BACK

We are back from Utah.  It was a fun, yet interesting trip!  I am hoping to post soon!  Stay tuned for more crochet things.  It has been my new addiction.  I am very much enjoying it.

How's everyone's Christmas decorating going?  We haven't started yet.  We are busting out the tree tomorrow.  It will be fun setting it up in our new house.

Until next time...

No Internet No Time

Between moving and having no internet I have not been able to write a post.  I am leaving in an hour or so ( If I can get packed that fast ) to drive to Utah to see my parents.  My husband has to stay home and work and so it's just me and the kids.  It will be our first time driving there since Kayla potty trained.  It should be interesting.  Here's hoping we make it okay and I don't have to kill anyone.  :)

Newest Obsession

My poor husband!  I just get into these kicks and want to do new things.  First it was making hair bows when my daughter was born.  Then sewing.  Then sewing anything and everything but mostly purses.  Then it was creating fabric hair bows and accessories and opening up the etsy shop.  Then I started doing odds and ends things here and there.  Next, garters, shoes clips....blah blah blah.  NOW I have taken on a new challenge.

CROCHET!  I am in love with crochet right now!  I mean REALLY.  My hand is absolutely killing me because I can't keep my yarn right and my hands are all over the place but I love it so far.  I found this free tutorial and pinned it here  I didn't actually learn the pattern because.....well....have you looked at a crochet pattern?  Um HARD!  I have no clue how to read them.  So I found an online youtube video that shows you how to make them and in ten short minutes I had me a bow!  The grey was my first and the orange was my second.  Right now I am working on a flower but as I mentioned before my left hand is on fire and it's time for me to go pick up my boy from school.

Who else crochet's?  I want to know.  Leave me a comment and let me know where you like to get your patterns from.  I found a million free ones on line and have been into the youtube video's since I am a beginner.  Everyone told me just just try it but I wanted someone to show me.  I finally just went on line and looked and WOW!  Now I am hooked....no pun intended!  :)

The New Place

This week starts moving week.  It is going to be crazy, hectic and exciting.  I told y'all I would post some pictures so I thought I'd do so now while I am in between packing boxes ( oh which I only have like 10 to 15 packed and my house is a MESS!  YIKES!!! )


Here is the front of the house from a couple of angles

Here is the living room

The kitchen ( I love all of the cut out's so you can see to the other room )

Our kitchen from the other way so you could see the dinner room

This is the breakfast nook area.  See that door leading to the room in the back?  THAT is going to be my sewing room/photography studio!  WOO HOO I am SOOOOOO excited about that.  No more sewing on the kitchen table.

 Here is the dinner room up close and you can see the front door of the house.  Off to the side where my son is standing is going to be his room.  the door next to that is a coat closet and you can't see in this picture but my duaghters room is next to the front door off to the left from this picture and my husbands office will be to the right of the front door.

 Here is the back yard.  Our grass in need of some serious water but that's okay, at least we have some!  And notice the gorgeous double rainbow?!  I told my husband it was a sign

This picture was taken a few blocks away ( around the corner from where we live right now ).  I had to stop and get a picture of the rainbow over the water.  Isn't it gorgeous!?!

Now I can't wait to be moved in!  Do you know that I call myself a photographer but have lived in this house here for almost a year and we NEVER put pictures up?  It drove me NUTS.  I can't WAIT to start decorating and hanging pictures.  EEEEEEEEEEEEE

So I will most likely not be on again this week, for obvious reasons.  I have crafted a little and if I have a moment to spare I might try and show you one or two.  Have a great week everyone and I can't wait to blog again from my new house

Happy

I am happy to report that after my little break down on Monday I tried really hard to re-evaluate things in my house.  I was in the middle of doing something and I just got this thought into my head out of no where and I knew what was wrong.  I would like to say it came out of no where but I know exactly where it came from.  I have been so busy doing all kinds of things like, packing, cleaning and cooking.  My poor son hasn't gotten enough attention from me and you know what they say, "even bad attention is attention".  As soon as I had this realization on Tuesday I decided to spend time with him right when he got home from school.  This is usually when I start dishes and start working on dinner.  I usually hear, "Mommy can you play with me?"  and what do I say, "No I'm busy right now making dinner."  IS that a valid thing I was doing?  YES!  My family needed dinner but sometimes a frozen meal is worth getting to spend some extra time with your kids.

