All Coming Together

Things are slowly coming together. The paper order that was MIA and then arrived only in part is hopefully being fixed and then some. Hard to make paper crafts without paper! I am getting some paper bead bracelets whipped up, perfect Earth Day craft! And keeping busy with some other little crafty things. Today I'll be getting ready for the family invasion happening this weekend, I'm so excited to see everyone! Saturday Mr. Golden Curls has a party in celebration of his 5th birthday! So I'm doing the cleaning. Not just the normal, keeping the house from total chaos cleaning but the oh my goodness family, friends, and new neighbors we barely know will be in our house kind of cleaning. Huge difference!

A Day With A Budding Artist

We've been trying hard lately to make sure we spend some one-on-one time with the boys. They just do so much better when they aren't together all the time and it gives us a chance to appreciate their individuality. It also gives them the much needed chance for some undivided attention. Last week the Bohemian and Mr. Golden Curls drove to Little Rock to spend his gift card on me, get a purple milkshake at The Purple Cow etc etc. and Lil' Spitfire and I stayed home. This was not at all ok with Spitfire until I leaned over and whispered in his ear "We can get out the new paints you got for Christmas." Suddenly going with Pappa was not at all important and they couldn't leave fast enough for his liking, he was ready to paint. Now that's my boy!

I had so much fun with my little man!

I'm amazed at his concentration and the fact that he does more than just play in the mess of it as though he's playing in a sand box. He actually tries different things to see what happens and made the discovery of mixing paint to make new colors. He absolutely loves the huge set of glitter Cars paints he got for Christmas. Well, technically that was probably brother's gift, but what belongs to one belongs to both! He was also very excited to painting on canvas.

When he switched to the water color paint palette I looked over at him cleaning his brush in this jar and had some kind of bizarre clash of worlds-nostalgia-flashback thing happen. This silly jar is one of the things I used all the time when I painted my gigantic, moody, abstract, mixed media pieces in college. It still has my paint ringed around the inside and sludging up the bottom and now here it was on the kitchen table with my child's sweet tiny little hand in it painting on a coloring page.

While he got into flinging paint I decided to test out our new portable DVD player. So I could go ahead and completely brain wash him into being an artist, I went ahead and played my new Living Art Museum Tour DVD. My parents got it for me so I couldn't complain again that they'd never taken me to an art museum. I don't know, seems a shoddy replacement and I'm still waiting for them to send me to the MOMA to make up for all my pain and suffering as a child! Actually Spitfire really liked the DVD and every time the painting changed would look up and ask "what's that one?"

He painted and painted for about an hour and a half before it was lunch time. I had to bribe it all away from him to avoid a fit pitchin', I don't know how long he'd paint if left to his own devices. After lunch we did some serious building with his new bristle blocks and then it was off to naptime when I actually got several hours of 100% peace because his brother wasn't home to roll around yacking and "napping" on the couch.

Best day ever!

Present But Not Accounted For

I've been having a hard time with this move. I can't believe we moved here a whole 5 months ago because I don't feel any more at home than the first day we arrived. Our house is coming together slowly and I'm trying to get into, and adhere to, a new routine/schedule. And I swear I'm trying my hardest to see in this town what others seem to but it just seems to me a really sad place to live. Every time I drive through town I wonder what I should be doing to make this community better because it seems so obvious to me that it needs some serious love. We've been so busy since moving too! I don't think we've ever traveled so much in a 5 month period, Florida, North Carolina, many trips back and forth to parents' houses, which are much further away now. I would guess that half of the weekends since moving have not even been spent in our new house.

I've also realized that ever since we moved I kind of lost my coveted day off filled with mocha, scrapbooking in a gorgeous store, and anything else my little heart desired without any mothering duties. Isn't my husband awesome for recognizing mothering is a job! I'm a person who requires a larger than normal amount of alone time. I need time to be able to think without being interrupted, to daydream, to gain positive perspective on my life. Without that chance to look in at my life from the outside I go a teensy bit crazy and start to dislike it. Absence really does make my heart grow fonder. That day off helped me make it through the week, no matter how rotten it was. Lately I've been more and more nutso and driving my family down with me. "Why am I so much crazier these days? Oh, yea, I'm not taking a day off!" Even when the Bohemian would send me out of the house or take charge of the boys I wasn't really taking advantage of that. I changed that today! I clocked out of mothering gig, sent to boys to Pappa with 100% of their requests, locked myself in my craft room with music blaring, took Mr. Cash on a Pug date to Petco and Starbucks, accomplished, daydreamed, refreshed, ahhhhh. I'm so much better now!

A Christmas Kid Craft Classic

Mr. Golden Curls has been asking me daily "how long before it's Christmas?" I think mostly because he wants to see his Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Pete and, maybe most importantly, the four cousins that are part of that brood. After he asked for the three millionth time I decided it was time to whip up the 'ole grade school classic, the countdown to Christmas chain. Now every morning we can pull off a link and when he asks "how long before it's Christmas?" I can just point to the chain and say "that long!" I'll let you know if it actually works.

Mamma vs. Crafter

Sometimes it can be pretty tough to get much of anything accomplished around here, as most of you can imagine! Many of you don't have to imagine because you live it too. The other day I got asked if I was going to list more of my Jesus Saves cards. I was tremendously flattered and of course set about to oblige. Yesterday and today I worked way harder on finishing such a meager number of cards than is healthy for the maintenance of sanity. Good grief, I thought I wouldn't get them finished until the boys moved off to college!

