Nora's Nursery

So in our new house Nora shares a room with our office. Half of the room is hers, and half is an overflowing desk and bookshelf. Nora's half still needs some work. I have more ideas for making it pretty. But who knows if and when I'll get around to all those things. So, I thought I should post some pictures of what it looks like now.

Little diaper changing area on top of a small dresser.

Here's the quilt my mom made for Nora. She has made one for each child. 

I love Nora's... so bright and pretty.

My mom made a crib skirt to match Nora's quilt and I made pennants out of some of the leftover quilt fabric. 

Many an hour has been spent in this rocking chair in the middle of the night.

So that's what it looks like so far. I love it. It's such a pretty room with fun colors, and I'm excited to make it even cuter eventually.

Easter Festivities

We had a great Easter weekend. Couldn't have asked for any nicer weather. We had a lot of fun with friends at our church's annual Easter egg hunt. Then went to church on Sunday and then headed out to Grammy's house for the afternoon.

I taught the 3-5 year old class during church. Which, honestly, I wasn't really looking forward to. I was envisioning a lot of extra kids in class... and it can already be a little crazy in there. But there ended up being fewer kids than normal, and it was a complete pleasure to spend the morning with them. It was such a privilege to tell them the Easter story. Of course, most of them have heard it by now, but they're still young enough that it's somewhat new. We talked about how we all do wrong things that make it so we can't be with God, but Jesus took our consequence, so that now we can know God. One little girl adamantly refused to admit that she had ever done anything wrong. When I asked if she'd ever gotten a time out she said that once a really really long time ago she had gotten a time out. One little girl was looking more and more serious as the story went on. Then when Jesus raised from the dead she looked relieved, and broke into a little smile. For some reason, being with the kids made Easter fresh and real to me in a way that sitting through the service wouldn't have. It ended up being a total blessing.

After I had told them the story, we broke out a small set of resurrection eggs that I had made up. I just did 6 eggs (bread, cross, cloth, rock, angel, empty) and had a child volunteer to open one and show it around. Then had the kids tell me about that part of the story. It's such a great activity for kids this age. They loved it, and we ended up going through them twice. Today, I had Leesi go through them with Jonathan and tell him the story while showing him the eggs. They did it quite a few times, and then Leesi said that she wanted to do it with Arthur (a baby I watch), so she did it with him too. Arthur did his part by happily chewing on an egg.

At Grammy's house we had a wonderful lunch with the family. Then relaxed (I even napped!) for awhile. Leesi and I made resurrection rolls in the afternoon. When Jonathan opened his up we explained that it was empty just like Jesus' tomb. Jesus isn't there anymore, he's risen! Jonathan kept on looking in his roll and then saying, "It's empty! He's not there. He went away." I don't think he had the slightest clue what we were talking about, but it made some sort of impression on him nonetheless.

Here are some pictures from our weekend:

Chocolate face after the church Easter Egg hunt.

Dying eggs.

Jonathan kept asking, "Can I eat it now Mommy?" I finally gave in, and he spent most of the time peeling and eating the eggs while the rest of us dyed them. (By the way, he's wearing an apron, not a sundress... at first he didn't want an apron, so we took his shirt off. Then he decided he did want one, so we put one on... made for quite the fashion statement.)

Doing a fun cross craft from my friend Christa's blog. As we were doing it Leesi told me, "This is going to be the most beautiful craft I ever made." So sweet.

Easter morning and on our way to church.

Leesi proudly showing off the eggs she found in Grammy's yard.

Easter Fun

What a beautiful day we had for our Easter egg hunt at church today. It was sunny and warm, a perfect spring day. It was both kids' first egg hunt, and I think it was a hit. When we got home Leesi dumped all her candy on the floor and said, "Let's count my candy." Which was such a big girl kind of thing to say. She's growing up.

Jonathan was in the 2 and under area, which meant there were a bunch of eggs just laying in the grass. He opened an egg and inside he found... fruit snacks!!! Fruit snacks are like his favorite thing ever. He held them out to me and said, "open." Then he wandered around eating fruit snacks for the rest of the time.

On a somewhat related note, I made this purse for Elisa:

I gave it to her this morning for the Easter egg hunt. At first Elisa was walking around trying to hold her eggs and her purse. She didn't quite get that she was supposed to put the eggs in the purse.

It was a great day and we're ready for all our Easter celebrations tomorrow.

The moment you've all been waiting for...

Remember this post and this one? Well, guess what!?! I finally finished our stockings. I'm so excited about it that I couldn't even wait until tomorrow to post a picture!

I can't stop looking at them! Aren't they cute? Maybe I'll leave them up until Christmas.

