. I had a list of things I wanted to document and was better about scheduling plenty of time for them. I'm hoping for the same with December Daily.

Hope those of you who are participating it are enjoying it as much as I am! I'll share more pages when I get photos printed and in the book.

ETA: I'm doing new blog enteries as I complete pages but I thought I'd add photos of them to this entry, as well, so they will be all together in one place.


Day 1.



Day 2.