more card challenges (card box, Tuesday Trio) ... (2nd post of the night... read below)

The very first challenge on 365 Cards was to make a card box, you know, for all the cards we'd be making. I kind of cheated by using a basket, but I did make the dividers... I like being able to see the cards sticking out of the sides of the dividers, but I decided to put foam on the bottom of them to better separate each section.



Then, this is yesterday's challenge... still 365 Cards. The requirement was to use 3 things: ribbon, flower, button. I don't usually use buttons and not many flowers either, but here you have it. Not the best I've ever made, but it's fun I guess. I'm still learning. I do really like the colors though (have you noticed I like brown?) And now I wish I would've stacked the flowers then put the words at the bottom of the column. Oh well.

technology, who'd have thought...

I did something dumb today. I accidentally deleted all the pictures off of my camera. Regular readers may have heard me say "I can't upload pics because I can't find the cord to hook up my camera to the computer." Yeah, there were a LOT of pictures on there that I had never uploaded... mostly of Adelle, pretty much since we left the hospital. My dad is trying to find some way to retrieve as many as he can from the card, but we'll see what happens. I bawled and bawled... so, then I learned today... guess what! This laptop has a memory card reader built into it! I could've been loading pictures all this time. I never even thought about that.

So, to make myself feel a little better (momentarily), I took pictures of some cards I've made for sketch/challenge sites.
Yes, I already showed you this one, but now you can actually see it. This is from Sketch #4 on the Card Patterns blog (link to the right). I tried to make it the right coloring to show the green of the paper, but I don't know if it's quite right. Ah well.

This next one is sketch #1 for the 365 Cards blog. I like using sketches. It's a good springboard.


This last one was a challenge instead of a sketch... This is the Monday challenge on 365 Cards. The challenge was to use no more than 2 embellishments, which is easy for me... I don't use a lot of embellishments. So, my embellishments are ribbon and... ribbon I guess.


Anyway, enjoy! And don't feel too sorry for me about the pictures. I'm coping... and praying that daddy can fix my screw-up :P

Pay it Forward Challenge

My sister Lori posted a Pay it Forward Challenge on her blog, so now it's my turn! The first 3 people to comment on this post will get something homemade by me within the year (and maybe sooner than later if you're lucky). The trick though is that then you must pay it forward and do the same thing on your blog (or facebook or email, whatever you use to communicate with people). I thought this would be a fun thing to do since I have all this "creative" energy. (I use the quotes because I always wish I was more creative than I am) Anyway, I look forward to it and hope that you like whatever I make for you!

Happy commenting!

Crafting

I can't stop myself. Ever since I started working on Adelle's quilt again, I've been crafting like crazy. I've been making a whole bunch of cards and finding all sorts of challenge blogs where they give you a challenge or sketch or something and then you make the card according to the challenge. I've made all the ones I've seen, but I still can't find the cord to hook my camera to the computer... booo! So, here's a picture of one I made from the Card Patterns (link to the right) Sketch #4 that I took on Luke's phone. Sorry about the poor pic quality.

And since then, I added a tiny rub-on that says "happy birthday to you!" (white). I like the added touch, but was too lazy to take another picture, especially with such crap quality.

Oh, and thank you to LynAnne for loaning me her sewing machine!!! I can't wait to really use it!

3 months!

Adelle turned 3 months old on February 19th. The following Saturday (the 22nd), we went by mom and dad's and took some pictures of Adelle. So, here's Adelle at 3 months! It's really hard to get her to smile at the camera because as soon as it's in front of her, she just stares at it like some strange foreign object. (Lori, recognize the fabric on her outfit?)

new wheels and such

The Eagle Summit has reached its last days. Right now it isn't even running (something with the alternator) and we've been driving my brother Eric's car, which emits horrible fumes through the vents. Anyway, it finally came time to find a new car, so on Saturday we got a silver 2007 chevy malibu. We really like it and it's by far the nicest car I've ever had. [Pictures to follow]

In other news, Adelle turned 3 months on the 19th! We also retired the bassinet and have been working on her sleeping in the crib. She's actually been doing really well, taking a few short naps during the day, then sleeping from 11ish until 7:30 or 8 in the morning. We have been really fortunate. She has been a really good sleeper since the first few weeks.

Saturday was the monthly craft day at Chelsea's house. Let me just say that she is a fantastic hostess! I didn't get a ton done because I was having too much fun talking to all the girls I haven't seen much since we switched wards, but I did start Adelle's album and made a few cards. It was so much fun and will definitely be a regular event. Thanks, Chelsea, for a great day!

cute little girl...

I still haven't found the cord to connect my camera to my computer, so here's a shot of Adelle from about a week ago that Luke took on his phone. She's just chilling in the bouncy seat my sister Lori has been loaning us.

Dear Adelle,

Please stop growing. You are doing it much too quickly and I just can't keep up with you. I would like it if you would please stop that now and stay little forever. Thanks.

