Creativity

First, sorry to Sarah...I know it's been like 2 weeks since I last posted...So many posts have been written in my mind, but I just never got around to writing them down, so now they're probably lost forever. Oh well...


Well, since Jadon just went down for a nap, and we finished the latest draft of the script two days ago, and I don't feel like cleaning the house...what else can I do right now? Update my blog! :o)


In spite of what I think is too busy, I have somehow found time to be at least a little creative the last few weeks. So here is a synopsis:


Week 23: My sister-in-law Becky made these awesome flower pins for Christmas, and it inspired me to make a few for my hair. (Oh how I wish I had a baby girl at this point, so I could make some for her. Besides the fact that Jadon has no hair, I'm pretty sure Jim would not support me putting flowers in his hair!) I won't give the tutorial here...if you want to make some for yourself, they are so easy, and there are tons of blog posts out there to show you how to do it better than I could. Basically, though, for this type of flower, you simply need satin ribbon or other fabric that singes but doesn't burn when exposed to flame. (I had to test out quite a few from my scrap fabric bin!) Then you simply cut however many layers of circles you want, expose the edges to a flame (I used a kitchen lighter), sew the layers together, and add beads in the center if you want. I hot glued a couple to hair bands and a couple to hair clips. So easy! I love them!

Week 24: This week was a busy one, but fortunately it was a MOPS week, and this is the craft we made there: a neck warmer. Again, so easy! All you need is a pound of flax seed (apparently Henry's is a great place to find this), a sock, and a towel (or scrap of fabric), and ribbon....Pour the flax seed into the sock, tie it closed, wrap it in the towel, tie the ends with the ribbon, and then put it in the microwave for 60 seconds at a time (careful, apparently flax gets hotter and can burn you!)

Week 25: OK, I have found a new addiction, one that has deprived me of sleep many nights this week after Jadon went to bed. Jim was away at a pastors' retreat , so I figured "why not?"...Each morning, my tired self answered that question, but each night I got sucked in once again...

What is this dangerous past time? Digital Scrapbooking! I am FINALLY starting Jadon's baby book, and I'm having so. much. fun! I am using Photoshop Elements as the basic program, and then spent about $30 of digital papers, alphabets, and elements at Funky Playground Designs (there are so many of these sites...you could spend a fortune if you weren't careful!). Then I watched a few online tutorials and have been learning as I go. It's awesome. So much more flexibility than working with paper. And if you mess up, no problem, you can do it over. When Jadon wakes up, I simply close the computer and there's no mess to clean up. Wow! And apparently, it's pretty easy to print your pages at Shutterfly. I imagine this will be my creative endeavor for the next while. You should try it! :o)

Phun with Photoshop

(Creativity week #24...)

I finally got Photoshop Elements! Yay! I've decided to try my hand at digital scrapbooking for Jadon's baby album, and thanks to Freda's advice, invested in the basic program. Whew! What a learning curve! I spent all day playing around with it (in between taking care of baby, of course), and, thanks to plenty of Help topics and Youtube videos, figured out some basic stuff. Check it out:

My college roommate Annie and her husband Floyd were the first to meet Jadon, as they were visiting us the day we got "the call". We went for a walk with him that night, and I got this cute picture. Unfortunately, their faces didn't show up so well, so I took another one with the flash. Of course, that then turned the background black...Enter Photoshop, where I blended their faces in with the background. I still need some practice, but I'm pretty pleased with it:

Then in the fall, I got this cute picture of Jadon at the pumpkin patch with my MOPS group. But since he wasn't sitting up too well on his own yet, I propped him up with my ugly backback, which just sort of ruins the shot. I got a few other shots, but in all of them, his face showed how much he hated posing...But with Photoshop, I was able to plop cute Jadon right in the middle of the cute pumpkins...COOL!!!

The Day My Heart Stood Still...

This morning, I experienced one of the scariest moments of my life. This morning I lost my son.

I was downstairs baking corn-dog-muffins for a Super Bowl party (by the way, they were great! Check out the recipe at allrecipes.com...And they looked so cute in my football shaped muffin mold. Yay! Let's count this as Creativity Week #22).

Anyway, I heard a few thumps that seemed to be coming from upstairs (where Jadon was still asleep in our bed), but since I didn't hear him crying (which he does when he wakes up), I figured it must just be bombing practice at Camp Pendleton. I finished up the muffins and went upstairs about 15 minutes later.

I walked into my room, and this is what I saw:

No baby in the bed!

Suddenly panicked, I figured the thumping must have been him rolling out of bed...and since he didn't cry...oh no! What if he broke his neck?! My heart froze, and I rushed around to my side of the bed, ready to see a limp body. Instead, this is what I found:

No baby on the ground!

