shirley shirley bo birley

Bacon Donut

2012-01-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, that is bacon sprinkled on a donut. If you've ever thought to yourself, I love bacon AND donuts, this is the breakfast of choice for you.

We saw these earlier in the week while at Rainbow Donuts. There must be robust enough demand for bacon-sprinkled donuts to warrant making* at least a whole row of them. I was tempted to get one in the two dozen I was getting for a work meeting, but I decided against it. I think people would have been confused about what it was without a similar "BACON DONUT" sign to accompany it.

* "making" makes it sound like it took a lot of effort, but it probably just entails cooking up a few strips of bacon, chopping it up, then sprinkling over a regular donut

Lovely Package Exchange & Package Project 2011 Sent

2012-01-24T19:26:00.001-07:00

I signed up to participate in a couple of package exchanges recently, the Lovely Package Exchange:

and The Package Project:

I finally got my packages together and sent out at the end of December. Here are some pictures.

My Lovely Package Exchange partner, Shayla, has more (and probably better) pictures of my package here.

BlackBerry Self Pictures

2012-01-22T16:49:00.002-07:00

Once in a while, I feel like taking self-pictures on my phone. Not of just me. That's boring. But of me and Evie. And then I often forget about them. I looked through my phone pictures a couple weeks ago and remembered that I took these. Good quality pictures? No. But they made me smile anyway.

Took this one in the hospital after Evie was born:

Took this one not that long ago:

Evie's Seven Month Photo

2012-01-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

I think some black mary janes would make the skirt even cuter, but I didn't want to get them because she's going to outgrow them in no time (she already outgrew the cute silver sandals that Stephanie gave us at the baby shower).

Evie at 7 Months

2012-01-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

Couple weeks behind on getting this up. Evie turned 7 months at the end of December.

Earlier in December, she was getting on her hands and knees and rocking a lot. Later in December, she was so close to crawling - she was scooting and able to get to things on the floor that she wanted.
She laughs/smiles/giggles when she sees the cats. Few months ago, she'd see the cats, but she didn't really know what they were or thought that they were funny.
She continues to be increasingly vocal with talking noises.
She's a big fan of sweet potatoes.
Around the middle of December, she was suspected of having hand, foot, and mouth disease, which apparently another baby at daycare had. If that's what it was, it was a pretty mild case because she didn't show all the symptoms, but in any case, the daycare didn't want her going back until her blisters (she didn't have many and none on her face) were gone, so Grandma Karnos watched her for three days during the week.
She can kind of stand on her own for a few minutes if we put her on something that she can hang on to. She likes it when we stand her up.
"I'm like the Cesar Milan of babies." -Greg, after getting Evie to go to sleep for the night after my two unsuccessful attempts. I contend it's because I wore her out.

"I Moustache You A Question"

2012-01-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

"But I'm shaving it for later." (I first saw that on the Google Chat status of a friend, Jessica. I think her boyfriend messaged it to her. Heh).

Emily had a DIY photobooth at her house when we visited her, Dora, and Kimberly a couple of weekends ago, and of course it would have been incomplete without a moustache prop, such as this:

The pictures aren't fantastic, because I couldn't stop myself from laughing while holding Evie and she was trying to lick/eat the moustache prop (because anything that close to her face MUST be food of some sort), but it's still funny. I should've tried out more props!

We Are Young by Fun

2012-01-09T19:28:00.002-07:00

Greg showed me this music video yesterday that a friend, Emma, sent him a link to:

I heard it and it was like, nostalgia! The voice was pretty much immediately recognizable to me as the same front man from The Format. In late high school/early college, I was much more into music + concerts than I am now and The Format, a local band, was one of my favorites. Greg and I saw several of their concerts when they played in the Tucson or Phoenix areas.

A co-worker told me a year or two ago that The Format had split and the front man, Nate Ruess, had gone on to join a band call Fun. I didn't put any effort into looking into it, but I liked this song when I heard it last night and it's been stuck in my head. Nate Ruess has a great voice, of which the ultimate test, in my opinion, is being able to sound as good as or better when singing acoustic (such as here and here) or live.

Back when The Format were still together, they played acoustic versions of Movin' Out, Wild World, and I'm Only Sleeping, which I was such a fan of that I burned them onto a CD that perpetually lives in my car. Although I listen to the radio most of the time, I occasionally bust out my Format mix CD and listen to them.

Journaling Stamp Background Card

2012-01-01T09:54:00.002-07:00

I like it when an idea turns out exactly as I pictured it in my head. I started out with this stamp:

Turned it on its side, stamped it twice (the second time slightly shifted to one side and with a different color of ink), and ended up with this as the background:

To finish it off:

And since the card has kraft and baker's twine on it, it goes right along with this CAS-ual Fridays challenge:

This card went to Greg's cousin, Tamara. She sends us girl clothes every so often for Evie and it's been hugely appreciated! In the most recent package, she sent a cute ballerina-esque skirt and I had Greg take some pictures of Evie in it while we were doing monthly pictures (to be posted once I get some time to sit down and look at them).

"It's a Boy" Alphabet Background Card

2011-12-31T17:15:00.000-07:00

Quick post of a baby card I made a while ago.

This card went to Greg's sister, Kati. Same "It's a boy" stamp as in this card, but used differently:

I liked the design - maybe I'll make a girl version of the card down the road.

Rainbow of Towels at Target

2011-12-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

While at Target a few weeks back, I passed by their towel section, all organized in rainbow order, and I had to take a picture because I enjoy when things are organized in a rainbow of colors.

A couple years ago, after seeing this blog post by Becky Higgins, I reorganized my closet (mostly my shirts) and I've been a fan. ROYGBIV? Check. Matching hangers? Yes, I will most definitely steal all the white hangers for myself. But I was already kind of crazy about that before and I couldn't stand all the crazy hanger colors that Greg had.

Lovely Package Exchange 2011 Received

2011-12-27T16:36:00.001-07:00

I signed up to participate in a couple of package exchanges recently, the Lovely Package Exchange being one of them.

Here's the package I got from my exchange partner.

Overall package:

Instant snow:

Baker's twine:

Candy cane:

Screenprinted tea towel:

Screenprinted notecards:

Sticky note tin:

I'm late in getting my package out (shame on me), but I finally finished putting it together and sent it out today! Pictures to come next week since the package is supposed to get there by next Wednesday.

Panic

2011-12-23T20:55:00.002-07:00

Is realizing that you don't have a clean diaper handy after starting to unfasten a poopy diaper and there is no one else home to be your gofer.

[Edited on 12/26/2011]:
I should add that this didn't used to be an issue when Evie couldn't roll over as expertly as she can now. Now, if I leave her with a half-on/half-off poopy diaper, I risk the poop migrating to other places as a result of her rolling (mostly because she wants to be on her stomach and not on her back).

Evie's Six Month Photo

2011-12-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

It was harder to get a smile this time. She was pretty aware of the camera, to the point where she was more curious than willing to smile. She's not really looking at the camera because I was off to the side trying to get her to smile. Still cute though!

Evie's Five Month Photo

2011-12-14T20:22:00.002-07:00

Greg says the caption for this one should be "To be, or not to be":

Purse Organizer

2011-12-11T21:27:00.001-07:00

I was thinking the other day how much I liked my purse organizer, so I wanted to share it real quick. Earlier this year, I bought this purse organizer from an Etsy shop called Divide and Conquer and it's been awesome for making order out of my black hole of a purse:

Note: That's not my stuff; these are pictures from the Etsy listing.
It's got a lot of pockets and structure to it, and it's made out of sturdy fabric, so it holds up well. I'm not really a color or pattern person when it comes to accessories, so I went with basic black, but the seller has a variety of colors and fabrics, as well as different sizes and shapes of organizers. I recommend it!

My posts as of late have been pretty baby heavy (not that I regret it). I have been getting little pockets of craft time in, but it's all working towards a couple of package projects that I'll post about soon.

Evie at 6 Months

2011-12-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Evie can sit up by herself now. This girl has been waiting to sit up.
Recently, she's been kind of getting on her knees and rocking. She can also scoot backwards, although it's unlikely to be intentional at this point. She's on her way to crawling!
She can sort of hold herself up in a standing position, though she's wobbily at it and it only lasts a couple minutes at a time.
She's starting to be able to hold her own bottle.
She's graduated to eating green beans!
She's increasingly vocal, including yelling as she entertains herself.
She's learned how to really laugh and it makes me smile.
Peek-a-boo has lost its luster. She doesn't get quite as amused by it as before, like when we first started doing it and she was like, Whoa, where did you just go?. I didn't think it'd go so fast!
She's a stomach sleeper, now that she can roll over whenever she wants. At first, I was like, Noooooooo, you're supposed to sleep on your back to be saferrrrrrr. I'm over it now. There's no stopping her from rolling on to her belly.
I sometimes find her in her crib sleeping with her butt up in the air. Heh!
Couple weeks ago, she had gunky eyes and pinkeye was suspected. Daycare didn't want her going until we went to the doctor to confirm whether it was pinkeye or not. Turns out it was not pinkeye, but likely a symptom of a cold she had at the time. Whew! I was convinced that we were going to wake up with crusted over eyes or something, which isn't the end of the world, but not preferable.
Along with the above-mentioned cold, we were frequently wiping Evie's nose. Love is wiping your child's snotty, crusty nose, like, 10 times a day despite being grossed out by it. Before actually having a child, it was easy for me to think to myself that I would not have a gross child that went around with a snotty, crusty nose. Turns out that's easier said than done, because Evie does not like to have her nose wiped. Many times, nose wipes are followed by crying. True, recovery from said crying is quick after nose-wiping ends. But a freshly wiped nose quickly becomes a snotty, crusty nose once again in only a short amount of time. Sometimes, if it's not that bad, I just say, nevermind.
Evie looks like a giant compared to her cousin, Ben, who was born six months after her, to the day. Can't believe how much babies grow in only six months!

Evie's First Ever School Portraits

2011-11-20T22:36:00.001-07:00

Could Greg have taken good photos with his equipment? Yes. Did I do exactly what the portrait company was banking on me doing? Yes. Yes, I thought my baby's school portraits were so cute I had to get them, and they were expensive. Can you blame me?! Greg says yes.