Stockings

Remember this post? Well, I didn't get our stockings done in time for this Christmas. But I'm determined to have them done in time for next Christmas! And now I can proudly say: one down, three to go!

(Ignore my crazy outfit, it was late at night and I had already put on my pj pants!)

Christmas preparations

What we've been up to lately...

making a Christmas paper chain

cutting our Christmas tree

decorating the tree

undecorating the tree

making our own spiced nuts and packaging them up for friends

ringing bells in our church's bell choir

listening to over 200 Tubas play Christmas carols at Pioneer Square

making salt dough ornaments

Grammy

Happy Birthday (a couple days late) to a wonderful mother-in-law, who also happens to be a great Grammy. Elisa adores her Grammy and worked really hard to make special artwork for her. Of course, it was a team effort. She did all the artwork behind the letters. I was inspired by this blog.

Valentine craftiness

At the library we use this hard plastic stuff that's sticky on one side to cover paperback books. A few weeks ago one of the other girls who I work with was covering books and she had a bunch of little pieces of this plastic left over. We were brainstorming about different uses for it and I ended up bringing home a bunch of the scraps thinking I was going to use them to make Valentine bookmarks. After some thought I ended up using it to make these fridge magnets...

Aren't they so cute? I sent them to our family members as little Valentines gifts. They are just wallet size pictures glued to thin magnetic backing (I happened to have a roll of this left over from a previous project. If you are interested in making something similar and don't want to buy anything, my friend Jeana used old magnets from pizza places etc. to make her alphabet magnets.) Then I used the aforementioned plastic from the library to cover them.

Christmas Stockings

Christmas stockings at our house don't match. They were all bought at different places, different years. They look okay together... but this year, as I was thinking about what kind of stocking I should buy for Jonathan, I realized that maybe I should just make some Christmas stockings. If we have more children, I can then easily make additional stockings to match. Then I found these stockings in a picture on the Angry Chicken blog. What do you think, aren't they cute? I love that each one is different than the rest, and yet they match. I also love the little initial on each stocking. So, I've decided that I want to try to make some that are similar to these. Hopefully they'll be done in time for next year's Christmas! I'm writing it here so that I actually do it!

Bruschetta and other culinary endeavors

So last week I posted a picture of the beautiful produce I bought at the Farmer's Market. I just had to show off what we ended up doing with it...

I steamed the green beans, toasted some almonds and tossed them together with a little butter. We used the tomatoes and basil to make bruschetta - so delicious! And served them both with some chicken.

Another cooking endeavor this last week was homemade yogurt. Greg and I have been on a plain yogurt kick lately. They started selling some really yummy plain yogurt at Walmart. We've been adding frozen blueberries, vanilla, and a little sugar to it... oh man, I can just eat and eat it. But it's pretty expensive. I found a recipe online to make your own yogurt in your slow-cooker. So I decided to try it. Greg was VERY skeptical! I told him I wouldn't make him eat it. But I just had to try and see if it would work - and it did! It's slightly runnier than the store version (I noticed they put pectin in the brand that we buy to make it thicker)... but other than that you can't even tell a difference. Even Greg agrees. If you love plain yogurt and are feeling brave enough to try it, I found the recipe on this post from A Year of Slow Cooking.

Learning to Draw

Okay, first off - a disclaimer: I feel a little weird about this post. But, I did tell a couple people that I would put some of my artwork from class on my blog, and here it is... (and it's only taken me 5 months now to do it.)

So this last Spring I took my second drawing class... this time it was Figure Drawing. (The year before I took Drawing I). I am always intimidated and insecure to be taking these classes... especially since I'm taking them with almost all art majors. But it has been so good for me.

The thing I've learned most of all is that drawing is a lot of work! I really am starting to believe that anyone can learn to draw. It's just that most of us get frustrated and stop trying somewhere around middle school. Some people have a more natural talent for "seeing" how to convert a 3-D object onto a flat piece of paper... but that does not mean that the rest of us can't draw, it just means we have to work a little harder to be able to "see" too. The book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain talks about this and has wonderful exercises to do to teach yourself how to draw.

Back to Figure Drawing though... Each class night we had a model. We would start out with the model posing for only 2-5 minutes and we had to capture the pose within that time. They called this "gesture drawing." Then we would work up to longer poses... sometimes having up to 15 minutes per pose. I definitely improved a lot over the course of the semester... I didn't upload any of my worst earliest drawings... I should have. Sorry, I've put them all away now (convenient, huh?). But here are some of my better drawings from the class periods:

We also had outside assignments that we had to do for the class. Here they are:

Anyway, I guess the big lesson that I've learned from taking these classes is that I need to press on and just do it... even when I feel afraid, intimidated, and uncomfortable. If I had let my fear of what other people would think of my poor drawing skills stop me from taking these classes, then I never would have improved. I feel like so often I let my fear stop me from doing the things I need to or want to do.

