Birthday mini-albums.

I got this idea from the Dear Lizzy website (I'm blog challenged and don't know how to link) so I rushed out to buy some adhesive fabric paper and sat down with scrap paper and embellies and these were the result!

The first one is what I made for my sister Kathleen, and has photo's of her kids Khyler and Kinlee, and her nephew Jacob.



This one was what I made for my mom. It's got my 3 kiddo's in there.



And the last one was what I made for Diane, my mother-in-law. Special appearance by Jeff.



Looks like Picasa decided to crop my photo's as I was making the collages. Ah well.

Phew!

It's official, my new haircut truly is kick ass. I washed it last night and this morning I wet it down again and attempted to style it.

We all know that it's impossible to re-create the style you left the salon with. That's why, as much as I loved the cut, I was a little nervous. And I don't own a round brush, which apparently you need to give your hair volume.

I muddled through it with my trusty little Goody brush and I'm happy to report that it looks as close as possible to how it looked on Monday. Meaning, it looks awesome!

Which is a good thing because this is definitely not a wash-and-go cut. In fact, this is a put-on-makeup-and-get-out-of-those-sweats cut.

Dammit.

Excuse me, I'm a little sleepy.

Sleep is supposed to restful, no?

I have gotten used to nursing a child through the night, I can even manage the one-eyed stumble over to the crib to grab his screaming body at 1 am without too much interruption to my sleeping state.

What is not so easy to manage is a 6 foot male, an 11 month old that likes to sleep sideways, a toddler that neeeeeds to sleep next to me, and myself...all on a double bed.

Four years ago when we bought our new mattress set I was absolutely not thinking long term and since I already had a double bed frame it only followed that we would buy a double mattress and boxspring. I wasn't thinking babies or co-sleeping or anything beyond the fact that I was making my very first grown up purchase.

We know we need to buy a king size set. A couple of things make me hesitant to do it though: our room is not large. A king size would eat up all available space and force us to move the crib into Nicky's room, where Josh's nighttime screaming would likely wake him up before I could dash in there and grab him.

Although...Nicky is already waking up and coming into our bed about 50% of the time. Okay, next argument.

I'm thinking about what potential buyers would see when they're looking at our home. No, we don't plan on listing soon but it's going to happen sometime in the next 1.5 years and a king would make our small room look even smaller. Is this even a valid concern? It's not like we have little man syndrome, we know our home is small. I'm just trying to see it through a buyer's perspective.

And speaking of new homes, I kind of wanted a new bedroom set to be part of us making the next move into our next place. Something shiny and pretty and new.

But. My aching back and shoulders. Jeff's aching back and shoulders. Nicky falling on the floor repeatedly because he insists on sleeping next to me instead of next to his dad in the middle. Josh being a crazy sideways-sleeping monster.

And Liam would be thrilled to inherit our old set.

Decisions.

Some lessons aren't worth it.

I had an a-ha! moment a couple months ago and called our local free paper to sign Liam up to do a paper route. Once a week he'd have to stuff flyers into a newspaper and deliver them to about 90 houses.

This is perfect, I thought. It's maybe 3-4 hours of work a week and will teach him a valuable lesson about earning money. He's 11, he's more than capable.

I was the one who ended up learning a lesson: don't do anything so damn stupid again.

It was a headache from the get go. It was reminiscent of me sitting him down to do his homework with him. The huffing and puffing and slamming things around when he's forced to do something he doesn't want to do.

They never got done on the day they were supposed to.

It took him 4 hours just to stuff the papers if I didn't help him.

A couple times I ended up delivering them myself (or putting them in the recycle but shhh).

Yesterday after fighting with him for the umpteenth time to just get it done and by-god-if-you-huff-one-more-time-I-swear-you'll-regret-it, I decided that the lesson wasn't worth it.

I fired off an email to the coordinator telling her effective immediately we wouldn't be delivering the flyers anymore. She called me and suckered me into doing it just one more week.

After that, though, we're free. I haven't told him yet but something tells me he won't be heartbroken.

Some craftiness.

In my 'about me' it says that I'm a scrapbooker. And it's true, I love to do it. My mojo has taken a vacation lately though, and while I have tried to force myself to work through it I really haven't been satisfied with much that I've turned out in the past 6 months or so.

It started to come back when I made some mini albums for my mom, mother in law, and sister. I got really exited to share them, they turned out SO nicely. I'll share the pictures from that little project another day since there's lots of 'em.

Then I sat down with a picture of our wedding. I don't get to use pink very often, being the mother of all boys, so I went a little crazy.



And then last night I was looking at a challenge for Mission Create and inspiration struck again. I used 4 out of the 5 prompts only because I don't have any bingo cards. I sanded the photo on the right, made a couple flowers out of tissue paper (2 birds with 1 stone baby!) and stamped it up with ink. This is one of my favorite LO's to date!




Whenever I make a page that has a lot of white space Jeff makes sure to comment on it, asking if I'm "done". For a long time it made me think that maybe I needed to do more to my pages and so I would struggle and try to fill it up. But it's just not me, not always. And another scrapper finally put into words what I never could: white space is itself a design element. So there Jeff!

And finally, I am also working on Josh's birth announcement. It's done in crosstitch and will probably take me a year but it's super cute and I'm very exited to finally start it.



So there's where I am with stuff. I'm glad that my energy levels are picking up so I can spend more time in my craft room!

Random ramblings.

Why is there such a thing as a sticky floor? I hate mopping. I wish I could put my kids in bubbles until they're old enough to learn table manners.

Why does my house seem to throw up laundry? I've done 2 loads a day for the last week and I've still got 3 loads sitting downstairs waiting their turn to get cleaned.

Does it count if I planned to iron all of Jeff's clothes? Even if I didn't actually get around to it for whatever reason (ie. laziness).

Are ALL 11 year old boys so loud and messy? And wtf is up with wanting to stay inside and play all day, get yer butts outside and ride to the park! Granted it's not that nice today but...

That's all I've got for now. My youngest demon has woken up and saved me from an afternoon of cleaning. Think I'll go give him a big smooch!