...and I blog.

40 Bags in 40 Days

2011-03-09T12:22:00.007-05:00

The Christian season of Lent begins today, on Ash Wednesday. While we Presbyterians don't focus heavily on giving up things for Lent, this challenge really spoke to me. In short, the challenge is to purge your home of 40 bags (size of your choosing) of whatever-you-need-to-get-rid-of during Lent. In recent years Christians have often been encouraged to add something spiritually beneficial to their lives rather than making a token sacrifice that really doesn't have much to do with our faith lives. My giving up french fries a couple of years ago (40 days of torture) probably benefited my arteries, but didn't do much in the way of bringing me closer to the savior.

My 2011 word of the year, a la Ali Edwards, is simplify. Less stuff in my life means more space and time for the people and the Lord that I love. Our house is small and we're not packrats (except for Annamarie, bless her heart), so forty bags sounds like a lot. But I'd bet I can get a quarter of that from our craft/computer room, and I'll enjoy this room a lot more when it's less cluttered.

My first bag is actually a box. I've been reorganizing my scrapbook supplies and some purging is overdue. Anyone want this box?

I'm excited about this challenge, and I'm going to keep track of my progress, including how I dispose of the stuff. I am a big fan of Freecycle, which keeps useful items out of the landfill and ideally gets things to people who really want or need them, rather than into the giant pile of stuff at the Salvation Army store. (I do take donations there as well, but usually only if I want it gone immediately.) By Easter, I hope to be 40 bags lighter in my home and my soul.

So who wants to join me?

Let's just pretend like I've been here all along, shall we?

2010-11-07T15:33:00.005-05:00

I've had this cool Crafter's Workshop template for a while, but no photos to go with the peace sign theme. When Annamarie started flashing a peace sign in every picture (What's up with that? Judging from the pics I see on Facebook, it's a middle school girl epidemic.) I knew I had my photos. I used about six colors of Glimmer Mist with the template and then decided it didn't "pop" quite as much as I wanted, so I stitched (badly) around the shape in black. I love the look and I also love the new Maya Road bingo pieces-- so fun! Here's another layout using a Crafter's Warehouse template: The Proposal

A Stash Busting Weekend

2010-04-03T12:22:00.009-04:00

Recently I've done a lot more gallery surfing and shopping than actual scrapping, but I'm on a roll this weekend. Shimelle's class has me in "use it or lose it" mode, and I feel a big purge coming on.

I am a big fan of Doodlebug Design, and notoriously unable to part with any of their products, no matter how old. See the tokens on the layout below? 2003. And that's one of my last remaining Heidi Swapp bling circles. I love them and they are very hard to find these days. The rub-ons are Making Memories, also from 2003, and they are still the best quality rub-ons around...they go on like buttah.

I am a sucker for the paper pads Michaels sells, especially the glitter and spot-embossed ones, but I wish they were about a third of the size. Who needs 54 sheets of paper from the same line? The background on the layout below is from one of those pads, and I never thought I'd use it, but I kind of like it here.

Annamarie and I are off to get haircuts and have some lunch, and the boys are shopping for new sneakers. Thomas has clearly hit that growth spurt we've all been waiting for. It's nice to see him actually eating for a change but he is, in true teenage boy fashion, eating us out of house and home.

Wishing everyone a blessed Easter. He is risen!

A Little Lift

2010-03-20T11:36:00.005-04:00

I ran across an adorable layout on Two Peas, and I knew it would be perfect for a rare photo of my friend Sandy and me. (Both of us would much rather be behind the camera than in front of it.) Lifting this layout would also allow me to play with the Maya Road mini banners that are my single favorite thing out of all the winter CHA releases.

Now I'm off to run some errands with my girl. We have shoes to return and fabric to buy and perhaps coffee to sip.

2010-03-13T01:00:00.003-05:00

I have really been on a Glimmer Mist binge recently, and I received some extra inspiration to play with it when the Scrapdoodles design team got to try out some new templates from The Crafter's Workshop. I had heard people raving about the Marshmallow Limited Edition Glimmer Mist, so of course I had to get my hands on some. It adds a beautiful sparkle and shine to white cardstock, but it really wowed me when I used it on black.

I took this detail photo to try and show how sparkly it makes the page...perfect for the photos of this romantic proposal while ice skating after dark in the snow!

I don't actually know the couple, but Ron and I were watching the kids skate at National Harbor the day of the huge December blizzard (don't know why I never blogged about our being snowbound in Maryland for three days). All of a sudden this guy knelt down in front of his girlfriend and I started squealing to Ron, "He's going to propose!" Naturally I had been snapping photos of Thomas and Annamarie, so I kept shooting. Because of the snow and extremely low light, the picture quality is pretty bad, but I love the dreamy silhouette look. We congratulated them and got their email address, and they were planning to use the photos on their save-the-date cards. What does it say about me that I scrapped photos of strangers before the ones of my own children skating?

Attacking the stash

2010-03-11T02:15:00.004-05:00

After hearing many rave reviews, I finally signed up for one of Shimelle Laine's online classes. Let's just say the topic spoke to me. I am HIGHLY qualified for this particular class, whose goal is to get us to actually use the stash of supplies we've been hoarding. The first "assignment" was to think and journal about why we purchased those supplies and why we haven't used them yet. The simple answer, for me, is that it's often much easier to find inspiration to shop than to sit down and create. I have been realizing lately that the actual scrapping part was simpler in the days when all of my supplies fit neatly into my Crop-In-Style XXL bag. Don't get me wrong, though--I love my stuff.

In the past couple of years I have become better about not buying every embellishment in a line, so the bulk of my embellishment stash is several years old. Compared to paper and cardstock, these little items don't take up a huge amount of space, so I am less ruthless about purging them. There are an awful lot of them, though... this drawer alone contains three layers of these storage boxes.

And then there are a few jars.

And a couple of Clip-It-Ups. And if I must be perfectly honest, that chest over there on the left is full too.

I can't wait to get started!

2010-03-06T19:28:00.004-05:00

Most days I consider it a major accomplishment when I get myself showered, dressed, and fed all in the same 24 hour period, and then there are days like today. Annamarie and I went to breakfast with a friend, and then to the supermarket, where we proceeded to spend the equivalent of Haiti's gross national product. Not only had the cupboard been bare for quite a few days, Ron and I are responsible for feeding dinner to our church's youth group tomorrow night. Almost exactly a year ago we invited some friends over for dinner, and the day before they were to arrive I realized that I did not own enough glasses or silverware to serve everyone. At 14 people, that was the largest group I had ever cooked for. I don't know what possessed me to agree to cook dinner for 50 ravenous teenagers, but back in September when I signed up, March 7 seemed awfully far in the future. We lucked out though because the high school youth are on a retreat this weekend and we only have to feed about 20 middle schoolers.

Anyway, I have prepared an unimaginable quantity of salad which, if my own children are any indication, none of them will touch. I made Pioneer Woman's Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever, and only had to start over once when I didn't follow directions. I won't detail all of the preparations, but I have to say this non-cook is very proud to be almost ready to serve spaghetti (with meat and vegetarian sauces), garlic bread, salad and chocolate cake to a horde of young people who would probably have preferred Domino's pizza.

Much more within my comfort zone, I also whipped up this card to go with a gift for a new baby who is soon to join our family (extended family --- my brother's stepson's girlfriend, seriously). I've only had the wrapped gift sitting on my desk for about two months. I really really hate going to the post office, but the baby isn't due for another couple of weeks. Nothing like waiting until the last minute.

2010-03-05T00:16:00.003-05:00

I wanted to share a couple of layouts that I did this week for Scrapdoodles, where I have the honor of being the coordinator for the store's very talented design team. If you are within driving distance of Fredericksburg VA, do not miss Scrapdoodles. In a world where we are losing so many of our precious scrapbook stores to the sagging economy, Scrapdoodles survives and thrives because of its sheer awesomeness. It is packed to the rafters with amazing product, and the staff there is knowledgeable and always helpful.

2010-02-07T23:29:00.002-05:00

A little birdy brought me some Crate Paper goodies from CHA (not a new line, but one I didn't own), and I used it to document our low-key New Year's Eve celebration. It's a shame that amidst all these snow days I have only been able to crank out one layout. Not only do I have both kids home all day every day, my accounting class is kicking my butt. It just reminds me how much going back to work is going to cut into my leisure time.

Someone's enjoying it

2010-01-30T17:04:00.004-05:00

My kids are holed up in the house, each snuggled up to a computer or TV, while Ruby is outside having a ball with her BFF Bartlett. (I love the snack breaks.) And yes, I am filming this through the window because it is 18 ding dang degrees out there and I do not have a fur coat.

You have got to be kidding me

2010-01-30T12:16:00.003-05:00

Today

2010-01-26T01:23:00.003-05:00

So many little pieces of my day in this photo... I'm working on making valentine cards and I was planning on posting some on etsy for sale, but it's probably too close to Valentine's Day at this point. Maybe they'll be ready for next year. My kids feel like they're too old for homemade cards. There's also a tiny peek at a Magistical Memories chipboard album I'm playing with. I keep re-painting/misting/glittering it trying to get just the color combination I have in mind. The chipboard will likely be an inch thick by the time I get it just right.

A highlight of my day (which started off with kids home from school because of widespread flash flooding in our area) was receiving a letter from Victor, the child I sponsor through Compassion. So exciting to get new photos of him and his whole family posing with the clothes and food bought with our Christmas gift. I love this kid from Togo who I've never met but who always draws fish or soccer balls or handbags on his letters to me.

On top is part of the homework I spent 4 hours on today. I'm taking an accounting class at the community college and, silly me-- I thought it would be a piece of cake because I took several accounting classes back in college. After all, that was only 25 years ago. That can't be true, can it? Anyway, this class is kicking my butt in the first week! Tons of details for my feeble old brain to remember.

I also took Annamarie to ice skating lessons, which she started a few weeks ago (she's in the pink coat). It was a beautiful day after the torrential rain stopped, and after skating we stopped into a gifty little shop on the Downtown Mall. Annamarie got a Pandora-style charm bracelet for Christmas and this shop carries Pandora charms, so we went in to take a look. To be honest, we don't shop down there on the Mall very often because the people working in the shops can be pretty snooty, especially with children. The man working in this store could not have been any nicer, and spent a long time patiently showing Annamarie the charms, even knowing that she was unlikely to buy any (they're pricey!). When it's time for her birthday, though, I will be back at that store because that man took a few extra minutes to be nice to me and my children. Isn't it a sad state of affairs that good customer service is something out of the ordinary enough to inspire a blog post?

And also, layouts!

2010-01-18T00:54:00.001-05:00

I've had a backlog of layouts to scan since my scanner decided it wasn't compatible with Windows 7. Their differences were apparently irreconcilable and I had to get a new scanner, which is much faster and also has clean, adhesive- and glitter-free glass.

I love, love the Life Stories line from My Mind's Eye.

And also Pink Paislee's Amber Road collection.

Using the last of this wonderful Chatterbox line from about two years ago. 2010's resolutions include using more stuff and buying less. Blah, it sounded more fun in my head.

Playing catch-up

2010-01-17T21:36:00.004-05:00

I'm not going to even mention my lack of blogging. Just pretend like I've been here every day, providing you with interesting, inspiring, and funny content, and let's move on. Our holiday season was derailed a bit by the Blizzard of '09 and by our being trapped in a Maryland hotel for three nights. I'm blaming those events for the fact that I didn't get my cards mailed until December 26, and also for our totally forgetting that we had purchased (not cheap) tickets to see the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes show in Richmond. The show was on December 23rd, and I was so excited about it, having heard from friends that it is an amazing show. On the 27th, I was sitting at my mom's house and suddenly realized that we had forgotten to go. I am additionally going to blame that one on my obviously perimenopausal state, which--who knew?--apparently makes one dumb as a box of rocks.

I didn't do a whole lot of homemade gifts this year, but I did make this house on a gift box, which was heavily inspired by Melissa Phillips. Mine is much simpler than hers, but I love it and the recipient seems to as well, or else she is just very kind and a good actress.

Annamarie and I made several kinds of sweet and spicy nuts for teacher gifts, during which project I burned $30 worth of almonds to a crisp (see aforementioned box of rocks). We made candied pecans, chipotle honey peanuts, Mexi-cashews, and cajun spice pecans, and now my mouth is watering.

Every year I intend to send handmade Christmas cards, and even though they were late getting in the mail, I actually did it this year! These cards are so sparkly and glittery in real life.

Last but not least, I promised to post a better photo of the banner and window frame I made. I haven't decided whether I am going to remove the banner and photos and redecorate the window, or whether I'll put it away as is for next Christmas.

Nester's Tour of Homes

2009-12-13T16:11:00.005-05:00

Hey, y'all! I thought I was getting a head start over here so I'd be all ready for Nester's Christmas Tour of Homes, but that tricky Nester started a day early. No telling whether I'll get any visitors being so far down the list, but if you made it this far, welcome and rest your tired touring feet...uh, fingers.

Somehow we ended up with a cute little itty bitty tree this year, which is a result of either a) waiting until all the 7-8 foot trees are gone from the lot, b) letting people under 5 feet tall select the family tree, or c) both. Every time I walk past the living room I giggle ruefully, because it is such a wee little thing. It smells divine, though, and that's the most important thing to me.

This paper angel has topped our tree for 16 years, since my mom gave it to us the year we got married. Her halo is a little crooked, but heck, so is mine.

This is one of several nativity sets that grace our living room. My mom bought it for about five bucks when the kids were small, and it has remained intact.

Here's another one that sits on the coffee table. It was a gift from one of my Sunday School students years ago.

This is the "main" nativity set, from Jim Shore's Heartwood Creek collection, which my hubby gave me a couple of years ago. I cannot tell a lie: This photo was taken last year, but it looks just the same this year minus the garland in the background.

Our fireplace is gas and has no mantel, so for years we have hung our stockings from pushpins stuck into wood shims wedged under the TV. We are very fancy over here. This year I finally stuck some of those 3M Command hooks on the fireplace and the kids wanted to know where our "regular hangers" were. You get used to a certain standard of living and it's hard to let it go.

Here's my Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen, stuffed full of Christmasy stuff. It's maybe a little busy, but it makes me happy when I eat my cereal.

This is the living room area that's just inside the front door. It's mostly the same as last year, except for the ladder which I picked up recently at a cute antique store and the relocated cookie cutter garland which is no longer looking over Bethlehem.

We are trying something new this year called "Not Spending More Money Than We Have," which has required me to not buy any new decorations. I did, however, buy $4.99 worth of mixed evergreens when we bought our tree, and I split them between a wooden caddy on the Hoosier and the two arrangements shown below. I like to think that Nester would be proud of my thriftiness and shopping my house for the other stuff.

And finally, I bought this window really cheap at the same antique store where I got the ladder, added a banner I made using scrapbook supplies, and several years of Christmas photos. This will hang on the wall as soon as I can track down some picture hanging wire. I'll take a better photo of it then too.

Merry Christmas, and thanks for stopping by!! I'm off to visit the other homes on the tour.

The agony of defeat

2009-09-07T17:52:00.004-04:00

Thanks so much to all of you who voted for my layout in the Queen of Paradise contest. I didn't win, and didn't even make the top 4, but I was inspired to create several pages that I really like so it's all good. Thanks to the design team at Croppin' Paradise for hosting a really fun contest. I posted my first two challenge layouts earlier, so here are my submissions from rounds 3, 4, and 5.

Challenge 3: Create a page about the person you'd want to be with if you were stranded on a desert island.

