amazing amounts of ribbon...

i just added new tag lovie blankets to the "selling stuff blog" i just liked this picture...so much ribbon, so little time

wow...

The Thirteenth Tale.


I just got done reading this book (that's right, book clubbers...stake a claim on it) and it was so twisty and wonderful. i just loved it. It was one of those time when i couldn't do much else but read (too bad, because i do have a holiday show on November 15 see My Craft Cottage for details...) and i loved every second of it. i might read it again...to catch what i didn't the first time...after everyone else has read it of course. so someone else read it so i can talk about it with you!!!! so good.

the great pumpkin...

we carved a pumpkin! yay! ethan helped by scooping yuckiness out of the inside



and telling daddy what shape to make the pumpkin's features and where to put them. a good time was had by all. avery sat in her chair and watched and wanted to eat the yuckiness out of the pumpkin...oh well:)


so they both got suckers to top it off! fun! yay halloween!



(and i looked somewhat akin to wretched that day so why we decide to take a picture THEN...i don't know!)

GROSGRAIN MINI STORE OPENING NOVEMBER 6!!!! AND BIG PREVIEW GIVEAWAY!!!!

GROSGRAIN MINI STORE OPENING NOVEMBER 6!!!! AND BIG PREVIEW GIVEAWAY!!!!

Halloween: Sneak Peek

warning: softballs are not that soft.

what can your child sleep through???

it seems at our house lately, we've been doing some research into what our children can sleep through. one day, during naps, kendall and his brother (saints both of them) came to take the old dumpy lockers away, but it turns out that they had to rip them apart before they could carry them effectively. and the kids were asleep and they stayed asleep through that. i was duly impressed.

then kendall's dad (also a wonderful person) came over to screw the new beautiful lockers into the wall so they wouldn't fall over and crush anyone unsuspectingly. and it was A LOT of noise, we are talking a drill through REALLY thick metal and through the wall and grating and scraping etc. and they stayed alseep.

but tonight takes the cake. we went to the fair (and i forgot the camera, can you believe that???) and it was tons of fun and the kids loved it but when we were coming home we needed to get some food with kendall's fam because we were all starving so we went to applebee's. on the way to applebee's BOTH children fell asleep but we figured they would be really hungry so it would be better to feed them so we went ahead with the plan. avery popped right awake when we stopped but ethan, in the face of shaking, loud speaking and bright lights...stayed asleep. he stayed asleep into the restaurant, he stayed asleep through dinner...i am talking DEEP sleep, he did not budge of his own volition the ENTIRE time we were out. and then we put him in the car and took him home, asleep the whole time. took his pants and underwear off, put a pull-up and pj pants on him and put him to bed...and he was out cold the entire time.

i am simply amazed. he was such a hard kid to get to sleep when he was a baby and i shed many tears over his habits but now...amazing. truly amazing. there is hope for any kid who has sleeping problems when they are young. i am pretty sure he gets a lot of that sleeping from me but some of it has to be from kendall because he fell asleep while getting his teeth drilled. true story.

more than a little strange...

so this morning it was really cold in our house, which is not normal...since it's been so so hot for so so long! so i thought it might be fun to turn on the heat for a few minutes just to be able to say i did that in october! so i did, when our heat turns on it makes a faint "tick tick tick" sound before it kicks on. something about these old houses..our other house did the same. so i hear the "tick tick tick", but from ethan's room i hear a "beep beep beep", really high pitched, right in time with the "tick tick tick". at first i thought it was the smoke detector...it resembled that kind of sound, almost. but it wasn't.

it was his toy cash register.

don't ask me how or why this works, but when we turn on the heat and it makes the "tick tick tick" sound...the cash register "beeps" in time to it. i showed the phenomenon to kendall and he stared at me with wide eyes and his mouth made a little "o." it is really weird. what does that mean? this requires more investigation and perhaps the removal of batteries from the cash register...stay tuned.

