catch a monarch

The latest creative outlet at the job.

Get it?  Catch a monarch?  They look like butterflies (sort of - come on…  I have very limited resources, okay!) but they are all books about kings and queens and stuff.  So get it now?  Monarchs?  The little play on words?

I'm about as clever as they come.

(I can hear you laughing at me from here)

apple bottom jeans

My little project today:

 What I really want to do is make a area rug out of these jean labels.  I think it would look very cool.  It would be even more cool if they were all real leather and I had about six times more of them.  My collection so far only makes a small door mat.  Maybe in time.  Or maybe I could be satisfied with what I have and just make it into a piece of artwork to hang on the wall.  I'm sure my family will think I am loony because of it but I am quite smitten with the whole thing.  Even just the picture of them would be great on the wall.  I'm kind of really super in love with the bottom picture.

 One of my bigger questions is whether I keep the ones that aren't leather or pleather at all.  Still not sure about that.  But I am excited about the possibilities. 

Knowing myself, I should probably just use what I have right now, frame it and stick it up on the wall or they will just sit there for years until I maybe acquire enough for my desired 4 x 6 foot area rug, at which time I may be entirely sick of the idea.

But if you are getting rid of some jeans and they have a leather patch, hang on to it for me, would you?

christmasy stuff

Christmas is, among many things, the season of glitter at our house.  This year was no exception although it was a mild one compared to most.

One of the best ideas I had this year was to put out a basket of nuts, some little pails and nutcrackers.  Well, at least I thought it was a great idea.  There were several times of just sitting around with one or two of the kids or with Eric, cracking and eating nuts together, chatting and just hanging out.  Plus it was a great healthy filler.  It just kind of made a good place to gather and be.

Later I got smart and put some cheery green and white polka-dot fabric at the bottom of the basket to stop the mess of little bits of nuts and shell making its was out of the basket.  The little pails were to put in the shells to keep the place a little neater - it worked well.

Cade decided that not only were the nuts good to eat but the whole "display" could turn into a nice structure to build a cardboard ramp on for his hot wheels cars that he got from his secret santa.

It is hard to see from this picture, but one day before Christmas it was snowing beautifully - my favorite - when there are big flakes that fall slowly down.  I had Christmas music on and I was setting up a little hot cocoa and tea bar/station.  It felt like the perfect, picturesque Christmasy day.  So peaceful, beautiful and fan.  Top that off with a little Andy Stanley sermon and felt I was set for the season.

crafting for christmas

gifts and ornaments

Back in the day, I put effort into wrapping presents.  And I loved doing it.  Then I went through a pretty long phase of just getting by.  And I didn't love it..... but it was necessary.  With a gaggle of young kids and a very busy life, it just wasn't done.  But now I was back at it.  And I love doing it.

It also helped a great deal that we really cut back on Christmas activities this year.  It was so good.  So much less stress.  So much more enjoyment.  And wrapping once again became my happy place and relaxation.  I wish I could turn it into a money making venture.

I've always wanted to do the simple, one wrapping paper for every gift, thing.  Costco helped out here by having a crazy good price for a huge roll of paper.  It was very large and will probably still last two more Christmases.  Because of the one I picked, it looked like a huge candy cane/barber pole/north pole marker.  It made me happy.  And me writing a blog post about how I wrapped gifts is a little ridiculous.  But since I had a ball with it, I'm keeping the memory alive.

I'm not sure the kids were thrilled about all-the-same-paper, but they got into it too.  Somewhat.

Lucy was singing, ad nauseam, "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas", this season, so she received one.  A gold one:

In fall I found this box of very old paper dolls at a garage sale.  I could not leave them there.  Especially not for 25 cents!  So one of them became part of the wrapping for my mom.  She's so purty!

This year's ornaments for the kids were all based on things that they said in the past year and that we now relentlessly quote and mock.  Relentlessly.  It is a love language.  I feel like I have written about this already, so if I have, just feel free and move on....

First up: Maddy.  First of all, Maddy likes make-up, so I bought a eye-shadow-compact ornament.  She also wanted to note that she is American, now living in Canada (she is Canadian too but has difficulty admitting that.  Shameful), so we bought an American flag ornament.  But most importantly, I bought her a lip gloss ornament (okay, so it really looks more like lipstick, but work with me here).  

Back in Ecuador, when I was going through some of our stuff to pack/purge, I left a new lipgloss on my sewing table.  Maddy encountered it and said in her most dumb-California-90210-blond way (and she wasn't saying it intentionally like this....)  "Oh!  Lipgloss!".  It has stuck and become our mantra anytime there is a dumb-blonde type moment.

As a side note, I also bought each of the kids a homemade-thrift store ornament.  As in someone made them and then brought them to the thrift store.... so they are homemade by someone else and also thrifted.  Here are Maddy and Mia's.  Lucy's is a yarn angel and I just can't even remember what Cade's is.  They represent our new life and home - pretty much everything we have right now for the house is from a garage sale, thrift store, hand-me-down from family, or homemade (and, just to be clear, save the sofa.... for which I am still very grateful for....I like it that way).

Lucy's ornaments are an owl - just because she likes owls, and a chicken.  I hoped to find a roasted chicken, but that proved to be a little difficult.  So I just stuck with a chicken.  It represents her "rosted cicken", which was previously blogged about.

And Cade's?  Well, I'm afraid it is also a chicken, but not a very good one.  Why?  Well, you can read about that here.

I still have to make Mia's.  I couldn't find anything that fit the bill.  It needs to be large eyes, that look like they might be burning and sore.

A few months ago she was talking about their trip home from missionary training in Elgin, IL.  I flew home while Eric drove back to CA with the kids.  They stopped at the Great Salt Lake.  Mia wasn't much of a fan and told how the water burned your eyes.  When she said it, she bugged out her eyes in a hilarious way and well, the rest is history.  We now have many occurrences of things that "burn your eyes"!

And finally, some people have an Elf on the Shelf.  We have a Police Guy in the Tree.  Although he was recently ruthlessly destroyed by Lucy at Eric's prompting.  So we only had one year with Police Guy in the Tree.  Sad.  I bought him in order to steal his gun.  I needed his gun to complete a gift for Mia's teacher.  More on that another day.