Challenge 4: Scrap your favorite book.

Challenge 5: Use only products more than six months old.

Help a sister out

2009-08-16T22:41:00.003-04:00

I'm visiting my mom and dad for a few days, so this will be a short post. Don't bother going to my house to rob it, because a) there is absolutely nothing worth your trouble and b) my husband and incredibly vicious dog are still home.

Anyway, voting is now open for the round two challenge at Croppin Paradise. If you are so inclined, go vote for your favorite card. http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1882332/ You don't have to register or anything. Thanks, and if you are lucky I will soon return with a video of my 2 year old nephew singing "Boom Boom Pow."

Oh, and the voting is only open for 24 hours.

Queen of Paradise Update

2009-08-11T22:54:00.003-04:00

Tonight over at Croppin Paradise they announced the immunity winners from round two, and I didn't get immunity this time. Boo hoo, boo hoo. Tomorrow we'll find out what the next challenge will be, and those entries will be posted for voting on Sunday.

For the round two challenge, we were shown a photo of a tropical beach scene and told to create a layout using at least two colors from the photo. I made these two and chose (with a little help from some friends) to submit the first one.

We will not be expecting an Oscar*

2009-08-06T12:56:00.008-04:00

Yesterday Thomas "graduated" from Oakland, the small private school he has attended for the past two years. When I posted photos from the ceremony on my Facebook page, a couple of people commented that they couldn't believe it had been two years already, and we certainly share that feeling. It was no small decision to make the substantial financial commitment to give Thomas this opportunity, but we believe it is an investment that will pay off big in his future. The Oakland School's literature refers often to "the Oakland Way," and whatever that "way" is, it works. Thomas said yesterday that Oakland feels like a big family because students of varied ages all have the chance to really get to know one another, their teachers, and the staff. My bright but distractable and disorganized son is so much more confident and responsible than when he began at Oakland, and he has been loaded up with skills that should (fingers crossed) help him continue his success when he returns to public school in three weeks. He will start eighth grade working well above grade level.

Each graduating student chooses a teacher to deliver a brief speech about them at the ceremony, and Thomas chose his main reading teacher, Jamie. This video is pretty awful, both because of where we were seated and the unspeakably dreadful lighting in the gym. (If we had any more money, I swear I'd give a donation earmarked for improving the gym lighting in the interest of saving the photographic sanity of future parents.) The audio is excellent, though.

Before I show you a few more photos, I want you to know how bad it really was. This first one is straight out of the camera, and this was the BEST of the white balance options. (I know that only my few photography ~~geek~~ buff friends will care about this.)

So that should make my edited shots look pretty good by comparison. Here is Thomas listening to speeches.

Receiving his certificate.

Thomas and Oakland director Carol Williams.

With his favorite teacher, Jamie. (Is that my little boy or a junior senator?)

*The post title refers to the bad video, but it also reminds me that in the annual dorm awards, Thomas was voted "Most Likely to Be a Movie Star." Help me, Rhonda.

I have the immunity idol!

2009-08-04T23:05:00.004-04:00

So I entered the Queen of Paradise contest at Croppin Paradise. It's a Survivor-style contest where everyone participates in a challenge, and then the "locals" choose four participants to receive immunity for that round. Those who aren't granted immunity participate in a mini-challenge, and their projects are voted on by the general public, and the lowest vote-getters are eliminated.

The first round's challenge was to create a layout about your favorite restaurant, and the round winners were announced tonight. I was lucky enough to be one of the four who received immunity, so I am safe until the next round. Can I get a "woohoo"?

I am very nervous about what will happen if I don't get immunity and have to move on to a voting round, because a) I don't have tons of online friends who will vote, and b) I am reluctant to browbeat those I do have. But for now, I am thrilled that my torch was not snuffed out.

We went to Cheeseburger in Paradise Saturday night so that I could take photos for the layout, and my coaster had a picture of a drink called a Pink Flamingo Rita, with a pink plastic flamingo pick in it. Thinking that the pick would be a cute page accent, I said to the waiter on one of his visits, "Could I possibly have one of those pink flamingos?" As soon as he left, it occurred to me that he was, of course, going to bring me the drink. Never let it be said that I have not sacrificed for my craft.

School Days Scrapping

2009-08-04T13:16:00.006-04:00

Last week I picked up a cute school-themed paper pad by My Mind's Eye, and it's got me in school-scrapping mode. I am really ready for school to start, not because my kids are bored and driving me crazy, but because I am bored and ready to get back into a routine. Both children have been at camp all day for weeks, and I miss them. I am at loose ends with nothing to do, and feeling a bit useless. I realize that this is a problem many moms would love to have, but I am ready for fall and back-to-school and church activities and an upcoming trip to Chicago with some wonderful friends.

These papers have wonderful texture, spot embossing, and glitter, which makes even these very simple pages look a little bit fancier, and somehow sparkly school buses are perfect for Annamarie.

Year of the Rabbit

2009-07-31T00:54:00.000-04:00

We live in a suburban neighborhood that is surrounded by wooded areas, so we are no strangers to wildlife. We have deer in our front and back yards fairly frequently, and Miss Ruby will just stand and watch them, wagging her tail humbly, as if to say, "I recognize that you are much bigger than I and have sharp hooves." She doesn't bark at the deer.

The rabbits are another matter entirely. We have only rarely seen bunnies around here until this year, and they have been in our front yard almost daily this summer, feasting on the fine crop of tender clover we have cultivated in lieu of actual grass. (I was not hiding behind the bushes...I took this photo through the kitchen window. Maybe the shrubs need a little trimming? If you click on the photo you can see the cute little bunny.)

For some reason, the rabbits make Ruby totally lose her mind. Is it a breed thing (from one of the many unknown breeds in her questionable heritage)? Is it their sheer cheekiness as they sit there calmly chewing while she barks and whines and tries to claw her way through the kitchen window?

All I know for sure is that it is exhausting work barking at those bunnies.

Simple Vacation Album

2009-07-30T16:25:00.001-04:00

I have been working on an album for the big American Southwest vacation we took last year. Because we took so many photos, a couple thousand at least, I am using a very simple style with a lot of photos per page. For the title page, I printed out a map of our route that Ron created using Microsoft's Streets & Trips software. (Have I ever mentioned how that man loves to plan a trip? He is a trip-planning fool.)

Here are the first few pages, created mostly with cardstock, scraps, and the Making Memories Slice and the Travel cartridge. I plan to add at least a little embellishment to the plainest pages, but right now I am all about getting the photos and journaling (done by Mr. Trip Planner on the laptop as we traveled!) down on the page.

2009-07-30T00:14:00.006-04:00

So, is anyone else watching "More to Love" and willing to admit it? Those poor women...they were all lovely women but it was really painful to watch, and I'm just glad I'm already married so I won't have to resort to joining them next season. One poor girl felt compelled to tell the guy right off the bat that she'd never been on a date, one jumped into the pool in her evening gown much to everyone else's discomfort, and one calmed her nervousness with wayyyy too many free beverages. I was a bit disappointed to see that the guy apparently sent home the five largest girls. Way to make it not about the weight, dude.

In other TV related news, next week is the season finale of So You Think You Can Dance, and I hate this part. The final six dancers are all so talented that I can't stand to think of any of them being eliminated. That said, someone clearly has to go home and I voted (multiple times) for everyone except Evan and Kayla. I can't express how much I love this show and how much I wish I could dance like they do, but if I could I would obviously have to overcome some boundary issues. By the end of the season, those dancers have been in very close proximity to the sweaty crotches of all of the other dancers. (Is "sweaty crotches" a search term that is going to get me a lot of weird visitors?)

Um, let's see, what else? Yesterday we had the sunniest rainstorm I have ever seen. The sky was blue with almost no clouds, yet it was raining.

I took that photo on the way to pick Annamarie up from "Colt Camp," where she gets to ride horses and swim and apparently, be hosed down with dirt on a daily basis. She has never been one of those kids who likes to get dirty--it is no secret that she is a girly girl--but she comes home absolutely filthy every day. In the photo below, she is wearing a regular t-shirt, but it has taken me eight days of camp to convince her that anything with rhinestones and/or sequins is overkill for camp. This was on the way home, and that is her stuffed horse ~~Misty~~ ~~Stacey~~ ~~Beer~~ whatever she's calling the poor floppy, broken-necked thing this week.

And with scintillating news like that to report, you'll surely wonder why I am not posting every day.

I will never sleep tonight

2009-07-17T18:12:00.005-04:00

HI! HOW ARE YOU? I'M GOOD, REALLY GOOD. I was feeling pretty draggy before I went to pick Thomas up from summer camp for the weekend, and I thought a cup of hot cranberry tea might perk me up a little, and now I AM PERKY. "Bouncing off the walls" might not be an overstatement. We're getting ready to head out to dinner with a friend, but I thought I'd use some of this excess energy to post a couple of layouts. Maybe after we get home I'll have some more tea and whip out 15 or 16 pages before I crash.

Many times I have considered signing up for a kit club but haven't actually bitten the bullet until Margie Romney-Aslett and her daughters announced the opening of The Girls' Loft. I love Margie's style and knew that I'd love the things she threw together, and I was not disappointed when I received my first package this week. Look at all of this pretty pink-and-greenness.

Both of the pages below were done with the Girls' Loft kit. The first one is an older photo that I have scrapped before, but it's one of my favorites.

Yes, I am scrapping

2009-07-13T00:24:00.004-04:00

The embellishments on this last one might look a little random, but all of them were part of the kits used in classes on the Ultimate Scrapbook Cruise. So there's a sticker from Heidi Swapp, a rub-on from Karen Russell, a brad from Margie Romney-Aslett, etc.

This is summer

2009-06-24T23:10:00.004-04:00

I have to admit that I am not one of those moms who cherishes summer breaks with long stretches of empty, unscheduled days. For starters, neither of my kids are gifted with the ability to entertain themselves; yesterday Thomas spent the entire three hours Annamarie was at summer school "in my bubble." Every time I moved, I bumped him with my elbow or my desk chair and wondered when exactly it is that teenagers are supposed to want to spend lots of time away from their parents.

After vacations, Thomas' year-round school, and Annamarie's summer school and Colt Camp, very few "lazy days of summer" actually remain to be conquered. Occasionally though, the planets align themselves just right and produce a day like today... a day that is just like what I imagined summer would be before I had actual children.

We were joined for the day by Thomas' friend Harry, one of those kids who never seems to run out of ideas for things to do. Harry brought his bike, and the boys rode much farther than I am usually comfortable with, up to the nearby high school. (I've been thinking a lot about letting go recently. It's not easy. When did I become such a control freak?) They came home a couple of hours later, sweaty and smelly and ready to hit the neighborhood pool.

Harry is also a bit of a daredevil, the opposite of my own cautious and fearful boy. When we arrived at the pool, Harry entered at a full run like this:

He decided he wanted to try to do some flips, the mere thought of which freaks Thomas out. It might hurt, or he might get water in his nose, but he was perfectly willing to jump up and down and cheer Harry on. (You can click on any of these photos to make them larger, and please note that I found the focus "sweet spot" on my new lens.)

And later on, Thomas got daring enough to risk an almost-belly-flop.

After two and a half hours I had to drag the boys (who had both claimed to hate swimming) out of the pool. But where was Annamarie during all of this summer fun? She was right in the thick of things, making sure to alert me to every potentially unsafe move anyone made. She is a terrible tattle-tale. Here she is saying, "Mom, Harry pushed Thomas in the pool." (Harry never fails to win my heart by being incredibly kind to Annamarie, including her and teasing her gently.)

Let's back up a second and see how upset Thomas was about being pushed in:

Yeah, I thought so.

We ended the day at Vacation Bible School, where tomorrow we are going to prepare meals for 10,000 people. Seriously...tune in tomorrow.

How to Become a Better Photographist

2009-06-20T17:10:00.000-04:00

Remember back on the Ultimate Scrapbook Cruise when I won a spot in Karen Russell's Photographer's Workshop? I am now a proud graduate of the class, and I can say enthusiastically that it is worth every penny of the tuition (that I blessedly did not have to pay). The class was everything that I had hoped for and more. If you're not familiar with Karen, she is a past Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame winner, designer of the fabulous Narratives line of scrapbook products (although she has now sadly retired as a product designer), and an amazingly talented photographer. She shares glimpses into her beautiful life on her blog, Snapshots of a Good Life.

Karen has said that she spent seven months working 50-60 hours a week preparing The Photographer's Workshop before welcoming the first student, and it shows. The course and the website are thorough and well thought out, and Karen responds quickly and graciously to questions posted on the message board. Probably because she is largely a self-taught photographer, Karen explains the technical aspects of photography in terms that even beginners can easily understand. She is funny and real, and offers constructive criticism while encouraging every student. The random photos in this post were all taken as part of my assignments, and every time I would pull out the camera, my kids would ask, "Is this part of your homework?" When I told them that I was finished with the class, Annamarie said, "So now you are a photographist like Karen Russell?"

I highly recommend The Photographer's Workshop to anyone who wants to become more skilled at capturing the beauty of everyday life in photos. It is probably not the right class for people who want to become studio or landscape photographers, and it does not cover photo editing. The course is designed to get participants taking better photos straight out of the camera (all photos in this post are SOOC...no editing other than minor cropping). The waiting list is huge, but it is worth the wait.

So what did I personally learn? Much of the information in the class was a refresher for me, which is always a good thing. Karen's explanation of the exposure triangle (the relationship between ISO, shutter speed, and aperture) was great. I discovered that I just may not be able to overcome my biggest weakness as a photographer, which is my inability to move myself around easily to get the best shots. I thought a lot about that, and on our Disney trip I would often set the camera up for a shot and then hand the camera to Ron, and tell him where to take the photo from. I might have to share credit for the resulting fabulous photo, but at least it will have been captured. (I did suffer one mini-stroke when I handed him the camera and he said, "I'm just going to switch it to Auto to make it easier.")

Just one more comment: Over the last ten years, I have taken a lot of classes with "celebrity" scrapbookers, and while I've enjoyed them all, I have often been disappointed by how thoroughly the instructors had bought into the notion of their own fame. That's all I'm going to say about that, but as a long-time reader of Karen's blog, I was really hoping that she would be as genuine in real life, and she could not have been sweeter when we met. She didn't treat me like a weird stalker at all. :) Also, I feel better about things after taking the class with some awesome ladies who are even worse Karen-stalkers than I am.

On wishes and healing and guilt

2009-06-20T02:13:00.006-04:00

The morning after we arrived in Saint Augustine we were heading out to do some sightseeing, and Thomas and Annamarie were loading my scooter into the van while Ron got some information from the front desk. A man walking through the hotel parking lot asked the kids if they needed help, and I smiled and said, "They're actually quite efficient." The stranger, an average looking fortyish man, asked if he could pray for me, as he had performed some healings in the past.

The first time a stranger assured me I would be healed by the intercession of his prayers, I was in sixth grade and visiting my friend Vicky's church after a sleepover. Already a bit uncomfortable with the unfamiliar rituals at her Lutheran church, I was mortified when the priest singled me out at the communion rail. With his hand on my head, he said for the entire congregation to hear, "I don't know what your problem is, but you will be healed."

This sort of thing happens to me every few years, and I can barely begin to unravel the mixed feelings it brings out in me. To start with, I have spent my entire life learning to love myself and to believe that my disability is part of God's perfect plan. He made me this way and as the saying goes, He don't make no junk. Then again, there is a part of me that so wants it to be true...I want to be healed.

