Around Here - Almost Spring!

I've been trying to think of a better lead in to this blog post than something cliche like "I can't believe how fast time is speeding by" or "It's the middle of March ALREADY?!"  But I couldn't because the fact is, the days really have been going by too quickly for me and often by dinner time I'm left with a partially unfinished To Do List and not enough energy or time to do anything other than hope there is something decent on the DVR so I don't get stuck watching some strange documentary my husband runs across on the History Channel.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not overwhelmed or stressed right now.  I'm on top of all my Have Tos for the house, the kids, the Etsy shop, finally getting a handle on an exercise routine and getting more active, and even working in time with friends, fun things with the family, and even a few things from my When I Get a Chance list.  Still, there always seems to be things I don't quite get to for days at a time - like blogging!  So I thought I would do a quick Around Here post, if only to get myself back into the blogging groove. 

This is what my craft table looked like this morning - remnants of last night's Card (making) Group and today's crop of countdown blocks getting ready to ship out.  

And have I mentioned I finally joined Instagram?!  

It must be "baby season" again because I've had a pretty big bump in sales for the pregnancy countdown blocks in the past few weeks and quite a few friends and acquaintenances have announced pregnancies in recent months too.  It was my turn to host our monthly card making group so, of course, I chose baby cards for the theme.

Can you guess which one was mine?  Yup, the one with the baby feet ;)

Speaking of babies - it's baby season out on the ranch too.  We have a handful of new calves born the last few weeks, including this little guy.

He was born in the middle of the night during a really cold snap and my Dad was concerned that he wasn't eating.  I was the only one around to help out first thing and "got" to spend the better part of my morning playing cowgirl as we attempted to get the baby and his mom in from the back pasture and into the small corral near one of the closer sheds.  It was quite a process and in the end we had to bring almost the entire herd into the corral then take them all back out to the pasture again.

On the up side, while it was may have been cold it has been absolutely gorgeous outside.

On the Mom Front - the kiddos are keeping busy with school and activities.  Miss Kate is doing great on the swim team and knocked quite a few seconds off a couple of her best times at the meet last weekend. 

Tyler's class was required to participate in the school's creative challenge (the theme being "Behind my Reflection is so Much More, Talents and Skills for me to Explore) and he chose to do a photo project in which he used mirrors to take selfies doing things he enjoys or is good at.  We got that turned in just in time for him to start working on a "storytelling" presentation that must be 3-7 minutes long and include expression, guestures, and props.
Kaitlyn also had a big book report due, in which she had to turn the book into a breakfast cereal then create a TV-style commercial for it.  We all spent a funny evening as cast and crew recording said commercial.  I was dreading it, but as it turned out I haven't laughed that hard in weeks.  Seriously though teachers, can the parents get a little break here?

As I said, the weather has been gorgeous with very few storms and the a-typical practically snow-less winter has continued.  I was nervous that we wouldn't get a chance to use the groupon for tubing that I got the kids for Christmas but we managed to slip in on one of the colder week nights shortly before they closed down (early) for the season.  The only snow in sight was what they had manufactured for the tubing and cross country runs.  Crazy weather.  The tubing itself was tons of fun.  We also managed some time at the ice skating rink with cousins, which was pretty much the last of the activities left on our (imaginary) Winter Bucket List.

My husband got both of us fancy new pedometer thingy's and we've been trying to make being active a priority.  That has involved a lot of walks outside - with the dog on the ranch, or loading up the kids and their bikes/rollerblades and getting to know the local walking paths.  The second option was prompted in part the day the dog came home all muddy and full of burrs from our walk in the field, and from the fact that no longer living in a neighborhood means the kids can't just step out the door and have somewhere to ride their bikes.  Everything else makes up for that little issue though, and we are very happy to be living "back home."

And that, my dears, is part of what has kept me away from the blog lately.  That and the multitude of things that needing fixing - the computer spent a week being repaired, the brand new fridge finally arrived but conked out within days of it's arrival, and so on.  But I'm trying not to dwell on the annoying parts and enjoying the fact that for today I have found some free time to do some "catching up"  And maybe, just maybe after I grab some lunch I might be able to do some scrapbooking before the kids get home from school.  Ya think?!

Valentines Photo Book for the Kids

Happy Valentines Day!  Is everyone feelin' the love?  Honestly, most of my Valentines-type celebrating has been done already.  The husband works weekends so we took advantage of his day off on Thursday and went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch - totally yummy and no V-day crowds!  The kids had their parties at school yesterday and the last minute Valentines to loved ones far away went in the mail.  This morning the kids insisted we wake them up before their dad left for work, so gifts have already been exchanged and pink waffles have been consumed.

