Thursday, November 29, 2012

Play Kitchen Sketch

So this isn't a stamping, scrapbooking, or knitting project, but it is a project...a building project.  Quent and I are going to make Jeralyn a play kitchen.  We don't want to go too crazy with Christmas gifts for our little girl, but it's almost hard not to.  Oops!  Originally, we were going to get her a couple of books (she LOVES books), a couple of stocking stuffers, a scooter car thing, and maybe some Duplos.  Well, I scratched the Duplos idea when we were recently visiting at my inlaws.  My 22 month old nephew has a play kitchen and Jeralyn just loved it!  She played with it and it's accessories a lot!  He has Duplos too, but she just tossed them around.  Haha!  Maybe for her birthday...  So I started looking for some kitchens on Amazon.  They tend to be rather spendy, so I had to keep on searching.  My dear friend Carrie suggested that maybe we could build our own.  I think I honestly laughed out loud when she told me that.  Maybe if I was sipping water I would have spit it out--it was one of those reactions.  Me?  Build a play kitchen?  My husband is waaaay to busy for that.  The excuses flowed.  She encouraged me to look on Pinterest for ideas.  Haha...maybe.  But I did!  And soon I was in this whirlwind of DIY (do it yourself) play kitchens.  Now I'm obsessed!  I'm glad I took Carrie's advice because now we are on our way to building this thing.  After looking at ideas on Pinterest I sketched this out:
 
It's not to scale, but it's close.

We will be transforming this entertainment stand into the kitchen.  Tonight we will start cutting and maybe start painting real soon.  I will take a lot of pics and show the progression.  Stay tuned!
 
P.S. That basket is where I keep my current knitting projects and knitting tools.  And it's stored most of our DVDs, which I moved to some shelves yesterday.  It all lives downstairs in our "family room".

Knitting here and there

I currently have 3 knitting projects going.  Here are some glimpses:
 

A beaded shawl.  Probably one of the most challenging projects I've done.  I was intimidated at first because I never did beading with knitting, but it's been surprisingly easy.  There are 300+ stitches each row and it's lace thread, so this is taking awhile (aka forever).  The picture doesn't really do justice to the beauty.

I knit this Christmas stocking for Jeralyn.  I'm NOT a sock knitter, but this was a fun project (and there was only ONE--I don't like knitting socks because you finish one and then have to do another--unless...oh never mind).  I simplified the project by just doing two colors, where the original pattern calls for 3 colors.  I should have taken a picture next to a penny to show scale.  You can find the FREE pattern here.  It took me about 2 days to knit this, but it would have been less time if I didn't have to pull out the toe part two times.  The 3rd time is a charm, right?  I really like this simple pattern.  I will probably use it for future children (future--when that time comes).  *smile*  Oh, and I just bought some purple sequins that I will sew onto the purple.  I will take more/better pictures (showing scale) once it's truly completed.
 
How about you?  Any projects you are trying to finish up this year?

Monday, November 19, 2012

Sweetie

Hello!  I just wanted to stop by to post this page.  Happy Thanksgiving [to those in the states]!
 

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Sittin' Pretty

Hello!  I hope you all had a good week and are ready for the week ahead!  I'm ready to celebrate Thanksgiving Day and eat some turkey!  Yum!  I have so many things to be thankful for...so many people to be thankful for... 
 
I didn't create much in the scrapbooking realm this week, but my fingers have been busy with knitting.  I'm not used to having knitting "deadlines", but with Christmas right around the corner, the pressure is on!  I enjoy it though!  This is the time of year where the weather and less light create a perfect situation to sit, knit, and drink some warm tea or coffee with creamer.  I'm loving it!  Oh, and I can't forget to watch a movie either!  I need something for my eyes and ears to focus on while knitting.  I guess I like to involve all of my senses.  And lately I have been watching the Little House on the Prairie seasons (for probably the 20th time).  But today I think I must take a break from knitting just to give my wrists some relief.  I tend to get a knitting "injury" in my left wrist if I knit too much.  So sad!  Ha!
 
