where I’ve been

-busily prepping for 3 craft shows that were okay, not like I’d planned, but okay.
- teaching preschool 2 days a week
-substitute teaching 3 days a week
-half crazy 7 days a week
-trying to get into the spirit of the season
-enjoying how excited the kids get over the lights and decorations
-finally starting my own personal cards and gifts

how are you doing with your Christmas prep?

Holiday House Boutique

This year I’ve participated in a few different craft shows/fairs. Right now I’m making cards, tags, mini books, and tiles to sell at this one.

This promises to be a great mix of handmade items, I’m very excited to participate!

Back to work table!

Happy crafting!

self-portraits: yes I was there too!

When my babies were very little I was so obsessed with taking pictures of them, I wanted to capture each little moment because this was such a long time coming and I knew that I’d probably never have a baby again. But then I wanted photos of me with the babies, I didn’t care that I hadn’t lost the baby weight or looked like I hadn’t slept in months, I needed to document that yes I was there too! Since my husband was at work during the day, I was on my own and it was hard to get those sweet shots of mother and child nursing, rocking, or singing. Those pictures in my mind that said “motherhood” to me.

August 2009

I got creative. I got really good at taking shots of us with arm out holding the camera. I used I propped the camera on a book, set the timer, set up a tripod and used the timer again. Then I started taking lots of self portraits thinking that I hated having my picture being taken, so I would just take a lot of photos to get over it. It seemed a little odd and I had to ignore the curious stares I’d get, but it got easier.

September 2007 photo booth

Another reason I like self-portraits is to capture a specific moment. When my babies were still babies, I would sometimes be packing them at the same time, a kid on each hip. This to me was one of the defining things about having twins. I wanted to capture it before they got too big. Even though they still want me to pack them both!

July 07

I could critique this photo, wonder why I thought that stripped shirt was a good idea! Maybe I could have taken it somewhere else in the house with less background stuff. I could think of all kinds of things. But instead I look at how I was strong enough to carry them both in the womb, I was strong enough to pack them both on my hip if needed, and I’m strong enough to take whatever comes my way.

I love this one I took at my parent’s farm, July 07.

July 07
I love the early morning sunrise on my face, I’m looking east to the Teton Mountains, and I’m wondering if I will ever live there again. This is home, my roots, and I always hope that the road I’m on will take me back there.

Looking through my library I’m almost embarrassed how many self portraits I’ve taken in the past few years. I forgot I had an entire album of these!

me

right now I am

washing dishes by hand, enjoying the feel of the warm soapy water, letting my mind just drift with a simple task

looking out my window enjoying the quiet street

seeing birch leaves fall slowly one at a time

hearing the click of little girl dress up shoes, motor sounds from a little boy

enjoying the giggles of my two little people making a fort with the couch cushions

feeling pretty calm and content, forgetting the long to do lists, ignoring the demands of life for just a bit

reminding myself that things usually work out even if I don’t worry over them

Instead of wishing you a great day I hope you can take a little quiet moment to settle yourself.

favorite mini books

I love mini books.
They are fast, fun, great way to document an event with lots of photos, and a great way to share photos. I’ve admitted that I take a lot of photos of my two cuties, but even I can only scrapbook so many photos! So I started three years ago making minis as a way to celebrate seasons and to give to the grandparents.
My two basic types are Tag and Accordion. And these two can be interpreted in many different ways.

I love tag books, either made with pre-made tags or ones I’ve made my own tags or shapes. These were tags I made to the size I wanted, bound with a binder ring, accented with ribbon, ink, paper, and stamps. I also use ribbon or twine for binding. Usually I will add a brief bit of journalling.

Inside:

Another variation of tags is using die cut shapes like the Top Note from Stampin Up!.

This was a gift for my husband showing the things I love about him as a daddy and husband in photos. Each little envelope is a mini love note to him. Kind of sappy but so true.