,

Evie at 5 Months

2011-11-09T20:54:00.001-07:00

I'm kind of behind on a monthly Evie post. And we only took our 5 month picture of her yesterday, so . . . technically she's more like 5.5 months. But oh well.

Visiting great-grandma Ett the night before Disneyland:

Wearing the 1st Visit button like it ain't no thang:

Conked out in daddy's arms at Disneyland:

It's so sweet when she falls asleep in our arms. I'll be sad when she outgrows it. I can only imagine what it would be like to fall asleep in mommy or daddy's arms - she's so warm! And cozy! And loved!
We bought her a ducky sleeper because we happened to have a Kohl's coupon to use. It has duckies on the feet. Cute!
I like it when she smiles as we are giving her kisses.
She's discovered her feet. We noticed that she has started grabbing at her feet and toes.
She's gotten better at grabbing things. I didn't expect her to get to a point so quickly where she could grab at the things we were eating / holding already.
She can put her pacifier back in her mouth, although not always in the right direction.
A few weeks ago, when we played peek-a-boo with her, it was new every time. She'd jump a bit right after we went "peek-a-boo!" and revealed our faces, and then smile or laugh. Now, she still smiles and laughs, but she's not as surprised by it every time we do it.
At Disneyland this past weekend, she fussed if we stood in one spot too long, but if we pushed the stroller around, she would soak in all the sights and sounds. It's like she was like, "Dance, puppets!" except instead of "dance" it was "constantly push me around" and instead of "puppets" it was "parental units."

Overheard

2011-11-07T20:43:00.001-07:00

Overheard in the Denver airport earlier in the week, a woman talking to, I assume, her young child:

Did you pee in the closet again?

In other news, I was not prepared for this much snow in Denver last week. Poor planning on my part, not bringing boots to walk in while scraping snow off my rental car.

Cobbler Requisition

2011-10-28T21:43:00.002-07:00

Greg makes me laugh. He asked me to make blueberry cobbler one night back in September. Via IM earlier in the day:

"I'm making you the VP of Cobbler Requisition. I want you heavily involved in the process. The point person, so to speak. Make sure the project stays on track and that the goals are measuring well against their benchmarks, such as, Is this cobbler delicious? (Yes / No)."

We used this recipe for blueberry cobbler. I didn't end up having any of the cobbler (not my favorite), but I heard it was good, although it wasn't as crumbly as we believed cobbler should be. Next time, we'll be looking at the reviews for adjustments to the recipe to achieve the appropriate level of crumbliness.

Evie's Four Month Photo

2011-10-12T21:18:00.001-07:00

(Sans editing, because I just don't have the time or energy).

Evie's Three Month Photo

2011-10-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

(Sans editing, because I just don't have the time or energy).

Evie at 4 Months

2011-10-07T22:31:00.001-07:00

Evie turned 4 months at the end of September.

She . . .

Went camping for the first time last weekend! It was chilly and we only had one sleeper that fits her size now, which we got from cousin Tamara. Thanks, cousin Tamara!
Is a sympathetic crier, so the daycare told us. But then Greg tested it out a couple times at home where he pretended to cry and Evie did indeed start to cry herself. It's funny and sad at the same time. But maybe a little bit more funny than sad.
Will fall asleep on her own with minimal or no crying when we put her down for bed (for the most part). Love!
Is getting more and more coordinated with grabbing things - toys, pacifier, bib. More often than not, whatever is in her hand goes straight to her mouth.
Isn't quite tall enough to use the walker as intended, but she is able to touch the ground on her tippy toes pushes herself a couple inches that way.
Had her 4-month check up last week and the doctor said she could have some oatmeal. We tried to give her some last Sunday, but she was too tired, and therefore fussy, at the time to really eat any. Since then, we've tried to feed it to her a few more times. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of eating off a spoon.

I discovered that the washing machine eats baby socks. I found four socks in the washer, under the rubbery door seal where the dirty water drains out. None of the four socks were matching pairs. And they were super dingy. Who knows how long they were stuck in there.

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge #21 Card

2011-09-27T21:41:00.001-07:00

Finished a quick card for the latest CAS-ual Fridays challenge, and by "quick," I mean it only took me a couple days. Overall time spent on the card wasn't very long, but it's hard to squeeze in a lot of continuous craft time between watching a baby and doing chores. And sometimes computer free time gets picked over crafty free time . . .

Design inspiration from a wedding invitation we got this summer. Happy with how it turned out (sometimes I make cards and I'm like, meh).

I need to get on top of posting Evie's 3 month picture, because 4 months is about to roll around. Yeesh. It goes by fast and slow at the same time!

Twine Packaging

2011-09-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

I shared some baker's twine goodness with my friend, Emily, a bit ago and felt inspired to package it up all nicely. I'd just gotten some stamps from Papertrey Ink, so I repurposed one of the clear plastic boxes that stamp sets come in for the baker's twine wrapped around clothespins. I stamped a pattern on the band of paper wrapped around the top and it turned out well - so well that I did the same on a couple cards. :)

Looks too pretty to use, all lined up in rainbow order. Heh.

September Wedding Cards

2011-09-23T21:20:00.002-07:00

We were invited to a couple weddings this month that we opted not to go to since it's a bit hard traveling with an infant. Here are the wedding cards that we sent . . .

For Greg's friend who loves Disney (I had Disney-themed brads that I bought several years ago and never had the occasion to use):

For Greg's work friend (I made this card a while ago to have in my ready-to-go stash):

2011-09-20T21:13:00.001-07:00

I saw a lot of buzz about Pinterest several months ago, but with so much social media stuff out there (which is where I lump Pinterest under, sort of), I resisted signing up, though I occasionally browsed through other people's pins.

Recently, I got a Pinterest invite from a friend (Jessica) and decided that Pinterest would be a good way to organize my starred items in Google Reader. I can tell that it is potentially a big time sink with the little personal computer time that I already have, but in any case . . . here we go!

Evie at 15 Weeks Old

2011-09-11T19:07:00.001-07:00

Evie is 15 weeks old as of today.

Just in the last few days, she's gotten more and more chatty with her cooing.
She kicks a lot when she is excited or wants to sit up, but also when she is grumpy.
She's more full of smiles than even a few weeks ago. If she's awake when we go to get her in the morning, we get smiles! Looks like she takes after Greg being all happy, rather than grumpy, in the mornings.
This weekend, she's been in a good mood pretty much all day. Last weekend, there was comparatively more fussiness, probably because she wasn't feeling that hot with a stuffy nose that has now cleared up.

10 Years

2011-09-11T11:09:00.002-07:00

Has it really been 10 years? It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was in high school when it happened.

When I was in high school, I used to set my alarm to the radio. That morning when my alarm went off, the DJs (who normally had segments of fluff for entertainment) were talking about the first plane hitting the tower. Right before I left for school, I turned on the TV (which was uncommon for me to do in the morning) to watch news coverage. At school that day, all anyone wanted to do was watch the news coverage of the planes hitting the towers. Even with us watching events unfold on the news coverage that morning, I can't even imagine what it would have been like to be there in person, or to know someone who was in one of the buildings or planes.

For me and Greg, we remember it happening, what our reactions were, and what the reactions of those around us were, but it's interesting how our perspective of 9/11 will be so different from Evie's because for Evie, it will just be a topic in a history book. Things that have changed as a result of 9/11 will always be the norm for her.

"It's a Boy" Embossed Card

2011-09-04T17:44:00.001-07:00

Our friends B'Tara (a.k.a. Brad and Tara, which Greg shortened to "B'Tara" a la Teen Girl Squad #10) have a new baby boy!

This is the card I made for when I went to Tara's baby shower about a month ago:

Yesterday, we stopped by for a short visit and saw the baby - so small! Sigh. Babies grow so fast.

Incident Record

2011-09-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

One day last month, when I went to go pick Evie up from daycare, this Incident Record was attached to her sign-in sheet:

I had to sign and return the original copy to the daycare. It made me chuckle. I showed it to Greg when he got home and he thought it was funny too. "Evelyn scratched her face." Heh! She did break skin, but it was no biggie and it's such a formal procedure to follow for a baby being a baby (flailing arms + fingernails that grow fast and are hard to trim). We are hanging on to this Incident Report - we think it'll be funny to Evie when she's older.

Blogger's new look is kind of blowing my mind. It's so new! And foreign! I miss the old look I'm used to! (Technically, I can still use the old look for now, but I chose to switch to the new one). Maybe this is yet another sign that I am getting old, if this is the reaction I have to new looks.

Made-up Words

2011-08-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the week, I went to Lee Lee's. Here's how my conversation went with Greg while driving home from Lee Lee's.

Greg: Soooo, what'd you get?
Me: I got some Yan Yan.
Greg: You got some what?
Me: I got some Yan Yan.
Greg: Whoa, whoa, Shirley, Shirley. You're just making up words now. Hey! Are you going by Wal-mart today? Could you pick me up some Flabber Jabber?

It made me laugh, even the next day. I guess I thought (mistakenly) that Greg had been with me long enough to know what Yan Yan was. I was telling him the next day that Yan Yan is one of those nostalgic childhood snack foods, for probably a lot of Asian kids. I have memories of snacking on Yan Yan when I was younger (while at Lee Lee's, actually - it's been around for a while).

Evie at 12 Weeks Old

2011-08-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

Evie lately:

Is most definitely responding to us with smiles.
Is a champ now at finding her thumb to suck on.
Is starting to be aware that she has feet and toes. And that she can control said feet and toes. (I don't think the connection is completely there yet, but there have been a couple times that we think she's been looking at her feet and flexing her toes while looking at her feet).
Has a preference for being held in a sitting position so that she can look out at what's going on.
Is funny when . . .
- She makes her uber-sad boo-hoo face with the protruding lower lip.
- She stretches after being woken up from sleeping.
- She gets startled and sticks her arms and legs straight out (the Moro reflex). This is starting to go away though.
- She puts her hands up next to her face while being fed. I read somewhere, though I don't remember where, that this is left over from when offspring had to compete with siblings to be fed.

