Fifty Five Days Left

I have 55 days left in my twenties.  Nicole at Making It Lovely made a list of 30 things to do before she turns 30.  She has a little bit longer to accomplish them than I do, but I don't think I'll use her list, anyway.  I have started thinking a bit about my birthday though.  I think my 30s are going to be awesome.  I'm really looking forward to them.  But I realized that once I'm there, I'll never be 20 again, so I should celebrate these last few weeks of my 20s before they're gone forever.  I made an impulsive decision today and cut my hair again, this time a bit shorter all around than the last time.  I still may go even shorter.  Or, I'll let it grow a little bit and just do the back shorter and really embrace the inverted bob.  I figure making crazy decisions about my hair is very 20s and I'm allowed.  And I'd like to figure out what I really like with my hair so my 30s is a better hair decade.  I didn't start my 20s off with great hair, so it should be easy to start off better this decade.

I've also been on the search for a lip color that I really love.  I'm having to buy lots of new makeup since I dyed my hair and it has a bit more red in it.  Changed all my colors on me.  I feel like the lip color that I'm drawn to looks almost cartoonish with a bit brighter hair.  But I need that color on my lips so I don't look washed out.  I was pale living in the desert, I'm going to be translucent living up here in the PNW.  I've embraced blush, but I'm not going to ignore my lips.


Thirtieth birthdays should be a big deal, right?  I really would love to have a big party with my family and friends, but it looks like that isn't going to happen this year.  I can't lie, I'm a bit disappointed about that.  But I understand.  And we're the ones who moved far away from everyone else.  I'm not going to dwell on that, like I said, I'm only a little disappointed about it.  


I have been making my birthday list for this year.  I added a few photography books to my Amazon wishlist.  I also want pretty OPI nail polishes.  There are lots of pretty pinks and purples I've seen.  I still have some thinking to do about this.  Ben's going to upgrade the seats in my Jetta to leather seats this week, which I'm excited about.  I thought about it for a long time and was hesitant at first but I think it will be great to have seats that wipe clean, especially living somewhere that gets wet and having an almost four year old who doesn't know how to keep her feet off the seats.  Really, I think it's more likely that she'd stain cloth seats than puncture leather ones.  Plus, they'll be heated, which will be really nice.  


Any ideas on things to do before I turn 30?

Time Marches On

Has it really been over 10 days since I posted something?  Sheesh.  Time has been flying by around here.  Natalie had her feeding evaluation.  I have to thicken everything she drinks for a while.  I have lots of questions about this, and I'll ask them at her checkup on Wednesday.  She's also been experiencing separation anxiety any time I walk away from her.  She cries and gets really upset, even if I just walk to the trash can to throw a diaper away.  Kind of frustrating, but age appropriate.  She's also getting four more teeth, which will bring her up to twenty!

Lauren's been having lots of fun with soccer.  She likes practice more than the games because they are shorter.  She says her big games are too long, and she gets distracted once she starts getting tired.  She does well playing goalie, though.  She blocked two goals this Saturday.  Her ballet seems to be getting better, too.  I just went this morning and signed her up for her April class.  She sometimes gets a little bit too chatty in class, but last Friday was observation day and it looked like she was paying attention and didn't get the giggles too much.

Ben's night schedule is finally done.  It was more exhausting for me than I thought it would be.  He's off today and has been working on my car, something about a steering column bearing, I think.  I'm not trying to learn about it, I trust him to do it.  Besides, I'm much too busy staying warm in the house to go hang out in the garage.

I'm thinking I'm going to host a brunch for some new friends.  I'm not really sure what to make, though.  I've been browsing through the Martha Stewart website and Tasty Kitchen for recipes.  Any suggestions?  Hopefully I'll get to host it as a kid-free event and get some mommy alone time.

The daffodils in the front yard have bloomed!  I think spring is coming, and I'm very happy about it!

Soccer and New Foods and Springtime Gardening

Lauren started soccer two weeks ago.  It's so adorable.  The kids are all so motivated and active and have no idea whatsoever about what they're supposed to be doing.  I love it.  It's fun to watch and she gets to run around like crazy and wear herself out, and that's the whole point of it really.  She has two practices a week and her first game was last Saturday.  Her team is the Hurricanes and they won!