Cancer Walk

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer - 2008-2009

Hello all,
i have decided to do a Breast Cancer Walk in november (november 8th to be exact) and i wanted to make you all aware why...

my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer last year in july. just one month before Avery was born and has since endured chemotherapy and radiation and her scans are clean at this point. that makes our family extremely happy and relieved but, having been through this with our family, i would like to ease the pain for others who may hear that they have cancer as well. please donate if you feel you would like to. even $5 would be appreciated. i have a low goal...of course i will be delighted if we can raise more, but i would definitely love to donate anything to this very worthy cause...will you help me?

thanks for reading and taking a moment to think about this.

jen

Occam's Razor...

so i have to admit that i'd never really heard of the principle of Occam's Razor until i watched an episode of House a year ago or so, but basically stated, as i understand it and as i looked it up on the very handy and most of the time reliable Wikipedia...it states that "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best"

so my sewing machine started getting really tight the other day when i tried to sew and it has extremely hard to make the needle go up and down...so i took it apart and noticed that when i took the bobbin attachment out, it would not have the tight problem, but when i put it in, it seemed to scrape against itself...very odd and it just started happening all of the sudden.

so i called my mom, whose machine it used to be, but it hadn't really ever happened to her before.

today i called the Bernina Store where i got it fixed last time, and i really like them, so i explained the issue and the lady said, "bring it in, it sounds like a belt problem" so i took it in today and prepared myself to pay the $100 to just walk in the door and then any other repairs on top of that. AND they said that the guy who fixes the machines (who is like a machine wizard, i swear) is booked out A WEEK! (i am trying to get ready for a holiday show...so that is not a good thing to hear..no machine for a week)

so i take it in and the ladies at the front are as puzzled as me and then "mr. wizard" (and i mean that with a lot of respect, he is really good at what he does)i think his name is Lynn....so he comes out and sits down and looks at it, takes it apart just as i had done and then asks me how often i oil the bobbin hook. Not often as i have no oil...i know i am supposed to have some but i never have had any...anyway, i was properly shamed by his look and decided promptly to buy some oil...then he proceeds to tell me, along with other things, that the hook needs to be oiled about every 4-5 full bobbins, he shows me how and voila! it works. like raising someone from the dead.

occam's razor. always the simplest solution! amazing.

also another lesson...OIL THE MACHINE!

thanks...

hey guys, thanks for your well wishes. we seem to all be on the up and up now and feeling a lot better! yay!

keep 'em coming..

and then ethan threw up two more times, refused to go to bed because he was so hungry and woke up avery...my mother in law had to come over and rescue me (sainted woman).

and now kendall is sick too.

awesome.

Clean up on aisle 2...ethan threw up

there are many things i can handle and not really bat an eye at...throw up is not one of them. first of all, if it were handle-able why would we have so many nasty, weird words to describe it? puke, toss your cookies, barf (gross!), blow chunks...it's just not good.

tossing cookies goes well with what happened today.

back up to this morning, i had to go to the post office and mail something (usually what you do at the post office, good one jen! thanks for not trying to buy a parrot at the post office! i digress...) anyway, and it wasn't crowded, yay! and i said, "ethan please come stand right by me" in about 8 varying forms but he was over by the door, and i kept calling him until i heard a screaming wail issue from his mouth and see him actually trembling with pain and screaming and crying and holding his balled up hand in his other hand and i am trying to finish my transaction but i am laughing because to me...this is just a little bit funny. i am not laughing at his injury, i totally know it hurt, but i TOLD him to stand by me and...he didn't. yet again. so i get a look at this hand and it is generally red and a little banged up but then the nail on his middle finger is instantly half red and looks like blood underneath. so i take him home, still screaming mind you, and get ibuprophen and ice and i hold his hand and put ice on it while he wallows around on the futon like his hand is falling off, all the while trying to keep avery from pulling his hair out (because that is how she shows affection apparently) and he is still screaming. i talked to him soothingly, i sang primary songs...nothing helped. then i called my mom, the RN and we talked and i decided to call the doctor and he said bring him in so i can see the nail because sometimes we have to drain the blood. awesome. so we go. but the kids haven't had lunch. but there isn't time for lunch because a) he's still screaming and b) they are waiting for us at the doctor's office. so i grab snack food...one of which is teddy grahams. so he calms down in the car, has some propel, teddy grahams, and some chips (whatever i could grab people...i was desparate). he's fine by the time we get to the doc's office, doctor joe decides it doesn't need to be drained and we decide to meet friends at the park (which we were going to do before the Post Office Fiasco) mostly because mommy needs some friend time. ethan loves the park, avery did pretty well, ethan didn't pee his pants, we are doing well. it's time to go.