Evie's Two Month Photo

2011-08-19T21:44:00.002-07:00

Evie's One Month Photo

2011-08-19T21:39:00.003-07:00

Evie's Monthly Photos

2011-08-19T21:30:00.015-07:00

At my work baby shower, I got a set of monthly onesie stickers from my work mentor. She got them off Etsy and a quick search showed that there are tons of monthly onesie stickers on Etsy.

Further monthly baby photo inspiration: the ones that Nicole at Making It Lovely took/takes of her daughter and son. Seeing the progression from newborn to toddler is so fun.

At the end, I'm planning on editing the pictures for size, using the monthly onesie stickers as the point of reference. I haven't really been happy with the location of these photos since Month One, but since that's what we started with, it was too late to change and still have consistency. I wish I'd done all the monthly pictures in the glider from the beginning, because then you can really see the change, but oh well. It's done. And she's still a cutie regardless.

Hate on the Baby

2011-08-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

Friday morning, Greg got Evie up, changed, and dressed for daycare in the morning, like he usually does. He put her in a hat, which although I thought was super cute, didn't seem necessary for daycare. I suggested that we save the hat for the next day, when we planned to be walking around an outdoor mall.

Later in the day, we had this conversation over IM:

Greg: (something that prompted a "heh" from me)
Me: Hehe. Dude, I keep typing an extra "e" when I don't mean to. I don't know why. Anyway. Whatevs.
Greg: Heh. I noticed that. I thought you were just changing things up.
Me: No, I don't mean to type that extra "e."
Greg: So . . . hate on the baby tomorrow?
Me: What?
Greg: Oh sorry, I keep typing an "e" when I don't mean to.
Me: Heh. You are ghetto.

And now for HAT on the baby:

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge #13 Card

2011-08-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

Card for the latest CAS-ual Fridays challenge! I've never done a long card before, but I'm a fan since we just bought a box of letter size envelopes from Costco, which means that we'll be good on letter size envelopes for the next 20 years.

Little dresses are cut out from American Crafts Dear Lizzy paper. I think the little dresses will be super cute on a baby girl layout too, which I'm slowly getting to.

Two Birds on a Branch Wedding Card

2011-07-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

A high school friend got married earlier this month in Napa Valley. With the baby and all, we couldn't go, but we sent this card with our gift.

Her wedding colors were brown and yellow, so that's where I drew the colors from. At least, I think they were since those were the colors on her wedding invitation.

Confessions

2011-07-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't partially excited to have a baby for the scrapbooking possibilities.
It will be a sad day when the exercise ball no longer effectively bounces Evie to sleep.
At least a handful of people have thought that Evie is a boy, mostly when she's not wearing uber-girly clothes. I'm okay with that though.
When I think about the blogging I do about Evie, this thought comes to my head: Now easier than ever to embarrass my future teenage daughter/unborn children!
I was able to get my loose jeans on AND zipped/buttoned. Success! I admit there is muffin top action going on though. Next step: Get rid of muffin top. Scratch that. Next step: Buy clothes that hide muffin top. Next step after that: Get rid of muffin top.
When I dropped Evie off at daycare for an observation day last week, which was effectively her first day at daycare, I felt like I should've been more sad than I really was. Not that I don't love my baby, but in reality . . . it was glorious.
I will be sad when Evie outgrows me holding her in my lap.

Week in the Life - July 2011 | Intro

2011-07-24T18:53:00.002-07:00

Earlier this year, I thought about doing a Week in the Life the same week that I did in 2010. That didn't end up happening though, because I was pregnant and lazy. More like, I was just lazy.

Starting tomorrow, Ali Edward's is doing her Week in the Life and I'm planning to do the same.

There's just something about a bunch of people all participating at the same time that is more motivating.

I'm not committing to a physical Week in the Life album right now, though I hope to eventually do one. My goal for the week is just to take the daily pictures, blog about each day, and know that I can use the daily pictures and blog posts to put together an album later.

Jammin'

2011-07-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

After her bath the other day, Evie and I were jammin' to daddy's music. Mommy was making her dance to songs such as:

Barbara Manatee, Veggie Tales
True, Spandau Ballet
Africa, Toto
That's How You Know, Enchanted Soundtrack
Nights on Broadway, Bee Gees
You Make My Dreams, Hall & Oates
Movin' Out, Billy Joel
I'm Ready, I Am, The Format
All You Need is Love, The Beatles

She started out pretty awake after her bath, but quickly got tired. I don't know if it had anything to do with listening to music though.

Evie at 6 Weeks Old

2011-07-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

Evie is 6 weeks old as of last Sunday.

I'm thinking this might be my last weekly Evie post . . .

Evie wearing a funny, furry little vest that we got from Tamara. She wasn't having any of it:

She's developing good neck control. It's amazing how quickly their neck control starts to get better.
She's got strong legs . . . maybe she will be an early walker? If not, whatevs.
Mommy didn't get her diaper on quickly enough after a bath and there was an accident involving #1 and our bed. At least it wasn't #2. And it was on Greg's side, so no biggie. Heh, just kidding. But really, it was no biggie. In any case, I'm not making that mistake again.

Evie's Thank You Cards

2011-07-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

I started thinking about baby thank you cards pretty early on since I was excited to make them. I settled on using this sketch with these papers to make the cards, since it was a cute and easy-to-mass-produce card. I've gotten most of my thank you cards written and sent/delivered, but there are still a few that I need to do. (Harder now that the baby is outside of my belly).

Khaki cardstock from Paper Source as the base, which Greg makes fun of me for using on cards so often. I'm down to my last few sheets of khaki cardstock from Paper Source. Nooooo! I started out with a bulk pack a few years ago. Next time, I plan to stock up on other colors as well, probably chocolate and cream.

I'd been itching to do some crafts since we moved, and yet at the same time unmotivated to unpack my craft space. Greg made me unpack and now I'm happy to be able to use the space. Now it's just a matter of finding time.

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge #9 Card

2011-07-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

Now that most of the dust from moving has settled, I can sneak in a bit of craft time if Evie falls asleep during the day.

I've had this card idea floating in my head since before we packed up my craft junk and moved, but hadn't had a chance to actually make it. This CAS-ual Fridays challenge was a good excuse to actually make it.

Yay to getting a card done. It really did have to be clean and simple if I wanted to get it done with the baby around.

Evie at 5 Weeks Old

2011-07-05T17:05:00.003-07:00

Evie is 5 weeks old as of this past Sunday.

Being a baby makes everything you do a) forgivable, b) worthy of praise, or c) both forgivable and worthy of praise.

Toot out loud? It's okay, because you're a baby!
Burp out loud? It's okay, because you're a baby! or Good job on burping!
Spit up all over me/yourself/fill-in-the-blank? It's okay, because you're a baby!
Hit me in the face while flailing your arms? It's okay, because you're a baby!
Projectile spit up while burping out loud? It's okay, because you're a baby! And by the way, good job on burping!

Spitting up while having tummy time on daddy:

About 6 hours of sleep on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, but that was after about 1.5 hours of trying to get her to sleep. Grumpiness with Greg ensued, although he may or may not have had anything to do with her not going to sleep.
On the night that she slept 6 hours after 1.5 hours of attempting to get her to sleep, I finally busted out a swaddler like this one that we got from Greg's cousin, Tamara. I don't really know how much it helped her sleep that 6 hours (I like to think it did help), but at the very least, it made swaddling so much easier that I was like, I was a fool! Why didn't I start using this earlier instead of struggling with receiving blankets?! Squirmy babies make swaddling with a plain blanket hard. Using the swaddler - awesome.
Greg accidentally dropped his iPhone on Evie's face while she was sleeping on him. iPhone dropping was immediately followed by crying. I felt bad for the baby that her sleep was so rudely interrupted, but it also made me laugh. Evie fell right back asleep after she stopped crying. Heh.
The generic prenatal vitamin I'm taking that has DHA in it smells and tastes really fishy. Ick.

Evie at 4 Weeks Old

2011-06-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Evie is 4 weeks old as of this past Sunday.

She has a bit of a baby mullet. Business in the front, party in the back. But since she's a baby, it's more like party in the front, party in the back. Especially at 2:00 in the morning.
On Friday night/Saturday morning, she went 5 hours between feedings in the middle of the night. I hope that is a trend that continues and ends with her sleeping through the night by the time I go back to work.
On Saturday night/Sunday morning, she didn't go to sleep until about 3:00 in the morning, but then she slept until about 7:00 in the morning (about 5 hours between feedings again). Boo to the not sleeping until 3:00 am, but yay to sleeping for a four-hour stretch.
On Sunday night/Monday morning, she fed about 10:45 pm, went down to sleep about 45 minutes to an hour later, and then didn't wake up again till 4:00something. She went right back to sleep after the 4:00something feeding and then didn't get up again until about 8:00 am. It was great. Again, I hope it continues . . .
She went to the pediatrician's earlier in the week. She was about 9 lbs and 22 inches long. The pediatrician also got rid of her remaining umbilical stump (it didn't completely fall off before).
She had her toesies dipped into the pool while we were at a friend's house this weekend. She didn't seem to know what to think of it.
She got a real bath this weekend, seeing as how all her umbilical stump is now gone. She didn't seem to mind too much.
I tried on a pair of my looser jeans over the weekend. I managed to get them on. Win! I couldn't zip or button them up though. Fail.

Evie at 3 Weeks Old

2011-06-21T14:16:00.001-07:00

Evie is 3 weeks old as of this past Sunday.