I ran across this great idea a few weeks back in which the parents made their kids special photo books every year for Christmas.  Obviously we were past Christmas but I thought "what a great idea for Valentines!"  I didn't get them put together and ordered as early as I could have (in order to blog about it pre-Valentines and er, so as not to sweat that they wouldn't be here on time) but they did appear in my mailbox just in time yesterday - yay!

These are 8x8 soft cover books from Snapfish (I had a coupon) - there are tons of sites that do great photo books.

 I wanted to go with an ABC's of Me theme - using words to decribe the kids and their interests right now.

 Some of the letters were easy and I had WAY too many ideas, others were hard and I had to reach a bit.

 Tyler got a big grin about the boots one and said "oh I love those!"

 This one made me laugh - I couldn't resist putting that close up photo of the flaming marshmallow on there ;)

And there they are all wrapped up, along with the other book and candy I got the kids for Valentines.  The paper airplane is a printable I found here.

Best of all, when they opened up the books this morning the kids loved them and had to read them cover to cover right away.  Kaitlyn even said, "wouldn't it be great if we got a book every year?"  Hmm... great minds really do think alike, don't they?  ;)

One Little Word 2015 - January Workshop Prompt

January.  My month of reflection, reevaluation and motivation.  I do this in bits and pieces as life keeps whirling along at high speed, but throughout the month I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about how my life is going, what I like/don't like, and what direction I want it to take in the next year.  Part of that process, for quite a few years now, involves choosing my Word for the Year (you can see the word I selected for this year here) and figuring out how to incorporate that into my every day life.  Last year, in a bid to keep my goals and intentions more present in my daily life I joined the year long online One Little Word workshop - such a great decision!  So I happily joined the workshop again this year.
While I shared most of the layouts resulting from the workshop prompts last year, I don't intend to post quite so many of them here on the blog this year.  However, I did want to start out the year by putting it out there - making myself accountable and sharing what I have been thinking about lately to clarify some of my intentions and goals.

My word for this year is Light.  I used my previous blog post for the journaling section on the "reason why" cards.  The photo was one I had snapped with my phone at sunrise during our vacation to Utah this past summer.  And while I'm not a "yellow person" I decided that my word practically demands that yellow be used, so I'm going with kind of a yellow/gold and blue color scheme.  I think.

That little heart is a wooden one I found in my stash.  I just used a little chalk to give it a blue tint and free-hand cut out the star, folding the paper back-to-back first so that the back matched the front since I knew I wanted to just slip it into the pocket and leave that section open to the next page.

Page two and so on.  I'll let the photos tell the story from here on.

So as January comes to a close, here's to seeking out and finding the light and the joy in everyday life.
What are you hoping for in 2015?

All Set

I feel like we're on the final countdown here.  Last (partial) week of 2014, one more week of Christmas vacation then Real Life hits again in full force.  And I'm so NOT ready to get back to the normal routine.  Or maybe I just don't want to go down to the freezing cold shop and work on drying racks while the snow falls and the kids are home entertaining themselves -  and the attitude is just carrying over to everything?...
I have been enjoying the slower pace the past few days and not forcing myself to get up and go to the gym or work on a giant list of To Dos.  Though I do also enjoy being productive and being on top of things.  Both have their place and the art of balancing them has been on my mind a lot the last couple of days.  There are just so many parts and pieces that make up a life, aren't there?  And only limited quantities of energy, motivation, time, and money.
It may be cliche, but this time of year is when I get in that mode to really think about and reevaluate my life, my priorities, and the direction I want to take in the new year and I've been taking a few solid steps toward preparing to jump into the new year with both feet.  I am finishing up my final prompt for the OLW workshop I participated in this year (and starting to get excited for the process next year) and am pretty sure I have decided on my new Word for next year (that will get it's own blog post in a few days).  I sat down with Kaitlyn this morning and we revised and reprinted the Before Screens list for the kids (we haven't used the lists at all since the move and I've been having such a hard time keeping Tyler on track and self directed lately.  Hoping this alleviates some of the frustration and constant nagging) and have them hanging up ready to be used.  I have a few other things/ideas for interactions with the kiddos that are percolating in my head.  I even found homes for most of the new things we all got for Christmas and the clutter piles are nearly all gone.

