The last week in pictures

Heather didn't want me to make a quilt for Oliver. Maybe it has something to do with taking 3 years to finish Maveryk's? Anyway, I made a diaper bag instead. Not the traditional luggage type bag though. It's a sling bag in fabrics to match Oliver's nursery theme.

That giraffe fabric is sooooo soft and snuggly. There's enough left to make something else for his nursery soon.
Kenzie was sick all day on Saturday, she thought it was food poisoning, and had to leave Sunday morning to go back to school. :(

Speaking of school, Jaxon had lots of catching up to do after his pink eye induced 4 day weekend. I love how serious he is when he's focused on his homework.

On Tuesday I got hit by the plague. I guess Kenzie didn't have food poisoning after all. :P I spent the next 36 hours mostly in this position.

(Note to self: You should really get the mantle redecorated now that you took Christmas down.)
The good news is, I got a lot of reading done in my book club book, Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza. Which was my pick for book club and is admittedly difficult to read. I hope I haven't sabotaged book club before it even got off the ground. Even though it's a hard read, I'm enjoying it.
When I was feeling better and solid food seemed wise again I made a run to the craft store. I thought I might treat myself to lunch at Rumbi Island Grill. I love their fish tacos. But there's a Jimmy John's right next door to Rumbi, and I had heard it's good so I stopped there for a sandwich instead.

I was not impressed. Now I feel ripped off for my fish tacos. 
I went to lunch with friends on Thursday and Friday but forgot to take pics. You'll have to trust me, it was lovely.
 

First "Remains Of The Day" Journal Cover + Bonding with Emily

I made my first journal cover yesterday. I love it so much!

There's a little surprise fabric flower when you open the cover.

This will be our family journal. The first one for 2012 anyway. As fast as this family is growing, I suspect it will take several journals to document a year.
The fabric choices were mainly based on a color theme, but really fit the family theme too. They are from
~Jaxon's nursery set that I made for him.
~Dish drying mats that I made as a gift for Christy.
~A lined basket that was a gift for Kayleigh when she was a teenager.
~A leftover square from a quilt I made for Tukker.
~Fabric from a quilt that Heather made for her inlaws.
~Ribbon from Jaxon's birth announcements.
Lots of good stuff!

Emily has been asking if she could do a sewing project but she didn't seem to have a clear purpose for one. So I suggested that she make a journal too. One to keep her memories of 7th grade and pictures of her friends.
We had fun working on this project together.
She and I have a difficult relationship sometimes, so it's pretty awesome when we find something that we can be happy working on together.
We did have a blast digging through the scrap basket and sewing our covers.
Here is hers. Just her style!

She did a lot of the actual sewing herself. Slowly gaining confidence for using the sewing machine.
Today we will make the signatures. Yay!


signature n.

a.  a sheet of paper printed with several pages that upon folding will become a section or sections of a book

b.  such a sheet so folded

Week in Pictures 1/1-1/6

I finished Dexter's quilt!

I think he likes it.

After a holiday full of slightly too delicious food, I was so happy to see a baking sheet full of fresh veggies going into our dinner!

Jaxon had as much fun helping me UNdecorate as he did helping me decorate last month.

Roger and I took Kenzie out to dinner at Thaifoon to celebrate her 19th birthday. *sigh* 19.

Pinkeye = 4 day weekend for Jaxon. Gah!

You'd think the eye drops are made of battery acid the way he protests them.

My Word Of The Year

NOTE
verb

to write or mark down briefly; make a memorandum of
to make particular mention of in a writing
to observe carefully; give attention or heed to
to take notice of; perceive
annotate; supply with critical or explanatory notes

Raising a half million kids taught me to sort of skim the surface a lot of the time. It's just not possible to absorb every single detail of every single day when you're in the thick of it. There are a great many things I have forgotten. And sometimes I'm sad to have forgotten them.
And there are times in my life when I feel overlooked, skimmed over, not noticed. And it's painful.
So my hope for this year is to take more notes. Literally and figuratively. To be PRESENT, NOTICE, PAY ATTENTION to my life and the lives of those I love.