She likes to be held while bouncing on the exercise ball.
It makes me feel like a bad parent when I try to put her down for a nap and can't get her to fall asleep, but . . .
Swaddling really does seem to help when I'm putting her down for a nap or to sleep, per The Happiest Baby on the Block. It seems most effective if she's not already too worked up, awake, or fussy, otherwise she's too hard to swaddle.
I'm afraid of her not being able to sleep through the night by the time I go back to work. Several nights, she's been able to do roughly four-hour stretches after the 11:00ish feeding at night. Now I have to figure out how to get her to do two of those back-to-back.
Since I see her everyday, I can't tell how much she is growing, but both my mom and my dad commented that she has grown. I can tell, however, that her cheeks look chubbier.
I feel like we haven't been taking enough pictures of her. There's not been a ton of down time with the move and such. We haven't taken any newborn pictures (like a photo shoot), but we plan to take some pictures next weekend. She'll be a month old - already? Time passes fast and slow at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Move to Mesa

2011-06-19T21:20:00.001-07:00

Laveen was never the place we wanted to be long-term, particularly after we had school-age kids. We'd been casually perusing home listings since the beginning of the year for the East valley (but not too far East), but hadn't really gotten serious about finding a house - we figured just some time later in the year.

In April, we spent a Saturday with a real estate agent looking at some houses in Mesa that sounded like they fit what we wanted. Most of the houses were okay, one was blah, and one we both really liked. We decided to go ahead and put an offer on the house we liked. There were a couple points where we were uncertain if things would work out, but they did and we closed on the house last Friday. Since then, we've been getting all our stuff moved over from the old house. You never realize just how much junk you have until you need to pack it and move it - our hope/intent is that it will be a long time before we have to move again.

Fortunately, our families helped us move boxes and smaller items last Friday and Saturday, then on Tuesday, we hired movers to help us get all the heavy furniture over. In between and since, Greg has been a cleaning and unpacking machine (and also a whip-cracker), so we've made a lot of progress putting stuff away and getting settled in.

There's still work to be done (blah) . . . I'm looking forward to being able to just chill. It's hard trying to get house stuff done in between feeding and looking after the baby, even with help from my aunt.

The main area left to unpack is my craft space. The reason why it's not done yet is because it's my space and not Greg's. Heh. I need to get on the unpacking so that I can find the monthly baby photo stickers (they are stickers that you put on the baby's clothes from months 1 through 12 and take a picture with every month) that I got from my work baby shower.

Evie at 2 Weeks Old

2011-06-14T11:13:00.001-07:00

Evie is 2 weeks old as of this past Sunday.

Weekly baby blog posts such as this may be one of those things where our subsequent children get the short end of the stick. Heh.

Her umblical stump fell off on Sunday.
There was a rough night in the middle of the week where Evie woke up at 1:00ish, I fed her, and then she didn't fall asleep for probably 4 or 5 hours. It was frustrating. Greg ended up taking her in the early morning so that I could sleep.
Since that rough night, Evie seems to be sleeping better (i.e., following more of a schedule/routine), which has been a relief. I'm not sure if anything that we've tried is what did it, but we don't let her sleep more than about 3 hours a stretch during the day and we try to keep her from sleeping too deeply during the day, though it's hard to wake a newborn who is really asleep.
My ankles look thinner than they've been in months. Still not sure about whether I fit into all my shoes since I haven't needed to wear them much.
It'd be nice if I didn't have this extra pooch going on in the belly area. I should probably set my expectations appropriately given that it's only been 2 weeks.
"I'm a Snugglesaurus Rex and you're my prey." -Greg

Evie at 1 Week Old

2011-06-06T19:36:00.001-07:00

Evie is 1 week old as of yesterday.

I can't believe it's already been a week. She'll grow so fast right in front of our eyes and pretty soon she won't be a newborn anymore.

Babies (not just Evie) are born so perfect. Total clean slate! Here's to trying not to mess that up over the next 18 years.
It's amazing that this little person was all folded up inside of me. I can't even imagine how she fit in there now that she is out.
She is not a super fussy baby who cries all the time.
She randomly smiles about who knows what and it is cute.
Baby feetsies are incredibly cute.
It stinks in the middle of the night when she doesn't go right back to sleep after being fed and instead is all alert and awake.
I don't want to use a pacifier, but sometimes it's just so easy when she is fussy, but not hungry.
Greg referred to himself as a "snuggleholic" with Evie and it made me laugh.
Babies are so flexible and limp when they are asleep that Greg played Toe or Finger with Evie, only with her own toes, and it also made me laugh.
Greg took a week off and returned to work today. I miss Greg not being at home with both of us during the day, to hang out and help out.

Evie's Arrival

2011-06-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

After being a week past due, we had Evie just a little over a week ago!

THE STORY:

On Friday, 5/27, I was sitting at about a week past due, so we were scheduled to induce at 3:00 am on that day. At 2:00 am, I called the hospital, as instructed, to check whether there were beds free and was told that there weren't, but maybe later in the day there would be. Throughout the day on Friday and Saturday, we periodically called the hospital to check the bed status and it wasn't until 3:00 pm last Saturday that the hospital called to say that they had a bed free for me and that we should go to the hospital in an hour.

When I first showed up at the hospital, I was only dilated about 1 cm, so essentially no change in progress since the week prior. They started off the process with prostaglandin gels - I got one when I first got into the labor and delivery room and another a few hours later. I was supposed to get them throughout the middle of the night as well, but the night shift nurse monitoring my contractions decided to hold off because she didn't want the contractions to progress too quickly.

When the morning shift nurse came in about 6:30 or 7:00 am on Sunday, she went ahead and gave the third application of the prostaglandin gel, since I hadn't made much progress during the night and I hadn't felt any contractions (despite the monitor showing that I had them). Right after she put in the gel, my water broke. We're not sure if it was because of her putting in the gel, checking how far I was dilated, or if it was just time for the water to break. In any case, that was an encouraging sign that my labor was progressing. After that, they stopped administering the prostaglandin gel and started me on Pitocin. They started me on a low dosage and gradually increased it throughout the day.

By mid-morning, I was pretty uncomfortable with contractions and asked for the epidural. Getting an epidural was always part of the plan - I'm too weenie for natural. For me, the epidural was awesome. It made things a whole lot more comfortable the rest of the time. By about mid-afternoon, the OB doctor on call had stopped in and said that I was making good progress, so we could perhaps have a baby by about dinner time with the way things looked.

Later in the afternoon, we had a little scare in that while the nurse was checking how far I was dilated, I had a persistent contraction that was distressing the baby since her heart rate dropped to the 60s or 70s. When the nurse saw this, she quickly called several other nurses in to help, and they helped me not only change positions (not that easy since I had an epidural), but also gave me a shot of terbutaline to stop contractions. They also had me sign a C-section consent pretty quickly, I assume in case things continued to go downhill. After they stopped the contraction, the baby's heart rate returned to normal, but rather than go off the external fetal monitor, they inserted an internal fetal monitor. The internal fetal monitor has a tiny metal corkscrew at the end that's put into the baby's scalp - poor baby, though I know it doesn't hurt or anything since I can't even find where it went in on Evie's head now.

After that little scare, they took me off the Pitocin for a bit to monitor the baby, then started me back on a low dose. After re-starting me on Pitocin, the contractions were spaced further apart and more consistently than before, with the baby's heart rate holding in the normal range, which was a good sign. They slowly increased the Pitocin over the next few hours, but they noticed my temperature going up, which was a concern since my water broke about 12 hours before. At about 9:00 or 9:30 on Sunday night, the nurse came in to check how far I was dilated and I hadn't really made any progress for a few hours. She also noticed that my cervix was swollen, which was the opposite of what should've been happening. The OB doctor came in a little bit after this and explained that at that point, a C-section was a better option than trying to do a normal delivery because of the risk factors (temperature spike possibly indicating infection, baby being distressed earlier in the day, not progressing for the past several hours).

I was prepared for the possibility of a C-section even before we went to the hospital, but it was not what I'd preferred (and tears were shed over it). In any case, things are what they are, so they prepared me for surgery. Since I already had an epidural, they just gave me more anesthetics to get me through the C-section. The C-section was unpleasant because I was expecting no pain during the whole thing, but actually did feel some pain (not just pressure or pulling), though my tolerance for pain at that point may have been very low. I could tell when they were doing certain things, such as using the scalpel on me, and just the thought of that is scary even now. I could also tell when they pulled the baby out, and it was such a relief to (a) have the baby out and (b) hear her crying almost immediately, though I didn't think at any point during the C-section that she wasn't fine.

They couldn't tell for sure until they did the C-section, but it turned out that Evie's head wasn't in the right position for a normal delivery. Greg says that when she first came out, there was a big lump on her head where it was up against the cervix, and it wasn't the right part of the head that's supposed to come down the birth canal first (the lump has since gone away - I never even noticed it). They also saw that the umbilical cord was around Evie's head, which the nurse told Greg would have made it all the more harder for her to come down the birth canal.

We're very happy that Evie came out all healthy, even if that meant she had to come by C-section. It still seems almost unreal that this whole little person is ours. And also, I had a couple other people tell me that they were really thirsty after giving birth (both normal and C-section) and I have to agree - having ice water after the C-section was so good.

Recent Baby Cards

2011-05-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

I was on a cardmaking spree last month and made some cards that went to people who had babies recently.

For a co-worker who just had a baby boy (her due date was technically after mine, but she had her baby a bit early):

Navy and Blue "Lush" Congratulations Card

For Greg's co-worker who just had a baby girl:

Pink and Gray Pieced Argyle Card

For another co-worker of mine who I just found out had his baby today (his wife's due date was more like mid-June. I was like, what! It's comical, almost, that both the other babies in my office that were technically due after baby K were born before her):

Blue and Green Congrats Elephant Baby Card

Fortune Cookie Predicts Arrival of Baby

2011-05-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Greg got this message in his fortune cookie the other night when we went out to Chinese (place called Wang's Delight) with my mom:

Nice! Obviously, it doesn't really predict anything, but I liked the fortune, so I hung onto it and will perhaps incorporate it into a baby layout.

No baby as of yet, though she was due last Saturday. If she doesn't come on her own between now and Friday, we are scheduled to induce later this week.

This looks to me like an image of her face-on (instead of profile). Honestly . . . looks a bit scary with the eyes all dark and sunken in. Heh.