I also picked up a weekly planner - something I haven't used in years.  I have a number of reasons for doing so.  First of all, I haven't been on the ball about putting things on my Google calendar and I'm hoping that having it all just in a hard copy will be easier for keeping track of appointments and schedules.  I know, right?  Old School.  But the bigger reason for purchasing a planner was for memory keeping/scrapbooking purposes.  My intention for the last few years has been to put together some kind of December Daily album (I know - lots of inspiration from Ali Edwards lately.  We must have similar personalities/tastes or something ;)  ) but I am never fully set up enough to do it as I go along, so this year I printed off a weekly calendar for December - you know the ones with a bunch of lines under each day of the week so you can take notes - and have been using it to keep track of some of the things I want to remember from each day.  I've seen that kind of idea before - using a calendar to write down one memory every day during your baby's first year and so on - and a light finally went off.  Those little squares on a calendar are not nearly enough room to write down a story from the day or any sort of detail but the idea of keeping it all in one place, in something that is easy to pick up and use, is a solid one.  So.  My plan for this year is to write down everything I want to remember in the weekly planner - funny quotes from the kids, details about daily life, stories of big events, etc.  Much easier than scrolling through Facebook posts, emails, and blog posts trying to figure out what happened during week ____ when trying to put together my layouts/albums.  Right now I'm thinking I'm pretty brilliant, but the true test will be a couple months into it to see if I have been following through on writing everything down on a regular basis.

I really am serious about doing more scrapbooking on a regular basis.  I even had the husband buy me a photo printer for Christmas - so exciting!  I still need to get another USB cord so I can hook it directly to my computer instead of printing solely from the camera's memory card but I have figured out the basics of how to use it and am very pleased with the photo prints so far.  So with the photo printer on hand and a weekly crafting date all set up with a friend I am looking forward to making a lot of progress with the scrapbooking this year.

Now I just need to finalize a few fun plans for New Years Eve (ack - someone tell me I'm not the only one that staying up until midnight doesn't appeal to! lol) and I think I'm all set to head into 2015.  Are you?

OLW - November Gratitude Prompt

 It's the month of December and not only is there NO snow on the ground here in Utah, but I also found the time yesterday to spend the morning working on my One Little Word album.  Free time on a weekday in December?!  Craziness. ;)
The prompt for November was a combination of photos and words, revolving around what it means to "live your word" and recognizing what we are grateful for.  I spent the first part of November trying to note something I was Thankful For every day (posted daily on my Facebook page) and although it kind of fizzled around the 20th, I still had plenty of ideas to choose from.  I thought finding the right photos might be harder, but after combing through all my photo files from the past few months I ended up with plenty to choose from.  I guess being a photo-obsessed, wish-I-had-more-time-to-scrapbook Mom comes in handy sometimes.

The finished layout:

I just realized I had intended to add a line of journaling to this photo.  On well.  I may do it later and reprint it, or maybe it's fine just like that.

 *photo taken as we pulled out of our neighborhood in North Carolina and started our trek across country to move back home to Utah.  I followed that Uhaul trailer for four days straight.

I have loved participating in this online workshop this year.  Whether or not I managed to do the prompts "on time" I got a whole lot more out of the experience than I did in previous years with my words.  I have already signed up for next year's workshop, though I have no idea at this point what my word for next year will be...

Minecraft Birthday Party

Look who turned 8 last week!  He was SO excited - and who can blame him?  Birthdays are exciting, especially when you are looking forward to a party with a bunch of your new friends and one with the theme of your favorite game to boot.  Yup - Tyler, like many kids right now, is completely obsessed with Minecraft.

I have to admit I know very, very little about Minecraft, nor was I really in the mood to sit down and play the game with the kids.  So I relied pretty heavily on looking at ideas online with one of the kids at my side making comments.  It was kind of a fun process actually.  Tyler had lots and lots and lots of ideas. ;)  And Kaitlyn is great about helping me pull it all together.  In the end, we decided on the following:

Creeper Rice Krispie Treats went to school with Tyler for all of his classmates.  We just tinted the marshmallow green and the eyes are chocolate chips which I melted and piped onto wax paper to form the eyes and mouth.

Once the birthday boy was off to school I got to work on the cake.  He had requested a TNT cake, which seemed as easy as stacking a few cake squares on top of each other and covering it with red.  Uh huh.  Yeah.  First ever epic cake fail.  It started leaning after I got all the layers on and even with additional support, it had toppled before I could get the exterior frosting on it.

I had to laugh.  Really, what can you do but laugh?  And my brother, who was eating breakfast at the time, laughed at me too - and asked if he could "publicly humiliate" me by posting a photo on Facebook.  I told him that was fine, because I fully intended to blog about it ;)

So what do you do when your cake falls apart and you don't want to run to the store?  I turned it into Dirt Cake, that's what.  

The kids didn't have a clue - ha!  In fact, they loved it.  Couldn't get enough of the cake in the cups with the Minecraft toppers I printed at the last minute (found here).

 The rest of the food was pretty easy.  Tyler had been pretty quick to suggest a bunch of foods that were in the game:  "bread" was sandwiches cut into squares, "potion of healing" were just Hugs with labels on them (I was informed that the potions are always red but since it would have taken way too many boxes to find enough red drinks for everyone we used green too since Creepers are his favorite character from the game), "slime balls" were green grapes, "raw fish" were goldfish crackers, and carrots and gold apples were, well, carrots and apples ;)

 Printables for the food and drink lables came from here, though I did resize and edit them a bit, as well as use them for the base to make the other signs for the party.