Because I don't believe that you can ever have too many prayers said over you, I agreed to pray with the parking lot man, and afterward he instructed me to get up and walk (I had been sitting in the car). Not surprisingly it was the same old lurching walk I had before his prayer, and I was vaguely humiliated, enough to say "No thank you" when he asked if he could try again. (Aren't you sorry you have never shared this experience?)

The worst part of dealing with these well-intentioned people is that for a long time afterward, I have the nagging feeling that maybe I just didn't have enough faith. I believe wholeheartedly that God could heal me if it was His will, and who am I to say that He isn't going to send some stranger in a parking lot to do it? I end up feeling anger at the person for giving me false hope and guilt because I didn't really believe it was going to work, and if I did might it have worked? and renewed anger at them for making me question my faith.

When I refused his offer to try again, I noticed Thomas and Annamarie watching wide-eyed, so I chose my words carefully. I said, "I do believe that God will heal me, but I don't think it's going to be on this earth." He disagreed, saying that he thought God wanted me to be dissatisfied with my disability and to pray and beg for healing. "God wants you to have joy now," he said, and I assured him that I do have joy, that I believe God wants me to be joyful and hopeful in spite of my afflictions.

...there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure... For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me... And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. - II Corinthians 12:7-9

I can't quite bring myself to brush these people off as lunatics, but it might be easier on my heart if I could.

Come on over for a vacation slide show

2009-06-20T01:20:00.007-04:00

It has now been so long since I've posted that I can't possibly summarize everything that's transpired this spring, but none of it was likely to be the answer to anyone's Google search anyway. I will just say that I am fully recovered from my thyroid removal surgery and the following radioactive iodine treatment, and Annamarie graduated from fifth grade. We have sent her out into the world in search of gainful employment. If a fifth grade education was good enough for Jethro Bodine, it is good enough for us.

After all that excitement, we certainly deserved a vacation, so we spent a week at Walt Disney World and three days in Saint Augustine, Florida. Disney was Disney: enjoyable, magical, blisteringly hot, crowded, and overpriced, and we will surely visit again soon.

In the week before we left, the kids drug out some videos Ron had taken during our 2004 trip to Disney, and we watched those videos over and over for days. My heart was nearly ripped out by the sweetness of those little voices, even in the one which features Annamarie whining and begging for a $65 beaded headdress at Epcot's Morocco pavilion, hollering, "Mom, can I be cute wif it on?" Among the videos was one where Ron had recorded his entire ride on Big Thunder Mountain, and 1476 viewings of that video convinced Annamarie the roller coaster hater that she could "challenge herself" (her words) and ride it. All four of us rode it the first time, and then she challenged herself four more times with Thomas. Thank goodness for Fast Passes. You have to click on the photo below to see their faces.

Of course we saw every parade and show in every park (except for Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios, which we couldn't fit into the schedule), because we love some Disney spectaculars. (I had always believed that "spectacular" was an adjective until we saw the Wishes(TM) Nighttime Spectacular). The photo below, taken during the Celebrate a Dream Come True parade, may be my favorite of the trip.

More of our Disney photos are here.

An excellent question

2009-05-23T00:18:00.003-04:00

My husband keeps telling me that I need to post something here on my blog, but I don't really understand what his issue is since he represents approximately half of my readership and he is already fully aware of the boring mundane events of my life. Nonetheless, it has been a sweet forever since I have blogged, so here is an Annamarie anecdote that Ron thought might amuse the internet.

Annamarie and I were lying on my bed watching the American Idol finale when the Black Eyed Peas appeared to perform the oddly catchy Boom Boom Pow, backed up by some zebra robots or futuristic convicts of some sort. Not surprisingly, what really caught Annamarie's attention was Fergie's bizarro fingernails.

"Are they fake?" she asked. "Stick ons? How long ARE they?" And most importantly, "How can she open cheese sticks?"

2009-05-16T16:18:00.001-04:00

When my friend Sandy left to spend three months in New Zealand, I told myself that I was going to do one scrap-related thing every day while she was gone. Clearly I misunderstood myself, and I did approximately one layout the whole time she was gone. The scrapping fire seems to be rekindled in me now, and I've created a bunch of layouts in the past week, including these:

Happy Blur-thday Annamarie

2009-03-26T22:55:00.004-04:00

My sweet girl turned eleven today, and I'm afraid I have reached a new low in birthday photo-taking. One of Karen Russell's children also had a birthday this week, and I am sure that next year my pictures are going to look as good as hers, after I take her photography class which starts Monday. I may also have to move to a place where it is possible to be outdoors in March using natural light, but we'll worry about that before Annamarie turns twelve. We are having friends over for dinner, cake, and ice cream on Sunday, so I will try harder then. Annamarie said several times today, "Look at me--I am the birthday QUEEN!"

Naturally, the best photo was of the cupcakes she took to share with her class. Her teacher sent her on an errand to the office, and her classmates hid under their desks and jumped out yelling "Happy Birthday" when she returned. It thrilled her and was so sweet of Mr. Smith to make it a fun day for Annamarie.

Annamarie chose Outback for her birthday dinner, where the waitress kindly assisted us in taking more blurry photos. We missed Thomas, who is coming home this weekend and will be here for Sunday's celebration. (There will be at least 12 people and it occurred to me today that I don't own 12 forks, knives, plates, or glasses. Hmmm.)

We concluded the evening by finishing a school project that is due tomorrow. It's the biggest project Annamarie has ever done, and we were doubtful at first about whether she would be able to handle it. We needn't have worried...she did get a good bit of help from us, but she is very proud of her garbage truck! (The assignment was to create a community helper vehicle 15-30 cm long and 8-15 cm high, with at least one element of symmetry, two simple machines, 3-dimensional, using only a list of approved materials. Her truck is made from a Diet Coke box, a pasta box, and prescription bottle caps for wheels.)

I worked on this post all night

2009-03-22T20:54:00.004-04:00

Well it did take all night for the video to upload. It's a song from the musical the children performed at church yesterday, A Tale of Three Trees. The moral of the story is that God has bigger plans for us than we can imagine, and the kids did a great job. Annamarie is the last toy soldier on the left. Ron and I could not figure out how toy soldiers fit into the story, but they were cute.

Here's my happy little tree. (All the kids were trees, and some had second roles.) She's a bit grainy because I used my "little" camera. (ha ha...grain? wood? Never mind.)

Unexpected Blessings

2009-03-17T14:46:00.006-04:00

The removal of my thyroid on Saturday went very smoothly, and I came home on Sunday morning feeling surprisingly good. (The highly unflattering photo above was taken by Ron with my iPhone, just before I went into surgery. Keeping it real. I can't imagine who would look good in one of those caps.) Yesterday Annamarie and I actually ran an errand or two, but I spent most of today curled up in bed with a book and my very solicitous dog, feeling very swollen and sore.

This experience has left me feeling very blessed for so many reasons. I am very thankful for the diligence of my primary care physician, who caught my cancer so early that it was simple to treat, and also for the skilled, caring, funny surgeon who operated on me. I am grateful for my parents who, despite my mom being in serious pain herself from a bad knee, came up to stay with Annamarie so that Ron could be with me at the hospital. I am grateful for and humbled by the generosity of friends who have called and brought meals and flowers and who have prayed for and with me. I am thankful for my husband who is taking good care of me and letting me milk the sympathy card just a little, and for my daughter who is so willing to serve as my nurse. And of course I am grateful most of all to God, from whom all these good things come.

2009-03-12T14:45:00.001-04:00

Just a little acrylic album for a friend with a new grandbaby. I made it very simple and left most of the pages blank so that she can add photos. I had a blast using both my Slice and my new Bind-It-All on this.

I had some scraps from that project and another layout lying on my desk and thought they looked pretty together, so I whipped this one up. I love these colors so much. (The papers are Heidi Swapp and Making Memories.)

I'm too sexy for my blog

2009-03-07T22:02:00.002-05:00

Actually, I am way, way too boring for my blog. Don't get me wrong, LIFE IS GOOD, but gracious it is dull to write about. My friend Sandy, with whom I ordinarily spend a lot of time during the week, has gone off to New Zealand for three months to witness the birth of her granddaughter. The baby arrived on Wednesday and she is gorgeous and perfect, so I don't understand why Sandy can't just come on back now, because I need some shopping and scrapping and lunching.

I have done some productive things with all my new-found free time, so it's not all bad. I repainted my hallway today. DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN with the boring?

You will find me curled up at the foot of the bed

2009-03-01T00:11:00.004-05:00

That is MY silky pillowcase that that spoiled rotten dog is sleeping on so comfortably. My mom's hair stylist, Miss Kay, told me that sleeping on a satin pillowcase would keep my hair from getting tangled at night, which reminds me that I never told you about my very long visit to Miss Kay's salon.

My mother's Christmas present to me was a haircut and color at Kay's Kreations, which is in a tiny town outside Charlotte, NC. You would never believe that a little crossroads like Stanfield would have so many hair styling options, but right across the road there is Wyndola's Beauty Shop, and just a little bit farther down sits Elaine's Hillside Cut & Curl. Now, you probably won't be surprised to hear that I am not a woman who is comfortable with being primped and pampered. I generally wait until even the dog is commenting on my gray roots and then run down to Hair Cuttery, not the really busy one near the university or the one that is nearest to my house but where the ladies become very bitter when you interrupt their socializing to ask for a haircut, but the nice professional one up near the Target. Of course my experiences there haven't been entirely without incident, but generally they do a pretty good job with a minimum of fuss.

Miss Kay has been doing my mom's hair for more than 15 years, and I had never met her but Annamarie had, once when she was spending the weekend with Grammy. She came home from the salon with one of those disembodied heads used to store a wig (she was going through a wig fascination and had a couple of cheap ones at home) and she immediately proceeded to give this severed head a makeover using Sharpies. It was a very dramatic look, more Saturday-night-at-the-club and less Sunday-morning-at-worship. For months Ron or Thomas or I would round a corner in the house and let out a startled little shriek at the scary woman staring at us from under her disheveled hair. She finally "disappeared" one evening.

Anyway, Miss Kay and her stylists could not have been any sweeter, and the salon was lovely, but the whole experience felt exactly like being at Truvy's beauty salon in Steel Magnolias. I was there, no kidding, for four hours. It does take forever to foil my very thick hair, but not literally FOREVER. It was a fabulous opportunity for people-watching on a busy Saturday, though, which is one of my favorite activities. One of the stylists (they all had fabulous hair...I am always wary of salons where the hairdressers have bad hair) was talking about how glad she was that Christmas was past, because ever since Thanksgiving her nerves had been tore slam up. I had to agree.

Miss Kay gave me the best highlights I have ever had, and I just may wait to get them redone when I am down visiting Mama'n'em around Easter, even though I will be way overdue by then. This time I will bring a snack and some sudokus.

School shouldn't feel like a necessary evil

2009-02-27T01:03:00.005-05:00

Tuesday night the fifth graders at Annamarie's school put on their annual musical, which was one of those events that is only fun to attend if your child is actually participating. This year's production was called "I Had a Dream," and it was a 25-minute ode to many of the people who have made our country what it is today. I think every child had at least one line, and Annamarie's was, "A Quaker, like William Penn." She nailed it. I am a sucker for anything patriotic, and Ron liked the fact that the colonial period was heavily represented, so a good time was had by all.

Today, though, I am highly annoyed with that school. Annamarie has a full-time educational assistant, and we have had numerous problems with this woman overstepping her boundaries over the past several years. When something concerns her, she refuses to just call me up, despite my frequent assurances that she is welcome to do so. Three years ago, she reported us to social services because Thomas drew a face on Annamarie's chest and belly with marker. I had been trying to get 7-year-old A to keep her shirt on, and had told her that her breasts were private parts and she needed to be modest. So at school she told her aide that her brother "drew on my private parts." Sigh. Fortunately the woman from DSS had the good sense to laugh about it.

I could go on and on about the assumptions this woman has made about our parenting over the years, and about how hard she has been on my child whose only desire is to do the right thing, but I will spare you. Basically, she has chosen to misinterpret partial stories related by a child who is developmentally disabled and who has serious communication issues.

Today she accused Annamarie of cheating on her homework. She apparently said, "Your mom gave you the answers, didn't she?" She had Annamarie so confused that I believe she admitted to whatever she was being accused of...don't police interrogators use similar methods that don't hold up in court? So here's what actually happened with the homework: It was division, and they have been having A make tick marks and divide them into groups. If the problem is 18 divided by 3, they have her make 18 marks and divide them into 3 equal groups. I believed that she could do it "the regular way" and with only minimal help, she did. I had her multiply by 3s until she got to the right answer, and by the end she was doing them independently. This morning the aide just saw that there were answers and no tick marks all over the paper. She tried to make Annamarie tell her how she got the answers, and when she couldn't (HELLO, cognitive disability, speech and language delays?) she again accused her of getting the answers from me.

So did she call me and say, "Hey, I was just wondering what method you guys used to do homework last night?" No, she sent my child home convinced that she had done something wrong and incredibly stressed out about what will happen tomorrow. And the saddest thing, the thing that breaks my heart and makes me want to scream at these people who just are not doing their best for my child? Annamarie prays for this woman every day. Prays for her health and that her car won't break down, and tells me every day how much she loves her. THAT is who she is, a little girl with Jesus in her heart who tries so hard to do the right thing and who loves with her whole heart.

Coincidentally, waiting in my inbox was a survey from the school system asking how well I feel the special ed department is using communication to help my child succeed. Perfect timing.

Cruise Mini-album

2009-02-26T22:59:00.001-05:00

This little album was actually one of the projects we created on the cruise, in Margie Romney-Aslett's class. Margie gave us general instructions about how to assemble the album (it's made with Making Memories' Passport collection) and then left us to our own devices, which was kind of a relief after several classes full of very precise cutting and pasting.

I didn't want to post individual images of each page, because it's just not that exciting, but there are a couple of envelopes containing memorabilia from the trip and extra photos, as well as a little file folder that has photos and some journaling inside. Lots of the photos in this album were actually taken by Mary Beth, from whom I stole them.

Tonight's work

2009-02-20T02:55:00.001-05:00

Since my design team gig evaporated, I don't really have a place to post my layouts online and so I'm using my blog as my gallery for now. It has been fun this week to just scrap for me, and these simple layouts are going pretty quickly. The background papers on both of the first two pages are papers that I love and have been hoarding for just the right time. I went ahead and used them and the sky didn't start falling. I am trying to break out of hoarding mode and actually use the stuff I have before it's as out of date as the eggs in my fridge.

There is a big BIG box of new supplies coming my way soon, including a Bind-It-All, which I have been wanting for a long time. I love to play with new tools, and the Bind-It-All feeds right into my mini-album addiction.

Too fast

2009-02-19T02:05:00.001-05:00

I think Annamarie looks so grown up in this picture. What's happening to my babies??

Determined to get my mojo back

2009-02-18T01:59:00.001-05:00

I have spent the past week reorganizing and purging in my scrap area, and while it's not perfectly finished, I am beginning to feel like I can find things again. I was feeling overwhelmed by too much stuff and after a brutal purge, I think I own less patterned paper than I have in 8 or 9 years. And I am finally taking those 8,000 Zig markers to my Sunday School class. It's kind of freeing!