At my appointment on Monday, the doctor said to eat something light before going to the hospital, such as cereal, toast, or a turkey sandwich. He also explicitly mentioned no Filiberto's, which is funny because that's exactly what I had decided I wanted to eat before going to the hospital. He said nausea is not uncommon though, so if I eat something heavy, I might see it again. Boo. Greg and I wondered if he said no Filiberto's because that's just what came to his head, or if it's because he remembers seeing Greg noshing on Fili's at the appointment the previous week. Heh.

Chinese Postpartum Traditions

2011-05-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

My mom has previously told me, on more than one occasion, about Chinese after-birth traditions/wisdom for the mother, such as not drinking cold fluids or washing your hands in cold water. I don't think she ever had a very good explanation for why not to do those things, and I sometimes think my mom is a little superstitious, so I essentially chalked up that piece of information to Chinese cultural craziness. Read: no intention of following.

Last night, my dad and his sister came over for dinner (she's in the US visiting for a few months, between my brother graduating from high school and us having a baby), and she offered up the same advice about cold fluids, plus some other ones, such as:

- Avoiding washing my hair if I can, or if I need to, making sure that I blow dry it right away.
- Drinking hot soups as much as possible, such as chicken soup.

The hot soup thing sounds pretty reasonable, but the cold fluids and not washing hair - really?!

Apparently, if the traditions aren't followed, it could result in bad health for the mother later in life. I realize the intent of the traditions are good, but I still think it is crazy.

In any case, I did a quick search online for what kind of information is out there and found the following article, which is at least an interesting read on cultural differences:

Postpartum Beliefs and Practices Among Non-Western Cultures

39.5 Weeks

2011-05-18T20:58:00.001-07:00

Due date is Saturday and it's so close that I'm like, whoa. We're going to have a baby soon. Like maybe this time next week.

Last couple weeks have been uncomfortable not necessarily because I'm nine months pregnant, but because I developed this pregnancy-related rash all over my body. Unpleasant. But at least my face was spared! I don't think it's terribly common (though not uncommon either, it seems, from reading about it online) and the doctor ordered blood work, as well as additional ultrasounds, to keep tabs on the baby. When he mentioned doing additional ultrasounds, I was thinking, Oh, we will get one more ultrasound between now and the due date. When the doctor's office called to set up two ultrasounds a week until the due date (this was a couple weeks ago), I was like, two a week?! Seems like a lot. In any case, blood work was normal, as well as all the ultrasounds so far. And although I'm still a little bit itchy, the rash seems to have largely subsided. Excellent!

3D ultrasound, again with her foot all up in her face:

Profile:

Profile, but with her arm over her face. I wouldn't have known what I was looking at had the technician not told me. The arrow is pointing to the elbow:

As of this morning, there's no indication that I'm even close to needing to go to the hospital yet, but last night, this was my conversation with Greg:

Me: So . . . what are we going to eat on the way to the hospital?
Greg: Dude. Are you for real right now?

People have been telling me that they won't let me eat once I get to the hospital, so I should eat before going to the hospital. I feel like the last week or so, I've been really nom nom nom. Surprisingly though, I hadn't gained any weight since my appointment a week ago, so I must not be eating as much as I think I am.

It's looking like if baby doesn't come this weekend, we'll go ahead and schedule an induction for late next week. That is good in that we will have this weekend to get some packing done (more on that later, like when the craziness settles), but bad in that having to be induced is not preferable to the baby coming on her own. We'll see what happens . . .

Home Stretch

2011-05-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

Last week was the first week that I thought to myself, Okay, now I'm uncomfortable.

I stopped wearing heels in early March because they were causing some hip pain, which seemed to go away after I started wearing flats regularly. At that point in time, I still fit into most of my dress shoes, so I was like, No biggie, I can still wear dress shoes once in a while if I need to. A few weeks ago, I tried to wear a different pair of flats than the ones I have been sporting and came to realize pretty quickly that those other flats, which I considered to be on the looser end before, were pretty tight and effectively unwearable. Which means that all my dress shoes are unwearable. Which means . . . my feet are fat from swelling. Or fat. Or both.

So I'm reduced to wearing the same pair of flats to work every day (I'm not buying more shoes if I don't have to). The other alternative is, apparently, tennis shoes. The OB nurse said that wearing tennis shoes will help with the swelling and that she could give me a doctor's note for it. I thought it was kind of funny, the idea of wearing tennis shoes with work clothes. I don't think I could pull off wearing tennis shoes in the office, both from a fashion standpoint and from an office dress code standpoint.

Last week: Hip pain began, but on a different side than before. I think this time it will stick around until the end. Sitting in an office chair all day aggravates it and, therefore, my waddling.
This week: Ankle pain began. Likely from my body not being used to carrying around so much extra weight. Contributes to waddling as well.
ETA: 3 more weeks. We're in the home stretch!

Paper Odds and Ends

2011-04-17T20:39:00.001-07:00

This might come as a surprise, but . . . I collect paper things. If/when we are out and about, I take business cards and brochures of places we go (fun places, not like, Home Depot or Fry's). I buy postcards. I keep wrapping paper, fun packaging, and envelopes with neat cancelled stamps. I have, for a while, been throwing around the idea of taking all those things and making a layout about how I heart paper. In the meantime though, I've just been saving them up.

I went to CKC-Mesa this weekend. I had previously decided not to go because of the time and money, but Greg highly encouraged me to go since I may not be able to go for a while after this. This year, Studio Calico was an exhibitor, which they haven't been in the past, and along with picking up some stamps and Mister Huey sprays, I also got some little handouts (business card, a coupon, and a kit subscription form) that I thought were right up my alley. Look at the backs! Makes me want to use them in a project.

Some other things I've collected and will do something with down the road:

Postcards from Lux Coffee Bar:

Kraft bag with vintage ads from when I bought something at Mystic Paper:

Also, along the lines of paper stuff, oh, hello friend has some super inspiring business card posts. Makes me want to make business cards just to have sweet business cards, but I don't actually have a business.

Flowers Galore Thank You Card

2011-04-16T06:48:00.001-07:00

I woke up around 4:30 this morning to use the bathroom and then I couldn't fall back asleep. Annoying. So I've been tooling around on the Internet since about 5:00.

And . . . here's a card:

I made this when I first got my hands on extra colors of distress inks and wanted to play with them. Flower stamps are from the Flowers Galore set from Unity Stamp Company. I was also inspired by this card from one of Nichole Heady's posts.

Doily Background Elephant Baby Card

2011-04-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

I have been a crafting fiend as of late. I've made lots of cards. I even finished a scrapbook page in only two days!

I saw this Lawnscaping challenge on a blog (Britta Swiderski) and although I don't actually have any Lawn Fawn stamps . . . I really liked the whole stamp-your-own-patterned-paper thing.

I picked up a BasicGrey stamp set on the clearance table of Scrapbooks, Etc. and it had a doily-looking stamp that I wanted to use for the background. After I stamped the background, it took me a bit to figure out what to do with the card. I finally settled on baby card because there are lots of people we know having babies this year. And if it doesn't get used this year, that's okay, because there are several people we know getting married this year, so that means I'll get to use it down the road. Heh.

The greens don't really match, but I was trying to use up scraps, so it was close enough.

Pink Baby Quilt

2011-04-10T16:05:00.001-07:00

I'm slightly embarrassed to say that when I bought the fabric for this baby quilt, it was before Greg's cousin, Tamara, had her first baby a couple of years ago and I was thinking it'd make a nice gift. Well, I started on it, sewed a couple rows of blocks together, got discouraged after realizing that I couldn't sew stretchy fabric perfectly (or anything, really), and then gave up.

Recently, Greg has been suggesting that I finish it before the baby comes so that someone (baby K #1) at least gets some use out of the pile of fabric that has been sitting in my craft room for two years. This past week, I resolved to let go of my need for perfection, suck it up, and just get it done. So I finally finished sewing together all the fabric squares I cut out for the quilt top:

It's a pretty good motivator seeing that all sewn together. It looks pretty legit from the front. The seams and edges in the back are messy, but when the quilt is finished, no one else will see it, so no biggie. My biggest concern is if the stitching might come out, but I'll deal with that later if that happens.

Next up:
- acquire backing fabric (I'm debating whether to buy a sheet or buy some fabric to piece together)
- quilting the top, batting, and backing together
- binding the edges

Rainbow Cards

2011-04-09T21:03:00.003-07:00

I'm a fan of rainbow colors. I remember when I was younger, perhaps around six, my friend (Lee Anne) had this set of stamp markers that I borrowed. I was like, Whoa. I can color and stamp this rubber stamp with all these colors?! Very exciting.

Other things that are exciting to have in rainbow colors:
- wardrobes/closets (actually, that blog post is what prompted me to reorganize my closet a couple years ago into ROYGBIV order)
- baker's twine
- distress inks!

Since I recently stocked up on some additional colors of distress inks, I busted those out for this color challenge at Lily Pad Cards:

A commenter also tipped me off to this other challenge involving baker's twine at Wee Memories, so yay to efficiencies in cardmaking!

The purple-ish blue on this card is a bit faint on the edges, but I like how the card turned out overall:

Pretty happy with this card too . . . I was thinking baby card:

I was able to finish both cards in one sitting because Greg had to work late and then when he got home, he played video games with his friend for a couple hours. I felt pretty accomplished from a crafty perspective.

New Tools

2011-04-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

JoAnn was having a sale on papercrafting tools and stamping supplies, so I picked up some new things that I tried out when making some thank you cards and was quite happy with the results:

Tonic Glass Cutting Mat

Cutting out shapes with an X-acto knife was so much easier on the glass than a self-healing mat because the blade didn't sink into the mat. The Martha Stewart circle cutter seemed to work better on the glass as well. Also, the glass cutting mat is good for doing different distress ink techniques, protecting the table surface, and easy clean-up.

Stamp-a-ma-jig

I made a boo boo while stamping on a card when I didn't ink it up enough to get the whole image stamped. I used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to go back and re-stamp in the same place. You can't even tell that I made a mistake. Awesome!

Additional colors of Distress Inks
Distress Inks are my favorite type of ink to use. I mostly had neutral colors before, but I stocked up on some cool colors and a few more warm colors. I've been using them a lot since I got them. 'Cause they're just that good.

