Crafty Goodness – Page 2

A Whole New Level of Craziness

Things have felt a bit intense over here recently and I feel like I’m going non-stop from the moment I crawl my OH-SO-TIRED self out of bed in the morning, until the moment I flop into bed at night.

Now to be completely honest, I shut down for the evening around 8:30-9:00pm on a “normal” night and then Jon and I sit on the couch and watch a show or two and then I do the whole “flopping into bed” thing.

So I’m not on the go ALL DAY, but boy it sure feels like it. And it’s been worse over the past few weeks because my babies have been sick. Josiah brought home some lovely virus from the Cruise ship (YAH OVER A MONTH AGO) and he was sick for a week-ish and then I got a sore throat and cough and then Judah picked it up and then just as he was getting better…..both Judah and Siah managed to pick up another bug from somewhere.

And those two little boys have been CRANKY!

And Judah’s not sleeping (not at night or during the day) and he’s wheezing quite a bit and I’m using Eucalyptus Cream on his chest 4 times a day and using a Castor Oil pack on him twice a day and trying some homeopathic medicine twice a day away from the Eucalyptus….and between his clinging and whining…..when I sit down at the end of the day….I’m so DONE!

Unless I’m holding him…..this is typically what Judah has looked like for the past week or so….It’s about as awesome as it looks….blurry photo and all.

He seems to be a bit better today than he was yesterday and I’m hoping that tonight is better than last night….Hello 3:30am until 5:30am – it was nice seeing you!

Jon has spent the greater part of this week Job Hunting and it seems like his efforts have paid off. He should have the contract in his hands as of Monday, but he has been contracted to do a great job for the next three months. Hopefully, there will be more work at the end of the three months, regardless, I know that we will be okay. He should start on Monday November the 14th. Yah!

I’ve been working on making a bit of grocery money in my spare time (HA HA HA HA!) and I have a few things put up in an Etsy shop…with a few more things to come….I just need to take pictures of the products.

If you see something that you like, you are more than welcome to contact me personally and we can work out payment details….I know that some people don’t like to pay for things online and that’s totally cool. I understand!

If you’re are interested in checking it out, please click here. I’ll be adding new things over the next few days so be sure to check back.

I have planned to “MAKE” time tomorrow to sit down and pound out the rest of our vacation. I can’t believe it’s taken so long to get to it. Life has just been that crazy busy for us! It’s mostly good, but I’m a big fan of quiet, peaceful, SLOW times. The business gets to me after a while. I crave the down times and lately they have been elusive.

New York, T-Shirts and Spending Cash

The Sunshine Kids take several trips per year with kids that are dealing with cancer. Angelica has been chosen to go to New York for the “Summer Broadway Break”, July 17-23 this year.

SHE IS SOOOO EXCITED

Everything is covered for the trip (transportation, food, lodging, admissions, etc) and the kids are treated like royalty. The kids only need to bring their own spending cash for shopping in Times Square and the like.

So, Angelica is looking for ways to raise some money for that spending cash, and seeing as the traditional methods like babysitting are out for her (with her low counts) Angelica has been thinking about putting some of her artistic abilities to work. She’s thrown around the idea of designing t-shirts a few times over the years and so we decided to try to make this happen. Here is the first design…

Confidence

(depending on interest, she has a lot more ideas)

the t-shirts are available in three styles and two colours each, and there is a hoody. Here they are:

Shirt Style	Sizing Chart
straight cut in white with black image or charcoal with silver image	Click for larger image
Ladies cut in white with black image or dark heather with silver image	Click for larger image
Youth fitted cut in white with black image or charcoal with silver image	Click for larger image
Hoody in white with black image or dark heather with silver image	Click for larger image

Click Here to order

Please note that we are not starting with inventory, and so we will be compiling the first weeks orders, then getting them printed, then shipping. Please allow 3 weeks for delivery (5 weeks for international). Also, please let us know if there are any issues with the PayPal shopping cart.

