craft swap

We had a craft swap last week in the meetup group I'm in and I wanted to share what I made. I scoured Pinterest forever for ideas, but I eventually decided I wanted to make some kind of wall art and never could find exactly what I wanted on Pinterest, so I was on my own.

I started with some scrap wood we had in the garage. I actually made 2, for two reasons. One, I was afraid I might screw one up and I wanted a back up. Second, I wanted to keep one of them if they both turned out well. 

Next came two coats of white paint:

Then came the creative part. I had to try to come up with a short and sweet quote plus some art. I decided to use vinyl wall clings because I didn't trust myself to paint well enough. I picked these:

I cut them to my needs and there were enough to make two art pieces, and the white flowers are on Miss L's dresser in her room.
I used my computer to play with fonts and spacing. The hard part was finding the perfect quote and then cutting the letters out just right. Then I modge podged them on!
Finished product:

I made the second one for me, with a quote that I feel pertains to my life, since I was pleased with the way the first one turned out. It hangs in the play room now.

I want to share the craft I received too! The crafts at this swap were AMAZING and I just happened to get my bestie's craft! It looks lovely on my front door, don't you think?

Edited with a close up by request:

Babies

One of my favorite people in the world is having a baby today! And I just found out someone else I've been rooting for is pregnant! Gosh, babies are really so great. They are adorable and soft and sweet... *sigh*

Occasionally, I'll see a sweet little one and get a tiny pang of longing, but for the most part I'm content with my baby days being behind me.
There are a lot of good things about older children, and I'm starting to get a sense of what life will be like when everyone is a teensy bit more independent. I took d (just turned 7) with me to a couple stores yesterday (spring break) with Miss L, while the middle two were in preschool. He carried bags! He entertained L! He talked to me like a real person about things we saw! It was quite pleasant. (Of course I have conversations with the children other times, but it's SO hard to get real time in when you have 4 kids all needing/wanting something.)

O sits in the back of van and cannot buckle or unbuckle the five point harness. This is a giant pain in the a$$ every single day, because I have to climb back there to buckle him, and unbuckle him, and buckle him and unbuckle... you get the point. Just last week we started letting him use his seat as a booster (properly, and he's well within size and age requirements, so let's just leave that) since he's been asking for months and we finally felt he was mature enough to do so. Let me just say: It's Fantastic! Everyone is much happier!

 He's about to be 5. FIVE. Five means Kindergarten, which means that by August I'll only have half of my kids at home during the hours from 8-2:30. Weird. (unless I decide to homeschool, which yes, I have been thinking about, but I think that deserves it's own post.) You know what else? C & Miss L will be going to preschool in September for 2 days (9am - 1pm) so for the first time in 7.5 years I will have 8 hours a week of child free time. I can't decide if I feel giddy or miserable about it. (Possibly both.)

And next year, C will start Kindergarten too. I'm starting to suddenly feel a little desperate about the fact that I'm not sure what I want to do when my last baby goes to school. Miss L is out of diapers and although I still say she's a baby, I know she's really not. I know that soon we'll have to ditch the paci, and the crib, and it's bittersweet in the way that "the end of an era" things are, but I'm also OK with it. (Despite the fact that I may have had a mini breakdown about ordering a new, big, swing to replace the old, faded baby swing on our playset. I blame PMS.)

They're still so little, but I'm starting to see why old ladies are always saying, "Enjoy this now! It passes so fast."  It's true - and even in the moment we know it - but it's so impossible to enjoy everything that's lovely when there is also so much that is NOT. I mean, I wouldn't want to go back to the endless spitting up that Miss L subjected us to, but I would very much like to occasionally sneak in an hour of rocking her sweet, soft, sleepy self in the dark.

So yes, there are a few pangs, but I'm mostly content to snuggle and coo over others' babies and sleep through the night with my own.

Sunday Funday

My current favorites

song:
Rumor Has It by Adele


color:

I can't decide!


show:
SMASH! (Please don't get cancelled!)

project:
 It's a toss up between my pallet planter and my t-shirt bags. Oh! Or maybe my shoe organizer turned art supply holder.

food:
Cabbage. Weird right?

splurge drink:

Iced Caramel Macchiato 
(I purposely did not go to their website to check the calories...)