Natalie is crawling around EVERYWHERE now, pulling herself up to stand, and is starting to cruise the furniture with a purpose.  I asked her home therapist to start helping us work on baby sign language with her since she still only says "mama".  Her eating is great, though, she's been eating pretty much everything I've given her.  Bell peppers, beans, avocado, cantaloupe, even lasagna last night for dinner.  By the time she has her feeding evaluation on the 24th, she won't need it anymore.

I planted strawberry seeds and some flower seeds in little pots and put them in the kitchen window.  The strawberries sprouted, but now they aren't doing anything.  I'm not sure what went wrong there.  The flowers are doing well, though.  I wish I could remember which kind I planted.  Hahaha.  It feels nice to have a seed I planted actually grow into something.  My hydrangeas outside are starting to get new green life, and the daffodil and tulip bulbs I had Ben plant are all up and I think I see the start of a few blooms thinking about growing.

I haven't done much lately craft or sewing-wise, which is a shame.  It feels like we've suddenly become very busy with soccer, story time, ballet, and physical therapy.  Story time is taking a three week break, though so that's one more day a week we have off.  We are also getting over having mild colds and Natalie had a bad diaper rash/yeast infection that's finally clearing up thanks to a trip to urgent care and a prescription for some cream.  Ben's current schedule is throwing things off a bit, too, but we only have another ten days of that and then we can get back to normal.  And last night I ordered myself Cath Kidston's "Make" (that I mentioned in my last post) so I'm excited to get that and get inspired again.

Things I Love -Jan 2010

1. Cath Kidston
Cath Kidston is a British designer.  The website sells homegoods (like umbrellas and gadget cases), clothes, fabric, kitchen stuff and more.  And all of it is in very lovely prints that are just adorable.  The fabrics are my favorite.  I would love to have a giant sewing stash of her fabrics.  Actually, I'd love to have at least one of every single thing on her site.  She has two cute sewing books, too.  I may have to go add them to my Amazon wishlist, like, right now.

2. Peanut M&Ms
There's not a whole lot to say about that, but I love them.  Not a huge fan of plain M&Ms, but I do also like almond.  Lauren also likes peanut M&Ms, so we get along just great when it comes to getting a snack in the checkout aisle.

3. Getting mail
Opening the mailbox and finding a letter just for me and not from a company or utility is such a little joy.

4. Bookstores
Specifically, getting to browse uninterrupted through a bookstore at my own leisure.  Not that it happens much anymore.  But when I get to, or when I used to get to, it made me happy.

Creative Inspirations

Do you use Flickr? I ♥ Flickr! It's a giant collection of user photos. You can search based on user's name, groups the photos belong to, or key words (called tags) that the user has assigned to their photo. People from all over the world use Flickr and I can spend an afternoon browsing through people's pictures. I've searched the restaurant where the band my dad is in plays to see vacationers' pictures with him in the background. I've searched craft projects I'd like to do to see how others have done it. Often, I'll start on one search and end up finding a picture I like from one user, then looking through that user's photos, and then end up in another group with more pictures completely unrelated to the first topic. I suggest doing searches for "Bento" - I find that one really entertaining.

I love searching for Quilts on Flickr. It makes me want a sewing room of my own where I can have room to cut and piece and lay things out and store and organize more fabric than I can imagine. I find I'm drawn to scrap block quilts and appliqued quilts the most. And I love quilts with lots of white mixed with brights. There are quite a few I've found that are all done by a woman whose website is called Red Pepper Quilts. Look through those, they are amazing.

I really really want to get a quilting machine. I think I'd churn out a dozen quilts a year if I had one. It's the final step of quilting by hand which is so daunting, especially when I like to make quilts that actually work on a bed and not doll sized quilts. And I don't really need any more baby blankets. I could cut and piece all day long, but sewing by hand on something that large is intimidating and tiring. There are so many chances to mess up and I don't want to run out of steam before I finish. Buuuuuuuut.... a quilting machine costs money - lots of money- and so I don't think I'll be getting one any time soon.

For the time being, I'll plan quilts. And I may even piece them. I may even do some by hand. Learning to quilt with my regular sewing machine might be a good idea, but I'm worried about the quilt shifting under the foot and I'm worried about really screwing up something I've spent hours doing.