Crap! Where did Jadon go? Now my heart was really frozen! I called out his name and rushed around, throwing off the blankets, etc. I don't remember if I heard something first or if I just decided to look under the bed, but sure enough, I peeked under the bed skirt on Jim's side and found this:

(Note: at this point, rather than rushing to the baby, he smiled at me...so I rushed to get my camera...)

After getting the camera, I took these pictures, then scooped him up and hugged him as tight as I could and said thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus! And then kept hugging him and thanking Jesus...

In trying to figure out what happened, I think he must have woke up, and for once rather than crying he exercised his new rolling over and squirming skills to get to his bottle which was sitting on my nightstand. But it's too big for him to grab so he knocked it off onto the floor, and then reached after it and followed down to the ground. Fortunately all the extra decorative pillows were on the floor so he must have landed on those and then rolled or squirmed under the bed where the bottle was, and somehow through all of this was content to hang out there for like fifteen minutes without crying. I don't get it. But at least he's safe. Whew! Thank you Jesus! I guess I won't be leaving him in my bed alone anymore!

Fun with Flowers

I forget how much I love flowers. Whenever I buy them for myself, it just puts me in a good mood. I think I like them even more when I buy them for myself than when Jim buys them (I know, weird, huh?) (not that I don't like them from Jim, too!). So last week we had friends over several times, and I realized that was a perfect opportunity for me to buy a few cheap bunches from Trader Joe's. Yay! I took like a month and a half off of the Creativity Project over the holidays and being with family and all, but by my accounting, this should have been week 21, and I'm using my flower arranging as my creative endeavor...

I think these Stargazer Lilies are my new favorite flower. They just smell sooooo good, and their fragrance fills the whole room. I love walking downstairs and suddenly catching a whiff. Mmmmmmm! The "vase" that they're in actually was a candle holder, but a couple months ago I got some flowers and thought they would look so pretty in it. Unfortunately it was not waterproof, and over the course of the life of the flowers, it leaked all over. So I bought a tube of bathroom sealant and sealed the snot out of it, and whala! A beautiful vase...

I must say, I like my photography on this one. :o) After a few days of a traditional bouquet, I decided to use my 8-candle candelabra for a more unique display (what is it with me and using candle holders for flowers?). I don't think this will be the last time I do so!

Ah, flowers. So cheerful!...I'm curious: What flower makes you most happy, and why?

Catching up on Creativity

OK, so a few months ago, I talked about this "52 Weeks of Creativity", and while I have been keeping up with actually doing a creative project every week, I most definitely have not been keeping up with posting pictures...So...here is a quick catch-up:

Week 4(a): My mother-in-law found this cute valance at Pottery Barn Kids for $3.50. But since we have two windows in Jadon's room, I had to get creative with how to use it!...

Week 4 (b): Add to it the fabric from a few extra receiving blankets, a clear vinyl shower curtain, and a cheap sewing measuring tape, and whala! A measuring tapestry.

Week 5: After consulting several friends, I decided to forgo the diaper genie and use all those extra grocery bags. But I needed a place to store them in Jadon's room, so...some extra fabric, ribbon, and a few little animals I broke off of a cute little "coat rack" Jim's sister gave me. I drilled holes into them and sewed them on like buttons.

Week 6: (Spoiler alert!) We made this beaded serving spoon in MOPS. Cute and easy...So, if you're related to me, you just might find something like this in your Christmas stocking...

Wek 7: A different sort of creativity...Jim and I spent 2 days with our director from To Save a Life doing some major work on our new script. Our dining room was filled with posters like these diagramming characters and their motivations, plot, conflict, etc...It felt like being in my own English class--but way more intense!

Week 8 (a): This was Jim's when he was a kid. His aunt did an amazing job embroidering it. However, it just didn't work in Jadon's room...

Week 8 (b): So I pulled out the power tools and some creative "fudging", and got the following result:

Week 9: Jadon's cousin Kylie turned 1, and since I "learned" how to make balloon animals in Haiti this summer, I volunteered to be a "balloonist"...Then I realized, I should probably practice. So I spent an afternoon watching online tutorials, and came away with mad skills! I can do a butterfly (usually), a flower, a dog/giraffe/other animal with 4 legs, a fishing pole with a fish, a sword, and...my piece d' resistance: (I learned it under pressure at a little boy's insistence!) a radio. Yes, that's right, a radio. :o)

Week 10: Jadon has a ton of extra receiving blankets, so I sewed 2 together, and then embroidered and sewed on this little monogram, so his blanket will be labeled when he goes into the nursery at church.

Week 11: I really liked how the monogram turned out, so I made another one for (and added some exterior pockets to) his diaper bag.

