Cards

I love making cards. My favorite thing is putting a card in the mail and knowing that it will brighten someone's day. Here are a few I made over the weekend. I can't wait for one day to have a craft room but for now I will settle for just being able to have the tools and toys to make beautiful cards. Happy Monday!

*Feel free to use for inspiration in your own crafts but please don't claim as your own. Thanks!

Learning to LIVE with Less

My husband and I have ventured our way into a new land of sorts. It started out with an article he passed me one day last summer and said, "how about this for an idea?". The article you ask, something to the effect of living a vagabond lifestyle. Of course my first thought was one of plenty, plenty of not wanting to do it! As time has marched on in our life and we have started to make way for space in our little home, we have seemingly moved into an era of living our life with less and at the same time, I feel as though having less "things" and not so much clutter is allowing me to LIVE more. I felt for many years that what we had was going to make us what others might have seen us to be but after tragic loss and the struggle to revitalize our son, I see that living with less is going to do more for us.

It is a very hard struggle to choose items to give away or no longer own but I'm finding in the freedom it is giving way for more dedicated thoughts of what I hope for to be what our family's life will be about. Who do I want to be? I feel at an impasse you could say, stay at home mom with an almost four year old wanting my life to have some purpose. To be able to enjoy the time I take to do something and feel good after having done it.  I want to create and share with others, have beauty and learn. I want to be a good friend and good mom and good wife. I want to excel and pray that with less, God will be able to show me more of who I am.

Man Down, Man Down!

It seems as though someone had the idea that I needed a wee vacation of sorts...Saturday morning went as planned for the most part. Got some laundry started (total accomplishment btw), Let the wee one paint (even bigger accomplishment) and then was going to head out and take the kiddie to see the cutest set of twins!

Well as I was remembering the laundry, I ran out to the said laundry room, which is out in our garage and surrounded by a few extra craft supples that SOMEBODY I, should have picked up and put away, a while ago. In an effort to be Suzy Housewife Extraordinaire, I dutifully grabbed the basket plopped it in front of the dryer, opened 'er up and leaned in for the mother load of clothes....ummm what I got though instead was two bulging discs and a 3 day hospital stay (so far)! If I do say so myself and I do, it was pretty awesome. Imagine if you will for just a moment...Mom at home with Little Miss, while Sir-reads-a lot is at a teen church conference, luckily he was just down the road and close to coming home. Now Little Miss or LM for short today, is for all intents and purposes, potty trained, thank you Lord! Only thing is, is that she has this affinity to liking someone else have to do the dirty work and wipe for her, oh and put her on and take her off. So just as I lean in to get the laundry, I feel a lightning bolt shoot up and down my back. I lean to the washer to hold me up because with each infintessimal move I anguish in more pain and the feeling that my legs are going to drop out from me and I will go crashing to the floor. I take a few deep breaths and try to move...WRONG IDEA LADY, what am I thinking...and then I hear it, you know what I am about to say don't you??? "MOMMY!!!! I have to go potty....NOW MOMMY!!!". What the heck am I supposed to do now??? Of course like any super mom I don't want LM to pee her pants so I take a few deep breaths and tell her to run to the potty and get herself on and mommy will get there in a minute to help her. So I get myself to the floor on all fours and crawl to the bathroom and get LM off the potty. I crawl to the living room and lay myself over the the large ottoman, knees bent, head on pillow and there I lay. I successfully reach my sister in law and request for her to come and get me and take me to the hospital because if she can't then it was going to be 911 coming and now while it would have been necessary, I think it would have just given LM a bit of a heart attack to see that happen. The boy came home shortly after I make the call to my SIL and he helps with LM while I wait, stuck on the ottoman.

My super sister in law got there and brought another super sister in law along as well who stayed with the kiddos (phew, now I didn't have to fear the kids by themselves!). They all work together, get me in the car and we are off to the hospital. Now lots of pain meds, say ouch, an MRI later, what happened at 12:45 on Saturday is now running into Wednesday evening and hopefully after the cortisone injection I got this morning starts to work it's magic, I will get to go home. Oh and home right now is a lovely morphology of chaos with LM getting the flu last night, Mr.Subby getting it today and waiting to hear that the Boy has it too...maybe another night in here doesn't sound too bad!