little lovelies handmade

ABCs of ME-L

Is for Layout.

Once upon a time I was a scrapbooker. All my spare crafty time was spent scr apping our family photos. The good, the bad, the ugly- it all got scrapbooked. About the time our littles were born I got out the habit of scrapbooking every photo we took and out of the habit of taking photos at all, and more in the habit of taking care of the kids. I know my family would beg to differ about the takig pics part since I am rarely without camera, but I really do take less pictures. Till I started blogging that is.

This week the kids have been pulling out my scrapbooks and for the first time they sat down and looked through them all, pointing out family members they knew, and then in their books and the vacation pictures, themselves. Watching my little ones get excited over seeing their parents, aunts and uncles, friends in scrapbooks made me realise that this is a habit I really need to take up again. If not for me definitely for them, which is who I had been telling myself I was scrapping for in the first place.

It's funny how digital cameras which were supposed to make scrapbooking easier for some only made it harder for me. Sure I could delete the crappy pictures, but that only left me with hundreds of good pictures. Cute pictures. Sweet pictures. Of the same thing. When Monkey was a baby I took about 10 pictures of him playing in the laundry basket. One was him playing in the baslet in the living room, one of him playing the basket in his room, one of him playing with the basket with a silly face. You get the idea.

If I was shooting in film I would have taken the one picture and then told the story that he would play in the basket all the time. For some reason digital made it possible for me to take that same picture everytime my kid did it and because each picture was cuter than the last I would not know which one to get rid of and since it didn't cost anything to store I just kept them all.

And so it went for every stage of Monkey's babyhood. I have 10 pictures of everything and couldn't seem to dump any of them. "Yes, honey, we need all 50 of those pictures of Monkey sucking on his socks, it shows that he did it everyday for a month." "No, don't delete those pictures of him with both legs on one leg of his footie pajamas, we need all of them.

Thankfully I did eventually go over it and weed out the repeats, (It was easy once I found a pic of Monkey chewing socks in the laundry basket. That probably allowed me to delete at least 80 pictures) but I still haven't scrapbooked any of it. I want to now that I know how much my kids like it. I probably have more picture weeding to do though.

ABCs fo Me-H

Him, Him, Her and lots of Humor

This is a really old picture of my boys, but it is one of my favorites. There are a series of pictures from this day where Monkey is feeding Aaron and right when the food would get close to his lips, Monkey would yank it away really fast. He thought that teasing his dad was the funniest thing, which of course was.

This pic of peanut is from picking out the xmas tree last year. She was so funny just dangling from her little backpack. Now our kids keep us laughing with their silly little personalities.

I never knew that being a wife and mother would be so much fun and it is largely because of these three goofballs. Actually it is completely because of these three goofballs. I wouldn't be either without them!

ABCs of Me-G (and some crafts, too)

G is for Growing Pains

It has been a big week at our house. On the weekend we got a new bed for Monkey and converted Peanut's crib into a toddler bed. She has done amazingly well. Only fell out a few times, stays in bed when we put her down, but she does have a rotten habit of getting up before 6. No one is enjoying that too much. It really really sucks.

Monkey is completely potty trained at last. At home, away, #1, #2, naps. We got it all down.

Peanut is getting opinionated about her clothes. She now refuses to wear an outfit that she didn't pick out herself. I have tried putting clothes on her anyway because heck if I am going to let a 22 month old tell me what to do. However, when I do that she cries and whines and pulls at her clothes all day long. Some battles just aren't worth it.

We had a fab day thrifting the other day. I went to get blankets and sheets for camping and came away with sheets for the kids and a few blankets. One of which is an A-Team blanket. That's right, I said A-Team. that was my favorite show as a kid. I wanted to marry Murdoch. I know. That is completely mental. And so was he.

I'm working on my first ever quilt, the doll quilt above. My plan is to hand quilt and hand bind it. We'll see how that works out. i have a couple of embroidery projects in the works also which I am super excited about. Hopefully I'll get to a point with them this weekend that I can show it off. 