Where I've lived and what I've loved (or not)

I was born in Missouri, in a very small town, about an hour from Jefferson City. I lived there until I was 12.
I loved everything about it, as you do when you're a kid and don't know anything else. I still remember the public library vividly, as it was our favorite place to go. I can see the school play ground in my head, and the local park, and my dad's shop. In fact, if I walk into a body shop today, the smell takes me back there.
I remember our house, which was a double wide on 20 acres. It must have been tiny, but it seemed large to me. We had burnt orange carpet, counter tops and couches. I remember "helping" my dad chop wood for our wood burning furnace in the basement, and hiding from tornadoes in the basement when the sky turned green. We had a small farm with chickens, rabbits, a couple pigs, a few cows and a pony. It's the kind of farm I wouldn't mind having now, except I'd probably just have one cow OR pig at a time, but man, I'd love to have some chickens.
---
Next, I lived in a tiny town in Texas, almost equidistant between Abilene and San Angelo. What a change! It was so dry there, with tiny little trees and a lot brown-ness. The Fall and Winter were so much more mild than what I was used to, and for a teeny little town it sure had a lot of churches. It was a complete life style change for my whole family. We went from living on a small farm, in the country, on a dirt road; to living right smack in the middle of town (small as it was). My parents owned a small motel there and we were no longer so poor. I hadn't known how poor we were until we weren't anymore.
I remember the big swimming pool and all the fun we had there in the spring and summer. I met D there my freshman year of high school. We got married - 5 years later - in one of the many churches and the priest who married us is still there today. In fact, any time we go back we see a lot of people who are still there. D's parents still live there, and have their whole lives. His grandparents have never even left the state and they are in their 90's. It's a whole different way of life down there. My parents moved back to Missouri when I was 17; a few months before I finished high school.
D & I both went to college in San Angelo. Boy, were there some ups and downs in those years. We stayed dating exclusively, and tried to balance jobs, and school with full (me) and challenging (him) course loads and terrible roommates and partying and doing all the stupid stuff most college age kids do, although we were much tamer than most. Sometimes I wondered if were meant to be together or not. Where was life going to lead us? Was I on the right path? It all sounds so dramatic now, but I was still a teenager who thought that the romance novel version of love was the real deal. Oh, to be young and stupid.
We got married a few weeks after he graduated. I finished my student teaching and graduated as well. We moved away 6 months later. I was 21.
---
We moved to Hampton, Virginia. Neither of us had even been to the East Coast before, and what a change it was! I had urged D to apply for a scholarship to George Washington University, which came with a stipend and internship while he got his master's degree. He was accepted and we moved cross country with our tiny U-Haul full of things and our cat. I got a job teaching Kindergarten while he finished his degree. We lived in a tiny, crappy, apartment right next to Langley AFB. The jet noise was enough to shake our windows, but you get used to it after awhile. I think we really learned how to love each other while we lived there. We were far from home and we didn't have any friends yet. We were poor, so we didn't get to do much traveling or anything like that. I still look back on those simple days with a lot of fondness.
Eventually we made some good friends there and we lived through Hurricane Isabelle, which was a new experience for sure. We visited the beach, but not as often as we thought we would. The traffic through the tunnels up there is sucky. We visited D.C. a couple times, and I really enjoy the city there. I love the metro system and there is a lot to see. D got a job offer near D.C. when he graduated, but when we saw the house prices we knew I'd never been able to stay home (I was a couple months pregnant at the time) like I wanted. He got a couple of other offers, in various places, but about a month before my 24th birthday, B*eing flew him to an interview in a state I NEVER thought I'd want to live in. In fact, I told him not to even bother going to the interview because I didn't want to live there. Less than 2 years after we arrived in  Virginia, we moved on.
---
He was so enthusiastic about the city, and the job, that he convinced me (SIGHT UNSEEN) to move here. To Alabama.
ALABAMA!
I know what you're thinking because I was thinking it too.
I was so wrong.
We've lived in North Alabama for 7 and a half years now, and there are very few things I don't like about it.
(The tornadoes are the main thing. The second thing is that I haven't yet convinced any of my family to move closer.) The city is big enough that there are plenty of things to do, but not so big that traffic and such are huge problems. We bought our first house here. It was small, but the mortgage payments were less than the rent on our crappy apartment in Virginia. We then built our current house, and sold our old one.  We became a family while living here, instead of just a couple. The city is family centered, and it fits our lifestyle very well. We've made friends that are our adopted family, and I don't know what we'd do without them. D has a career that he loves, and is great at, and I get to stay home and raise our babies.
We may have been all over, but I have no doubt that we've ended up where we belong.

