happy

Today I wrote this in my journal:

"I feel happy right now. I feel happy to be at home with my family, to be focusing on my daily tasks and the huge, juicy stack of library books always waiting for me. I feel fulfilled by the company of my sweet husband, friends, and neighbors. I feel my testimony and my commitment to Jesus Christ growing steadily. These are such great blessings."

Things have been steadily dropping out of my life recently. I've been letting them fall like crisp, light leaves off a tree. It started a month or two ago when I cleaned out my ridiculously cluttered Google Reader. Not actual clutter, just mental clutter. I used to leave it on screen all day and stop every time I passed so I could read the new stuff. I pared it down from around 70 to around 30. Now I just go to those other (crafty, designy, post every day, make-you-want-to-buy-stuff) blogs if I have time and the inkling to do so.

Then our DTV box broke. Wow, that was awesome. It actually still works once in a while (oddly enough, when very important sporting events are on), but for the most part, even Glee and SYTYCD and the Office are no longer a part of our evening routine. We spend a lot of time cuddled up on the couch with our books. I finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a week and a half. Seriously, I wish I had had the courage to give up TV earlier. I like it.

And then somehow I stopped blogging. It was always sort of a guilty pleasure for me--I LOVED reading nice comments, I loved creating something pretty for the whole world to see. But now as my priorities are unusually clear and well-aligned, blogging is not so important to me. There are SO many other good things clamoring for my time and attention (number one, two, and three being my sweet man and boys) and I feel so happy to focus on them for a while. It's a little sad for me and, I'm sure, fleeting, but for now I am content to read your darling and amazing blogs while keeping my words to my own little journal.

But because I have learned that my projects and passions change frequently and dramatically, this is definitely not bye bye blog. Goodness, no! How dramatic it would be, though: "Farewell, dear friends...I shall never return...my priorities have changed...it's not you, it's me..." But really, let's just call this a blogging break. It might be long and I might be back tomorrow. But it will probably be long-ish.

The good news is, I just set up a Flickr account--quick uploads, not too time consuming. So those of you who are interested in seeing pictures (Mom, Adrienne) can go here for (ideally) regular photo updates.

See you later, alligators.

what's happening now

Dressing up: Optimus Prime and the little dragon who was supposed to be a tiger but insisted on last year's almost-too-small costume. Hopefully Halloween will be different.More dressing up: we had a BLAST out in the snow today. Daddy even joined us because school was cancelled today. The snow was deep and powdery and we got totally covered. Hello, winter!

See? Deep and powdery. Wouldn't want to be under that ledge when the snow falls off.

four years old

Wow, I can't believe my little boy is four! It goes so fast. His birthday on Monday came at the end of a long weekend of sickness for all of us but Jared, so it was definitely a laid back celebration. But all the essential components were there: his favorite spaghetti dinner, a happy recounting of the day he was born,

the robot cake (requested months ago),

presents (this sketchbook has at least ten drawings in it already, the funny pillowish thing is a robot I made for him),
decorations,

and a very big moment: his very first library card. If you click on the picture, maybe you can make out his sweet writing. Wow, I am so proud.

I sure love my Thomas. He is thoughtful, kind, super smart, and I'm SO blessed to be his mother.

yes yes yes

image from here

Oh, how I aspire to have the most relaxing Christmas ever! Inspired by this post and the accompanying printables, I'm making a list and checking it twice, buying supplies, and generally feeling the Christmas spirit. In September!

And really, did you know there are only 13 weeks until Christmas? It's practically upon us!

I win again!

Wow, I have had such good luck this month! The ever-so-nice Sam Hirst of Inklore hosted a giveaway and I won! The three darling tea towels I chose arrived on Saturday. I think they will look so nice in my kitchen. Thank you, Sam!

guess what I got for my birthday?

I know you're just dying to find out. :) Don't scroll down too quickly unless you want to ruin the suspense.

A couple of months ago, Jared bought me Wicked tickets for my birthday. YES! I love Wicked! So of course I said he needn't get me anything else, but he insisted on getting me something small so I could have a present to open on my birthday. Well, okay. :)

A couple of weeks ago he brought home a little box and wrapped it. It sat on my piano, beckoning to me, for many many days. Jared acted so excited, but then always assured me that it wasn't that great, so don't get my hopes up.

Yesterday morning, Jared got up with the baby at 6:30 and I turned over and stretched luxuriously, ready for a fantastic birthday sleep-in (which I had practiced for the morning before, thanks dear). But two seconds later, he jumped back into bed and whispered, "You know how I said your present wasn't that great? I was lying. I'm going to wake Thomas up."