oh, dreaded time to go. ethan freaks out, which he usually does, no biggy. then we are driving home, he says, "i don't feel good, my tummy hurts" starts to cry. i say, " you didn't really have lunch, maybe you are hungry" at which point, he throws up...all over pretty much everything. GROSS. i completely and utterly HATE throw up. i just do. it's nasty. so i get home, make avery stay in her carseat while i get ethan and his carseat out of the car, clean up the throw up in the car (which smells just like the teddy grahams by the way!) and then get them inside, into the tub.

then avery poops in the tub. oh glory. can i just be done with today? it's only 2 pm (and kendall's not home until 9 tonight). then i get everyone cleaned up again, get ethan a banana to try to settle his stomach, get them down for a nap and face the throw up carseat...more laundry. gotta love it. pray that the nasty stomach bug is not here to stay but it was just all the screaming he did earlier and the bad choice on mom's part...BLASTED TEDDY GRAHAMS!

How the Lockers Came to Be

okay, so i don't really know how they came to be initially but i know how they came to US! here's how you too can get lockers that are REALLY heavy and probably, we think, from the 50's.

1. look on craigslist obsessively for months.
2. get other lockers that are falling apart and unusable.
3. look obsessively on craigslist again for a month until you find more lockers.
4. call a guy named jimmy
5. go to south phx to a reclamation yard (aka: Junk Yard)and try not to be deterred by the rows and rows of warehouses where any amount of drug deals could and probably do "go down"
6. (mind you we have both our children on this trip)go meet jimmy at the said junk yard.
7. notice that jimmy and the other two yard workers look like the epitome of junk yard workers...conjure that up in your mind and run with it.
8. walk walk walk through the yard and find the lockers.
9. say "yes i would like those lockers" and then go back to the car
10. pass the sound of a barking dog to find the guy who drives the fork lift (at which barking jimmy actually says (and i am NOT lying), "oh, we better not go that way, i haven't fed my dog today")
11. find that they need to get gas for said fork lift and decide that sweet husband will wait with the truck for them to bring the lockers and wife who created this whole hullaballo about lockers will take children home because child number one is getting himself dirtier than the junk yard dog.
12. find husband returning after 1.5 hours because he had to wait while someone RODE HIS BIKE to the gas station to get gas for the fork lift and then they had trouble finding the lockers and then they had to get them in the truck and tie them down because they are so heavy if they, by some miracle, fell out they would crush any car.
13. promise exasperated brother in law that helps sweet husband get lockers off the truck cookies because he not only helped get the first crappy lockers here, and then to the dump but he helped get the second set of lockers (which we may nickname "mammoth") off the truck and into a position that i could work with them.

thank you one and all for bearing with me through my ridiculous wanting of lockers and helping me get them done. wonderful people.

here are some pictures before and after:)

ethan by the "before" lockers

close up of after i washed them, they were...caked in dirt, nasty!

after i had painted them, ethan was begging to do some painting so i let him paint the back...pretty good huh?

here's kendall and shane (bless you both)trying to get these behemoth lockers inside.

had to stop in the doorway and tie them on again....

Ta Da! after some lovely inlaw parents came and bolted them to the wall so no small children would be injured (Thank You!), here they are, in all their glory.

whew!

the potty...

in the same breath that i am actually "saying" this (typing it, whatever) i am also taking it back because i don't want to jinx myself. we are potty training ethan and figure this is the time that it needs to work. he is three years and three months old, let's get on this people, right? he fights me every SINGLE time i want him to try to go potty, it is so frustrating. but if i wait for him, is he actually going to tell me? and now he won't poop. lame. he had a great day yesterday, no accidents but he just needs to calm down about it, i'm not sure how to do that. maybe i need to calm down too:) but truth be told, i'd rather be able to go out when i want and not have to take him to the potty when he is going to fuss about it all the time. anyway, that's what we are doing. silliness. good job all you moms that potty trained your kids, or the kids did it themselves:) wish us luck.

