Crochet!

I've been wanting to learn how to crochet for...forever, it seems! I finally decided to teach myself from books and youtube tutorials, and I LOVE it! It's so easy once you know the stitches and it's very relaxing. I'm excited to start some bigger projects, but these are my first two projects. Ava is modeling my very first scarf--a simple single crochet scarf. Next I made a neck/ear warmer that can be worn two ways: around the neck as a neck warmer, or on the head as an ear warmer. I made a cute crochet flower and attached it to it also. I like how it turned out!

My Dirty Little Secret

In light of my friend Carolyn's Momcenter blog post today, and this sister post about dirty houses, I decided to "come clean," so to speak, on my blog and admit something that some of you might know, but a lot of you probably don't.

I am a complete neat-freak.

Not a clean freak, as in germs make me crazy or anything like that, but a NEAT freak. An "everything-must-be-in-its-proper-place-or-I-will-likely-develop-a-nervous-twitch" freak.

Like most people with a strange tendency, mine manifests itself in a compulsive need for order and cleanliness, a desire for every possession I own to have a place and a need for nothing to be OUT of place. Strangely, though, I really only care about the OUTWARD appearance of things, such as everything in a room needs to be put away, but not caring at all about the actual order of items once they are inside a closet or a drawer. Subsequently, my house appears to the casual observer to nearly always be freakishly "clean," but if you actually opened my drawers or closets you would likely find things to be unfolded, balled up, in a heap together or even just lying in a pile on the floor. Yet outwardly, all the beds in the house are made, the kitchen counters are wiped clean, the dishes are put away, the couch pillows are fluffed, the floors are vacuumed, etc. It is an odd behavior that only seems to be getting worse with time, and having children compounds it.

Watching shows like "Hoarders" on TLC literally makes my skin crawl. Not because I am judging these people by the way they live, but because I literally lack the ability to comprehend how they could exist in an environment so cluttered and chaotic. I wrestle internally with the compulsion to simply follow my children from room to room, picking up after them the entire day. I don't want to be this way, I think about how much more enjoyable my life would be if I could successfully suppress the constant urge to "tidy things up," but at the same time I have absolutely no idea how to break a habit that is so rooted in my life, my upbringing. It is, admittedly, a daily struggle.

But posts like Carolyn's DO make me stop and think. I am wasting valuable time with my children by spending so much time cleaning, and more importantly...I do not want this life for them. I want them to be able to pick up the tv remote, then put it back in a completely different spot and not think twice about it. So I am trying. I am learning to relax my standards for their benefit. For the most part I only clean up the playroom every few days or so (even when being in there makes my hands itch to put things away). I try to save the majority of my wiping and sweeping and vacuuming for first thing in the morning or while they are resting. It doesn't always happen, sometimes my tendencies still get the better of me, but I am making a conscious effort. Baby steps, right?

"A clean house is a sign of a wasted life." ~Anonymous. Maybe not necessarily words to live by...but definitely some food for thought.

Picture post

I haven't done a picture post in a while, so here is what we've been up to the past week or so. You'll notice immediately that nearly ALL of these pictures are of Ava. I promise it's not me being partial, but Aiden just doesn't want his picture taken much these days. :(

Aiden is home sick from school AGAIN today. Please send some well wishes his way. He's a very grumpy sickie, lol, he definitely gets this from his mama.

DIY: Family Tree Canvas

Another DIY? Of course! I've never been one of those people to look at something and think, "Hey, I could make that!" but lately I've been tapping into my creative side and I'm loving it! There is something very satisfying about creating a piece of art for your home and loving the way it turns out. It's been a long time since I felt proud of myself for accomplishing something, and it feels nice:)

A week or two ago, I was browsing through family tree items on Etsy (have you ever checked out Etsy.com? The world is so full of creative, inspiring people!) and saw a family tree quilt that someone had made that I LOVED. Now, being that I don't quilt and can't even sew, I changed the idea a bit and decided to do a similar project, but use mod podge to decoupage scrapbook paper onto a canvas. I'm pleased with how it turned out, even though it's not perfect. It's imperfectly perfect, just like my own little family:)

Materials needed: misc. scrapbook paper, mod podge, blank canvas (I used 11 x 14), foam brushes, printed pictures of you and your children (on regular printer paper, not photo paper)
> I got my canvas for 40% off at Michael's, so it only cost $3.20. I used 4 different sheets of scrapbook paper which cost $1.80 total. So aside from the cost of a new jar of mod podge (eek, that stuff is pricey! $7 for a pretty small jar!), this is a very frugal art project!