I was awake. Thomas wandered in a couple minutes later. "What do you want to say to Mom?" Thomas rubbed his eyes. "Thank you."

We went to the kitchen and I finally got to open the mysterious package (please ignore the ugliness on my part). Inside was...a bunch of packing material! And a tiny package containing triangular pieces of plastic. Hmmm... Jared said, "Oh, that's the wrong box! Let me go get the right one." And somewhere between the time he said that and the time he came back with the right box, I figured out what the little plastic triangles were.

They were guitar picks.

I am SO happy! What a perfect day. Many thanks to my darling husband and to all the lovely people who made me feel like royalty all day long.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I'm so happy that my power finally came back on this morning so I could post this great picture! Mom posted this on facebook yesterday for my birthday. Isn't she beautiful? Aren't I cute? She's such a great mom and we have so many happy memories together. And she's on her way to London today! She so deserves it!

I love you, Mom! Thank you for being born!

my first polaroid

What fun! Instant photo gratification! Our morning walk preserved for posterity. Hmm, what shall I use my few precious remaining shots on? And now it's time to do a little birthday weekending. Bring on the cake!

the big secret event revealed

disclaimers:
I promise I know how to sing on key.
I promise there were lots of adults in attendance (you'll see what I mean).
Yes, those are my new boots (see, Janssen? happy birthday).

And now, for your viewing enjoyment (because it's certainly not for mine):

living room furniture: before and after

before:after:
We love them! It's all very brown, like a nice, clean palette all ready for some punches of color. Throw pillows, anyone? :)

something soft for someone sweet

Last week some friends of ours had a house fire. They lost basically the whole top floor of their house, including all their clothes and shoes and furniture and toys. They have two little girls who are close in age to my two boys. And yes, their insurance will cover all their losses (at least financially), but when we got an invitation to their baby Kathleen's 1st birthday party, I started salivating over all the soft, pink sewing possibilities. Girls are just so fun to sew for! So here are Kathleen's quilt and matching cuddle bear. I've had that little rose-patterned cotton for so long and I've been waiting for just the right project to use it on because I LOVE it. So it became binding and the little bear's back side.

I felt so awesome as I was sewing the binding on the little quilt: "Look at me, look at me, I don't even have to get out my sewing book to remember how to do mitered corners!" But oh yeah, I sewed them totally wrong. Had to unpick them and everything. But eventually it turned out very nicely, I think.

lent

Can I celebrate Lent if I'm Mormon? And if it's September? Well, no, but still. Lent, or un-Lent, is what I'm calling it: this week is my un-Lent (like un-birthday, you know).

Last week was decadent. We bought a couch and chair (pictures coming soon), I ate dessert after every meal (yes!), I spent a lot of time browsing the internet for fun (oh wow, there's so much!), I ordered a bunch of stuff for Christmas making, and to top it all off I went to Ross and treated myself to the boots I've been dreaming of ($18!). It was lovely, really lovely. And I felt a little bit guilty. I probably gained some weight. I definitely felt spendy and I definitely felt sort of selfish. I don't NEED new furniture, boots, bloggy ideas about fashion and crafting. It was a splurgy week.

So now it's time to tone it down. Trim the fat. I'm off dessert this week. I'm off buying non-essentials this week. And I'm off hours and hours of Internet. My "weight-loss" plan for success includes teaching six little kids plus Kimball, practicing for the event this Saturday that will be revealed if I don't totally stink it up, coaching some teenage volleyball (yes, me, I know), some really fun sewing projects (coming soon on this blog), and frequently calling my husband at work. Really, I shouldn't even have time for anything else.

Except I could really use a cookie or twelve right now...

a place to sit

Shopping for a new couch has been super fun. Jared and I are really different in our preferences and styles, so it will take us a while to find THE couch. After lots and lots of research, here are some couches that would make us very happy, though I think we'd go for a bit darker upholstery. (from Z Gallerie, Crate & Barrel, Crate & Barrel)

Also, we'd appreciate a couch for about half (or a third, or a fifth) the price of these, as I'd much prefer to invest $1000 in appreciable assets rather than a couch I could possible hate in a few years. *sigh*

oh boy!

It's a big week for Mr. Thomas! He's a preschooler now! We're doing Joy School, which means that I get the seven small people in my house on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next three weeks. How exciting! I'm a little nervous about it, considering that I'm never quite sure what to do with other peoples' kids, but every single minute is planned out for me, including discipline strategies and transitions. What could go wrong, right? And really, you can't beat the price and you can't beat the really good feeling of preschooling that is so aligned with my family values.
Plus, he really just likes it. That's extra good.