My new obsession with journaling should be a very useful tool in this endeavor. Dontcha think? ;)

December 2011 as practice for my new obsession*

*VERY long post with MANY pictures. Don't say I didn't warn you!
I used to be a scrapbooker. A VERY long time ago.
The older kids have decent scrapbooks up until their early teen years.
Emily has a couple of years.
Jaxon's has...umm...a picture of the positive pregnancy test and the ultrasound that showed he was a boy.
Oy!
I seriously dropped the ball.
Then came blogging. I thought this would be a great way to easily keep documenting our family's day to day life.
I planned to blog faithfully and then have a printed book made of the blog posts every year.
So far, not one printed book.
Nada, zip, zilch.
Blogger, my family is counting on YOU to safeguard those memories. Don't let them down!
At least it's here though, if the kids want to thumb through their memories. Right?
The problem with that is that I also like to collect memorabilia of our experiences. Maps of places we've been, brochures, scraps of this and that. Know what I mean? And there's not a great way to incorporate those bits and pieces into the blog. I suppose I could scan them in and post them. But I don't.
For a couple of months now I've been kind of itching to go back to pen and paper scrapping.
The kids just love going through those old books. Lately it has been so much fun to look through them and compare the grandbabies now with their moms at the same ages and stages.
But I just can't get into doing it like the old days. It was just too cutesy, trendy, expensive, time and space consuming and frankly, kind of stressful. Making pages that match pictures. Keeping it all in order and keeping up. ugh!
I know that digital scrapbooking is all the rage now too. But even that is still kind of more of the same to me.
I have friends who do it and love it and are really talented with it. But it just isn't me.
So then I thought maybe journaling would be the way to go. Hmm....much more intriguing to me.
I was busy, busy, busy getting ready for Christmas so I kind of put it in the back of my head for a beginning of the year project.
And then...THEN! I stumbled across this blog.
I stayed up till 1 or 2 or some crazy time in the morning reading through her blog. Very cool lady with a seemingly very cool life. But I was especially intrigued by her homemade journals. Just GORGEOUS things that I wanted so badly to reach through the screen and just start digging through.
I noticed on the sidebar that she has some online classes available for learning how to make those amazing books! So I signed up for the Remains of The Day classes. And then proceeded to go crazy because I didn't have time to take the classes till after Christmas.
But I had been inspired enough by what I did see to start a little practice run using an old photo album I had kicking around. I used it for sticker storage WAY back when I did scrapbooking.

So in between the chaos of preparing for Christmas (BTW I failed miserably at keeping Christmas calm and simple this year. Miserably. Christmas day was awesome but the weeks leading up to it? Not so much.) I proceeded to makeover that little album to test out the style and see if it felt as right to me as it seemed.
I stole moments here and there to get it ready to become our December 2011 book.
I finished it today.
And I was right. This style is totally ME. Kinda messy, kinda random, kinda scrappy and just so visually tempting to me. And there is also fabric and sewing! Jackpot!
I CANNOT wait to make an actual Remains of the Day journal. It's going to be so much better than this!
I've already tried my practice book out on two of the kids, Emily and Crystal, and they seemed to love flipping through the pages and discovering the tucked away things. Maybe they're just playing along with mom's latest thing, humoring me, but I think they really did enjoy it.
And now I'll show it to you. Ready?
Click on the pictures to enlarge, if you're so inclined.

my shabby, scrappy December 2011 family journal

It's a little messier than necessary. LOL But I love it and it was so much fun. I'm glad I did a little test run because I learned a lot.
Not the least of which is that computers have been the ruin of my handwriting skills. But I'll soon be back in practice. :)
Okay, I'm off to begin the real thing now! The family probably doesn't really NEED dinner. Right?