Wednesday when I picked my boy up from school we went home and I said, "How about I come sit on the couch with you and cuddle" He was SO happy!  We sat on the couch, My boy, my girl and I, eating popcorn, cuddling and watching Kung Fu Panda.  It was so nice and I am telling you I only sat with him for like 20 to 30 minutes but it was EXACTLY what HE NEEDED!  The next day when I picked him up from school we came home and went on a walk.  We live in an area that is surrounded by water.  There are ponds all over and so we like to walk to one and "feed" the ducks.  The ducks have never once eaten our bread but that doesn't stop us from feeding them.  Then we went to Dinner and to Costco.  Tyler was REALLy good the whole night.  The next day mommy got her hair cut.  Can I just tell you my hair hadn't been cut in like 6 months.  It was full of slip ends and it was looking horrible.  I haven't had bangs since the 3rd grade and so I got bangs and got my hair fixed.  It looks so cute and I feel great! Thursday we picked him up from school and we cuddled again and worked on homework.  I am telling you guys it is amazing what just 20 minutes or so of Tyler and Mommy time has changed his attitude.  I don't know if it will continue to work but it has work wonders so far.

This next week is going to be stressful.  We are moving and I have started trying to make Christmas presents.  I decided that if I didn't do something creative this week then it would just make my mood even worse.  It has helped a lot to try and be creative in some way.  So for me this next week is going to be filled with packing boxes, cleaning a lot and TRYING to get some sewing in here and there when I can.  But we are all SO excited to get moved into our new house.  That is keeping me motivated.  I was going to post some pictures of our new house but I need to go jump in the shower.  I'll post pictures of my new hair soon too.  Now if only I could stop eating some much freaking Halloween candy I think I would be feeling really good.  We only had ONE trick or treater so the two bags of candy we bought are just sitting her calling me and my husband's name.  SERIOUSLY.  The kids go to bed and we sit her eating candy watching TV.  It's horrible.  Maybe the candy will get "lost" in the move.  :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend.  My husband has to work today and so I have two very whinny kids and we are heading to the new house in a little bit so I can clean some more.  The house was built in 2007 and is really nice inside but it has been empty since March so there is an inch of dust on everything.  While the house is empty I wanted to wipe everything down.  Last Saturday we vacuumed EVERYTHING and I started scrubbing the baseboards.  We were there forever it seems like that we didn't even get that done.  Here's hoping I can actually get something done with the two cranky kids bugging me every two seconds.  I'll post pictures later.