Ethan is Famous!

not really, but he is on the little advertisement for the halloween bags over at Crafting Chicks...check it out! he was happy to be my model but only for about 5 minutes...had to get what i could.

and ps--if you are ever painting with spray paint, be prepared 1. to have it ALL over your hands for days (how do those graffiti artists do it?) and 2. to go back to Home Depot and buy 3 more cans of it! the lockers are going well...i'll be finished hopefully today or tomorrow...cross your fingers!

paper trail...

okay, so i have a paper issue...too much of it. i don't know what to keep and for how long...i keep tax stuff for sure in a file..but what about that day to day clutter, papers from the doctor, receipts, forms, mail, pictures ethan colored/paint/drew on etc. i just don't know what to do with it all. we seem to have a catch-all place, right on our counter in the kitchen and on the table...yuck! it's bugging me. i am generally more of a stack-maker and go through it later, but i really don't like the way that looks...i need a better system...how do you guys contain and make functional all your papers etc. that you have??????

funny children...

life is good, busy as always, i seem to find things to fill my days:) kendall is on fall break this week, but going into school in the mornings to work on cases for a clinic he is doing...so we get some alone time in the am and then get to see him more in the afternoons! awesome!

so my locker situation is funny: those ones we got are still sitting on our back porch in pretty much the same sad sad condition they were in when we got them, probably worse because both of us have hit them repeatedly with a socket wrench out of frustration and a concerted effort not to swear:) but we went tonight and got some different ones that are infinitely better (and cost about 3 times as much but hey, you get what you pay for right?) and the price we paid was still about 1/4 or so of what they are new, so all in all, i feel really nice about it. so we will be hauling the old away and getting down to business with the new ones soon, pictures to come.

the kids are good, one day i was so tired of avery's hair being in her face and her dislike of clippies that i put two back ponytails in and then swept her "bangs" over into another ponytail in the front, kind of funny but effective. this was before the front ponytail, when she still had the clip in.

she also got to use a spoon this week, all by herself, i know we did this earlier with ethan, but i kind of didn't even think about it until later with her, oh well:)

here is ethan with his Cars umbrella (thanks Melissa and boys!) he pretty much adores this umbrella and carries it around with him most days, cute pic though:)

and this is one of avery's newest hobbies, when ethan will slow down enough to let her do it.



AND AVERY STARTED WALKING! she doesn't do it everywhere or even all the time, but she can do it! that's the important part right:) (sigh) she's getting so big! i am happy for her and sad at the same time you know? it's a good thing. but it's funny, she doesn't do it when i'm in the room, most of the time. always with other people. she finally did it today with me:) so that was fun.

that's what we've been doing. how about you?

Halloween Bags

See the All Sewn Up blog to get these little beauties! Very Cute:)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang...

you may not know, but at our house we have a little boy who is quite obsessive about things when he really likes them. For example, after he watched 101 Dalmations, ALL (and i mean, literally ALL) he talked about was Horace and Jasper and the dalmation puppies. he wanted to play that, be that, talk about that, read that, watch that etc. you get the idea. when he discovered Cars, same deal, then he got cars silverware, plate, bowl, cup etc. we are feeding a monster! so the newest fixation and fad at our house is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

he knows all the songs, he can sing you "chitty chitty bang bang" "me 'ol bamboo" "doll on a music box" "toot sweets" and "truly scrumptious" among others. he doesn't like the pirate parts so we skip those parts and he'll tell you when he's getting scared, which is good. also i don't like the child-stealing guy, he's a little creepy

so i skip that part...and i skip the "chu chi face" song, because, i don't know how recently you've seen this movie but that lady doesn't wear many clothes during that part...

anyway, so ethan has been telling me he wants to be "a bamboo" as he calls them, the guys that sing "me 'ol bamboo" song, for halloween.

he even does a really cute and funny dance when this song comes on...but no one will know who he is...so i think maybe i'll make him a costume he can put on at home and for halloween we can do something as a family.

he even uses his toy broom as his "bamboo stick"

cute kid.