7

I should have posted this yesterday but we spent almost all week celebrating d's birthday and I let it get past me yesterday.

Dear d,
Today you are 7. SEVEN years have gone by since I saw your beautiful face for the first time. I know I say it every year, but how is it possible that the years have flown by so fast?
I love to see the wheels turning in your brain; you are as analytical as your father. You take after him in so many ways. You love sports, you're very competitive and love to win. Lucky for you, you also are very good at a lot of things. You are smart; great at math and science, and reading. (That one comes from me.) You are a rule follower, and sweet to your siblings, and love, love, LOVE babies like no child I've ever known.
We often say that you truly got the best qualities from both of us. We are so proud of you, our first born son.
At the moment you love anything to do with science experiments, space, and Legos. You have a weird obsession with saving boxes and bags and filling them up with odd things. You love to write your own Super Hero comic books and your spelling always makes me smile.  You like to play Battleship, soccer and the Wii - as long as you are winning. You are hitting the stage where you aren't so picky about what you eat, and instead you are just hungry! You're a great helper, a wonderful big brother and the teachers all love you.
It saddens me, just a little, to see how big you're getting. Will this be the year you stop wanting hugs and kisses from Mama? When will you stop thinking we are funny and start thinking we are huge dorks? I know it's coming but for now I will just enjoy your 7 year old innocence and try to protect it as long as I can.
We love you d.

Zaps, family and napping for a week

My last post mentioned how exhausted I was, and considering that we were putting in new floors, and planting the garden and etc, etc, I thought it was pretty obvious WHY I was exhausted. Well, I'm also weaning off citalopram and it just dawned on me yesterday that perhaps that's the reason for feeling like I could sleep for a week, and also why I am crying at the drop of a hat, and why it sounds like paper crinkles in my brain when I turn my head sometimes, and also why I keep getting these... zaps... in my brain. It doesn't hurt, it just feels really weird; like a surge of electricity or ... something.
 I'm totally feeling out of it lately. I can't focus sometimes and my heart pounds randomly, but the worst is the overwhelming exhaustion. Early pregnancy exhaustion wasn't this bad!
I tried to take a nap today when I put the kids down, but then they got up fifty majillion times, and L needed an impromptu bath and then the phone ring and just... urg. No nap for me. Also, I cried reading a blog, watching American Idol, during a commercial, and when my parents left. Emotional much?
I'm on day 4 of being totally off the meds. Please tell me this won't last much longer?

Luckily, this week was as insanely busy as last week, so I haven't had a lot of time to dwell on it until today. My sister, her husband, my 3 nieces, my brother, my nephew, and my parents all arrived on Sunday and left this morning. I spent a lot time cooking and going back to the store for more food.  (I could not anticipate how much food 8 children and 7 adults would eat. Yikes.)
The kids were so. awesome. together. So awesome. I loved seeing all of them together for the first time ever. My sister's family had to travel here from Texas (first visit in almost 7 years) and my parents and brother/nephew came from Missouri, so I'm very, very grateful they all came so far to visit us. It was really lovely for the most part and man, I love these kids so much!

bad

I've been such a bad blogger lately. I hadn't even checked my Google Reader in 3 days and had to mark a lot of things read because there were just. so. many!
We just have so much going on right now, and  I'm so exhausted! We're getting ready for a string of birthdays, a large family visit and we're replacing our floors and starting soccer and planting our garden and then, of course, there's rugby and school and work and regular life. I'm still working on weaning off the anxiety meds, and we had awful weather last week and I think I've spent my month's budget on stress shopping. *sigh* (Time to put that spending freeze firmly back in place.)

There is a ton of stuff going on, but nothing that makes good blog fodder, and so the blog just sits here. Mocking me.