I found the printable for the large Steve and the Creeper here.

The table set up was pretty simple (and inexpensive) too.  It doesn't take a lot to make a big statement.

 The plates were just green plates with Creeper faces that I had cut out of vinyl with the Silhouette machine.

And the table runner was green wrapping paper that I quickly cut into block-type forms on the edges.  I used the Silhouette to cut a pattern for the Creeper face out of cardstock and used it and a Sharpie to make Creeper faces on the table runner and on a bunch of green balloons.

 The balloons went downstairs in the "party area," along with my standard bead board birthday banner.  I also put a set a balloons out by the road and by the door, along with a Minecraft Welcome sign.  I always try to do something like that in case a guest hasn't visited our house before so they can easily tell where the party is.

 As I mentioned in an earlier post, Tyler had invited his entire class to his party and not knowing how many kids would actually show up, planning was a little tricky.  I decided to use the kitchen/living room for the food and do all the activities in the family room downstairs.  I only set up one table, which was perfect for the amount of kids that did RSVP but I had another table and extra decorations on stand-by in case we had any show up unannounced.  We only ended up with one that hadn't called ahead, so it was fine.
Anyway.  One of Tyler's first requests was to have "torches" as decoration so I printed off a few for the stairs/hallway and used crepe paper to form the "portal" (or am I confused and they only use that term in Skylanders??)

Downstairs, I had turned my craft tables into "crafting tables" (of course!).  It was just a simple matter of using electrical tape and a ruler to form the grid.  Minecraft is all about building, so I had a few crafty projects planned.

 And again, not knowing how many kids would actually attend the party, I had planned accordingly.  If we had a large number of guests, I had extra helpers on hand so we could split them up into smaller groups and do "stations" for the different crafts and games.  I put all the things needed for each activity in its own little basket so we could just grab them as needed.

 As it turned out, we had about 10 kids attend so they just did everything in one big group, but I was still glad I had planned ahead and set it up this way.

 I always like to have some sort of low key activity for everyone to start working on when they arrive.  This keeps the fidgeting and chaos to a minimum while still allowing time for any later guests to arrive without missing much of the planned activities.  For the Minecraft party, our Arrival Activity was making Minecraft masks.  I cut out a bunch of small squares out of colored paper and the kids glued them onto poster board that I had cut into squares with a couple of square openings for eyes.

This worked pretty well, but these kids were HYPER that night so as soon as we could, we moved on to the more active games.

This game was originally intended to be a beanbag toss, but the beanbags we have for our cornhole boards were too big for holes so we used Neft guns instead.  Nerf dart look close enough to the TNT in the game, right?  The kids didn't care - they had fun (though some of them were way too excited to wait their turns!).

The next game was probably the favorite for our rowdy crew.  I had filled a bunch of balloons and put a line of tape down the center of the room to split it into two parts.  Yes, I was all creative and used some of the Creeper balloons as well as some smaller colored ones which could represent the other animals in the game - but I don't think the kids noticed or cared.  The point of the game was to get all the balloons onto the other team's side.  We played music while they bopped balloons back and forth (had intended to find Minecraft parody songs but forgot to get them cued up and just ended up using whatever was on the IPOD) until the music stopped, then everyone would freeze while we counted the balloons on each side.  As I said - this game was a perfect way for them to use up their energy without hurting anything so we let them do 5 or 6 rounds before we headed upstairs for cake and gifts.

The time just flew by and by the time everyone had finished eating and all the gifts were unwrapped we only had a few minutes left before parents would start arriving so I gave them some block character printables to assemble.

This link has a lot of great printables for all of the blocks, characters, etc.

As I said, the time went by so quickly we didn't end up using some of the activities I had planned.  Like:

Minecraft character Perler bead keychains.  This activity alone probably would have taken them half an hour.

 And the bean bags were going to be repurposed to "Feed the Wolf."

But I'd rather have too many activities planned than have bored kids at the end of a party.

As they were working on the character printables, I also had them take turns assembling their own favor bags.

For the favor bag tags I used a pdf file I found online (see this blog), added the rest of the message (in Photoshop) then printed them 6 to a page.  

 The tags went inside a cellophane bag and the kids got to fill it with:

Creeper face lollipops, (had an a-ha moment on this one and instead of cutting them all out by hand I figured out how to make my own pattern for the Silhouette to cut out - go me!)

 glow stick "torches"

licorice "TNT" (Tyler was very pleased with those.  When he saw them all assembled he told me "Mom, you've really outdone yourself!") and Hershey Kiss "emeralds, red stones, and silver"

So there you have it!  Paper, scissors, a printer, and a lot of ink - that's really all it takes to make a little guy happy on his birthday ;)



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