More Homemade Presents

In some lighter, non-cancer related news…..I haven’t yet shared about the presents that Jeremy gave to his brothers and some of the cousins…..

These building stacker’s are AWESOME. Again, you can find them all over the internet, but I wanted to make some of our own and they were super easy and totally fun to make.

We made a few in the traditional rainbow shape…..

And then, Jon made one that was a bit more free form and it is pretty cool.

We have all enjoyed playing with these. You can stack them in so many ways.

You can have them laying flat on the ground…

Ok, so that is a lame picture of them laying on the ground, but you can make cool designs with them laying flat….when I was taking pictures, I just didn’t think to make some to take pictures of. Silly me!

or standing up….

You can create tunnels with them…..

Our kids love to sit at the table and take turns seeing who can come up with the most creative idea. We have a few of them here at our house and it’s extra fun to use 2 or 3 sets to create these huge amazing towers and creations.

I’ll see if I can get a couple of good shots of the kids and what they create with these simple stacking blocks. Again, we cut them from a hardwood (Maple) and sanded them smooth and finished them with flaxseed oil.

We’ve had a LOT of fun playing with these from Jon all the way down to Judah, who loves to see them all fall over and BANG onto the ground only to have us set them up again.

They are 1.5 inches thick and at the tallest part, they stand 5.75 inches and they are 11.5 inches wide.

These are great sturdy toys and definitely spark creativity and the imagination.

Siah’s Super Clips

Siah gave the babies those cute little hardwood teethers, and yes, to those who have asked. I would definitely be interested in selling some so talk to me if you’re interested.

When it came to the rest of the siblings and cousins, we didn’t figure that wooden teethers would be very much appreciated and so we needed to come up with a different idea.

I had seen these wooden clips before and I wondered if we could replicate them as well. They are basically a large wooden clothes peg…..sorta?!?

They are perfect for creating tents and forts. The wooden clips are big enough that they attach to most furniture and the strength of the clasp can be adjusted using the elastics. I imagine that they could be useful for other things as well. We’ve already thought about adding a set of 4 or 8 to our camping gear as we figure they’d be really handy to keep the tablecloth ON the table and possibly useful for holding up wet towels or even tarps.

He wanted to play, not do pictures

One of the nice things about them is that they are just made from regular lumber and can use up the offcuts that might be laying around; and even if the elastic breaks….you can just get another one and wind it around a bunch of times.

Jon made these up and once again, Siah helped to play with them and then wrap them up. We gave Siah a break this year……well, we gave ourselves a break, too. This year it was just easier to do it ourselves and to give his gifts to him to give, as opposed to recruiting his help….which wouldn’t have been very helpful at all. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye out for something that he can actually “do” mostly by himself for next year.

I find them laying around my house all over the place, and while I dislike them laying around my house….I love that it means that my kids are playing with them.

Enough already! I just want to play and finish whatever snack I have in my mouth!

Can you think of any other ideas that we could use these clips for?

In other non related news – Judah woke up early this morning with a fever. I believe that it’s just a virus, but I was particularly stressed because of the issues relating to his bowels. He had no other symptoms initially, but now he is quite stuffed up. His temperature is hovering in between 37.5 and 38 degrees Celsius and so it’s a low grade fever. He is nursing and eating and playing, but is definitely “off” and wants to be held and is quite clingy. I’ve been mostly awake since 3am this morning and hove done well up until now. Now…..the lack of sleep has caught up with me and I’m exhausted. He’s finally gone down in his own bed for a nap and has been sleeping for about 20 minutes. The longest he’s napped all day today.

I’m not sure what’s going on as Siah also has a runny nose, but no other symptoms. The stress of my family’s health wears on my heavy and so if you could pray that we’d be healthy and that I’d not stress so much, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

The Butterflies Flutterby

For Christmas, Jeremy gave one of his sisters and 3 of his cousins, a whole bunch of butterflies.

…Paper Butterflies, to be exact!

This is another inexpensive gift, and once you have the tools…..you can make this gift for any number of people that you know that might enjoy them….