Love,
Mom

(Adelle has started wearing 3-6 mo. sized clothing)

In response to my last post, Ali wrote "other than this, how's life?" so I will attempt to respond before I forget entirely about it and move on to something else completely (story of my life, more and more and more as time goes on).

Life is good! It's hard to say how life is outside of the job because wow does it take up a lot of my life. However, there are actually other aspects. For example:

Adelle is fantastic. She is trying so hard to laugh that she constantly throws her arms and legs down and makes this heart-melting expression that I'm pretty sure is imitating my "let's be excited when we say hi" face. It usually consists of opening my mouth really big (you know, like the big-mouthed surprise gasp) and then saying "hi!" a few times... and her version is so cute. She just smiles and opens her mouth really big while crinkling her nose. I made. the cutest baby. ever. It's as simple as that. Of course, it does make me wonder just exactly how goofy I look to her when I make said face. I'm pretty sure she'll love me either way, so I'm okay with it. One sad things is that I think she is already being affected by the allergens in the air. The last couple of days she's been sneezing a ton and randomly has the red puffy eyes to go with it. I don't like seeing her having to feel yucky like that :( We're washing everything and trying to pinpoint what exactly is causing it.

Church is great too! I really enjoy being in a family ward and I LOVE that I got called as a Primary Teacher. It's for CTR 6 (the kids who will turn 6 during the year) and completely exhausting and rewarding. I pretty much have every extreme of personalities/energy levels in that class and it cracks me up constantly. And wow, you really can tell which kids get taught at home and which don't.

Now that we're getting a little more situated into the new place, I've been getting more motivated to do some crafting, etc. I bought a couple of scrapbook albums, one for Adelle (black with small white polka-dots) and one for Luke for mission pictures (per his request). I also started working more on a quilt that I started before Adelle was born and the top is almost done now (I do not sew quickly. Not at all.). Thanks to Lori for letting me stay very late to get some of it done last weekend. She has been teaching me a ton along the way (and managing the machine because I still can't figure out how to thread the thing) (I apparently like using parentheses a lot).

choice, accountability, parenting: worries & woes... and how to learn from them

i really love my job. it can be exhausting and extremely frustrating (especially when hearing "4:00 4:00 4:00 4:00 4:00 snack snack 4:00 get a snack" over and over and over and over and over again), but at the end of the day, i can't help but smile and learn from the people i serve every day. at the end of the day they are grateful for our effort to maintain a positive and fulfilling daily environment and every day is a clean slate no matter how difficult the previous day was for them. i really am grateful for that and am trying to follow suit. i can get really frustrated when someone refuses to make a good choice (like simply climbing up into a chair instead of waiting for someone to pick you up off the floor) and it's easy to continue reminding that person that s/he didn't make a good choice, but i can say with confidence that if i messed up, they wouldn't even think to rub my face in it for the rest of the day, so i'm striving to be more like them in that way. life is full of too many good choices to just focus on the few not so great ones (and they're hardly even "bad").

that brings me to something else i've been thinking about a lot lately. as a teacher, as a parent, as an authority figure, your limits will always be tested unless you put a stop to it from the beginning. my sister-in-law Gaia and i were talking about this last weekend, specifically the example that if your child is screaming and crying for candy or something like that in a store, it means nothing to threaten leaving unless you actually do it. that may mean leaving a full cart of groceries and having to make another trip to the store, but otherwise, the battle will never end. it may be really challenging in the beginning, but it is so worth it in the end. in my field of work, that may mean waiting over an hour for a man to decide he's going to pull himself up into a chair after going limp expecting his staff to carry his weight while he's walking (he is fully capable of carrying his own weight) and consequently dropping to the floor. he was so convinced that someone was going to come rescue him and pick him up off the ground and ultimately he was right. we were prepared to leave him where he was with a staff and take the rest of the group home, when 2 other staff members (who don't work in the home, but are therapists, etc, in the community center) came and pulled him up off the ground. any possibility for progress was immediately lost (as well as about an hour of our time which was now for nothing) and well, he was right. it not only impeded progress, but further engrained in his mind that if he decides to drop to the ground, he just has to wait long enough and someone will come rescue him. frustrating. he is very seizure-prone, so he has to be assisted when walking, but that doesn't mean doing the work for him. it means supporting him enough that if he has a seizure he can't fall forward and crack his head open on the ground. in the past few years he has decided more and more to let staff do the physical work for him that his actual abilities are diminishing as a result. really, it comes back to the fundamental principle of choices and then being made accountable for the choices you have decided to make.

it may be easier at the time to just give the screaming child the candy so s'he'll shut up and let you finish your shopping, but do you really want to deal with that over and over again? then all of a sudden you have a spoiled rotten kid who is so convinced that they can anything they want out of you and your credibility as an authority figure is obsolete.

anyway, just something i've been thinking about a lot lately because of some of the things that i encounter at work along with my overwhelming desire to try to not be a horrible parent.