For an added "cute" touch, I wrote my and Chuck's initials on the trunk of the tree and our wedding date underneath it. After I finished the project I thought it would have been cute to "carve" the kids initials and birthdays into their limbs of the tree, but it was too late to add them :( Oh well.

Have fun making yours and show me how it turns out! I used green scrapbook paper because my house is very neutral and virtually any color would look fine, but I love the idea of doing a red/yellow autumn tree also.

PS--you can't see it in the picture, but using mod podge on canvas makes the whole thing look like an oil painting. It is very cool!

DIY: Family Monogram Photo Collage

When I found this DIY tutorial on A Little Moore last week, I swooned. So of course, I had to make a giant B:) I got the cardboard letter at JoAnn Fabrics for $9.99, but if you shop there a lot you probably have a 50% off coupon and could get your letter for $5. The nice thing about this project is that it is EASY. The not-so-nice thing is that it is TIME CONSUMING. But no matter, I think literally anyone could do this project. This would make such a fabulous house-warming present for a newlywed couple if you had access to their wedding photos!

I used about 60 photos to make my letter, and it took me about 2 hours total. It doesn't show in the pictures very well, but this is a GIANT letter, lol. 24 inches tall, so it has presence. All you need is plain old computer paper and mod podge. I copied/pasted my photos into a word document and re-sized them to make them about 2.5-3 inches wide (depending on if it was a portrait or landscape-oriented photo). Then you just start cutting and affixing your photos to the letter. A tip for beginner mod podgers (is that a word? lol): I think your fingers are your best tools for helping to smooth edges and press out bubbles. I had a bit of a problem with the mod podge smearing the ink and discoloring it a bit, but after I was finished Chuck and I both agreed that it sort of gives the B an "aged" antiquey feel that I actually really like!

I LOVE the way this project turned out!

Born to you

I posted this on FB last night, but I wanted to share it here as well. It warmed me deep in my soul, it stretched those sinews that anchor my heart to my spirit and it made me feel effortlessly loved. Unconditionally.

The kids were riding bikes in the driveway yesterday afternoon. Ava came up to me and asked, out of the blue, "I was born from you, Mommy?" So I explained that, yes, she grew in my belly and was born from me. And then she said, "I was born from you, and you were born to me, and that's cause why we love each other, Mommy!"

She was born from me. I was born to her. And THAT is why we love each other.

I hope beyond hope that our love will always be so simple and uncomplicated. I hope that we never let our petty issues get in the way of our love for each other. I hope that I always make the effort to show my children, to tell them, to LOVE them the way they deserve to be loved. Even when they let me down, even when they disappoint me, even if we don't see eye to eye. I hope that I can be the kind of mother to them that they will want to be to their own children some day.

My love for them...some days I wonder if anything else really matters at all?

On a related note, I took these pictures in the koala house at the Cleveland Zoo yesterday. I could have sat and watched this mom and baby for hours. The baby is almost one year old and the zookeeper in the koala house told me that she didn't know how much longer the mom was going to keep holding the baby while they slept, because it was clear that the mom was not very comfortable and she kept giving the baby the stink-eye every time the baby fidgeted and moved around. It can't have been very comfortable for either of them, but oh my goodness, was it ever cute to watch!





And one of my monkeys loving another monkey:)

Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

It is NEVER going to stop raining.

Ok, that's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but right now it feels accurate. It's been raining for five days. So, in an effort to banish boredom and also make fun Halloween treats, the kids helped me make these candy corn sugar cookies today. Kind of a pain to make, because this dough was REALLY sticky. If I make these again, I would make two separate logs of dough and keep one in the freezer while I cut the other, because by the time I got to the end of slicing my very long log of dough, it was mushy and my cookies didn't look anything like candy corns, lol.

I followed this recipe from What I Live For. The kids loved making them, and loved eating them even more!

DIY: Book wreath

When I find a DIY project that I absolutely LOVE, I obsess over it and have to do it immediately, lol. So when I stumbled on this book wreath tutorial last night in bed, I knew I HAD to make a trip to the Dollar Tree today. This project cost all of $1 (for the foam craft wreath) since I already had lots of hot glue sticks and an old book from MOPS that I was just going to recycle.

You'll notice that my book wreath looks NOTHING like the one in the tutorial, because I did my folding differently and affixed my scrolls differently, but I actually like the way mine turned out even better than the one in the tutorial. It is HUGE, and looks perfect in our downstairs half bath, which I've been struggling to decorate for over 6 months now, lol.

I won't lie...I'm in LOVE with it. Can you love a wreath? It's exactly my style--crisp lines, white and black, makes a statement all by itself.

PS--I also made a lovely autumn flower and leaf wreath for $3, and I can't wait to hang it on our front door, but I forgot to take a pic--oops! Maybe once I get it hung...