My dearest local friend left today to spend three months in New Zealand with her new granddaughter, and I am going to be so lonely without her to hang out with. I am going to try to use my spare time getting some real, back-to-basics scrapping done. One of the reasons I've been in a scrapping funk recently is that the design team I've been part of for nearly four years has been disbanded. We've seen it coming, and it's really the best thing for the owner, but it makes me very sad and leaves me without a DT gig. I am pretty much OK with that...it's never been about the recognition for me, but it has been so inspiring to work with such a talented group. And I cannot tell a lie: I will miss the discount.

Here's a page I did tonight. It's Ron and Annamarie at her school's family Valentine dance.

Baby card

2009-02-15T15:34:00.001-05:00

I haven't been doing much real scrapping recently, but I have made a few cards, and I keep sending them away before I remember to photograph them. This one is going to a soon-to-be-born little bundle in New Zealand. The striped paper is the wrapping paper I used on the gift.

I also did a layout using a rare photo of me and Ron, based on a challenge at Create My Keepsake to do a love page using no red and no hearts. I sprayed Maya Mist over one of Heidi Swapp's masks for the background. I love to use new techniques, but whenever I try to get artsy my pages end up looking "chumpy," to use my friend Maureen's word. I should probably stick to the simpler style.

25 Things

2009-02-12T20:18:00.000-05:00

I have been tagged twice on Facebook for this "25 random things about me" meme, and I am going to let it serve double duty as a blog post since the well seems so dry these days. Relax--I am not going to tag you, but if you haven't done this yet and feel so inclined, you may tag yourself. When I started this blog I posted a list of 100 things about me, and I can't imagine there are 25 more in there, but I will dig deep.

1. I am a serious night owl, and it runs in my family. I could pretty much call my parents or my brother Brett until midnight.
2. I do not believe the day should begin before 10 am.
3. If Diet Coke is as bad for me as "they" say it is, I am a goner.
4. I used to be very into fashion but now I wear jeans and a t-shirt everywhere except church.
5. They're not mom jeans, though.
6. I am a compulsive spender, enough to annoy my husband but not enough to appear on Dr. Phil.
7. I am trying to change.
8. My favorite scents are Christmas tree and Crayola crayons.
9. My mom wanted to name me Brandy or Jane. My dad said that Brandy was an Irish Setter name and he didn't like my mom's crazy cousin Jane.
10. I don't spend a lot of time wishing I wasn't disabled, but oh how I wish I could dance.
11. I also wish I could sing well, but I am a rock star when I'm alone in my car.
12. I am secretly surprised that my kids have never said, "Mom, quit singing."
13. My husband's love language is acts of service and mine is words of affirmation/physical touch.
14. Neither of us could possibly be any worse at the other's language.
15. Our marriage seems to work anyway.
16. I am very long-waisted and have short legs, so I buy tall shirts and petite pants.
17. My daughter, who was adopted, is built exactly the same way.
18. One of my children makes me feel like a complete failure as a parent, and the other makes me feel like a parenting ninja.
19. I love skim milk, but whole milk makes me gag.
20. I am not very adventurous, foodwise.
21. I don't like to eat any meat or fish that looks like what it was before it was my dinner. Nothing with eyes or in its shell, and if it could be boneless also that would be great.
22. My son recently said, "So like, chickens are walking around full of CHICKEN?" He existed solely on chicken nuggets for 10 years...I'm not sure where he thought they came from.
23. I kiss my dog a lot.
24. I recently realized that I am easily grossed out. Slobbery dogs, sweaty people, raw meat, bad smells, vomit...ICK. Baby spit-up and diapers don't bother me much, strangely.
25. One of the greatest pleasures in my life right now is reconnecting with old friends on Facebook.

A Baby Story

2009-02-11T11:50:00.000-05:00

Have I ever told you that Annamarie is obsessed with the TLC show "A Baby Story"? I DVR them for her and she watches them over and over until she has memorized the lines. It is one her more autistic tendencies, but it's harmless and a girl has got to have some interests besides jewelry. When our pastor's wife announced that she was pregnant with her third child, she told Annamarie that she was welcome to visit as soon as the baby was born, and Annamarie has talked about that at least once a day for six months. I swear she has waited as anxiously for this baby as the baby's parents have.

If I must be honest, Annamarie's enthusiasm isn't nearly as much about the baby as it is about the pregnancy and the related medical procedures. When she watches Baby Story, she fast forwards through the parents' preparations for their bundle of joy and right to the labor and delivery. She is just beginning to learn to multiply by 7, but she can tell you everything you might want to know about epidurals. Occasionally she will randomly bust out a line from her favorite show, like yesterday when she told our pastor, "I can't handle the contractions." He is fortunately aware of her obsession and just laughed, but I am sure we've gotten some concerned looks when Annamarie talks about being pregnant at age ten.

Anyway, the blessed event finally arrived and we visited sweet little Sarah Elizabeth and her family at the hospital. This is a strange angle, but Annamarie was holding the baby and said, "Mom, she looks like a baby doll."

I got a couple of beautiful photos of the new baby with her parents, but I didn't think to ask their permission to post them, so you get me. Luckily the sweet baby doll was sleeping peacefully and wasn't frightened by my lack of makeup and eyebrows that need waxing.

I had an epiphany on the way out of the hospital. Fourteen years have passed since we began struggling with infertility, and I have finally reached the point where I can hold a newborn baby and not ache to have one of my own. I am thankful for the miracle and blessing of Sarah's new life, and I am also thankful that I will not be the one waking up every two hours with her.

Wherein I admit that I am insane

2009-02-11T00:27:00.004-05:00

I may have mentioned once or twenty times that I am the queen of social phobias. I WANT to be a social butterfly, but I am hampered some by the fact that the prospect of being with people sends me running screaming back into my house. I really hate this about myself and it has gotten worse as the years pass. Whether it's at a school function, church, a clothing store, or Bible Study, for crying out loud, imaginary voices are always whispering to me, "Everyone's thinking how weird you are. You don't fit in. You aren't good enough to be here." Logically I know that people have more important things to think about, and they probably aren't giving me more than a passing thought, but that logic doesn't go deep enough to drown out the negative voices.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that those voices are the remnant of some childhood verbal abuse. My parents were loving and supportive and I don't have any idea what is the source of my insecurity. Yes, I'm chubby and I'm disabled but I have always been those things and I haven't always been afraid to leave my house without a shield of husband or children.

These fears create a vicious cycle: I used to be very involved at my church, and as the social anxieties increased, I began to pull away, which of course made me feel more isolated and more anxious, and I pulled farther away. Because I desperately want my children to be involved and because I love my church, I continue to participate but every Wednesday night I leave feeling emotionally wrung-out, and for the wrong reasons. The stress of constantly worrying about what people are thinking about me, as I sit there doing absolutely nothing worthy of anyone's speculation, keeps me from focusing on worship and leaves me unable to, as I keep hearing people say, make the the main thing the MAIN THING.

The suspicion that these feelings are probably sinful does not lower my stress level any either. I do believe that my God knows me and cherishes me and that my Savior died for love of me and that should be sufficient to make me strong enough and bold enough to face the clerks at the supermarket or the other parents at my children's school. My insecurities have robbed me of so many opportunities over the past few years, and that makes me very sad, and I have no one but my own crazy self to blame.

If you've met me in real life, you might be surprised to learn this about me. In my more rational moments I think that in general I come across as reasonably intelligent and easy-going. But I guarantee that I came away from our last interaction second guessing everything I said or did and believing that you'd find an excuse to be unavailable next time I called. If I never called, that's why.

Holy cow, do you know what this post was originally going to be about? How much I love Facebook.

The day, it sucketh

2009-02-05T15:12:00.004-05:00

Here is a terrible self-portrait of me in my pink coat, taken in my home studio (garage). I probably should have buttoned up, which makes me looks much less wide. It is a lovely coat, don't you agree? And I know you can't see much of my scarf, but it was VERY expensive. Another blogger (I can't remember who) posted about a fabulous selection of scarves at Wal-Mart for the princely sum of five dollars, so I ran over there last night while Annamarie was rehearsing for the church musical. I got the pink one and a pretty bright green one, and you should dash over there and get some for yourself. Who doesn't like cute fashion accessories for cheap dollars? No one, that's who.

So Dr. Chupacabra tells me that I do in fact have thyroid cancer, but the good news is that "if you have to have cancer, this is the type you want," because apparently no one dies from this. They will remove my thyroid and maybe give me some radioactive iodine and put me on thyroid hormone for the rest of my life. I am not particularly stressed out about any of this, but I think my mom is. I called her just as she was getting ready to go get her hair done and I will feel horribly guilty if the distraction of worrying about me caused her to wreck her car or make rash hairstyle decisions. And Ron has decided that "cancer likes me" because of my previous bouts with skin cancer. At least it's the fairly benign kinds that like me.

When I got home from the doctor I had two messages from Thomas' school informing me that he is in Big Trouble about two separate and unrelated events. He has not ever been in trouble for anything at school before, unless you count talking too much, so I'm hoping that these are isolated events and that he will not get expelled and cause us to forfeit the huge amount of tuition we paid.

So how's your day going?

Much ado about nothing

2009-02-05T00:47:00.010-05:00

Not only has there been nothing going on here worth sharing, my computer came down with the flu and has been operating at a snail's pace. My awesome in-house IT department replaced the hard drive and I am now able to ~~play Pathwords~~ blog at blazing speeds again.

Am I the only one who is sick to death of winter? I need some sunshine, people. As much as I love the hot pink pea coat Ron gave me for Christmas, I am ready to have it dry cleaned and put away for the season. Miss Ruby is right there with me: The dog park is too muddy and cold for her people to take her as often as she is accustomed to and Doggy Day Care is too often full. You may not appreciate the extreme rarity of the event captured below. Not the sweet smiling girl, but a Virginia school bus driving on snow. Twice in the past year our school system has canceled school because snow was forecast, before a single flake fell.

I mentioned a while back that Ron and I were looking for new bedroom furniture and that we were having a difference of opinion on matters of style. We keep rediscovering that our only overlap in taste is Shaker-style furniture. The last time we made this discovery was the last time we bought bedroom furniture, so guess what? The new stuff is so similar in style to the old that it is not at all like having new stuff. Except that it smells new and wonderful, and there is a huge difference in quality. The old bedroom suite came from Rooms to Go and very few trees were harmed in its production, whereas the new one was made from actual oak by actual Amish carpenters in Pennsylvania. I am a bit embarrassed by these pictures, which I snapped to email to my mom. There is bedding on the bed now, but we have taken everything off the walls in preparation for painting. (There is ordinarily a picture between those stars.)

We are repainting the room the same yellow. We went to Lowes Sunday to buy the paint, and I forgot to bring the paint chip, but I was pretty sure I remembered the color name. I went off to look for drawer organizers while Ron ordered the paint, and I didn't look at the swatch painted on the lid until we got home. Apparently the actual color I wanted was Sun SHOWER, and there is a considerable difference between them. Please calibrate your monitor before viewing this image.

We will be returning to Lowes before the painting commences.

In other news, I get the results of my thyroid biopsy tomorrow. Since no one seems to want to hear the details of having cartoonishly huge needles jabbed into my throat, I will just say two things about that. One, people kept telling me that my bruises looked like hickeys. Although it has been a very. long. time. since anyone planted a hickey on me, I remember that it was much more fun than a "fine needle aspiration biopsy." And B) the lovely endocrinologist's name is Dr. Chhabra, and it is all I can do to resist calling her Dr. Chupacabra. This has everything to do with my own immaturity and nothing at all to do with her appearance, skill, or bedside manner.

True Love Mini Album

2009-01-30T00:19:00.001-05:00

Hmm, about the only subject I haven't documented in a mini-album is my love of mini-albums. Wouldn't it be funny to have a little book in the mini-album basket with pictures of the other mini-albums? And how many more times can I say "mini-albums"?

I really made this one just to play with the beautiful Love Letters line from My Little Yellow Bicycle. There are so many wonderful embellishments in this line and the colors are wonderful. MLYB debuted more great new lines at CHA-W--I can't wait to get my hands on some of them. I am a sucker for travel lines and they have a great one coming soon.

I listed this album on Etsy, despite my lack of luck there. Clearly I am not trying hard enough. Don't you need a little album for your Valentine?

Ultimate Cruise Charm Swap

2009-01-27T16:14:00.000-05:00

In my cruise recap I forgot to mention the outcome of the charm swap. I am really impressed with the creativity of the participants, and at the variety of different charms we received. I was NOT AT ALL impressed with the swap hostess, who was disorganized and just plain mean, and that is enough said about that. My resolve to avoid future swaps remains intact.

The completed bracelet is very heavy and it's hard to see the individual charms, so I am trying to think of an alternative way to display them...maybe in a frame. Unfortunately one of my charms broke before I got home. You can click on the photos to enlarge them.

I hope this gives a little better view of each charm. What a fun keepsake from a great trip!

All good things must come to an end

2009-01-23T01:27:00.000-05:00

Let me just begin this post by saying that ScrapMap has already begun accepting deposits for the Second Annual Ultimate Scrapbooking Cruise, which will take place at the end of January 2010. Go on over there and plunk down your $100 deposit, because you will regret it if that cruise fills up and you just have to live vicariously through the lucky participants two years in a row.

In the ten-plus years that I have been a scrapbooker, I have attended right many scrapping events--conventions, trade shows, retreats, classes, and crops. I claimed for several years that I wasn't interested in a scrapping cruise because I'd either want to crop or to cruise, and I was skeptical that both could be done in a single trip. I'm here to tell you that I was mistaken. The Ultimate Scrapbook Cruise was the best of both worlds, and Mary Beth and I had a blast. The six-day cruise consisted of three days in port and three days at sea, and for the most part classes were only held on the days we were at sea, so that we did not miss out on any chances to explore the locations where the ship stopped.

We arrived at our stateroom to discover that ScrapMap had sent us all bottles of champagne and chocolate covered strawberries. It was just the first of a number of little surprises that made the cruise so much fun. I can't say enough about how well organized this trip was and how beautifully the ScrapMap staff had planned out every detail. We were all so excited at the opening gathering, where our awesome teachers were introduced.

Karen Rusell, Donna Downey, Teresa Collins, and Margie Romney Aslett

And of course, Heidi Swapp

The classes themselves were wonderful(hello? did you see the list of teachers above?) and I hope to post some photos of my projects as I get them completed. The smallish size of the classes, about 25 people in each, meant that we actually got to interact with the instructors, which was fun except that it meant I had plenty of opportunity to make a fool of myself when I introduced myself to Karen Rusell.

One of the things that really struck me about this event was how well the participants seemed to "click." At some of the events I have attended, the women who travel together tend to stick together and not socialize much outside their group. We made so many new friends on this trip, and were amazed at how nice and friendly everyone was. We especially had fun with our dining companions, Tina and Debbie, who are sisters and Good People. For some reason, every single photo that we asked someone else to take with my camera came out blurry. Clearly my 40D loves me best.

A few highlights:

* Learning to use the Bind-It-All in Teresa's class. I had been eying this cool tool for a while, but now it is definitely on my must-have list.

* Playing with canvas, paint, alcohol ink, book text, toilet paper rolls, etc. in Donna's class.

* Margie. She is just hilarious and so much fun.

* Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Mary Beth and I rode up to a mountaintop on a chair lift and then bob-sledded down despite one of the employees' warning that it was "for the young people." We ate lunch at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, a crazy fun place to hang out.

And I saved the best for last: On the final evening there was a cocktail party where ScrapMap gave away over $10,000 in prizes, including THREE cruises. I didn't win one of those, but I was even happier with what I did win--a spot in Karen's online photography class! Can you believe it? It was fate, I tell you. Can't wait to get started on that.