The second type of mini, the accordion is not a new idea, I’ve seen this done all over magazines and online in a million of ways. But my variation, I call the “wallet mini” I came up on my own when my dad complained that he needed pictures of the babies to pack around to show around. So I wanted to make a mini book of photos to carry that wouldn’t be too “foofy” and would fit in a shirt pocket like the notebooks that he carries daily. Then the hubby piped up that he wanted something that wouldn’t take up too much room in cubical’ville.

I used the size of a business card as the starting point, growing into a slightly larger size to accommodate a 2×3 wallet sized photo. The embellishing and binding is kept simple. My husband likes to stand these on his desk at work. M
I like them to stay closed when folded so I’ll twist a piece of twine around a button or make a “garter” out of ribbon or elastic cording that can be slipped on and off easily!

Using wallet sized photos:

Using smaller photos:

My dad has a spot where he keeps his important daily things along with all of the minis I’ve made for him in the last three years. All of these minis are a little faded and worn. They look like they’ve been carried in a shirt pocket and taken out many times and unfolded. I love seeing this! Love seeing that something that I made is carried with such love!

And to me this is the whole point of minis: your photos are meant to be looked at, carried around, shared, and touched.

three years ago today

I had two sweet little babies, dressed in halloween outfits, rolling around on my bed while I tried to get just the right picture. For this little photo shoot I took 20 pictures.
my boy

my girl

So sweet.

And now, they are three and a half, going to preschool, full of independence and opinions.
I love watching them grow and learn and sometimes I’m sad because they will never be little babies again, but I’m so glad I took these pictures while I could.
So right now, stop take some pictures. It doesn’t matter if you have a great camera or if you are a great photographer. Take these pictures, capture these little moments while you can.

my sentiments exactly: organizing stamps

I have lots of stamps, I know there are others out there who have more than I do, but I still have lots. I have a few very good sentiment stamps. But sometimes I want more than a thinking of you or happy birthday. I have some other sets that have a sentiment or two included that I’d like to use separately but unless I have that set out I forget I have it. So I decided to take all of my non-sentiment stamps off the shelf and stamp any sayings or greetings, write the name of the stamp set. Now I have a quick reference to the variety of sayings I have on all my stamps. I even made a sheet for the sentiment only sets.
It’s a pretty simple system which makes it work for me.

I printed it on card stock front to back and left lots of room to stamp!

I’m thinking this could work as a way to organize all of my stamps by season, occasion, etc. This might be overkill, we’ll see.
Here’s a jpg of my chart, feel free to download and use it!

creating custom calendar pages and reducing the daily chaos of life!

Like most people I struggle with keeping my chaos somewhat under control. I’ve tried all kinds of approaches and have had some success. I am fortunate to have an iphone and mac computers so my hubby and I can keep out calendars shared and synched. This helps a lot. But something I’ve always done is had a daily to do list. This has changed from random sticky notes, electronic notes, scraps of paper, notebooks (cute and plain) and back again. Recently I decided what I really needed to keep track of. Here’s my list

-daily to do’s, including the must do’s like phone calls etc
- menu plan, really trying to plan farther ahead than say, 4 o’clock that day!
- grocery list, I see we are nearly out of “white dip” (ranch dressing) but by the time I go to make a list I’ve forgotten it!

So I had a plain med size notebook with 3 sections. Which worked for a while but I wanted to add pages or have pockets so I thought of making it work, and making it pretty. Then I thought, a little binder would do the trick, I have photoshop I can make my own pages. I found my old planner. Really a nice leather one I probably paid a bit too much for. But I didn’t want to go to the store and buy new pages because a) I’m cheap and b) I never find just the right page.

Here’s my basic directions for photoshop
1. create a new project that is the same dimensions as your planner insert. Mine are the 6 hole pages that are 3.5 x 6 inches.
2. Using text boxes, make your lines using the _ key, leaving space for a blank notes section
3. Make a small rectangle for the date at the top.
4. Make another small rectangle for the daily menu.
5. create a new project that is 8.5 x 11 inches
6. Select all and “copy merged” to past on your new large project. I was able to get 3 to a sheet. Do not resize these at all.
7. Print, trim to the correct size, punch holes.