Stretch Marks

2011-04-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

I had previously asked my mom if she got stretch marks when she was pregnant and she said she didn't, so I was hoping (oh so very much) that I, too, would be spared stretch marks. Last night, however, I noticed some stretch marks on the underside of my belly. Annnnndddddd . . . let the crying commence. Just kidding. But not really. The saying "no use crying over spilled milk" comes to mind, doesn't it?

I put some lotion on my belly before I went to bed, then again this morning before I went to work. Not that lotion really does a whole lot of good, except maybe improve the appearance. Sigh. Not that I'm saying all this isn't worth it, but the changes to my body are a tad shocking. Big belly! Waddling! Stretch marks! But on the upside . . . No scooping cat poop! Baby kicks! Baby!

Light Rail

2011-04-04T22:30:00.001-07:00

Today, I took the light rail for the first time ever. I'd like to say it's because I'm being "green" and junk, but really it's because I'm protesting the parking garage management company for wanting to charge me for NOT parking in their garage.

The light rail was super easy to navigate and fairly convenient - I decided that's what I'll do the rest of the time that I'm working downtown. I was a bit concerned that there would be weird people on it, but actually, there aren't really (that I saw, at least). At the same time, I'm not going to be hanging around downtown, takin' the light rail after it gets dark, either.

I think one weekend, if Greg is up for it, I'd like to tool around downtown just by taking the light rail. It makes downtown seem more urban than it really is!

Mushroom Mail and Waddling

2011-04-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

I enjoy getting personal snail mail (none of that junky stuff we get most of the time). It's why I like to ask people for postcards if they go somewhere I've never been, so not only do I get mail, but I also get a postcard - two things I heart! (Though I like just one or the other too).

This weekend, I got a letter from a friend (Kimberly), along with a little goodie inside:

The tape! The doodling! The cute Asian stationery goods! I'm a fan.

This week, I feel that my waddling has become more pronounced. Really, it's been a gradual thing, because I know I started to develop a waddle before now, but this week, I just feel like, Man, now I'm really waddling. Before, it was kind of like, I could walk normally if I wanted to, but I don't know that that's really an option now . . . there's some actual pain/discomfort in the hip area associated with walking normally (one of the drivers for why I stopped wearing heels about this time last month).

DIY Paper Flowers

2011-04-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

Similar to the twine embellishments here, I saw these Girls' Paperie paper flowers while at the scrapbook store and thought that I could make something similar myself:

I first played around with shapes in Microsoft Publisher to get the measurements down, basically creating a template that I printed out and used as my cutting guide. After that, it was just a matter of picking out paper, cutting out three pieces to stack on each other, and securing the layers together.

There are tons of possibilities with the paper that can be used to customize these. Now I just have to figure out a project where I can use these.

DIY Twine Embellishments

2011-03-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

I saw a couple of cute embellishments at the scrapbook store last time, but I thought to myself, I could make something like that myself! Without shelling out $4 for it! One of the embellishments was a package of these twine flowers from Jillibean Soup:

I also recalled seeing something similar here on the The Twinery blog:

So I took a stab at doing it myself and here are the results:

Summery colors!

Black and red!

Steps:
1. Start out with a punched circle for the base.
2. Mark the center of the circle for the starting point of the twine.
3. Cover circle with double-sided tape.
4. Wind twine around in a circle, starting in the center.
5. Secure end with a bit of glue. I used Matte Accents and that seems to be holding well.

Not a Fat Baby

2011-03-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago when I went to the doctor, he said my belly was measuring a tad ahead of schedule, so we had an ultrasound to take some baby measurements. Turns out baby's size is normal and we got a 3D picture from the ultrasound. Yay! Except that the baby had a foot all up in her face and didn't want to move it, but that's okay.

At first when I was looking at the 3D images, I couldn't make out what was what, so in my head, I was starting to get all like, WHAT IS THAT?! IT LOOKS HORRIBLE! But then Greg pointed out all the features and all was good. (A visual for what the thoughts in my head sounded like is when Bill Hader's character in this SNL Milkshakes skit goes "Nooooo! Nooooo! I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD! I'VE ABANDONED MY BOY! I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD! I'VE . . . Oh, here he is.")

Scrapbooking Old School

2011-03-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a Paperclipping Roundtable (episode #13) the other day when something they were talking about made me think about the time in high school that I dabbled in scrapbooking. It was somewhere around 1999 or 2000 (sophomore year) and I had just gotten back from a summer church trip that a bunch of my friends were also on. I had taken a bunch of pictures on the trip and gotten them developed, so I had this idea that I didn't want to just put them in a photo album - I was going to scrapbook them!

I went over to Michael's to get some supplies (not a lot, because I was on a limited budget) and this is where - when I think about how it was then versus how it is now - I'm like, whoa. A lot has changed. I remember back then, there was maybe one aisle dedicated to what scrapbooking was at the time. The paper offerings were, for the most part, 8.5 x 11 sheets of what was basically stationery paper. There were also die cuts, stickers, and decorative edge scissors. Here's an example of the sweet stuff I picked up:

It's such a big change from when I next got into scrapbooking/paper crafts in 2006, when I bought supplies to make wedding invitations, and now, where there is an entire section in Michael's dedicated to scrapbooking and paper crafts. I think I saw in a recent Michael's ad that they've revamped their scrapbooking section, so I'll have to check that out . . .

One-Year-Old Birthday Card

2011-03-27T21:53:00.004-07:00

We went to a one-year-old birthday party for Gracie (Julio and Stephanie's baby) yesterday and that occasion called for a birthday card, of course:

Clouds from using the Fiskars XL cloud punch on graph paper. Toothpicks for posts, with yellow baker's twine strung between them. Hand-cut number one.

Greg also took a bunch of pictures of the party, but I'll let Stephanie post/blog those pictures once they're done being processed.

Sausage Fingers and Tummy Crumbs

2011-03-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

I know it may be hard to tell in the picture because there is no baseline for a point of reference . . . but I think I have sausage fingers right now. I don't know how much to attribute to swelling versus weight gain, but that's beside the point. I stopped wearing my rings a couple months ago because I was afraid that my fingers would get so sausage-y that I wouldn't be able to get them off. Good thing I was proactive about that.

In addition to sausage fingers, I've also found that I need to periodically check my belly to make sure that there aren't things like food crumbs sitting on it. How did I come to that conclusion? A few weeks ago, I was working out of the office (normally we are at client sites) when I was in the break room and ate a couple Girl Scout cookies (I think it was the same day that I ate three donuts, but again, beside the point). So I ate some cookies in the break room. Walk back to my office, which is almost on the other side of the office, do some work, then at some point later, get back up to go to the break room for water. And cookies. And that's when I noticed that I had crumbs on my belly, before I had eaten any more cookies. Burn on me. That's my lesson to check my tummy for crumbs if I'm going to eat something without a plate.

Last night, I was in the middle of preparing to publish this post when I stopped to take a few bites of ice cream before going to bed. I didn't notice at first, but Greg pointed out that I had dropped some ice cream on my belly. Awesome! Further evidence that I need to be more careful when I eat.

Email is Like Our Lives

2011-03-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've gotten away from the "snippet of our lives" type of posts in favor of craft-focused posts, but looking back on older posts, it's fun to read about non-craft stuff too, because it's a snapshot of what we were doing at that point in our lives. So . . . I'm making an effort to (at least more often than I have as of late) blog about non-crafty stuff, as well as the crafty stuff.

Greg and I have different "styles" of maintaining our house / junk. For Greg, everything has its place and everything should be put back in its place. For me, I don't mind having stuff out or having it pile up, because for the most part, I'll still be able to find all my stuff. Our different "styles" is a big part of why Greg supports me having a craft room in our house. I follow (try to, at least) Greg's ways for the rest of the house (neat and tidy, which are good qualities), but the craft room is where there could be (and there usually is) stuff all over the place. It's funny, then, when I see our two different approaches in other aspects of our lives:

Me: My email is down to 2,400! I've been filing emails.
Greg: Nice. What was it at before?
Me: Like . . . 3,200 or something.
Greg: I need to organize my inbox too . . . I'm up to 13. Probably file some stuff away.
Me: Heh. Whatevs. Our emails are like how we live our lives!

Pink Butterfly Baby Card

2011-03-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

My dilemma with cardmaking is that sometimes I make a card I end up really liking, and then I don't want to give it away. So I hoard it until enough time has passed that I'm less attached to the card. But I was good. I sent this card to its intended recipient. Heh. I think it's safe to post now since she most likely received it already:

Butterfly and starburst punches went well together. I also decided that the top note die cut needed a little bit extra something before getting adhered to the card, so that's where my $1 Wal-mart roll of white crepe paper streamer came in handy.

I think this weekend, I'll play around with my photography "skillz." Maybe read up on some of Greg's photography books (maybe I should prioritize reading up on being a parent and such, but . . . meh). I've decided that I should learn how to use my Digital Rebel on more than just the auto setting.

Cesar Chavez Park Photo Session Layout

2011-03-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

I finished this layout a while ago, but never posted about it.

Pictures from this photo session at Cesar Chavez Park. I also did a separate layout of just the sunset pictures from the same photo session, but I like how this page turned out better.

I started out with some Basic Grey patterned paper, but it was a lightly patterned neutral sheet. Elle's Studio tags were used for the focus of the layout, with the middle of some of them cut out to frame pictures, journaling, and a title. The corners were finished off with Glimmer Mist and doilies.

In other topics . . .

We haven't talked to our Japanese exchange student from last spring, Mako, on the phone yet, but she's been active on Facebook and says that her and her family are okay after the earthquake and tsunami over there. I guess I shouldn't find it as crazy as I do all the damage that was done, especially since there have been other fairly recent occurrences of earthquakes and tsunamis in other parts of the world, but it just highlights that no amount of disaster readiness can ever prevent something like that from happening. All you can hope for is that you've minimized the damage and that you've thought of everything you could. :(

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice Layout

2011-03-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Layout from when we found out the gender!