And now this post is much too long and I am up MUCH too late. There are more photos from the cruise at my Flickr if you're so inclined.

Ch-ch-changes

2009-01-23T00:25:00.002-05:00

Twelve days since my last post? Seriously? My only excuse is that I am caught in some winter doldrums which are preventing me from wanting to do anything but sit around wrapped in a blanket drinking hot tea. I'm interspersing all that activity with frequent naps, of course.

The cruise was wonderful, and I will be posting more about that on my other blog shortly. I have to be honest and admit that it has been difficult to re-acclimate myself to the lack of 24-hour buffets and tropical drinks around here.

There is a lot going on in our household, some good and some bad, but all of it stressful. While I was gone, Thomas came down with a stomach bug during the night at school. It freaked him out pretty badly to be sick away from home, and the experience has resulted in a terrible bout of homesickness. Yesterday we received a letter from him, the most pitiful epistle you have ever read, begging us to let him go back to being a day student. I don't know whether I ever mentioned how he begged to board for over a year, how he swore that he would not change his mind, or how Ron and I agonized over the decision and the money involved. We are sticking to our guns and hoping that spending weekends at home will hope him get over this, but oh my soul it is heartbreaking to drop him off sobbing his heart out.

Also it seems that after eleven years of staying home with the children, it may be time for me to go back to work. (Now it's me who's sobbing.) Coincidentally, there may be an appropriate position available in Ron's department within the next few weeks. I don't have any real objection to contributing to our family's finances, but those long years out of the workforce bring up all sorts of insecurities in me. Do I still have anything to offer potential employers? Do I still possess two brain cells to rub together? And most importantly, what in the name of heaven would I wear?

Lastly, for now anyway, I learned today that I need to have a biopsy done on my thyroid. The lovely young (why are all the doctors I've seen recently so stinking young?) endocrinologist spent an alarmingly long time describing what it would mean if my nodules turn out to be cancerous. I am not particularly worried, since I have been told at various times that I probably had a pituitary tumor, a brain tumor, and a pulmonary embolism, and I didn't in fact have any of those. Am I being punk'd by the medical profession? Nonetheless, I am predictably unenthusiastic about having needles stuck into my throat.

But hey! I am thrilled about the amount of awesome TV that's been available the past couple of weeks.

Bon voyage

2009-01-10T12:33:00.001-05:00

I am waiting to board my flight to Fort Lauderdale, so you may not hear from me again for a week. I'll miss you!

Thirteen

2009-01-08T22:10:00.000-05:00

Thomas will turn 13 on Sunday, but we celebrated his birthday before he went back to school on Saturday. All of a sudden this child who wore nothing but sweatpants and whatever t-shirt was clean has developed a keen interest in name brand clothing, specifically Abercrombie, Aeropostale, and American Eagle. (Were they fighting to be listed first in the phone book? What's with all the A's?) Since Abercrombie is the only one of those three that carries kids' sizes, I ordered him a few items on clearance because holy cow, do you know how expensive that stuff is? (Insert flashback of my mother saying to my 15-year-old self, "If you want $88 Guess jeans, get a job." And I did, thank you very much.)

He seemed pleased, until I accidentally sat on his new clothes, which he left on my chair. "Moooooom, be careful! Those are Abercrombie clothes." Apparently my butt is good enough to purchase Abercrombie items, but not to sit on them.

He later cracked me up by planning out his outfits, down to the shoes. Watch out ladies. Thomas also received an electric razor, for which he has only the most minor need now, but Ron's dad gave him one at 13, so it's tradition.

After he shaved his whisker off, we went to his favorite restaurant where they sang to him and he enjoyed a traditional slice of birthday key lime pie.

Happy birthday, Thomas! I love you.

If I fall overboard I will not be ashamed of my undies

2009-01-08T01:05:00.004-05:00

Mary Beth and I leave for the Ultimate Scrapbooking Cruise in just two days, and I have done very little in the way of preparation. I did however feel the need to purchase all new underwear, an impulse which is puzzling to me because I doubt that MB (or anyone else for that matter) will even see my drawers.

I think it's something to do with the old saying about wearing clean underwear in case you're in an accident, but I watch a LOT of true crime shows on TV and I have never once heard the forensics experts remark on the condition of a victim's undergarments unless it was directly related to the case. At least now I know that I will not be the first.

Pray for the Lamberths

2009-01-07T23:43:00.000-05:00

It's interesting to me how the internet, particularly the blogging part of it, makes the world seem simultaneously bigger and smaller. There's so much to learn, and so very many people doing good things for the world and for each other. I am always amazed at how the internet rallies around strangers who are hurting or in need; getting the word out, whether the need is for donations or simply prayer. I believe strongly in the power of prayer, and it certainly can't hurt to ask you to add to the pleas that are going up tonight on behalf of Mark Lamberth, a young father who suffered a devastating head injury just before Christmas. After showing some positive signs earlier, he has taken a turn for the worse.

Charmed, I'm Sure. Or not.

2009-01-07T16:37:00.000-05:00

I have never been a tattoo sort of person, although I often admire them on other people. I just don't, at this point in my life, have find any part of my body attractive enough that I want to call attention to it. But I am beginning to think that a tattoo might sometimes serve as a useful reminder of something one never wants to forget...a permanent post-it note, if you will. Thus, I have designed myself a tattoo to serve that purpose. What do you think?

Mary Beth and I leave Saturday for the Ultimate Scrapbooking Cruise, and not surprisingly, we are beside ourselves with excitement. The only thing clouding our joy about the whole experience has been the 33 charms we each have to make for the charm swap we signed up for. Several years ago, when paper piecing was all the rage, I got deeply involved in swapping. It always sounded like great fun when I signed up, but being the procrastinator that I am, I always ended up burning the midnight oil to get my projects done and mailed on time. Often I was disappointed in the quality of the materials that I received in return, and there were invariably people who didn't complete theirs at all, and I would swear after every swap was completed that I would never participate in another one. I made that promise after paper piecing swaps, after circle journal swaps, after page kit swaps, after card swaps, and after altered puzzle piece swaps.

My scrapping friends would roll their eyes every time I got involved in another swap and remind me how I had sworn them off. Given that Mary Beth was one of those friends reminding me of my past mistakes, it is surprising in hindsight that she was willing to join me in signing up for the charm swap on the cruise. Nonetheless we did sign up, and surprise surprise, it has turned out to be much more of an ordeal than either of us expected. We had originally signed up to make 25 charms each, and a new swap hostess who took over at the last minute allowed more people to sign up after the cutoff date. I will spare you the details of the multiple trips to multiple stores that those additional eight charms have necessitated, but suffice it to say that they have been a pain in my hiney. They are done though and packaged up three whole days early, which is a record for me. This isn't a very good photo of my charm...I assure you it's cuter in person, but it does convey the general idea. The starfish charm hangs down the back of the disc when it's hooked on.

I have to admit that I am looking forward to seeing the completed bracelet now that I am finished. The ones I have seen from Creative Escape are darling and I hope our cruise themed bracelets turn out as well. I'll let you know, and I will be sure to post a picture of my new tattoo.

Attention, Nintendo

2009-01-06T22:11:00.004-05:00

If you read a lot of blogs like I do, you probably noticed that before Christmas, a number of popular bloggers were having Wii giveaways sponsored by Nintendo, after hosting Wii parties also sponsored by Nintendo. You might think, from the number of posts I have written raving about how much we love the Wii, that Nintendo must be sending me a stack of Wiis to give away to my loyal readers. Puzzlingly, that is not the case. They have not contacted me at all, unless maybe they called me on my iPhone, which my new case is causing to shut off randomly. Their loss, as they could have reached an audience of at least eight readers. Despite the deliberate snubbing by Nintendo, I am going to say publicly that the Michener family is quite enchanted by the Wii, especially this young person who bowled a 215 tonight, our family record.

It is so much fun to watch her bowl, especially since she is nearly as excited when she misses as when she gets a strike.

Better late than never

2009-01-03T23:10:00.005-05:00

Well, it seems I took a bit of an unplanned blog hiatus. I think I have some January Blahs, and I haven't been able to muster up much energy for anything other than napping and playing the occasional Wii tennis and bowling with the kids. Tonight, though, you would swear I had had espresso with my dinner. How much caffeine is in ~~one~~ eight of those tiny Lindt dark chocolate squares?

This week many of my favorite bloggers have posted wonderful year-end recaps complete with links to their favorite posts from each month in 2008, but I am not even going to pretend that I had twelve posts interesting enough to re-link here. It was a pretty good year at our house, but blessedly mundane. We are starting the new year financially chastened but healthy and hopeful.

Not surprisingly, there have also been quite a few "New Year's Resolutions" posts around. I am not so good with the resolutions, and the ones I would make are the same as almost everyone I know: Eat healthier, get more exercise, spend less money, spend more quality time with my family, etc. I hate to be predictable, so I am making some resolutions that I might actually keep.

1. Splurge on better-quality wrapping paper next Christmas. Target, I still love you but your wrapping paper sucks and I am going to Hallmark next year. Look for crappier gifts, beautifully wrapped.

2.Improve my "Wii Fitness Age." (It's 54! Even my TV can see how out of shape I am.)

3. Get up to date on The Office. I mentioned before that I can't jump into the current season until I have watched the previous ones, and I am actually making good progress. I think I'll insert subheadings in this section to break it down, if you will. (Saying that always reminds me of my brother-in-law, who adds "if you will" to the end of 90% of his sentences. He is clearly very accommodating.) I am already feeling like 2009 is a success resolution-wise because I am 40% of the way toward accomplishing this goal.
a. Season 1 DONE
b. Season 2 DONE
c. Season 3
d. Season 4
e. Season 5

4. Purchase some photo-organizing software. Holy cow, this is a big one. I should have put this one first. I have 67GB of photos on my computer, or over 25,000 pictures, and virtually no organization system (although we do back them up online daily). Let's just say that when I am looking for that one cute picture of Annamarie where she was wearing a straw hat, there is much grumbling. If any of you own ACDSee let me know how you like it.

5. Find my brain. I do not know what my issue is (perimenopause?) but lately I am a flake. In six days, I leave for a Caribbean cruise that I am taking with my BFF Mary Beth. We booked this cruise oh, nine months ago? Today I discovered that I booked my return flight for the wrong day. I swear I have looked at that reservation 50 times--why did it never click that the cruise ends on the 17th and my flight home is on the 18th? Also this evening I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out why the photos I took earlier today wouldn't upload to my computer using my new Eye-Fi card. Eventually it dawned on me that the photos were on the card I took out of the camera when I put the EMPTY new Eye-Fi card in. I am thinking that maybe if I clean off my desk I will locate the missing pieces of my brain and also my passport.

If I can accomplish those things this year I will feel pretty good about life. And if I can also somehow manage to get thin, fit, and out of debt it will just be icing on the cake.

Merry Christmas, Aunt Betty

2008-12-25T00:18:00.007-05:00

In the morning after Thomas and Annamarie have opened their gifts and we have eaten our traditional Christmas cinnamon rolls, we will pack up the car and head to my parents' house in North Carolina. A trip to Grammy and Papa's is always loads o' fun, but we were especially looking forward to this one because Aunt Betty and Uncle Bill, who live in Georgia, were going to be there. Unfortunately Bill has been very sick due to complications of diabetes, and they aren't going to be able to make the drive after all.

Aunt Betty is my Dad's sister, and she never had children of her own, having married Bill at about the age I am now. My brothers and I adored Aunt Betty when we were kids (and still do). She worked for an airline and did a lot of traveling to places which seemed very exotic to us, like the time she took my grandparents on a very dignified trip to Israel.

My own first trip on an airplane was going from Charlotte to Atlanta with my Mamaw and Papaw to visit Aunt Betty. As pass riders, we were required to dress up to fly, which made the whole experience just that much more exciting.

My mom later worked for the same airline, and Aunt Betty would sometimes travel with us when my workaholic dad couldn't get away. Here we are in New York when I was around 14 years old, in this photo that was clearly taken by my youngest brother. Good job, Brett. I wish I this photo was of sufficient resolution that I could zoom in on the pink and green shoelaces in my Tretorns. I was a slave to The Preppy Handbook.

Please notice Aunt Betty's camera. My parents are not (NOT. AT. ALL.) picture-taking people, and I am fairly certain that no photos of my childhood would exist if Aunt Betty had not been around. I clearly inherited a love of travel and photography from Aunt Betty instead of getting my my mom's cooking and gardening genes, which missed me entirely.

Back in the seventies, Aunt Betty lived in an apartment, which seemed incredibly glamorous to me. I have told her that I remember her apartments in greater detail than I remember most of the houses we lived in, because she had so many fascinating items in her apartment, like a liquor cart with metal labels that hung around the necks of the bottles. She had styrofoam airplane models that hung from the ceiling and a board that you could stand on and do the twist, PLUS her apartment complex had a pool. There was nothing we looked forward to more than spending a weekend with Aunt Betty.

When I was about to turn 17, Aunt Betty took me to Acapulco, which was theretofore the coolest thing that had ever happened to me. OK, yes, my Mamaw and Papaw went too, but it was still the first time I had ever been outside the U.S. in my Ralph Lauren corduroy skirt and penny loafers, and I felt very grown-up and special especially when Aunt Betty let me drink margaritas by the infinity-edge pool at the hotel.

I could go on and on. I could tell you about her many trips to Korea to escort orphan babies home to their new families, or about how gently she always treated my grandmother despite Mamaw's often being pretty hard on her, but the bottom line is that my Aunt Betty is the salt of the earth. She is just good people, and she has survived breast cancer cheerfully and freaked out my children by taking off her wig, and now she is caring for her ailing husband, still cheerfully as far as I can tell. My children adore her as much as my brothers and I did at their ages, and I hope that somehow this post will convey to her just how much she will be missed today.

Although she is a terrible lurker (Aunt Betty, that's a person who reads but never posts comments), she is my blog's biggest fan, and it's just one of a million reasons that I love her. Merry Christmas, Betty and Bill. We know you are here in spirit.

Altered Cigar Box

2008-12-24T23:47:00.000-05:00

This is another gift for an online friend. (Three of us did a handmade swap.) Making handmade things for people is scary, because you put so much work into it and then what if they think it's, as my friend Sandy says, "chumpy"?

Both of the other ladies in this swap make actual non-scrapping crafty things. The recipient of this box sent me a lovely thick, warm scarf, and the other participant makes cool hand-painted glass items. So I, with my scrappy paper gifts, feel a bit like the little drummer boy.

Teacher Gifts

2008-12-19T01:12:00.000-05:00

Sets of six of the cinnamon ornaments Annamarie and I made, with a bag topper I created digitally. I like them!

There's not enough Ruby on this blog

2008-12-18T20:34:00.007-05:00

According to Google Analytics, my blog traffic is up over 7200% this week, and I am still getting about 200 views a day from Boo Mama's home tour. It's like crack cocaine! Or crystal meth, which I understand is the crack of the 21st century. I mentioned before that I was thinking up ways to keep the traffic up (because I want the visitors to get the most out of the average 36 seconds they're spending here). I was reminded of that awful news story about people watching a murder live online...or was that on CSI? Regardless, that seems a bit over the top. But maybe a live webcam of a boy in a cage? Ruby was puzzled and concerned about why Thomas was in her crate and wouldn't get out of the way so I could get a good picture of the captive.

(Oh, stop. He put himself in there.) She didn't like this idea much better.

As you can see, she is very high-strung and nervous.

Her many jobs around the home require constant vigilance, especially the 24-hour Squirrel Patrol.