I felt a little guilty being frustrated with my precious angels with a dozen or so smiling Jesus faces staring at me. Soccer goalie or not, He's the baddest cat on this block!


Part of my frustration stemmed from the fact that I was working at the kitchen table, just like the olden days. Why was I doing this when I have a fantastic new craft room at my disposal? I think the next picture might answer that quite nicely!

The whole room looks like this! It's like a paper bomb went off and ever since creating my lovely light box I've been lacking a work table. Ok, I know, if I would take a moment to reorganize and tidy up a bit it would be functional. That's the first thing on my to-do list for tomorrow! Sometimes it's hard to do that part when all you want to do is make stuff!


Some of the interruptions while creating cards today:

• Lil' Spitfire getting up from nap 4 times
• Dog needs let out as soon as my bum finally hits the chair
• Delivery guy brings a delivery, as they're prone to doing (the boys' Halloween costumes, yea!)
• Mr. Golden Curls tries on his costume
• The dog "needs" out again
• Too late for napping now, I let Spitfire get up
• Spitfire sees his costume so he has to try it on
• I pin the arms and legs on his costume while he's wearing it. Sort of along the lines of trying to put a sweater on a crazed Chihuahua I imagine.
• Help Spitfire on/off the potty
• I rue the decision to let Spitfire get up as he throws a massive tantrum about anything and everything while I frantically try to glue card parts together between (or during) outbursts and timeouts so they'll be finished by the time we leave for church where, for some unknown reason, I've taken on co-teaching the Jr. High Girls Bible Study.
• I have to referee several fights between two boys, neither of whom took a nap or really even rested and therefore are grumpy and impossible to reason with.

Four hours later I've managed to complete four measly sets of Jesus Saves cards! I know, woe is me! But sometimes it really does feel like woe is me! The amazing thing is that even with all the woe is me-ing I do, being a mamma and getting to stay home with my boys and craft on the side is the most rockin' awesome job I could ever have dreamed of having!

Kiddie Collage 101

Yesterday Mr. Golden Curls came up to me and said "Mamma, is it ok if we do some scrapbooking in my Thomas scrapbook." I was so excited before I remembered I've already packed all that up. That seems to happen about a million times a day, the boys asking for something and me having to tell them it's packed up and ready to go to our theoretical house in Hot Springs. "How about we make a collage instead, it's kindof like scrapbooking without the pictures." I can feel collage artists everywhere cringing at this definition but it's the best I could come up with and figured it'd do for a 4 year old. "Yeah! Can it be a Thomas collage!" "I'm sure I can dig up something Thomas-esque for you collage."

Note to self: Choose the box marked WASHABLE!

I made the first attempt at helping Mr. Golden Curls write his name, you know, without my holding his hand and making him write it. He did a great job for his first try but it was a bit painstaking, he was not at all thrilled that I was making him try it on his own. "I'll mess it up! I can't make it look right!" All this before he's put marker to paper. Poor little perfectionist first born!

I loved Lil' Spitfires collage. It was his first try with scissors, did the glue by himself and he actually managed to not destroy anything! He was very meticulous too, every piece of paper got it's own Disney sticker, only one each (well, until the very end when the Happy Feet stickers came out) and he was so deliberate with his little markings. Lil' Spitfire's mellowing in his old age.

Mr. Golden Curls Hearts Miss Megan

Mr. Golden Curls' Mother's Day Out teacher had her last day this week so we made her a good-bye gift. It turned out pretty darn cute. If I can drum up some motivation I may do something similar for my etsy shop.

First he colored a paper mache heart shaped box. I somewhat reluctantly sacrificed a bunch of my really nice, extra shiny scrapping rhinestones because they're self adhesive and truthfully had just been sitting in the box 'o stuff for a long time. Then we cut heart shapes out of scrapbook paper, one with his picture and the others with notes on the backs of them saying what Mr. Golden Curls liked most about his teacher. Then I ran a ribbon through all the hearts, glued the knotted ends of the ribbon to the box bottom and lid so it streches out like a garland when the box is opened and added some of my extra promo pins. Pretty quick project and the teacher was thrilled declairing it the best gift "really!"

The Big-Ass Book Of Crafts is MINE!

Tuesdays have become my 50% break from motherhood. Lil' Spitfire goes to Mother's Day Out and Mr. Golden Curls and I have have some quality time together. I'm also able to accomplish some of the housework that just doesn't happen when a rambunctious 2 year old is reigning terror throughout the home. Today we went to Barnes and Noble for the four millionth, six hundred fifty four thousand, one hundredth and second time, what can I say, I'm lacking creativity in all areas of my life these days. Mr Golden Curls doesn't mind a bit, he's a man of consistency and routines. He gets that from his mamma.

As part of my routine, I picked up some books to look at while he played trains. This book has been one I've picked up every visit for the past few months. I often get hooked on a book but tired after a few visits when I feel I have it thoroughly looked at. Since this one seems to have stuck I decided it was worth taking home. It's filled with lots of wonderful random crafts and alot of rockin' cool paper crafts, which allowed me to justify it as a business necessity. Ever since I got it home I've been rubbing my hands together mischievously, already anxiously awaiting the boys bedtime so I can dig into making something wonderful!