The ABCs of Me - E

E is for Everyday Food and Eating and Enormous

I remember years ago when I was 16 and I bought my first copy of Martha Stewart's Weddings magazine and perused the pages. I remember liking her style and the attention to detail, but also feeling like it was out of reach. Nevermind that I was 16, no boyfriend in sight, and as far as my little high school brain was concerned I was never going to get married. I mean the design, the style, the life seemed out of reach. It just wasn't real life. Not mine anyway.

When Aaron and I were engaged, his mom asked me for my Christmas list and I put Martha's big ol' Bible of a cookbook on there, which I got. I perused that cookbook cover to cover and learned several things about myself. 1. I like pictures. I need pictures. I screw up food (sewing/crochet/knitting) without pictures 2. I need recipes with less than 10 ingredients and 3. Those 10 ingredients should be found in the grocery store, not online at some little grocer in NYC/Martha's Vineyard/Pakistan. Not to say all the recipes were like that, but I do remember being sidetracked a time or two because I felt like I had to order the saffron from the Turkish market in New York and that no other saffron would do. Bear in mind I was 20 when I got this cookbook. I hadn't been living on my own a whole year yet and really hadn't cooked anything resembling food more than 5 times in my life. That cook book was scary.

I'm a simple kinda gal. I am dazzled by Martha's projects and recipes, but when push comes to shove I need me some easy stuff. Enter Everyday Food. Finally. Recipes I can follow, scratch that, recipes I want to follow and either already have all the ingredients for at home or can easily run out to get at the corner store.

And that is where the eating and the enormous come in. Yum.

ABC's of Me-D

D is for Distracted.

I have two toddlers, distracted is my middle name. In addition to mom induced distraction I have the attention span of a 5 year old. I wish it wasn't true, but it is. That might account for the 6 majors I had in the 5 semesters I took of college. English, Journalism, Interior Design, History, English, History. I guess that is only really 4, but you get the idea. I eventually got too distracted by my husband and babies to finish school. I rarely remember to switch the laundry or turn on the dishwasher because halfway through the job I get some great idea or decide to check my email while the laundry is on the wash cycle.

I think I kind of like being easily distracted, though. Sure, its annoying when we realise there is no clean underwear or Aaron's work shirts are still in the washing machine and he needs to leave in half an hour, but being easily distracted means impromptu storytime in the hallway when we are supposed to be cleaning up, making funnel cakes to go in my Club Little House packs just as I am packing it up to mail, or making handles for our camping roasters. I have no idea what distracted me in these instances, but I'm glad it happened. The results were fun.

The ABC's of ME - C

The first thing that popped into my head was Clutz. Then Children and Crafty. Since we covered Clutz with Accident-prone, and we cover crafty and children every day. I need to come up with something better. More creative. Great.

Cue the Jephardy theme music while I think a bit.

Okay, I got it. Clutter. I don't like it, but it sure likes me. A whole whoppin' lot. You wouldn't know it by our house, but we donate huge vanfuls of stuff to Goodwill every two or three months. I mean the kind of vanfuls where only one of us can go because we laid down every seat and pulled the passenger and drivers side seats waaaay up so as to sqeeze more stuff in. And still we have clutter busting out the seams. I know I need to buckle down and get it under control, but it is the kind of thing where if I am looking at it for too long my head starts to hurt. Plus when I de-clutter I end up making a mess 10 times bigger than the pile I began with, which causes my head to hurt and to have an uncontrollabe need to get out of the house.

Hence why we go to the zoo and Fairytale Town so often. I'm scared of my own stuff. Someday I dream of haveing a clean and lovely house so I can show it off on the Corners of My Home group. This weekend my mother in law and I are clearing out my Office and making it all pretty and nice. It's coming along. we'll be done today and then we'll take my monkey children to the zoo.