Those pesky squirrels always sneak into our yard while Ruby is doing laundry. In this photo, she is carrying four socks and a bone. Earlier she also had a partially eaten tennis ball in there too. She is an excellent multi-tasker.

It's a dog's life.

All is merry and bright

2008-12-18T20:11:00.002-05:00

That title really has nothing to do with the rest of this post at all. I am just really, really sleepy and that's all I am coming up with. I am trying to turn my night owl self into a morning person and stop staying up until 3AM, so I got up at 7:30 this morning and I am about to fall over. What will undoubtedly happen, though, is that I will get a second wind at 10:00 and find many many things that need doing right away and can't wait until tomorrow.

Anyway, thank you so much for your concern about my feather tree. It actually survived the fall quite well and I am sorry to have alarmed you. (This reminds me of sitting by the phone waiting to hear that my nephew, Ford, had been born. My mom finally called, sobbing hysterically, and said something that sounded like, "He's gone." I became hysterical too, shouting, "What happened?" My mom finally got a grip on herself and it turned out that she had actually been saying, "He's born," but for me thoughts of his birth will always have a slight chill of death about them. Thanks, Mom.)

Back to the tree, I straightened it out and replaced the broken ornaments with some of the cinnamon ornaments Annamarie and I made the other day. And, HEY! Now all is merry and bright.

Lacing Card Project

2008-12-16T18:29:00.000-05:00

I made this for an online friend as part of a handmade item swap. I chose this color combo because her living room is teal and red. Her taste is much more young and hip than mine, so I hope she doesn't absolutely hate this. If she does I hope she gives it back to me because I am really happy with how it came out. The photo mats are loosely adhered so she can replace them if the size doesn't match her photos. For some reason the photo looks really blurry here but if you click it, it's much clearer.

Because this is a gift, I actually finished the backs of the cards because the thread ends weren't pretty. I see that I need to redo the bottom one because the "x's" are a bit crooked.

Christmas Tour backlash

2008-12-16T15:29:00.003-05:00

This is what happens when you get all cocky about your Christmas decorating skillz and having 56 comments on your blog in one day. I was walking through the dark kitchen in the middle of the night and tripped on a laundry basket which you might well wonder what that was doing in the kitchen anyway. I stumbled against the table that was holding my delightful feather tree, and you see the resulting carnage above.

My faithful reader Jean (she is totally a stalker; I don't even know her) sent me an email saying that I must be in heaven with all of the comments, and she was oh so right. It's a banner day here when I get three comments on a post, and since midnight Monday I have had hundreds of visitors thanks to Boo Mama's Christmas Tour.

I am bit concerned about what happens after I publish THIS post and return to my normal obscurity. Will I be plunged into depression and sit here drinking ~~whiskey~~ ~~vodka~~ a nice Riesling until next year's tour? Will I resort to desperate measures to attract more readers? I'm not sure what that would look like--posting naked pictures of my 43-year-old self would surely be counterproductive.

I'm going to go decorate more things. Back later.

Bloggy Tour O' Homes

2008-12-15T00:05:00.005-05:00

If this is your first visit, WELCOME! One of the best things that happened to me in 2008 was discovering Boo Mama's blog, so I am thrilled to be participating in the tour for the first time. If you're one of my (two?) regular readers, be sure to click on the button above, and head over to Boo Mama's to visit more bloggers' homes, but only after you've hung around here a while!

This Hoosier cabinet in my kitchen is one of my favorite things, filled with a few of my other favorite things.

This corner, under our kitchen TV, is not one of my favorite things because of the lovely black cords that hang down. Perhaps I should have painted them red or green to make them more festive.

This cool feather tree sits on a table in the middle of my kitchen.

Just inside the front door is a little saltbox village, one of my favorite new things.

And my other favorite furniture thing, which is red all year. The three angels on top are so cute with their brillo pad hair, and they came from the Wal Marts of all places, a few years back.

I love, love, love these cute little packages wrapped in vintage paper.

No, seriously, this is my favorite thing: the Jim Shore nativity my husband gave me two years ago. Most of the Santas in the Hoosier cabinet above are by Jim Shore too. Now that I think about it, it's maybe kind of strange that the Holy Family is being watched over by a vintage cookie cutter garland.

Last, and maybe least, is a banner that I made on the spur of the moment from scrapbooking paper. It hangs in what used to be our dining room and now houses my kids' homework desk and my 10-year-old daughter's Important Stuff, otherwise known as every blessed piece of paper ever to pass through her hands. Note that I did not photograph that. It is not festive.

Naturally I've got more photos, including one of our fairly run-of-the-mill Christmas tree, but I don't want to keep you too long. I so hope you'll come by again. I'm making Cracker Candy tonight, and if you've never tried it, you can't imagine how delicious this simple recipe is.

Cracker Candy

1 c. sugar
1 c. butter
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
chopped nuts
saltine crackers

Line a jelly roll pan with foil. Arrange 40 saltine crackers in a single layer.

Bring sugar and butter to boil and cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour over crackers and spread with a spoon. Bake at 450 degrees for about 5 minutes. Watch closely to make sure it does not burn. Remove from oven and sprinkle on chocolate chips. Let stand to melt. Sprinkle on nuts, if desired. Spread and refrigerate. Break apart and serve.

Merry Christmas!

Lights and Music

2008-12-14T21:40:00.005-05:00

Friday night we took the kids and our friend Sandy to GardenFest of Lights at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond. Annamarie's "Gotcha Day" (anniversary of her adoption) is on December 15, and for the past few years we have celebrated it with a trip to "the lights" and dinner at Red Robin. We bundle up and traipse through the freezing cold oohing and ahhing at the beautiful lighted creations, then we get hot chocolate. The kids run through a maze of lights over and over (it's not much of a challenge to them anymore) and then we head into the conservatory to see the giant Christmas tree. This year it was decorated in a peacock theme with beautiful blues, greens and purples.

It was a nice celebration of our sweet girl's ninth Gotcha Day. What a long way she's come since that first Christmas with us.

She sang in church today with the children's choir, and she was by far the most enthusiastic participant.

Nine years ago tomorrow was one of the happiest days of my life. I love you, Ree Ree.

Christmas banner

2008-12-14T20:06:00.000-05:00

Just a quick photo of the banner I was making in a previous post. This is in our former dining room, which now contains the kids' desk and not much else.

My Christmas Checklist

2008-12-13T23:30:00.000-05:00

* Christmas tree: Up and decorated since the weekend after Thanksgiving. Despite daily waterings, it is dropping needles at an alarming rate. I hope Santa won't injure himself on our pointy stick with ornaments.

* ~~Handmade~~ Christmas cards: Bought! And mailed! Except for a handful of special people for whom I really still want to make cards. (Read: "People who are also crafters and won't throw away my hard work.") I just hope I actually get them done and don't cause those people to cross me off their lists entirely.

* Shopping: DONE! Seriously, it is so amazing for me to have finished my shopping before December first this year that I can't believe it. I have to interject an amusing story here. Yesterday I told Annamarie to empty her bathroom trash can, and she decided to empty all the ones in the house. Late at night I was craving chocolate and I remembered that there were M&Ms in the bag of stocking stuffers I had bought. All of the stocking stuffers were in a Target bag that I had tied shut and set on top of the waste basket in my scrapping area. It looked like trash, so I knew the kids wouldn't notice it, but I realized that Annamarie had emptied it into the trash bag and carried it out to the garage. Of course mine was the first trash can she emptied, so that bag (fortunately still tied shut) was on the bottom of the big Hefty Bag. I dug through all manner of unsavory things to retrieve my children's peppermint stick and orange. Hey, if it was good enough for Laura and Mary Ingalls....

* Wrapping: Mostly done. I have a stack of gifts on the kitchen counter, wrapped in identical paper, with no ribbons or TAGS. I truly hope that I will remember who they're for by the time I get the tags made. I wrapped one of my gifts in one of these this year, and I laugh every time I imagine the face of the recipient, who asked for something very specific. I will be around to see it opened.

Thomas has been home for one day and is driving me crazy asking, "Where are our presents hidden? You can just tell me, because I am NOT going to look. I'm just curious." Right. This is total divine retribution because I was a terrible gift snoop. My poor mom had to devise codes for the presents instead of labeling them, and one year my assumption that I had figured out the code led to bitter disappointment when the Sony Walkman whose wrapping I slit open and re-taped turned out to be for my brother. Given my own checkered past one would think that my son's snoopiness would just amuse me, but it drives me insane!

Annamarie is right behind with her million questions about how Santa is going to make the sparkly purse she asked for and EXACTLY what time does he come and how does he get in and when will he leave the North Pole and all of this wouldn't bother me except that she is almost eleven. I am so torn between not wanting to spoil the magic for her and wanting to say, "Dude, do you not see any inconsistencies in this story?" And I am trying so hard to make them focus on Jesus this year and if Jesus would maybe just come with more sparkly pocketbooks and video games it would be easier. Annamarie melts my heart when, out of the blue, she says, "Mom, Jesus is my favorite." But recently she has been adding, "Santa is my favorite too." She is clearly hedging her bets, wanting to stay on the good side of whoever is bringing the loot.

Oh, was I making a list?

* Baking: We made cinnamon ornaments, and they are stacked on the stove waiting for me to go over to the Ben Franklin and get some homespun to tie on them. Everyone who comes over thinks they are cookies and it is just a Christmas miracle that no one has taken a bite of their cement-y goodness. Tonight we made actual edible sugar cookies, most of which I am taking to my Sunday School class in the morning. Mmmm, sprinkles.

That's pretty much it except for last minute details and a lot more talking about Jesus and his birth. And a lot more, "No, I am not telling you. No, they are not in the attic. No, they are not in the garage. I am not telling you."

Scrapping? What scrapping?

2008-12-13T22:52:00.000-05:00

I am sure I am not alone in feeling like Christmas preparations have taken over my life, am I? I am certainly not sitting around doing nothing, but I am certainly not scrapbooking either. I am making something really cute for a swap that was due oh, 3 days ago, but I hope my friend will think it's worth the wait.

And look! Here's a layout that I did for November's articles at Busy Bee, but I forgot to post it here. A rare and even decent photo of me and my hubby. I love love love this Urban Prairie line from Basic Grey.

I can simultaneously paint a house and read a magazine

2008-12-06T02:31:00.000-05:00

Not only am I reminding you that I exist, I am painting chipboard houses and reading People magazine. People is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, but tonight I couldn't find a catalog to paint on (puzzling, because this close to Christmas we receive approximately 74 a day) so I had to use an issue of People I hadn't read yet. I am just making sure to read each page before I use it as a painting backdrop. I am multi-tasking, yo.

I have room on my desk to do actual projects because I spent yesterday cleaning and reorganizing my scrapping area. I finally broke down and bought a second Clip-It-Up, which is the best storage system I have found. I am not good at using things that I can't see, so having everything (well, most things) out and visible encourages me to use my stash. The best price I found online was oddly from Amazon.com, sold by Ritz Camera.

Re: Puking and pouting

2008-12-05T23:59:00.004-05:00

It's poor Annamarie who is doing the former, and me who is doing the latter. I took Annamarie to the pediatrician on Wednesday because a cough was making her asthma flare up, and also because she has had pneumonia the past two years. She did not have signs of pneumonia on Wednesday, so the doctor gave us a new prescription for an inhaler and on we went. On Thursday and Friday she went to school, claiming she felt much better, but not quite seeming herself.

Late this afternoon we were debating whether she was well enough for us to go to our Bible study home group, when she suddenly threw up all over my pillow, sheets, quilt, and the back of my shirt. We decided not to go to home group. She wanted to lie down in her own bed, so we cleaned her up and took her temperature, which was 104. She is sleeping now, but I suspect we will be returning to the doc tomorrow.

My pouting is directly related to the poor child's illness: We were supposed to have friends over for dinner tomorrow night and I correctly assumed they would prefer to reschedule due to the whole fever and throw up-thing. We had all been looking forward to the visit of these very dear friends we haven't seen in ages. We met Jim and Cassie eleven years ago when we were waiting for a birthmother to choose us to parent her baby. We had already been waiting for a long time and were likely to wait a lot longer, and we were beginning to consider international adoption.

Jim and Cassie joined our church just about then, along with their incredibly beautiful 5-year-old Bulgarian daughter. I remember the first time I saw them, and how adorable Mary Anna was in a little red coat, but I didn't get to know them right away. Lumped on top of my normal social phobias was a lot of depression about our infertility struggles and that did not make me very outgoing or friendly.

Every woman who has experienced the hell of primary infertility knows what I mean when I say that when you're longing for a child, every Mother's Day is akin to having red-hot pokers stabbed into your chest. Only worse. So in 1997 I was relieved to be spending that awful day not in church but in New York on a business trip. I came home to find a vase of freshly picked flowers and a card from Cassie, that she had brought to church and given to Ron. For me. I barely knew this woman, but she knew me. She knew from experience how badly I was hurting and she wrote on that card, "Because you are expecting, even if your wait is longer." I am crying as I type this, as I have every time I've remembered that card and those flowers for the past eleven years. It is the kind of gesture that I long to make to others, that I think of making, and am always too scared of reaching out, or I put it off until too late. Cassie actually gets up and does the thing that is going to touch someone's heart.

I have said before that I firmly believe God inserts certain people into our lives just when we need them, and just the flowers and card would have been enough to back that belief up for me. Of course God had a bigger plan in mind. One Wednesday night at church I had just had enough of waiting. I was extra emotional because a friend had died unexpectedly the day before, and I said to Cassie, "I want you to tell me about your Bulgarian adoption." She and Jim were well into the paperwork to adopt their second daughter. Cassie replied by saying that she hadn't wanted to push the idea of international adoption on us, but it just so happened that her attorney had just called and had a child he wanted to place as soon as possible.

We called the attorney the next morning. He told us in his Bulgarian accent that, "This is the best child in the orphanage. He is quiet child, but healthy." He sent us this by overnight mail:

And the rest is history. Holy cow this has gotten long, and I haven't even told you the part about dragging Cassie into the scrapbooking world, and her dragging me into the country music world, or a million other reasons I love and miss her and her sweet Godly husband and her gorgeous (17! and 13! year old) girls. And I especially didn't tell you about the time we went to lunch when Annamarie was four and sick and she threw up in Cassie's purse.

Whew, it's over

2008-11-30T20:33:00.004-05:00

Day 30 of NaBloPoMo and I DID IT. I filled up the internet with meaningless drivel every day for a month. I hope that I will be able to keep up the regular posting, but don't expect to see me every day.

My brilliant husband was mentioned in a New York Times article today. You have my permission to say, "Wow, I know this guy!"

My Christmas list consisted of exactly one item, and it is apparently the Tickle Me Elmo of Christmas 2008. It is back ordered and expected to ship in 11 to 13 weeks. Three months, are you kidding me? Oh, you can purchase one on eBay for about a thousand bucks, but I am not insane and neither is my husband. So tell me, my friends, what do I want for Christmas now? That's what I get for being fiscally responsible and not buying it for myself months ago.

Scenes from the Wiikend

2008-11-29T23:48:00.003-05:00

We hung around my parents' house this morning long enough to see my youngest brother, who had been visiting his in-laws in Florida, and we arrived home with just enough time to buy our Christmas tree and get the lights on it before the kids went to bed. We dragged all of the Christmas stuff out of the attic and there are boxes everywhere. The only piece of the decor that is completely up is the nativity scene, but it's the only part that is non-negotiable anyway.