These are the daily pages I made inspired by Simple Mom.

I kept them simple, added a digital brush on the pages to fancy them up a bit. The brushes are from Jason Gaylor, and if you have photoshop these are a very cool thing to have! He has a lot of designs available for purchase and free download. These are a very fun thing to add to photos before printing them! I didn’t print my pages back to back so I could have the back of each day as extra room to write a list or message, or inspiring thought. Next I made a basic menu plan and grocery list.

DISCLAIMER: I am not in anyway an expert, or one of “those” kinds of women who have it together! Ha Ha! The opposite. But I read lots of books, magazines and blogs about house keeping and organizing etc. So I’ve put the ones I like together and made my own system.

Here are helpful links to people who really do have it all together.
-Simple Mom Tsh covers everything and it makes sense. Really it does. The things I’ve really taken and put to use in my life are the idea of menu planning. She has great ideas on how to get started, examples and after making my 1st set of menus for 2 weeks, it wasn’t as hard as I thought. I used her basic categories because they worked with how we eat anyway. And I like how she even does a monthly menu plan! Can you imagine not having to stress over dinner for a month? But as Tsh puts it, if you can plan for 2 weeks, you can rotate and repeat and you can make it a month! Cool! I also like her “Daily Docket”, her version of a daily planner which you can download for free from her site where she also has lots of other free downloads. And I’d really recommend checking out her categories on the side bar, lots of good info!

-Fly Lady I read the book a couple of years ago, and she has a ton of info to get you started on the journey of reclaiming your life by getting your house under control. I’ve followed her systems in various ways, but what I really like are the simple things like setting a timer and cleaning/picking up a room for a set amount of time and moving on. Really great way to get a plan to get your house under control. I don’t do the zones or the set things because there are times when the kids and I just decide to go do something and leave the house stuff for another day. Plus I’m not real great about a set schedule for everything all of the time.

These are two of the sites I’ve checked the most for ideas.

leaf hunting 101

(aka “how to get out of the house before everyone goes stir crazy!”)
Here’s what you need:
1. snacks for you and kiddies. We had bags of cheerios, m&m’s, peanuts and water bottles
2. camera, you might get some special photos!
3. paper bags to collect

Today was starting to look like a pretty crappy day. Last night we’d had a horrible windstorm (that I slept right through) and we had a rainy, dreary day yesterday. So this morning I was puttering, cooking down the last of the summer tomatoes to freeze, herding kiddies, looking at the work I needed to do and felt my mood just going down the tubes. I decided to put the tomatoes in the crock pot to cook for a while, got all of us dressed, made up some snacks and water bottles, gathered my camera and paper bags and announced we were going on a leaf adventure!
I took the kids to one of my favorite places in Boise: Municipal Park with the MK Nature Center nearby.

I even gathered some chestnuts to fill a hurricane for a pretty decoration.

We fed the squirrels some of our peanuts,

took lots of pictures, walked, talked about fall, and just enjoyed this little spot of sweetness.

pretty leaves changing colors

Talking about the water cycle

Big Fish

Semi-blurry photo of the three of us (using a rock as a tripod)

I admit I took almost 200 pictures, in about 2 hours.

But I got some great shots
my girl

my boy

I feel so refreshed, recharged, like things are much more manageable, like I can handle this crazy life.
If you are in need of a bit of refreshing I encourage you to take the time and go for a leaf hunt!

embossing on a picture frame

1. Take a cheap black frame (or one you painted).
2. Choose a stamp that will look good even if the image is a bit smudged. Make sense? I used the Stampin Up Charming set
3. Stamp image with versamark ink in lower corner a few times (or upper corner)
4. Sprinkle silver embossing powder, try not to make a mess
5. Apply heat gun.

Results:

Pretty neat huh? I admit that this has probably been done but I was so thrilled it worked on this very cheapo frame! Guess what my family members are getting for Christmas gifts?
By the way, I took this picture (arm outstretched method sitting on top of the swing set) and played with the color a bit in iphoto.