We had a small butterfly paper punch and I took another 40% off coupon to Michaels (Don’t go shopping there without one. You can google for one and print it out yourself.) and bought a large butterfly punch. I think that it was originally about $23 and with the coupon, I paid about $14. I had Scrap booking paper at home but in the pictures that you see here…..I actually used some paint chips from Home Depot that I got for free.

Angelica hasn’t put up the color co-ordinated butterflies that Jeremy gave her yet. (Disclaimer: I very quickly and with out too much thought threw these butterflies up on Xandra’s wall before Christmas time – this was actually the “idea” behind Jeremy giving the “wall decorating butterflies” as gifts. In the future, I would probably take a bit more time to place them better, but I was rushing and basically just threw them up therel.)

I think that we need a little back story to go along with this post…..

Angelica and Alexandra were sharing the rec room in the basement as their bedroom when Angelica was diagnosed with Leukemia. After spending the month in the hospital with either her mom or her dad, Angelica was feeling the need to be closer to us. Jon and I and the boys have the rooms on the top floor. Xani had been staying up on the top floor with us while Geli and Jon were in the hospital and so it seemed like the right thing to do, to re-arrange the rooms so that Geli and Xani could be upstairs and close to us.

This was a very good move. Geli was SO sick and needed to be close to us and Xani really needed to be close to us as well. We got a bunk bed and moved the girls into the room that we had been using as the TV/office room. The boys stayed in their room and Jon and I stayed in our room with Judah. 7 people in 3 rooms. Hah! It was awesome.

Angelica has been feeling the need for some space recently and has been feeling independent and strong enough to want her own room. We finally moved her down stairs into one third of the rec room. The TV is in the middle third and Xani is behind some bookshelves in the final third. So, the 2 girls have their own spaces and they are loving it. We have placed a monitor down in the hallway close to the bathroom and the girls rooms and so if they need us in the middle of the night, they just have to call and we can come running.

Wouldn’t you know it that since we’ve moved the girls down there, we’ve not needed it…..until a couple of nights ago and for whatever reason, the receiver up in our room was turned off. Angelica was having a bad night coming off of the steroid and was in so much pain and we couldn’t even hear her to go to her to help her. Finally Xandra woke up and came up to get us. Now we make sure that it’s on before we go to sleep at night.

We’ve moved Jeremy into the room that the girls had been in and now he finally has his own space which is HUGE thing for him right now. In the last while, he was getting quite frustrated sharing a room with his 3 year old brother who is struggling with the whole “respect your siblings property” concept. We are working with him on that one….it’s not exactly a quick learn. Not Fun!

We are still unsettled on what exactly we are going to do with Josiah and his big bedroom; and Judah is not quite ready to move into a room with Josiah and so for now…..Josiah has a HUGE room to himself, while Jon, Judah and I share the master bedroom, and……we’re all okay right now.

Okay….back to Xani’s space/room.

There is a horrible wall paper border down in the rec room (see photos above) AND the walls are painted a really nasty putty color AND….it’s kinda dark and icky down there.

I went to Home Depot the other day because I was dreaming about painting different rooms in our house. I have absolutely no energy or time or ability to be painting rooms (at this point in our lives) and yet the fact that I was even dreaming about what I might like to do in the future…..pretty amazing. I picked up a bunch of paint chips to see how the different colors looked in the different rooms and to see which of the colors we all liked.

I sat down at the table one evening and punched a bunch of butterflies from the paint chips. I put a pop dot on the back of each butterfly and then took them down stairs and stuck them on Xani’s wall. I was just hoping to brighten up the drab-ness of her space a little. After I got the few that I had, punched out and stuck on the wall – I ran upstairs to punch butterflies out of the rest of the paint chips. It is just a hodge-podge of color.

Xani was away when I did this and was thrilled when I came back. One day when we do get the rec room done the way that we would like it to be, I’ll probably punch out a bunch more that are color co-ordinated to a color palette that she chooses, but for now….there’s just a little bit more color in an other wise very un-colorful corner.