As I was flinging decorations out on every surface it occurred to me, as it does every year about this time, that sweet merciful heavens someone is going to have to put all this mess away in a month.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving, and I took almost no photos. (Shocking, I know. I have got to start carrying my good camera again and get back in the swing of taking better photos.) The ones I did take were pretty awful, but I had to share these two of sweet baby Ford, who is so amazingly gentle with my mom's ~~hateful mutt~~ dog Xena. Poor Ford has been really sick with some respiratory ailment and was even hospitalized overnight last week.

2008-11-28T23:44:00.003-05:00

You'll pardon me if my post is brief tonight...I am a bit sore from all of the sports I played today. I am not used to playing tennis, baseball, and bowling all in one day.

Ron and I did head out for some Black Friday shopping this morning at the crack of ten. I'm not sure we got any huge bargains, but we did almost finish our Christmas shopping. Ooh, I did get seasons 2 & 3 of The Office for $13 each--score! We came back to Mom and Dad's with two bags; one containing some socks and disposable razors and the other full of clothes for our "Adopt-A-Snowflake" kids. Thomas and Annamarie were surprised and puzzled that we let them look in the bags and that we didn't have anything else stashed in the car. They don't know about the stop we made at the Pak'n'Mail, heh heh. We shipped home a big box of stuff that we never could have kept out of their sight, sneaky little ponkers.*

We are heading home tomorrow to purchase our Christmas tree and get it decorated before Thomas heads back to school Sunday. It will truly be a Christmas miracle to have the shopping and decorating done before December first.

Now I'm off to ice my pitching arm.

* "Ponker" is one of our special family words. Annamarie made it up when she was little and it stuck.

I am thankful for y'all and for the Wii

2008-11-27T21:43:00.003-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I am very grateful for all of you, my seven readers, and I hope you had a wonderful day with your families. I trust you're as pleasantly stuffed as I am. For the first time this year my mom ordered most of our feast from the K&W. It was pretty good, although nothing could beat Mom's stuffing, and I was glad that my mom had some time to enjoy the day outside the kitchen. We had a small crowd this year as well, with one brother visiting his in-laws and my niece and nephew at their dad's house, and no aunts and uncles available. We missed them, of course, but it did mean that we had fewer people to fight over the Wii.

Several weeks back Mom and Dad were having dinner at the home of some friends who introduced them to the siren song of the Wii, and they went home and bought one! My parents bought a Wii before any of their three technology loving children, and they bought a big screen TV to maximize their gaming experience.

I had never had the opportunity to play Wii before, and after today I am wondering whether I am going to need an accountability partner after Santa comes this year. It is so much fun! We bowled all afternoon, and the suprise natural talent is Annamarie. She doesn't overthink anything, just flings the ball and beats the pants off nearly everyone. Thomas the video game junkie was eaten up with jealousy and bad sportsmanship.

I did take photos of the Wii-playing and of my precious nephew loving on the dogs, and I would happily share them with you if I had remembered to bring my USB cord. I promise you that the photos of Ford and the dog are even cuter than you're imagining.

Still deciding whether I am going to do any early morning shopping.

Over the river and throught the woods

2008-11-26T23:23:00.002-05:00

To Grammy's house we came. We are in North Carolina visiting my parents for the weekend. I can't imagine why my children decided to revert to their toddler years and whine and squabble through every one of the 270 miles we drove today. We had to institute "silent time." The only reason this worked at all was that it was too dark for them to make faces at each other. I may have to FedEx them home in separate boxes because I am not sure I can face a repeat performance.

You broke your bed, now you must lie in it

2008-11-25T00:50:00.008-05:00

About six or seven years ago we bought new bedroom furniture, including a king-sized bed to replace the queen we had before. Not too long afterward, Annamarie dropped one of her precious items of plastic jewelry down behind the headboard and commenced to screech her fool head off, which was her preferred method of communication before she learned to talk 16 hours a day. The only way that infernal noise was ever going to stop assaulting our eardrums was for someone to retrieve the jewelry. To this day I don't know why we didn't get a long stick with duct tape or a broom or anything more well thought out than trying to move that whole king-sized bed, mattresses and all, by yanking on one corner of it.

Not surprisingly, the wood splintered at the point where the sides hook onto the footboard. As a temporary measure we put a stack of books under that corner, which luckily faces away from the door, and thus it has remained until this very day. Well, with slight modifications by Ruby, who decided the books were great fun to chew on. Upon which to chew? Whatever. Isn't this fashionable home decor?

The time has come to purchase a new bed and probably other stuff to match. The rest of our house has fairly nice furniture, but the master bedroom is propped up on dog-chewed books and features an armoire that we bought for $269 at Office Depot and I assembled myself. It is made of genuine wood products (TM) and pressboard and the drawers don't close quite right but it has served us well for 14 years or so.

The challenge now is that Ron and I have different tastes in furniture. I am wanting something in a style like this:

And Ron would prefer something more like this:

I think that formal cherry furniture is lovely, but it doesn't go with the rest of our casual, country-ish home. There is certain to be marital discord before a compromise is reached.

There is also the question of where to buy. Do we hit the local furniture stores and hope for holiday sales? Do we drive to High Point, NC, furniture mecca, and overwhelm ourselves with choices? Do we trust online vendors and buy furniture sight unseen? Maybe we ought to just replace the books.

All that stands between me and frostbite

2008-11-24T23:25:00.004-05:00

Sometime Saturday night while we were sleeping, our furnace bit the dust. We woke up Sunday morning to find that it was 60 degrees in the house, and please know that I am fully aware of the millions of people who don't even have walls or blankets or heated mattress pads that kept them blissfully unaware of the malfunction until the alarm went off. I totally acknowledge that this is a first-world whinefest.

Ron leapt out of bed like he always does. It's one of his superpowers, that ability to just get up without moaning and cursing the injustice of morning. My own superpower is, well, not that. He exclaimed, "It's COLD in here," so I stuck an arm out and discovered that it was indeed frosty, at least in contrast to our normal balmy 72 degrees.

I was cozy still under my quilt and flannel sheets, and lying on the aforementioned heated mattress pad which was set on 9. I briefly considered skipping church because I couldn't bear the thought of leaving my toasty cocoon, but I realized that at some point during the day, probably several points, I'd have to get up and go to the bathroom, and the toilet seats would probably be warmer over at the church.

The heating and cooling guy arrived shortly after we got home from church, and was here (along with his 5-year-old son) for two and a half hours. Apparently the blah de blah on our 15-year-old furnace wasn't sending a signal to the bloogity bloog to turn the fan on, and of course they didn't have a replacement in stock. But if we would just keep the fan set to ON instead of AUTO it would be fine and we would be warm until the part came in Tuesday.

Except that when I went to bed Sunday night it wasn't working at all. And this morning it was cold again. So I was forced to keep warm by going to IHOP with a friend and eating stuffed french toast, oh! and to Lowe's to get a space heater so that Annamarie wouldn't freeze to death in the night. Ron brought that little one in the photo home from his office and it is keeping the icicles off of me and my computer.

[Side note: I love the English language and grammar, and although I remember the rule about never starting a sentence with a preposition, I cannot seem to write a blog post without doing so several times. Witness the last four sentences. The grammar po-po are surely coming to take me away.]

I hope the repair guys are back promptly in the morning, but I feel 99.8% sure that they are going to want to come by around 12:45 which is when I am going to have my thyroid ultrasounded.

Also, I am not a big quote person, but I heard an ancient Chinese proverb today that I really love: "My barn having burnt to the ground, I can now see the moon."

And one last thing (again with the prepositions): Am I entitled to a discount because the repairman's cute little boy broke the hurricane lamp on my coffee table, necessitating the vacuuming up of hundreds of fake berries?

Flushed with discount fever

2008-11-23T23:42:00.005-05:00

Way back in 1997, Ron and I took a weeklong driving vacation to New England and I still look back on that vacation as one of the best we ever took. The stars seemed to be aligned such that the whole trip was perfect, and besides it was about 100 degrees when we left Virginia and about 75 in Massachusetts. It was one of those before-kids times when it actually worked to take a road trip with no planned stops, just a vague idea of where we wanted to end the day. But if you asked Ron, he would probably say that I have such fond recollections of this trip because of the outlet shopping we did in Maine. Freeport, Maine is not only a picturesque coastal town, it is home to some truly awesome shopping, including the home of L.L. Bean. At the time(remember that this is 1997, and please be forgiving)I was a huge fan of Laura Ashley clothing and I found huge stacks wonderful items at the Laura Ashley outlet almost for free. When I came out with a giant bag of treasure that I had paid about $30 total for, Ron laughed and said that I was flushed with discount fever. I couldn't argue with that, because I was pretty darn excited. Who doesn't get feverish about saving big bucks on stuff that you probably would've bought anyway?

Once again my background information is probably excessive, but I felt that flush of bargain shopping again today. I had asked Thomas to mail home his Christmas list and received it in the mail before he came home on Friday. This is the child who usually has a terrible time coming up with three or four items for Santa. It's not that he doesn't want anything; rather he expects us to know him so well that we can read his mind. Either that or he's too lazy to look up the proper name of the video games he wants, but this year he had about $1000 worth of stuff on his list. Ironic given that we had already given both children the lecture about the economy, cutting back this year, blah blah blah.

Anyway, seeing Thomas' list inspired Annamarie to make one of her own. When she pointed out that she didn't know how to spell most of the things on her list I told her to cut out pictures of items from the many catalogs that she has been saving and glue them onto a piece of paper. She might as well have just handed me the Limited Too catalog. The sheet that she handed me was covered on both sides with photos of sweaters, purses, Webkinz, scarves and jewelry. If it wouldn't wake her up, I would go into her room right now and take a photo of the racks we hung up tonight to hold her purses, scarves and jewelry. I don't think she could squeeze in another item on those racks. But as I have taught her to say recently, "Bygones."

I went to the Limited Too website just to see how many thousands of dollars this is going to cost us, and to make a long story short (too late) I lucked into a double coupon situation that ought to make my newly penny-pinching husband want to be my best friend forever. After narrowing down her list a good bit, I was able to order $180 worth of pink sparkly crap for less than $70 plus shipping.

I am understandably flushed and trying very very hard not to reward myself by spending the $110 I saved on scrapping stuff. I do not want to upset my new BFF.

Unrelated to any of the above, we took the kids to see a university production of the musical Oklahoma! last night. Ron and I both love the theater and have tried to cultivate a similar love in our children. I think we have mostly succeeded in Thomas' case, but unless there is tap dancing and sparkly costumes Annamarie has a hard time following along. She enjoys herself as long as there are snacks at intermission, and because she just generally loves being out and about. It's not a review that you will read in Variety, but as we were leaving the theater Annamarie exclaimed, "Mommy, I was not too bored!" For what it's worth, I wasn't bored either --- I thought it was great for a local production.

(When I think about it, I compose my posts using Dragon Naturally Speaking and a microphone rather than typing, at which I am exceptionally terrible. A couple of paragraphs back the speech recognition program went all wonky and I said to myself, "why are you not working?" My computer heard that as "re: network gaming." Either I talk too fast, or I'm mumbling, or God is sending me a message that I am playing too much Slingo online.)

The gang's all here

2008-11-22T23:56:00.000-05:00

Thomas is home this weekend and we have had so much fun being all together for the first time in a month. We had a big Sorry tournament Friday night.

We love Sorry because even Annamarie can understand and play it well. And it's such a dramatic game. The highs...

And the lows...

And I won't mention any names, but some of us wear a horse on our heads for good luck.

I won, by the way. SORRY!!

An extra post, because it is important

2008-11-21T20:30:00.001-05:00

I stole this from my friend Jean's blog, but if just one more person sees it, it will be worth it.

Amen.

Doing my part to boost the economy

2008-11-20T23:03:00.002-05:00

My friend Sandy is a bad, bad influence and yet, so much fun. Today we went to a fabulous antique mall about an hour from here, and darned if I didn't forget to bring a tractor-trailer truck with me. I could have bought that much stuff easily.

Antique stores are hit-or-miss for me...I can appreciate the beauty of fine antiques but they are both out of my price range and generally too formal for our comfortable country house. What I love are primitive antiques, pieces that are genuinely distressed from years of use. This antique mall (Through the Garden Gate in Mechanicsville, VA) is just perfect for me--a ton of little treasures tucked into a bunch of different rooms.

Our small house doesn't have room for any more furniture, and my husband the economist tells me that many, many peanut butter sandwich meals lie in our future, so I wasn't after anything big today. I actually said a prayer last night that I would be able to enjoy looking at the lovely things in the store and then leave them there, for the good of my family's finances. Well, I did leave many things in the store, but I brought a few home too, all of them Christmas-y home decor items.

Since I'm planning to participate in Boo Mama's Christmas Tour of Homes, I won't share photos today, but among my favorite purchases were a garland made from vintage cookie cutters (that thing is HEAVY) and a Christmas tree-shaped pillow made from vintage fabrics. I am unreasonably excited about the bloggy tour o' homes because I do all this decorating and then no one sees it but the four of us and the UPS man. I hope that I will have many visitors because y'all, last year Boo Mama had nearly five hundred homes on the tour. Yes ma'am, I said FIVE HUNDRED. If ten or twelve of those people drop by and leave me comments I will die of happiness. Maybe if I'd write something interesting they'd come back again.

Giving thanks in all circumstances

2008-11-19T22:18:00.007-05:00

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit's fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil. 1 Thessalonians 5:6-19

This month I've been attending a Wednesday night Bible study about Advent, the season of preparing for Jesus' birth. I suppose we are preparing for the preparing, heh.

At the beginning of tonight's meeting, our pastor Jason welcomed us, led us in prayer, and then said, "We'll get started in about two minutes." He sat on the edge of the desk, and after about ten seconds of uncomfortable silence someone piped up with a question unrelated to the study. After answering the question, Jason pointed out what terrible "waiters" we are. We weren't able to just wait for the session to begin...we had to be doing something. This led into a discussion of the fact that when we can't control our circumstances, the only thing we can control is our response to them.

As an example, Jason was talking about the frustrations of air travel. (Amen.) He mentioned a mission trip that we took to Mexico in 2006, which involved opportunities to give thanks for all kinds of unforeseen circumstances, or to feel angry and put-upon if one were so inclined. This trip included flight delays, missed connections, an emergency landing because of smoke in the cockpit, and a flat tire on our 15-passenger hoopty rental van, out in the middle of nowhere. The first Spanish word many of us learned was "flexibilidad" and as a group I think we did a pretty good job with the concept.

I got to thinking about how those experiences, unpleasant as they were in the moment, made for amazing bonding within our group. Some of my favorite memories of the trip wouldn't have happened if everything had gone according to our plans instead of according to God's will. I find that that happens often when I travel: The unexpected inconvenience, detour, or change in plans often results in some joyful surprise that just may be the highlight of the journey.

Isn't that generally true of our whole lives? We believe we know what is best for us, and we despair when our best-laid plans go awry, when relationships end painfully, when babies don't arrive as easily as we had expected, when whatever we thought we needed is yanked away. My life is full of those unanswered prayers, and when I look back I thank God for his infinite mercy in guiding me to where He wants me. I hear all the time the saying, "When God close a door, He opens a window." I think that in most cases, that window was always there but we were too busy clawing at the door to see it.

Not surprisingly, my children are the area of my life where this rings most true. Adoption was not part of our original plan, and raising children with special needs was certainly not part of the plan. I will not say that I have never grieved for a more "normal" or easier parenting experience, because that would just be a lie, but I will say that I wouldn't trade my children or our life together for anything. If you've never read Emily Perl Kingsley's "Welcome to Holland," it's about as perfect a summation of those feelings as I could imagine.