I had an urge while making this layout to fill every single spot of white space on the paper. I don't know why, but I did. I may go back and add some more stitching to the bottom right, but I haven't decided. Or I may just call it good because I'm already pretty happy with it.

I hand-cut the title using the CK Big Boy font. I did two layers - one blue for the outer/bottom layer and one pink for the inside/top layer. Took a lot of work, but I like the end result. Also a fan of the paper ruffles - it helped to wet them with a mini mister first, then crumple and ruffle the paper.

Last night, I went over to Cindy's house with Stephanie to craft it up. Made some progress on baby thank you cards, as well as the December mini book that's been in my queue since January. My goal is to get that done before the end of March.

Martha Stewart Crafts Products

2011-03-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've found Martha Stewart's line of craft products to be kind of hit or miss. I have a handful of Martha Stewart products, a few that I've thought worked great and the others, I think could work better.

1-inch Starburst Punch and Classic Butterfly Punch
I really like these two punches. I use them a lot. I bought the starburst punch at Michael's and the butterfly punch at Wal-mart. Overall, I think they are on par with other punches, so they're among the Martha Stewart products I have that work well.

Circle Cutter
I haven't really used this circle cutter in earnest (i.e., on paper that I care about for a project). I have, however, tested it out on scratch paper and the results have been okay. I read the reviews on Amazon after I bought it and the reviews weren't that favorable, but I tend to agree with them. It is a little hard to use with the rotating mechanism not being super smooth, thicker paper is harder for it to make clean cuts, and it is a challenge to keep the paper from moving as you're cutting (you can't just put a spot of adhesive on, it has to be enough to hold it tight). I saw a video where Kristina Werner used this circle cutter with a glass cutting mat and it seemed to work well, but I don't have a glass cutting mat and don't really want to spend the $20 to get one. Seems like a lot of extra effort and money to get a product to work like it should.

Score Board and Envelope Tool
Seeing as how the only moving part on this scoring board is the little compartment at the top, which doesn't affect the functionality of the actual scoring part of the board, there's no reason why this product shouldn't work well. And it does. Because moving parts are not integral to its functionality. So . . . thumbs up on that.

Doily Lace Border Punch
This border punch works decently. The main issue I have with it is that if you are punching cardstock, it can be very hard to push down the handle for it to punch through the cardstock. I've found the Fiskars border punches to be better in that respect. I think it has to do with the design of the punch - the Martha Stewart punch has a relatively wimpy lever handle while Fiskars border punches have a wider lever handle.

Good Weather Weekend Outing

2011-03-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, the weather in Phoenix was fantastic. There are two short windows of spring and fall during the year where the weather in Phoenix is enviable while other parts of the country are contending with cold and snow.

On Saturday, we went out all date-like and did a bunch of things. It was fun - we don't normally go out like that in the interest of saving money. And plus, I tend to like vegging at home, maybe to Greg's dismay since he's a doer.

Downtown Farmer's Market
On the walk to the farmer's market from our car a couple blocks away:

Breakfast burritos:

Pulled pork sandwich and brat, with me nom nom'ing:

No picture of the snow cone that we got, but it was "tiger blood" flavor (coconut + berry flavors). It was good, but I don't think any snow cone/shaved ice here will ever compare to the mango shaved ice we had in a Taiwan mall food court when we were there in 2005. It was like fresh snow, topped with cream and fresh mangoes, and we have yet to discover something comparable here.

Japanese Friendship Garden
We decided to walk around the garden since the weather was so nice.

Frances and Smeeks
Also known as, "We almost took some photo booth pictures." I decided that since we were already going to be in the downtown area, we should go to Smeeks for photo booth pictures. I made this decision after we already left the house, so Greg didn't do his hair, and we eventually decided to go back for photo booth pictures on a day that Greg had a chance to do his hair.

Rainbow Donuts
Donut holes from Rainbow Donuts. I like this picture for its perspective.

Amano Bistro
Bread with olive oil and vinegar:

Tomato and basil bruschetta:

Poblano chili and mushroom pizza:

Ribeye in cream sauce with fingerling potatoes:

Blog Design Update

2011-03-08T20:08:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I get a hankering to change up the look of my blog. I decided I'd give the new Blogger templates a try. I'm not knowledgeable enough with the code to do anything fancy, but I can Google it. In any case, I just tweaked the colors of one of the pre-existing templates, put together a new header in Photoshop Elements, and called it good enough for my current skill level.

I first did a header with carnival tickets (which I scanned) that I have in my scrapbooking supplies:

I didn't feel like it meshed with what I was going for though. So I nixed that header and went with one where I pieced together digital tape strips:

I used these tape strips from Pugly Pixel:
Patterned tape strips
Solid tape strips

There's a lot of other free digital stuff on Pugly Pixel that looks fun to play with. I think I'll have to check these out too:
Velvet strips and corners
Vintage fabric deco tapes
Scallop and starburst medallions
Dot your dots
Paper buffet (all you can eat) <-- I think this is my favorite, with all the variety of elements

Security Training

2011-03-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

I spent the last six days, including the weekend, attending (computer/information system) security training for work. It was really interesting, but made for long days.

It also made me kind of paranoid. Not that I wasn't already a little bit. But maybe that was also a product of the instructor, who made it openly known that he is a paranoid kind of person when it comes to security. A couple examples he told that made me be all like, scary much?:

A site called pleaserobme.com that used to compile public information about your house (where it was, how much it was worth) if you ever said you were going to be out of town on a social networking or other public site. They don't appear to do it anymore, but this Huffington Post article talks about it: Please Rob Me: Site Tells The World When You're Not Home. I was already wary of ever saying online when we were going to be out of town, but this just solidified it even more.
The teacher told us about how, as a graduate student, he would teach courses and give his students an assignment where all he would tell them was his full name, and their task was to spend no more than $20 and find out as much information about him as they could, to illustrate just how much public information is available out there and why people should be careful with what they share. He said he stopped giving that assignment because it was freaky, but some students were able to get a lot of information, such as where he was born, where his wife was born, his children's names, where his children were born, where his parents were born, and even his parents' prom picture. Parents' prom picture! I can understand more if we're talking a prom picture from the last 10 or 15 or even 20 years or so because those do make it onto Facebook and such. But my guess is that this guy's parents are pretty old since he himself was in his mid-forties. He also added that he stopped grading that particular assignment at home because his wife would see how much information his students found out about him and his family and she was not a fan. Heh.

Sometimes I google myself to see what's out there . . . but it's still creepy because although I can control what I put online, I can't control what other people put online (public records, schools, professional associations, etc.) that seem innocuous, but all together, makes for a lot of information that I don't have control over.

Cal Academy Layout

2011-02-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

Layout of our visit to the California Academy of Sciences:

I wanted to scrapbook the pictures from our museum visit, but ended up with a layout that I feel like is less artistic. It accomplishes the goal of telling the story, but I have this notion in my head that scrapbook layouts should be works of art. It's hard to get away from that when that's the message I feel like I get from scrapbook magazines.

Anyway, I usually collect various paper things when we travel (brochures, tickets, maps, etc.), but most times don't actually incorporate those things into layouts. I still don't have the map and ticket from the museum on the front of this layout (except those butterflies punched from a second ticket and a cropped tag from a souvenir T-shirt), but I added a glassine envelope to the back where I could stick those things, as well as a tag with journaling.

I should work on incorporating more stuff I collect on outings onto my layouts so that I don't end up with junk (if it's on a layout, it's meaningful; if it doesn't it's junk).

14.5 Weeks Layout

2011-02-20T12:10:00.002-07:00

I feel like the colorful background (made out of washi tape!) doesn't really mesh with what I ended up doing with the rest of the layout, but meh. Layout got done and that's what's important.

Decorated Wooden Clothespins

2011-02-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

I had some thin strips of Basic Grey paper leftover from when I finished my 2010 Week in the Life mini book that I couldn't bear to throw away, so . . . decorated wooden clothespins it is!

I first covered each side with washi tape, then added a strip of paper down the middle. These will be useful on my message board!

Week in the Life - May 2010

2011-02-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

Last May, I took a stab at the whole Week in the Life thing that Ali Edwards does every year. It was kind of challenging getting pictures of everything because I just don't even think about taking pictures of some of the little things that happen during the day. And honestly, it was kind of a chore pulling out the camera so often. Also, my time spent at work is a big black hole because I'm not bustin' out my camera at work and being all like, "Hold on, I have to take a picture for scrapbooking purposes."

I bought this Basic Grey Perhaps Collection Pack maybe a couple years ago and have been hoarding it:

I finally decided to suck it up and cut into the papers to finish my Week in the Life mini book:

I think I'm going to do Week in the Life for the same week in May this year, and this time I'll try to pick a format that won't take so long for me to finish.

Cheeseburger for Two

2011-02-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, Greg saw on the Joe's Farm Grill Facebook page that they were doing a Valentine's cheeseburger for two special during Valentine's day weekend. We were intrigued, so we went there for lunch on Sunday and ordered it:

I'm not sure what I expected from a 1 lb patty, because I was surprised when the order came out. I guess it's one thing to read in words that it's a 1 lb patty and another to actually see what a 1 lb patty means for your plate (i.e., it takes up the whole thing). It was pretty tasty though.

We also got a couple cupcakes from The Coffee Shop next to Joe's Farm Grill. Although both cupcakes (red velvet and chocolate chip) were quite yummy, they seemed to be smaller than I remember from last time, as well as a tad pricier. At the current size and price, I now put it on par with Sprinkles, whereas the first time I said it was better value than Sprinkles. I still put taste above Sprinkles, but at the same time, I haven't had Sprinkles in a while. Also, I don't profess to be a cupcake connoisseur.

Valentine Tag Collage Card

2011-02-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

I got my hands on these Vintage Valentine Tags and Valentine Milk Bottle Caps by Shabby Chic Crafts from a giveaway and made this card for Greg:

I'll admit that my collage-style tags on the card were inspired by this card I saw on the Elle's Studio blog (they sell tags too - gasp!).

In other news . . . am I supposed to sweat so much after walking on the treadmill for 40 minutes at only 2 mph? I feel like that's weak sauce.