Depending on whether or not you had paper at home to use or had to buy some…or if you went and picked up some big paint chips….this is a fairly inexpensive gift and one that is easy to make and do, even for younger kids to help with.

To make this craft idea, you would need:

– Paper (card stock or heavy gauge paper works best)
– Pop dots (or some other raised double sided adhesive)
– Paper Punch (we went with butterflies but I saw a really cute elephant and I also think that different size circles as polka dots would be SO CUTE, too.)

Jeremy and I worked together punching out the butterflies and attaching the pop-dots. We put together sets of 120 small and big butterflies and packaged them as gifts. Jeremy even made origami boxes for them to be given in. I wish I had thought to take a picture. They were so cute and so very much, from Jeremy. He LOVES origami. Anyway, I think there are about 70-ish butterflies in those pictures (above) from Xani’s walls.

In all of my dreaming…..I was dreaming about painting my laundry room a bright cheery yellow color and I would LOVE to put a bunch of white butterflies on the wall to brighten up my teeny, tiny dismal little laundry room. It’s one of those things that I am looking forward to for the future, and knowing that I can just punch them out when I want them, is so much fun!

Do you have any craft ideas for decorating your house or place or work space or even just ideas that you are looking forward to using in the future? I’d love to hear some of our favorite ideas.

Siah’s Gifts for the Babies

Josiah received a bit of help with his gifts…

Well, honestly, I wanted to be able to give these to the babies and Jon and I worked on them together and in an effort to make things as easy as possible – we gave them to Siah to give to the babies.

He helped to play with them before hand and also to wrap them up and well……that counts doesn’t it?

This year, it counts! It just does.

I bought a wooden teething toy for Josiah when he was a baby. I loved that it was all natural. These are made from Maple and are finished with Flaxseed Oil.

There are tons of these wooden teethers available for purchase on the internet and I wondered if we would be able to re-create some for ourselves.

We purchased a piece of hardwood and decided which designs that we wanted to create and Jon started cutting.

I love this hippo. I think he’s absolutely adorable. I have been trying to come up with an elephant design as I LOVE elephants and I’d love to be able to design the cutest elephant. I just don’t want it to have too many small pointy or sharp(ish) edges.

I also love these guitar’s.

Which design is your favorite? They were so much fun to make and I will definitely be giving these out as gifts in the future.

I love that the babies get a kick out of sucking and chewing on these, but a bonus surprise has been that Xandra and her cousins have enjoyed playing with the camera & keys; and that Josiah has loved playing with these also. I love the fact that they are using their imaginations to play with these. I also love that they are being used my children from infancy through to 12 years old. I’m wanting to make more wooden toys to encourage them in creative and imaginative play.

This gift was a lot of fun to create and even more fun to give.

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

I spent a few moments yesterday going through my Christmas Cards and hacking them all up before I got rid of them.

I’m one of those people who don’t keep Christmas Cards, in fact – I will probably start to put all of my Christmas decorations away today. I like to set the decorations up a month before Christmas and then celebrate until Christmas rolls around and then as soon as Christmas is over, I’m ready to pack it all away.

This is not to say that I wasn’t so thankful for your Christmas Cards. This year, more than ever, I needed the cards as a reminder that I wasn’t alone. I have so much more to say on that topic, but not is this post….it deserves a post all on it’s own. I hung the cards through my venetian blinds and looked at them every day. Thank you to everyone who sent me one. It meant so much to me and that made it even more difficult than normal to just get rid of them….which is why I was so happy to put them to good use….

Earlier this year, I used a 40% off coupon from Michaels and bought a gift tag punch. I think this punch normally sells for anywhere from $15 – 20 and with the coupon, it is considerably cheaper. It’s great because you can use it year round for gifts and also for scrap booking. I will never buy gift tags again.

All through the month of December I kept looking at my Christmas Cards and thinking about how beautiful they were and how it’s sad to just look at them and then to get rid of them. I know I could keep them, but I have this thing about storing stuff. I just don’t like to. I’m not a pack rat. I keep a very few, select, sentimental things and the rest -I get rid of.