I win I win!

And speaking of Polaroids, looky what happened yesterday! I am so so lucky!

"polaroids"

I've been playing with some photos using rollip.com (found via her) and I just love the old polaroid look!Here's the original photo.
And here it is after. Cool, no?

I think they look so summery and nostalgic.

happy september

this lovely boot from here

Ooh, it's finally my favorite month of the year! My windows are open, the morning breeze is cooling my little home, and I'm feeling just a bit fall-ish. Nevermind that it will hit 90 degrees here today. Time for tights! Boots! New jeans! Plaid! Maybe even a scarf, in a few weeks of course. I just love the leafy smell, the anticipation of my birthday, the school buses rolling along the street. Makes me glad to be married to a teacher so that my life can continue to revolve around the school year: a new semester, a fresh start, every few months of the year.

Things here are so great. We sold our couch and chair (good riddance, Southwestern fabric) in one day on Craigslist and so we're now happily shopping for our birthday/Christmas presents in the form of a couch and chair. I'm getting ready to make a very large fool of myself at a ward party coming up, and the crafting for birthday season and Christmas has begun. No, I will not be buying those gorgeous boots pictured above, but I do like to fall asleep at night imagining the very cute outfits I could create if I had them. Hurrah for September!

school's in

let us eat pie.

mmmm :)

home again, home again, jiggety jig

Jared pulled the realtor's sign out of our front window last night. Today I'm walking around the condo, unsticking the little signs that say, "Special Feature: New Bath Countertops" and "Pet Free." I'm thinking about paint chips and fabric swatches again.

We had an offer last week. We rejected it. We're staying here.

Do I seem sad? I'm a little sad. I never like to fail at something I set out to accomplish. When we listed our little home, interest rates were incredibly low, everybody and their dog was planting a garden, and I needed NEEDED a yard and and some more storage space. I was so sure we'd have good offers within a week or two because, you know, things usually go our way. I entertained the possibility of being "on the market" for a few months, but that was just a remote and awful possibility.

The showings began. We neglected our friends for the sake of keeping things clean, we transformed into neat freaks, we ate lots of picnics. It wasn't hard, it was just annoying. And every showing, or absence thereof, was an emotional rollercoaster. Will they like it? Why aren't they coming to see it? What if we do sell? What if we don't? What if we don't find a house? And, most of all, WHEN will life be back to normal?

And every time we came home after a showing, the house looking and smelling so fresh and clean, I remembered how much I truly loved being here.

About halfway through the summer, Jared heard some advice about never taking on a home loan that was more than three times your income. Apparently this is pretty standard, common sense stuff--that we had never heard before! We were looking at properties that would have put us in debt for between five and six times our annual income.

So we shifted our plan a bit. We would sell our condo and then rent a little house (with a yard!) for about the same monthly payment. In the meantime, we would set aside all that extra money for a bigger mortgage and invest it so we could buy a really great house in five or ten years, maybe even without a mortgage. (Can you imagine?!)

We also thought about just buying a much cheaper house so we could still get the tax deductions, but then we would have had to sell it again in ten or fifteen years and I NEVER wanted to go through readying a house and showing it again. Still, both plans were good.

We could also just stay here, still get the tax deductions, invest our savings, and have zero extra bills. I mean, there's really no reason why we HAD to move this summer, especially when the interest rates were no longer amazing.

And then the new mall, just across the street from our complex, started opening up. The library is now a four minute walk away, and just outside the library is a Gateway-style fountain, made for kids to run through and be entertained on hot summer days. Soon there will be a movie theater, a bunch of restaurants, fun shopping, and a little playground, all just across the street. I knew it would be fun, but it's, like, really really fun. We were over there every single day last week.

So then the offer came. As soon as we finished with our realtor, we knew it was time to unlist ourselves, to put our roots back down for a while. I felt a tiny twinge of wistful regret when I thought about a lawn, a garden, dirt for boys to dig in, our very own snow in the winter. But really the overwhelming feeling was peace. I'm so happy to be done (for now) with showings, I'm so happy the uncertainty is over, I'm so happy to be keeping our ward and neighbors, and I'm so happy to be building a very strong financial foundation for our family. So happy to be in the Lord's hands.

A house can wait. We're truly happy right now, right here, at home.

Uncle Ben's motorcycle

His last time on a motorcycle if I have anything to say about it. :)