Creative people I know

So I have a lot of creative friends who make beautiful things... and I've been wanting to feature them in a post. Now with Etsy it's so easy to display and sell handmade things. I love browsing on Etsy and seeing what people are making. So here are a few of my friends' Etsy sites to check out:

My very talented sister-in-law is an expert knitter. She makes beautiful felted wool bags that get tons of compliments. She also knits hats, scarves etc. Check her out at knit on a bike.

I have two friends that make beautiful jewelry. My mom got me a pair of earrings from Jessica's shop for Christmas and I absolutely love them. Check her out at jlalalalala. Jeana's jewelry often has an organic feel - nature inspired designs. I love how delicate her designs look. Check out her site at ruby willow.

My friend Kristal makes really cool signs. She can even personalize one for you. Check them out at grateful tulip.

I know there are probably people I'm forgetting... so if you are a friend of mine who makes things to sell and you have a site I can refer people to, let me know and I'll add you in!

Thanks to a comment from Lori, here's another site to check out: Molly J Walter. She makes all sorts of things from "plarn" (plastic bags - reused as yarn). Really cool!

It'll cure what ales you...

A few years ago when I worked at Master's Touch Chiropractic one of my coworkers gave me this awesome home remedy. Of course nothing can really "cure" a virus, but this concoction works wonders to boost the immune system. I've made it numerous times since she told me about it. Now, it's probably not a smoothie you'll want to make and drink just on a regular basis... it doesn't taste bad (in fact I think it's pretty good)... but we don't make it primarily for the taste. It's all about the antioxidants and vitamin C. And it tastes a lot better than Emergen-C or Airborne.

So here's the recipe for Lecreta's Amazing Cure-All:

1 lemon

2 cups frozen blueberries

1 Tbsp. honey (opt.)

water

First, peel your lemon, leaving as much of the white pith on as possible. (I usually peel the lemon with a vegetable peeler - as this removes all the yellow, but leaves lots of the good white stuff). Then cut your lemon into quarters and remove the seeds. If you don't get all the seeds it's okay - they'll get ground up in the blender anyway. Put the lemon pieces and frozen blueberries into the blender. Mix the honey with about a 1/2 cup of warm water and dump this into the blender. Blend it up (blend really well - it takes a while to chop up all that lemon) and enjoy! You can add more water if you need to. In fact, you can add more or less of any ingredient depending on your taste.

I made this tonight and gave some to Elisa. She LOVED it! She sucked it all up through her straw and then when that didn't work any more, she dug in with her spoon to get the rest out. Then she dug in with her fingers and tipped the glass back to her mouth just to make sure she had gotten it all. Here's the aftermath:

Happy Thanksgiving!

So another Thanksgiving away from family... this year we celebrated at our house. I cooked my first Turkey ever (it was fine, not great)... and I baked my first pecan pie (which was delicious).


We had Patrick (RD for North Hall), Comfort (RD for Mayfield), and Comfort's parents and sister over. We all had a good time together and lots of good food.

After the big meal we went out to the lobby for a few games of ping pong. Elisa even got in on the action.

Elisa also got in on the food action. She had her own mini Thanksgiving dinner. It was her first time eating turkey and cranberries... at first she wouldn't eat the turkey, but by the end she was feeding it to herself.

So overall, a very nice Thanksgiving. This year I am especially thankful for my wonderful husband and my beautiful daughter. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

I made a purse

This is actually the 5th purse/bag I've made. It's kind of addictive. First I made one for myself... then another for myself... then one for a friend... then a friend of that friend wanted me to make them one... then this one.

This is by far the most difficult one I've attempted. I complained and lamented through the whole process to Greg. When I finished it he said he was a little surprised because he had been waiting for me to just give up and scrap it. It was supposed to be about 2 inches taller than it is... I had a couple of mistakes that necessitated a change of plans. And there were a few seams that I had to rip out and redo. Still, I think it turned out quite well.

Food Network Obsession

Okay, so now that we live on campus we have cable tv. It's the first time in my life I've had cable... but sadly, we don't get the Food Network (or HGTV). When we were in Portland staying with Wanda over the summer I LOVED watching the Food Network. I found that it inspired me to want to cook good food. Now that I'm back at home in my own kitchen I'm trying to keep that inspiration alive. I checked out a Food Network cookbook we have in the library and found a recipe for Bow Ties with Pesto, Feta & Cherry Tomatoes. So we tried it the other day. And I must say, it was quite yummy. Here's a picture of how it turned out.

If you want to try it click here for the recipe. (Yep, Click right on the word "here")