But, I was so excited when I realized that I could totally re-use those Christmas Cards and be “green” about it all.

1. I was able to reduce the amount of material that I was going to dispose of.

2. I was able re-use the cards to make pretty gift tags for use next Christmas and even some that I can use on regular (not holiday) gifts.

3. I recycled the rest of the cards.

Some of the tags are “good” on both sides and I can use a hole punch and tie a ribbon through those to attach to a gift. There are some that have writing on the back side of them and I think that I’ll just use tape or pop dots to stick those to the gifts so that the “underside” doesn’t show.

Paper punches are a great tool to have. Especially one’s like this that are so functional.

I will just pack the Christmas Gift Tags in an envelope along with the rest of my Christmas Wrapping Paper and Decorations. Then next year – Voila! Christmas Gift tags and I get to remember all your love again.

Speaking of gift tags – I had a moment this Christmas where I was wrapping presents and I had run out of pre-made gift tags. We had a a set of gift tags that had come from the Cancer Society and I figured that I might as well use them up. You know the kind….the little rectangle ones that are about 3/4 inch by 2.5 inches and they have a small picture of some Christmas wreath or candy cane or snowman or snowflake…..do you know what I’m talking about?

Well, I was sitting there wrapping presents and I picked up one of these tags to use and I had a great memory of my Grandma Kennedy. She ALWAYS used those little tags and my mind flashed back to an image of her living room with her Christmas Tree with the tinsel that was perfectly placed on the tree one strand at a time and all her fragile old Christmas ornaments. I have some of them hanging on my tree now. I remember wrapped presents with tags placed on perfectly in the corners. My grandma was very precise in everything that she did. I’ve been told that I’m a bit like her sometimes. I remember her handwriting and for a brief moment I wondered if I had a tag from one of her presents upstairs in my memory box. Something that I could hold on to and look at and remember. The memory came flooding in so fast and then I was left wanting more. I’ve replayed that memory more than a dozen times over the past 2 weeks. My Grandma died when Jeremy was 6 months old (he’s 10 now) and I often think of her when I’m dealing with my boys and wonder what she would have done. She had 4 boys and raised them all to be amazing, wonderful men. I hope and pray that I raise my boys (and girls) as well. I miss her and think of her often. It’s so nice to have these memories that come and bring such gifts with them.

Giving

Christmas is over and was amazing. We are terribly over tired, but managed to do what we needed to do on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and now today is for recuperating……for some of us – quite literally.

Geli woke up this morning barfing. I’m not sure what the deal is, but there is no fever and so we are just hoping that whatever it is passes quickly. She is feeling a bit better than this morning as so……we carry on.

I had these great ideas that I’d post regularly over the past week or two and yet, when it all came down to it – there was JUST. NO. TIME.

I chose to be as wise as possible and to work within my limits and I’ve managed to not only make it through the Christmas chaos, but I’m not completely stressed out (well, not any more than what seems to be “normalish” for right now) and I have a whole ‘nuther week to relax before the kids all head back into the school madness.

So, if I can, I’d like to share what some of our handmade Christmas gifts were this year. I have a few other things to say and I’ll probably throw them in around some of the fun things that we did or are doing and it should be quite a party over here.

Last year we had our first “handmade Christmas”. The kids (my kids) were responsible to make gifts to give to each other. I wasn’t opposed to helping them to buy or get material to make their gifts for each other as long as it was inexpensive and was something that they could mostly do on their own. It was SO MUCH FUN that we’ve decided to carry on with this tradition. This year I made an effort to try to use materials for the projects that we already had on hand. We did end up spending some, but very little for the 30+ gifts (in total) that the kids ended up making for their siblings and their cousins. This year, we started making the gifts earlier than last year, but even then we ended up leaving things to the last minute. I think that I’m gonna try to get the show rolling a little earlier this next year and try to have things finished by the 1st of December. It’s always good to have goals, isn’t it? Anyway………

Xani’s Quilt

Angelica was given a quilt back when she was diagnosed with Leukemia and its the kind of thing that she can have here at home and then take to the hospital and then it’s the same and has the reassuring qualities of “home” and “comfort” regardless of where she is. Xani has ooh’ed and aaaah’ed all over Geli’s quilt and I mentioned that in the new year, we could think about making one for her.