Women

Why do we as women always seem to take on more then we can handle?  Do you notice that?  I know it isn't just ME.  I feel like for some reason women are just more willing to give themselves over to others to better them even if it means killing themselves.  Today a friend of mine called me who I hadn't talked to in YEARS.  She needed a favor and I just happened to live in the area she needed something from.  Did I mind her calling and asking?  NO!  Was I offended that she asked me to do something for her when I haven't heard from her in years?  NOPE!  In fact, I felt horrible that I just couldn't help her out today.   It really wasn't in the cards for me today to do anything much but yell at my kids apparently.  I am having an extremely hard time with my son.  Without getting too personal let's just say that he is SO good at school and at church but for some reason when he gets home he just doesn't want to be good any more.  I understand.  I really do.  But it has been driving mentally insane trying to deal with him all of the time.  The worse of it for me is that his sister is learning ALLLLL of this from watching him and now I am starting to have problems with her as well.  I am glad that he is so good for other people but I wish he understood that he should ESPECIALLY want to be good for his OWN MOTHER!  He totally does not understand that.  We have been trying EVERYTHING lately.  I try something for a week or two and it doesn't work so I try something else.  The latest thing I REALLY thought was going to help and so far it hasn't.  The thing that frustrates me more then anything is that a LOT of his problem is personality traits and not something behavioral.  For instance today I put him in time out.  I have a rule that you can not talk in time out or your time out starts over.  Lately this has become a thing of the past and I was trying to revive it.  I told him not to talk or even make a single sound.  The second I said that he made a whining noise.  Why should I get to tell him what to do, right?  I mean, I'm only his mother.  So I took a bean out of his jar ( when he fills up his jar we get to go do something fun! )  and then I say make another noise and I will take another one out.  Most kids would stop but not my stubborn little boy.  he makes another noise immediately.  I ended up taking out about 8 to 10 beans just because he wouldn't stop making noises.  Does anyone have any suggestions on kids with that stubborn attitude I am talking about?  REALLY, anything might help.  I am at my whits end with him.  This is only one of the several problems I am having with him.  I won't get into the others but any advice would be wonderful.  It has been a long day for me.  Every morning is a battle to get him ready for school.  Every morning I end up screaming at him because he simple won't do what I tell him to....I just don't know how much more I can take of it

My mother told me about a great article my church put out about fasting with a purpose.  I read it.  I am going to fast and pray that him and I can work through this together.  I know my son is a child of God.  I know he was given to me for a specific purpose and I love him more then life itself.  He is one of the sweetest kids you will ever meet, he just has that temper that I just don't know what to do with.  So for now I am trying my best to stay calm, not yell, and keep reminding him that I love him.  When I remember these 3 things, everything gets better but sometimes.....I forget!!!

Seriously?

Wow!  I have only been averaging about 1 to 2 post per week for the last month or so.  That is so sad.  Funny thing is that I thought when my son started school I would have SO much more free to time to craft. HAHAHAHA  It has been the opposite.  I haven't sewn hardly at all and I have made nothing for my etsy shop.  I have barely managed to do a few projects for friends or for church.

This last weekend I did a Halloween photo shoot with some friends and friends of friends.  It was lots of fun.  I made a Halloween banner just to help with decorations.  I also brought my halloween quilt that I made a LONG time ago.  A lot of the fabric matched because it was left over from when I did the quilt.  Here is a picture of my son and his friend Lillie ( who happens to be my best friend from high school's little girl )

I was planning on using the Halloween banner across my fire place but I made it SO huge that I would have to cut it in half and so far I have been way to lazy to do that.  Pathetic I know.   The main reason for the photo shoot was to take a picture for my friend.  Her little girl is almost a year old and she is so adorable.  She was looking on pinterest or somewhere and saw a picture of a baby INSIDE a pumpkin.  If you have been looking on pinterest at all you have probably seen the picture.  she sent me a copy and said, "Can we do this, please?"  I told her as long a s she carved out the pumpkin herself I would totally do it.  SO this is what we ended up with

When we first put her in it she balled!  Like big crocodile tears!  Then her momma started singing and all the kids started jumping up and down dancing and we got this little smile out of her.  She never smiled huge but that is okay.  We liked this one any ways.  What a cutie pie huh?!

So there you have it.  Some kind of a blog post from me.  And since today is Thankful Thursdays I am going to say I am thankful for friends.  My friend Lisa not only set up everything at her mom's house and bought all of the decorations for this photo of her daughter, but she then wrote a note on facebook and asked if anyone was interested in coming and paying money to get their kids picture taken!  What a trooper she was!  She worked hard all day too.  I'm so grateful for the few of my friends who are like that and support me no matter what.  Her momma raised her right.  I met her sister and she was the SAME way.  Kept asking me if I needed anything, threw my trash away for me, put my medicine in the refrigerator for me.  It was so nice!  I hope everyone who reads this can find something that they are thankful for today too!

So here's hoping I have SOMETHING crafty to show for my self soon.  I am NOT making any promises thought because we are moving into our new house in about two weeks,  I have one box packed.  YIKES!