So maybe some scrapping will take place instead!
 
I created this page about a week ago:
 

Thursday, November 8, 2012

My lil sunshine

This layout was inspired by a layout Kaleigh Wiles did from Designer Digitals.  She is such an inspiration to me when it comes to scrapbooking.  I just really enjoy her stuff!  And now her Studio-D templates are available and they are really a lot of fun.  I didn't use her template for this page though.  And speaking of Designer Digitals, they are having a 30% off sale for a week for their quarterly sale.  I took advantage of it today.  I had a bunch of stuff in my cart and was in disbelief when I saw the total.  Yikes!  I thought, "There must be something wrong with their site calculator!"  Ha!  So I had to take some stuff out and figure out what I really wanted.  Cough.
 
 
 
And can I say once again how extremely difficult it is to not scrapbook every picture of my little cutie pie?!  I had to skip over some pictures because they don't really exemplify anything except that she's just so stinkin' cute!  There are thousands of pictures that I have to pick from, so I am trying to make the wisest choices.  Ha!

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Love this girl

I bet if I would have scrapped this page back in February/March of this year I would have been very emotional because it was a very emotional time right after my lovely appendectomy (surgery to remove my ruptured appendix).  It wasn't fun at all.  But the hardest part about it was being away from Jeralyn.  She did great, but I did NOT like being away from her when I stayed in the hospital.  It was a short time of 5-6 days, but at the time it felt like forever.  My body went through so much at the time and because of the medications, antibiotics, and just not feeling well, my body stopped producing for my nursing baby.  And then all of that combined with hormones because of all of that stopping--well, I was just a mess!  And then I couldn't lift her for 6 weeks!  When the doctor told me that I just started crying. 
 

 
But you know what?  It could have been so much worse!  When I was about 21 weeks pregnant I woke up in the middle of the night with extreme pain on my right side.  Quent was gone and the pain was so bad that I had to hunch over when I walked.  After maybe 2 days (have I ever mentioned that I'm quite stubborn?), I sent a prayer request out to family/friends and within a very short time the pain subsided.  At the time I (and my doctor) attributed it to round ligament pain, but honestly, I think it was my appendix.  I think it was doing something.  I am so thankful that God stopped all of that and held it together for me.  I don't even want to know what that would have been like to have a ruptured appendix during pregnancy.  So I count my blessings!

Monday, November 5, 2012

Grandpa

Hello!  Happy Monday!  I worked on this page this morning...
 
 
I'm feeling terribly behind *chuckle* on scrapbooking.  I look at all of the photos and think, "HOW am I going to pick my favorites?"  How?  I don't know, but I will figure something out.  I'm sort of going in chronological order, but also going with the flow.  Does that make sense?  I'm not in a rush by any means.  I want to capture those memories through photos that mean the most.  But even that's hard. Hmmm...
 
I feel like this blog has turned into "this is what I scrapped" and "this is where I'm at with scrapping photos" and blah, blah, blah.  I want it to be more.  So I'm trying to define what "more" means.
 
So in the mean time I will leave you with something I wrote out on paper and have it in my bathroom to remind me:
 
Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know your labor in the Lord is not in vain.  1 Cor. 15:58

Friday, November 2, 2012

Weeks 50, 51, & 52

Guess what???  I'm done scrapping her baby journal pages!!  Woot!  Woot!  And these last few pages had a turquoise them--oops!  I guess I just like the color.  *shrugs*
 
So I have officially decided to do a monthly journal for her second year.  There's just so many things that I want to write down and capture with journaling.  I debated about doing it because I hadn't been writing things down after her birthday.  But I started writing down things from memory the other day and I think I have a good foundation to work off of now.  Instead of doing a collage of pictures I will just pick one picture per page and then journal about what happened in her month.  I'm excited to get started!  But I'm also excited that I have completed the first year for her baby journal/album!   Yeah!