Lauren picked out a dress pattern and fabric at JoAnn's yesterday, so I'll have that to do. I'm also thinking about making another pillow for a friend of mine who just adopted a baby girl. If I use her nickname, I'll only have four letters to applique, so that won't take too long. My grandma also gave me two applique quilts that she started in the 80s and never finished. The pieces are cut, all I need to do is the sewing. They look like fun projects and not something I would normally choose to do, so I'll probably learn a thing or two doing them.

Sometimes I feel like there are so many projects I have set up for myself that I don't know where to start and so I end up doing nothing. Does that ever happen to you?

The Story About The Movies

On Thursday, I got a call from Natalie's home therapist that she would have to cancel Friday's appointment. I thought this would be the perfect chance to head out to my grandma's house with the girls to spend the night. We hadn't gotten together since Thanksgiving because of weather and all of the appointments we keep every week. It seems like whenever we had two days off, it was storming and would make me nervous for the two hour drive. We left Friday morning right from Lauren's ballet class.

Packing is pretty easy, I packed one large duffel bag with all the clothes and toiletries and diapers for myself and the girls. I also take the playpen for Natalie and I let Lauren pack a small backpack of toys. Before ballet, we loaded everything up and Ben set Lauren up with the DVD player and her case of movies. It's one of those zippered books that holds around 100 DVDs and has a little handle. Lauren carries that case all over, from her bedroom where she watches a movie in bed, to her playroom or the living room where she'd like to watch something. All of her movies are in it... the Disney classics like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, the Nick Jr. compilations with Dora, Backyardigans, Kai-Lan, the Barbie movies, Strawberry Shortcake movies, Max & Ruby.... all of her favorites.

I drove straight to ballet, got Natalie and Lauren out, sat inside. After class, I loaded the girls back in the car. Over the sound and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. Or, went. We got to her house and when I was bringing the bags in, she stopped me. She had a family from church staying with her. They were getting ready to move to Ohio. Their house was being packed and cleaned for showings by the realtor and they had been staying in her spare room. They were leaving that afternoon, but their things were still in the bedroom that the girls and I would be in that night. She told me just to set my things down and we'd put them in there after the family left. They were out when I got there, but she expected them back around 4:00 to load up their stuff and head to the airport.

We let Lauren paint, and I painted with her, we played some hide and seek with Lauren, played Lauren's My Little Pony board game and then headed out to the store to pick up a few things so that I could cook dinner. We got home just before the family did and I was cooking up some chicken breast when they came in. The dad and daughter were running late, so they were rushing around to get all of their suitcases packed and loaded into the car. Another friend of theirs from church was going to be driving them to the airport, and he was helping to load their things, also. It was kind of a mad dash and I just did my best to stay out of their way.

After dinner, Lauren asked to watch a movie, and ... that's when we realized we couldn't find the movies. Right away, my grandma figured it must have been loaded with the stuff the family was taking to the airport. I called Ben to ask if he had loaded the movies, he said he was 99% sure they had been on the seat next to Lauren. He thought there was a small chance he had left them on the roof of my car, so he went and checked the alley off the garage, the street, and called the base police to inquire about the lost and found. My grandma called around until she got the family's cell phone number and she called to ask if they had it, but they were in the car and would have to wait to look until they got to the hotel by the airport.

The next day, we still hadn't heard back. I searched all over my grandma's house to see if they had been moved out of the way, but couldn't find them. I stopped at WalMart on our way home and picked out a few movies for Lauren from their $5 bin so she'd have something for the 2 hour drive home, and something for bedtime. Saturday came and went and we didn't hear anything back.

Sunday I started browsing eBay and Craigslist for secondhand kid movies because I figured our collection was long gone. I was getting really sad about the thought of replacing all those movies. Over a hundred movies at an average of $10 each (if not more) is a THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of movies. And they were just gone.

My grandma called me last night. The family had found our movies! They are putting them in the mail Monday morning. We're so relieved. Lauren did get about 10 new movies out of it, including Beauty and the Beast, which she didn't have and I won on eBay. I'm also fairly certain we'll be only taking a few movies when we travel from now on.

Sorry

I just realized that those pictures of the pillows are super small and that clicking on them doesn't make them bigger! Whoops!

Here are the pillows:

Front

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