Well, Angelica really wanted to make a quilt for Xandra for Christmas and so she did.

She had a bit of help from her Nana Karen and from her Momma, but she made this quilt for her sister.

We used bits and pieces of material that we had on hand (oh, except I did buy one piece of fabric on sale for $1.99 per meter), an older blanket for the inside filler and an old sheet for the bottom piece. We had everything to make this gift on hand except for the $1.99 purchase.

Xani had mentioned that she really wanted a purple and yellow quilt and Angelica made it happen. The biggest frustration with this project was that Geli left it a little too late and we were rushing to get it done before the kids finished school as it would have been difficult to work on it while they were home.

Geli spent ages working on the pattern she wanted to do and trying to make the fabric that we did have to fit within what she envisioned and she did it. It’s really pretty. It’s not a HUGE quilt, but perfect to snuggle up with, on the couch or on your bed and the best thing……Xani LOVES IT!!!

She was so happy on Christmas Day when she opened it.

Truth be told, she did download a bunch of photo’s from my camera and these pictures happened to be on there and she did see it in advance. Regardless, she hadn’t got a really good look and compared to what she thought she’d seen…..the real gift was a lot better.

Geli had so much fun making and giving this gift and Xani got so much pleasure from receiving it and so this handmade gift was a GREAT success.

In fact, Angelica had so much fun making this quilt that she whipped up two more smaller quilted blankets for her two baby cousins. We were in such a hurry to get them finished and wrapped that I never even got any pictures of them, but they were really, REALLY cute. You’ll just have to take my word on it. She used a bunch of the fabrics from the stuff that I used to make Judah’s quilt back in the spring…..

They turned out really well, and again….she just used material that we already had on hand.

It was a great distraction for Geli in the middle of some down days. We did have some obstacles to overcome and the whole process would have probably gone a bit quicker, if my machine hadn’t broken in the middle of our sewing frenzy, but a HUGE thanks to Aunty Linda for letting us borrow hers. We are so thankful.

I love that we were able to thin out my fabric stash, to not spend money (well, not very much) and to make AWESOME presents to give away.

I especially loved just how excited Angelica was to be making these gifts and how excited she was to give them away. I want to teach my kids to be thoughtful to others….to give gifts that they’ve given of themselves into and that they believe the other person will appreciate or will have meaning to them. I think that we are on that track.

Pixies and Dimples

So, this post is the equivalent of me sticking my fingers in my ears and singing, “la la la la la la la” really loud. Things are not really great, but they’re not really horrible, and right now I don’t want to talk about it so…..yah….anyhoooooo……

I said that I had some things that I had been working on to show you, and here is the first of them….

(mostly, this is just a post with a lot of adorable pictures of Judah.
I wish I could bottle up his giggles, they make everything disappear for one moment.)

This little hat knits up really quickly and requires only that you know how to knit and to purl. I managed to knit this up over 2 days and I am NOT the worlds fastest knitter. I think I used size 7 needles and this is a wool that I picked up from Michaels….none of that is very exciting at all, is it?

I like to have a fun, simple, not time critical, knitting project that I can just work on whenever, because I can take it with me in the car and knit while we drive….well, while Jon drives. Although, I’ve not been out a lot recently and man, has that ever cut into my knitting time.

Do you not want to just eat those dimples up?

If you are interested in knitting this hat, just google “Pixie Hat Pattern” and there are TONS of links for this hat. Oh, and Judah is HUGE and is typically wearing between 12-24 month sizes and I used 62 stitches instead of the 50 that the pattern calls for.