Week 12 (a): I've been wanting one of those waterproof outdoor blankets, but because they're a little expensive, I thought, why not try to make one myself? I had already bought this green flannel throw for $2.50 on clearance after Christmas last year, and then found the leafy shower curtain at Target for $10. Unfortunately, they have different elasticity, and I didn't take my time to keep the green blanket from overstretching...so it ended up a little funky. But I still like it. And of course, why not add another monogram, while I'm at it ;o)

Week 13: Decorating for Christmas is a whole week of creative fun!

Week 14: I've been wanting to do this project for a few years, and finally got around to it! YAY! Every year for Christmas, I use clothespins to hang our Christmas cards from ribbons, and I wanted to embellish them. I found these cute little mini ornaments at Walmart for $2 for 6. I love them!

Week 15: This week, we hosted our annual youth volunteer Christmas party. Feeding 40+ people and figuring out how to cram them all into our house definitely took some creativity!

Sentimentality

My mom is an amazing mother! She grew up without one, but somehow figured out how to be everything she missed out on and more. While my sister and I were growing up, she put everything in her life on hold, and we became her life. She loved (and still loves) us more than anything except God. I have such good memories from my childhood. She played with us, did craft projects with us, allowed us to destroy the house in the name of setting up forts or orphanages or Barbie mansions or racetracks or...She took us to the library and then out to lunch every week. She spent hours cleaning up horse poop (and conquering her fear of horses) so that we could have free riding lessons. And she cuddled with us...

One of our favorite spots to sit in her lap and cuddle was this rocking chair:

So when she told me this summer that she was finally going to get rid of it, I was shocked. And then, when we got Jadon, I devised a rescue plan. I talked my dad into hauling it all the way down here, and then I got to work on giving it a face lift of sorts. (Not that 70's gold isn't my favorite color, but y'know...)

This was my first serious slipcovering project, and so I first decided to create a pattern out of scrap packing paper:

Then I got to sewing, even making my own piping for the edges. I discovered that my two favorite new tools are my zipper foot for my sewing machine (it's so much easier to use than I thought!!!) and my $2 seam ripper from Walmart (oh how many times I used that life saver!!!).

And here is the final product:
It may not win any design prizes, but I'm happy with it.
And I hope Jadon gets as many happy memories here as I did...and that I can come close to being as good of a mom as mine is!

Creativity, to-do lists, and moving out...

Well, having a baby around sure changes my normal routines and habits! (duh)

I'm lucky if I even think of this blog these days...

Oh well...

I've had a pretty productive week, all things considered: hung out with some girls from the youth group, started MOPS, finally scrubbed out my sink, had people over for dinner twice, finally framed some pictures of Jadon, finished thank you notes (finally!), went running [only]twice, bought diapers at Costco, backed up my computer hard drive, and...my elements of creativity for the week...duh, duh, duh...I FINALLY finished my Haiti album this morning, thanks to Costco.com and a long nap by the J-ster. AND I made these really cute ice cream balls for dessert for both dinners we hosted:

When we bought our house 8 years ago, they gave us a $5,000 carpeting allowance because the carpet was so nasty. Being struggling newlyweds, we just appreciated that the mortgage was $5,ooo less and forgot about the carpet. But now 8 years later, we figured it was finally time, especially before Jadon starts crawling around...sooooo, we get our new carpet installed on Monday! YAY!!! Which means that this weekend consists of essentially packing up the entire upstairs, and next week will consist of re-setting everything up, hopefully in an even more orderly, clean manner (we'll see how that goes!). And since we'll finally be setting up Jadon's crib, that means (sniff, sniff) that we're going to be moving him to sleeping in his own room. I know he'll be fine, but I'm a little sad about the distance...

52 Weeks of Creative WEEK 1

Holiday weekends always throw me off a bit. So I'm a day late on my submission, but who's counting. I started a few "creative" projects this week, but none are yet picture worthy, so here's the least creative but most finished endeavor:

We had some new neighbors move in down the street, so I thought a giant cookie might welcome them into the neighborhood properly. And we had three students from our youth group head away to college, and I thought a giant cookie waiting in their mailboxes may be fun for them. Of course 2 of them only went down to Point Loma, and have been back every weekend, so it's not exactly like they could be homesick yet. The other one went to Biola (woo woo!). Notice the appropriately colored writing on the cookies. Oh yeah, I'm good! :o)

Let's see what I can finish this coming week! By the way, if any of you want to exercise your creative muscle at all, join our Flickr group and show off what you do!

52 Weeks of Creativity!

One of my fellow teacher friends turned stay-at-home-mommy due to layoffs has issued a challenge: once a week, do something creative (whether sewing, photography, baking, scrapbooking, building something, crafts with the kids, etc...), take a picture, and post it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to hang, but it sounds like a fun challenge! Anybody want to come with me?
She's started a Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/52weeksofcreative/
Join with us!