Fabric Basket Bed and Free Photo Booth

2011-02-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

The other day, while I was working on a project in my craft room, I thought I heard the cat (Nina) in my room, but when I looked around, I couldn't see her. Generally, if I don't see her, she's probably not there, because there aren't really any places to hide - even for a cat - in my craft room. I was mistaken, however, because I eventually figured out where she was:

On an unrelated note, Smeeks, which is this cute boutique-y candy shop at Central and Camelback, is doing free photo booth pictures for couples on Valentine's Day. Normally, I think it's like $2 or $3 to do the photo booth (which, yes, isn't like a ton of money, but free is better). I was pretty excited to see a free photo booth opportunity, but I don't think we will make it there on Valentine's Day since we were planning on doing dinner that night.

Bling Theme Card Exchange

2011-02-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

Theme for card exchange this time was bling. I picked up some supplies while we were in the East valley last weekend:

Sunlit Pool glitter paper, Reminisce
Sienne Ledger Silhouette, Paper Reverie, Making Memories
Cool Cantaloupe cardstock, Bazzill
Merry-Go-Round, Carnival Collection, Crate Paper

Such pretty papers. I really enjoy just looking at all the papers at the scrapbook store.

My finished card:

The make-and-take card:

And a collage of the other cards exchanged:

Baby K #1 Thank You Card Papers

2011-02-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

Picked up some patterned paper at Scrapbooks, Etc to use in making baby thank you cards. I was looking forward to finding out gender so that I could solidify my thank you card-making plans. I went in with the idea of picking out all pink patterned papers, but came out with a different color scheme:

Creative Imaginations
Tickled Pink "Wonderful" Paper, Fine and Dandy by Jen Allyson, My Mind's Eye
Lace, Restoration Collection, Crate Paper

Maybe I am jumping the gun, but I'm going to start working on these soon. Heh.

California Academy of Sciences

2011-02-05T21:04:00.002-07:00

After several years of going to the Bay area without visiting Golden Gate Park, we finally went a few weekends ago. Greg's aunt, Kris, took us to the California Academy of Sciences, which had some neat exhibits, including a Rainforests of the World exhibit.

Greg took some neat photos while there:

And a sunset photo as we left the museum:

Retro Blue Bathroom

2011-02-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

Greg's aunt, Kris, has this cool retro bathroom in her 60s-era house. It is decked out in a blue-gold theme and whoever planned the bathroom seriously went all-out perfecting every detail to go with the blue and gold colors, including:

gold fixtures and lighting
blue tile, some with gold stars
blue and gold wallpaper
blue linoleum with gold specks
blue paint
blue tub and toilet

Observe:

Pretend that the toilet seat cover is blue, because it used to be. It's hard to find a replacement for a 40ish year-old blue toilet cover on the market today. Imagine that.

9.5 Weeks Layout

2011-01-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

Scrapbook every ultrasound picture I get my hands on these 40 weeks? Fo shizzle. Baby K #2 might not get so lucky down the road with the scrapbooking of every ultrasound picture, but who knows.

I admit that I'm an impressionable consumer, so when I saw someone using this Martha Stewart starburst punch on their projects, I went out the next day with my Michael's 40% off coupon to get one for myself. Then I punched a bunch of those 1" starburst babies out of white-on-kraft patterned paper and vellum and made myself a sweet background. Overall, pretty simple layout in terms of design and embellishments.

Burp Cloths

2011-01-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

I was motivated to sew some burp cloths last week. Nothing fancy - just sewing some pretty fabric onto cloth diapers following this tutorial. They turned out pretty cute and since I know they are going to get barfed on or used to clean up barf, there was less pressure to be perfectionist about the sewing job.

I told Greg that I put some ribbon on them and he said he didn't want to use them because ribbon is girly. Newsflash for him: girls are girly. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited that pretty little girl dresses are on the horizon.

I was looking at how to make ruffle butt onesies one day and got the verbal equivalent of a stink eye from Greg (maybe I also got the actual stink eye, but I'm not sure because I wasn't paying attention to him) for apparently entertaining the thought that I'd dress our baby in something so silly as ruffle butt onesies. It's okay, I have several months to wear him down. Tee hee.

Asian Mothers

2011-01-16T21:20:00.001-07:00

This article, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, apparently drew a lot of attention when it went up on the Wall Street Journal. There were a lot of comments criticizing the Chinese parenting style the author describes. It was interesting for me, having grown up experiencing both American and Chinese cultures. I think there are pros and cons to both American and Chinese styles of parenting. My mom was never as hardcore of a Chinese mother, compared to either the author or to other Chinese mothers I knew growing up. I can guarantee I won't be, though there are some things that I'm not sure I can ever get away from.

All the attention on the original article also prompted a response from the author here. I ended up getting the book (more like Greg bought it for me before I could object, since I originally wanted to just check it out from the library, but he knows I'd never get around to it if it were left up to me) that the article was based on, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and read it in less than a day. The book is not so much pushing Chinese-style parenting as the only way, but more a story of how that parenting style worked with her own daughters (end result: the strong-willed second daughter prompted an adjustment to the Chinese-style parenting).

There are definitely things that I thought were too extreme that the author describes doing (no sleepovers or playdates). There are other things that I could see myself also emphasizing, though not necessarily to the same extreme, e.g., doing well in school, learning to play an instrument (I favor the piano), and if possible, learning Mandarin (a hard thing to do in an environment where there are few opportunities to practice in day-to-day activities).

On a lighter note, I do like Asian mom humor, because it's relatable (to me, at least) and there's some truth behind it. This YouTube video is pretty hilarious:

"We come all the way from that far country China and we born you here in America just so you can get B+ in Engrish?!"

Blue and Grey Doily Heart Tag

2011-01-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

While I was picking out ribbon to sew onto some burp cloths, I re-discovered some other ribbon that I had, which gave me the idea to make a little something for Greg:

I stuck the ribbon on a grey heart in rows. Don't try to read the words on the ribbon though - it won't work because I had to cut out parts of the ribbon to make it fit the heart shape. Greg couldn't resist poking some fun at that. Shoot. It looks good though. On the back of the tag, I wrote Greg a short little note.

Divine Twine

2011-01-15T21:00:00.002-07:00

Coming across new/pretty/crafty things is part of what's fun about reading blogs.

Earlier today, I saw this post: Happy Mail
Which led me to this post: Airmail Inspiration
Which led me to this shop: Divine Twine

A little while ago, since he indulges my craftiness, Greg got me all the colors of baker's twine from Divine Twine. Since then, however, new colors have been released! (No, this is not me hinting that Greg should get the other colors for me, because I' rather keep the money. Heh). Aside from blueberry, plum, and brown sugar, I have to admit that the air mail twine does look pretty sweet. Makes me want to send more packages just so I can pretty them up all nice-like.

Nordstrom Rack

2011-01-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

I know Nordstrom Rack has been around for a while (I think the one close to us opened while we were in high school), but I've never actually made an effort to shop there.

This weekend, we went into Nordstrom Rack to look for some dress pants for Greg. While Greg walked out empty-handed, I came out with a few tops for just under $10 each, and so I ask myself: what have I been missing out on all these years?!

I was on the lookout for some loose and flowy tops that would cover my fat belly without making me look frump-tastic and fortunately the whole loose-and-flowy thing is in style right now. Sweet. And since none of these were actually maternity tops, that means I can wear them after the fact!

Crafty Temptations

2011-01-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

With the start of the new year, I've been reading about Project Life for 2011 on various blogs (comes in Amber and Turquoise!). It makes me tempted to follow suit and do a year-long scrapbooking project, but I don't know if I'm ready for that level of commitment. I can barely keep up with this weekly Belly Book shiz that Greg bought me and that doesn't even last a whole year or require as much effort. Sometimes Greg has to guilt me into working on it.

I have been feeling more motivated to be crafty recently (scrapbooking and sewing, not so much cardmaking) whereas for the last few months, I've been pretty much blah about it.

I do occasionally come across other crafty temptations that, like with Project Life, I have not been able to (a) commit to and/or (b) convince myself to shell out the money for:

Art journals. I toy with the idea of starting one when I see other people's, such as this and this.
Kit clubs. I've been eyeing Studio Calico and Jenni Bowlin. But man, each month is like $30. Times 12 months equals kind of a chunk of money to spend on scrapbooking stuff that I probably won't use as fast as I get.
Week in the life. Last May, I did actually go through and take pictures, as well as jot down daily notes, for a week. I even went so far as to develop the pictures and put them on a book ring to make a little album of all my pictures and notes. That's as far as I got though. I should make one of my goals to finish last May's before I do another week this May.
Making and sending holiday cards. I see other people making cute cards to send out, but then when I start thinking about who to send cards to and having to collect mailing addresses, I get discouraged all quick-like. Some year down the road, maybe.
December Daily albums. I've only been able to do a December (but not daily) album. It's less pressure that way. I'm planning to do one for this past December. We'll see if I beat my March completion date for the December 2009 mini album.

I've got some sewing projects in the queue, so I'm looking forward to working on those the next few weeks.

Chicago Layout

2011-01-02T12:55:00.001-07:00

Finished this layout several months ago, but never posted about it.

Took me a long time to finish it. I originally wanted to do the journaling in white, so I sat on the unfinished layout since I didn't have a good white pen to do the journaling. I finally decided to just do the journaling in black so that I'd actually finish it. Took the color scheme from this Color Inspiration on the KWerner Design blog.

On the topic of white pens . . . I found that the Ranger Inkssentials White Opaque Gel Pen didn't work so hot for when I tried to journal with it since it didn't write that smoothly and didn't show up that well on darker paper. I did, however, really like the Uni-ball Signo White Gel Pen for the reasons that I didn't like the Inkssentials one. I picked one up at Maido while we were visiting Greg's aunt in San Jose.

Icee Float

2011-01-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

Apparently, you can get an Icee float at the Coke store in Las Vegas. Greg and I shared one while we were there.

Verdict: Icees and vanilla ice cream are both very good separately and I'd like to enjoy them that way. Greg said he liked the combination though.