I added a brim to the bottom edge which is amazing because it comes down and keeps his neck nice and snugly warm even if there is a gap between his shirt and his coat. I also used a snap closure because I didn’t want to be dealing with any strings.

This would make a great gift for a cute baby in your life, don’t you think? And, it is super stretchy and Josiah can fit this, and well, honestly Geli can get it on her head, but it’s a bit too short and doesn’t cover up to her face like it should…..I do have another one on the go, in pink, and I’m using around 100 stitches. If it works out size wise, then I plan to add a really LOOOONG braid to the bottom with tassles at the end. It should look darling on Geli or Xani….I may even end up having to make 2, because they’ve both expressed an interest in having one of their own.

Oh, LOOK! Judah is waving bye to you all.

Just for fun, what is one of your favorite memories of Christmas?

Feeding on Creativity

That post last night comes pretty close to the worst post I’ve written yet. It’s so disjointed, and really has no point, and look….hey…..cookies.

My coffee table at this exact moment. What does it say to you about me?

In my defense it was late, I had just made way too many fussy cookies, I was watching a show and chatting with Jon about something or other……all the while dreaming about my bed.

See, I probably should have just gone to bed early again, but I’d been in bed and sleeping the previous 3 nights at 9pm and seeing as we “get things done” after the kids go to bed, I’ve been feeling pretty useless and like I’ve accomplished NOTHING. And so I chose to stay up and “get some things done” and posting was on that list.

But, hey, we’ll just go with the fact that I was able to cross one thing off my list. Sometimes, it can be about quantity and not quality, right?

Even I don’t believe that. I’m much more of a quality over quantity type person, myself…..most of the time.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Not in a bad way, more that I’ve got a lot of thoughts inside my head and I’ve not had enough opportunity to get them all out of me.

I love to be creative. I love to make things. I love to find things to make my life and my family’s lives more healthy and more beautiful, and easier and more enjoyable and if I can do so in a simple manner, then I get even more excited. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to find the energy or the time to be creative. Recently, I’ve been feeling antsy to be able to make and create and while I think this is a good thing…….. with the chemotherapy, and 5 kids and the back load of stress, it’s a little frustrating and has me wondering if I’m just trying to “escape” from things.

I think that it’s important to do things that “feed” you and over the past 5 months, there’s not been too much time or energy for that, and so I’m trying to make sure that I allow myself some time for things that “feed” me and at the same time I’m trying to make sure that it doesn’t become all consuming.

So far, I’m able to work on some things and then put them aside when I need to focus on the kids and family and then to be able to pick them up again. I feel…..well, as corny as it sounds, I feel more alive. I’m excited to try to accomplish as many of my daily chores and tasks in a decent amount of time, but then to be able to stop and give myself a few moments to be creative. I’m trying to find the balance in all this chaos. Most of the time, it’s easier said than done.

But, with Christmas coming up and gifts to be given…….I’ve chosen to work on gifts to give and I’m pretty excited about some of the ideas that I’ve come up with. Some are old ideas, and some are new, but I get to be creative and so for me……it’s fun!

I love to be able to see what other people make and do. I love to look things that others make because I am always trying to see if I can come up with ideas that I can tweak to be able to make things. I like to be able to use things that I have or that I can obtain easily, so I’m constantly on the lookout for new ideas that are fairly simple. I like simple. I’m not so big into complicated. But I guess that’s all relative, isn’t it? What might be simple for you might be very difficult for me. We are all so individual and each of us have our own unique giftings and skills. That’s what makes this world an amazing place.

Some of the things I’ve made I can share and some I have to keep a secret, but I’m hoping to share a few of my ideas over the next little while and then maybe you can tweak my ideas and use them to create things of your own to give or to keep.

ps. those jam thumbprint cookies in the photo above – gluten, dairy and egg free. I used this recipe and used Vegan Becel instead of butter and Ener-G Egg Replacer instead of eggs. I also added about 3 more Tablespoons of Rice Flour than they called for as the Vegan Becel makes the dough a little oil-ier than normal cookie dough. Try them, they are amazing. Almost like shortbread.

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