I know that God has equipped me for this task, but sometimes I forget. OK, LOTS of times I forget. I fully believe that some of the toughest parts of raising these amazing, challenging little people may give rise to the most precious moments of the journey. I pray that God will lend me the wisdom and patience to wait joyfully and be thankful even in the circumstances that wear on my very last nerve.

Ooh, pretty

2008-11-19T01:10:00.000-05:00

I bought a couple of nice but plain notebooks from Target over the weekend. I spent a few minutes and a few leftover odds and ends dressing this one up for my purse.

I also finished my banner and will try to get Ron to help me hang it tomorrow so I can decide whether it looks festive or just goofy.

This is the way I blogroll

2008-11-18T23:34:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I mentioned that I read many blogs, and I have long felt that it was unfair of me to keep them to myself, but I have simultaneously been too lazy to actually create a list of the wonderful writing that entertains me.

I have left off the "celebrity blogs" that everyone reads, because they don't need the publicity. Yes, I thoroughly enjoy Dooce and Pioneer Woman and Finslippy and Fussy, and in the scrapbooking world Heidi Swapp and Donna Downey and many more, but you probably already do too.

Click on a few of the links over to the right. They're MY favorites, so some might not be to your tastes, but like I'm always telling Thomas, "If you try something new, you might discover something delicious."

And, hey! If I am missing something that you love, post a link. Especially if it's crafty or inspiring or laugh-out-loud funny.

Dilemma of the Day

2008-11-17T23:23:00.001-05:00

It is no secret that I read many blogs. According to Google Reader, I subscribe to 52 of them. Many of those are infrequently updated, but still I will not be surprised when the crew of Intervention shows up on the doorstep with my extended family. I read Christian blogs and parenting blogs and craft blogs and photography blogs, and they are all food for my soul.

If you have a discussion with me in real life, it will probably not be long before I say, "One of the bloggers I read says..." It has occurred to me that this might a) be really annoying and b) indicate that I should get out more, but oh my stars you bloggers are some smart and funny people! Often with pretty pictures!

That's background info for the real issue here. Several years ago my youngest brother and I were having a discussion about our TV viewing. Now, I am not a huge watcher of TV. Perhaps you are speculating that it cuts into my blog reading? HA, I say! I have a TV tuner card that allows me to watch shows in a window on my computer. Nonetheless, I am picky about what I watch and am reluctant to get invested in new shows. Somehow I always miss "the big ones," the ones that everyone watches, because if I don't see the first show, I can't jump in in the middle.

LOST? Never seen it. 24? Ditto. Amazing Race? The Hills? ANTM? Gossip Girl? Heroes? Never seen an episode of any of them. And also, The Office. When I admitted that to my brother, he gasped and claimed that it was the best show on TV. Eh, but he's my baby brother. What does he know?

Recently, though, BooMama has been posting her favorite moments of each episode of The Office and I feel left out. And don't tell her because she doesn't know me from Adam's housecat, but she's one of my best girlfriends. If BooMama thinks it's hilarious, it must be hilarious! Then my dear friend Pioneer Woman started making references to the show as well and then it popped up on more and more of my favorite blogs.

Naturally I decided I needed to get in on the secret and so I downloaded Season 1 from iTunes for only $11.94. A bargain! I watched all six episodes yesterday and not surprisingly I am hooked. Those people are so hilariously dysfunctional that they make me look well-adjusted. Is that why everyone watches? No? Never mind.

My dilemma arose when I went to download Season 2, which has not six episodes, but 22 and costs $35 even if I choose the non-HD version. It will cost me $105 to get caught up to this season and by the time I have watched four seasons I will have missed most of the current one and have to purchase it too. Do you SEE what I am up against?

As far as I can tell, here are my options:
1) Just start watching in the middle of the current season. Pros: It's free. Cons: Nope, can't do it.

2) Buy seasons 2, 3, and 4. Pros: Quick and easy. Cons: Bad economy, children expecting Christmas presents and college educations blah blah blah.

3) Reinstate my Netflix account and rent them on DVD. Pros: It's $8.99 a month. Cons: I canceled the account because it was taking me approximately three months to walk out to the mailbox to return each movie, making each movie rental cost about $27.

Please share your thoughts on the matter.

I May Need to Get a New Boyfriend*

2008-11-17T20:48:00.000-05:00

I got a huge unexpected package from My Little Yellow Bicycle today, filled to the brim with items from their new Love Letters collection. The pictures on the website DO NOT do this collection justice. The colors are gorgeous, a ton of the elements are flocked, a ton of shaped papers, there are silky fabric tags and so many cool clear elements...I can't wait to play with it all. I'm going to have to wait a bit because right now I am feeling a powerful Christmas crafty urge.

Look, I am making a Christmas banner for my living room, using some gorgeous Chatterbox papers from last year. I hope it will add some festive to the room.

I should be putting a huge stack of layouts in albums, but they'll still be there after I make some Christmas shaker boxes and felt pillow covers. Anyone know a good source for wool felt?

*Because there is so much lovey-dovey stuff in this line that I feel kind of silly using it to create layouts about my husband of fifteen years, beloved though he is.

New Inspiration at Busy Bee

2008-11-16T23:34:00.000-05:00

I just posted four great new articles by the Booya Girls at Busy Bee Scrapbooking. Check them out if you are looking for some great inspiration straight from your stash.

Despite the Booya Girls' excellent work, I am having trouble inspiring myself to scrap. I did this layout last night, and it just isn't doing it for me. This may be my favorite photo I've ever taken of my kids, and I wanted the layout to be special. You know how that is, don't you?

The detail photo is supposed to show how sparkly this page is in real life. The background paper is glittery, the cardstock is Bazzill Bling, and all of the embellishments are glittery. Maybe if you click on it you'll get some idea. I am still debating whether I am going to redo this one from scratch.

Anyone? Anyone?

2008-11-16T14:33:00.002-05:00

I took this photo on the way to church this morning. I am assuming that it's maybe on its way to a barbeque restaurant (for decoration, not dinner)? Anyone have another plausible explanation for this strange porcine transport?

Burning Questions

2008-11-15T23:39:00.002-05:00

Where is my scrapping mojo?

Is it with all of my black and white long sleeve t-shirts that have gone missing?

What am I going to wear to church tomorrow? (Not that I would wear the b/w t-shirts if I could find them. These questions are unrelated except that they both fall under the general heading of I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR.)

And again with that topic, why can't I find a decent pair of khaki pants that are neither too low-rise for my freakishly long waist nor so high-waisted as to be totally unfashionable?

What am I going to give Thomas' RIs (dorm parents, both 20-something guys) for Christmas?

Why can't I seem to take a decent photo anymore?

Is anyone out there?

The goose is getting fat

2008-11-14T23:59:00.004-05:00

I need to confess that I still have most of my Halloween decorations up. Ordinarily our pumpkins have been so thoroughly devoured by squirrels that by Halloween, all that is left are the rotting bases of our beautifully carved creations. (See my first ever blog post.) This year we succumbed to the lure of plastic lighted pumpkins from Target (of course), and since the squirrels have not turned those into moldy masses there has been little impetus to unplug them and put them away. Also, I haven't redecorated my Hoosier cabinet because a) I don't have any Thanksgiving decorations and b) it would mean redoing it twice in a month.

I have been thinking it is way too early to start Christmas decorating, but lo and behold December first is just 16 days away! The past few years I have enjoyed doing some handmade home decor projects for Christmas, like this canvas from two years ago:

and these countdown blocks from last year.

I am thinking seriously about making some Christmas shaker boxes similar to the ones I did for Halloween, and maybe some kind of photo garland. I also need to get started on Christmas cards if they are going to be handmade. Anyone have any cute Christmas home decor project ideas for me?

Lessons from Dad

2008-11-13T19:46:00.006-05:00

Annamarie is so blessed to have a dad who has the patience to teach her important life skills like making pumpkin pie. Here he was helping her read the recipe from the back of the can. After years of experimentation, I can tell you that that is the location of the perfect pumpkin pie recipe: on the back of the Libby's Pumpkin can. Fortunately, he remembered to buy fresh spices as well.

Showing her how to crack an egg, scientifically. Ruby seems interested in his method as well.

Ruby is still interested in the proceedings and hoping someone is going to drop something.

Continuing the lesson all the way to the oven.

The pies turned out yummy. Poor Ruby didn't get any, but I hope Annamarie will have yet another memory of how much her Dad loves her. The photos are pretty bad because my point & shoot was the closest thing at hand and I was trying to be stealthy with the zoom, but I think they captured the moment anyway.

Excuses, Excuses

2008-11-12T23:38:00.000-05:00

Reasons why I will not be writing a real post this evening:

1) I can't stop sneezing. I've been feeling a head cold coming on for a few days, and it seems to have arrived.

2) My mind (the part not filled with snot, anyway) is occupied with the upcoming battle with Annamarie's school system. We are actually hiring a lawyer, something I have only done in the past for good reasons, like buying a house and adopting children.

3) I have been shopping online. One of the biggest online scrapbook stores is having a HUGE sale and I just got about $11,000 worth of stuff for $63 shipped. This store has had some stocking and shipping issues in the past, so we shall see what actually arrives and when. I am optimistic.

4) I must go to bed and rest up for my annual exam/pap smear/lecture about my weight at the crack of dawn. Maybe that will involve something interesting enough to post about tomorrow. Something for you to be optimistic about.

Some things we're better off not knowing

2008-11-11T21:21:00.007-05:00

Lately I have been very annoyed by my spice cabinet. It is tiny and narrow and jam packed. Every time I cook something, which is frankly not all that often, I have to dig through the entire cabinet. Somehow the spices know that I am coming for them and they go all Anne Frank and hide in the very back. By the time I find what I'm looking for, several avalanches have ensued and bad words may have been uttered. Setting this mess to rights has been in the back of my mind for a while, and earlier today I was (reading a blog? playing games?) on a website that had a banner ad for McCormick Spices, advertising a web page that would tell me exactly how old my spices are.

I made Ron empty all of the spices into a box and lug them to my desk, so right away he knew it was going to be another big night of entertainment. He read off the codes and I entered them into the website, which gave exact creation dates for most of the bottles we have. (Except for the few that aren't McCormick brand, of course.) Here are the results of our research:

If you need a refresher on greater than/less than symbols, the big group over there on the left are all more than ten years old. A surprising number are more than twenty years old. Ron and I have only been married for 15 years, and I brought no spices to the marriage. The grand prize winner was celery salt, which dates from the 60s. I cannot tell you what my husband might have been doing with celery salt in his teens.

The good news is that the spice cabinet will be much less annoying and I will be able to easily find any of my nine remaining seasonings. The bad news is that if you come to my house I will be unable to make you cinnamon toast or anything that includes fennel. And also, my marriage was obviously much spicier in the early years.

Because I find myself endlessly fascinating

2008-11-10T23:59:00.004-05:00

Where I went today:
* Lunch with Sandy at Riverside (legendary hamburgers and a basket o'fries)
* Target (lots of Christmas shopping done and a new sweater)
* Dog park

What I'm looking forward to:
* Neil Diamond concert on Dec. 9
* David Cook's album release Nov. 18
* Ultimate Scrapbooking Cruise Jan. 11
* Thanksgiving in Charlotte with my family
* Twilight movie release on Nov. 21
* Decorating for Christmas

Blogs I have discovered this week and think you should too:
* Cool Mom
* Pleasant View Schoolhouse
* Bye Bye, Pie!

Who is on my mind and in my prayers this week:
* My 2-year-old nephew Ford, who was hospitalized over the weekend with breathing problems
* My friend Michele who just lost her father-in-law
* Another friend whose marriage is struggling
* Our friends the Gritskos who are awaiting a foster-to-adopt placement

And look at the post time...did I squeak that in under the wire or what?

In the Name of Fairness

2008-11-09T20:40:00.005-05:00

I was reading back through my posts on this new blog, and I realized that poor Thomas is almost completely unrepresented. Since he has been boarding at school, I have no stories to tell about him, and no photos to share except for the odd soccer game pic, and they all look the same anyway. My action photo skills are somewhat lacking. Thank goodness for the photographer who shows up at the games with the giant white "I-am-a-professional" lens, who will kindly sell me a 4x6 of my son that is neither blurry nor shot from 50 yards away, all for the bargain price of $7.85 including shipping.

Several people have asked how Thomas is doing, and the answer is that he seems to be thriving. The boarders are required to write home every Monday, and I suspect he is cutting and pasting the previous week's letter, changing a sentence, and printing it out. I can tell you off the top of my head, because he has repeated it every week for the last seven, that:
* He is getting along great with his roommate
* His RI (residential instructor) is very cool
* Classes are going great
* Can he please bring his PlayStation 2 back to the dorm with him?

Given that he expected dorm life to be a 24/7 slumber party, Thomas has been a bit surprised at the amount of responsibility the boarders have. He has told me that he has even less time for TV/video games/computer than he did ~~back at the gulag~~ at home, AND can you believe they have to change their own sheets?!? Every. week. When I pointed out how glad I was that he knew how to perform that skill now, he looked concerned that maybe he had overshared with his mom.

He has also told me that in effect, the students are kept so busy that there is no time for misbehavior. Thomas has never done well with unstructured time, and I am far too lazy to provide constant activities to keep him occupied. He is in the perfect situation in that regard at school. It's interesting how receptive he is to concepts that his parents tried to introduce for years; for example, an old-fashioned notion known as "playing outside." I have to concede that it probably does look more appealing when it comes with a bunch of friends and a 400-acre campus.

Our boy has always been an extremely picky eater, and my only real concern is whether he is getting enough to eat. In the past the school has used a food service contractor who served typical borderline junky kid food, much to Thomas' delight. This year they let the contractor go and hired an in-house chef who is also an RN with a nutrition background and a passion for locally grown organic whole foods, which sounds awesome and healthy, but practically guarantees that my son is subsisting on a diet of rolls and saltines. And only if the rolls are white. With none of those seeds on top. Every Friday we receive the menu for the upcoming week and I laugh until Ron has to whack me on the back.

Here's what's on the menu for tomorrow's lunch: Watermelon, Feta and Black Olive Salad, Shrimp and Veggie Risotto, Tortellini Aioli, Tuna Salad, Spinach Salad, Garlic Roasted Hummus, Warm Onion Dip with Sliced apples and pumpernickel bread. And Tuesday's dinner: Black Beans and Rice with Andouille Sausage, Wilted Spinach, Roasted Vegetables, Snowflake Rolls, Banana Bread. Personally, my mouth is watering just retyping it, but my child refuses to eat corn. And apples. Wilted spinach? Get real. I just hope they have plenty of snowflake rolls.

Fireproof

2008-11-08T23:40:00.002-05:00

Wow. Ron and I saw Fireproof today. I had heard a lot of wonderful things about this sleeper hit, made by the same Georgia church that produced Facing the Giants, and let me tell you it lived up to the hype. I foolishly left my purse full of Kleenex in the car, and my shirt sleeves suffered all sorts of tear- and snot-related indignities.

Please, take your husband or wife and go see this movie, even if you feel like your marriage is rock solid, but especially if you are struggling. Or if you're single but hope to be married someday, or if you're divorced and hope to try love again. You will leave the theater as I did, wanting to love better, and thinking hard about what real, sacrificial love is. I needed that message now. I pray that I am equal to the challenge.