full grown woman

Sometimes…

Life gets the better of me.

It just does.

And I get grumpy, and irritable, and the mere sound of my children makes my head pound.

And so today I sent them away. Matt, Christian and Lily…be gone! (They went to the gym, and to dinner without me.)

I took a long bath to brood.

And think.

And grieve.

And sob.

And then, I got out, and put some clean clothes on.

And now, I miss them, and am sorry I sent them away.

Because I realized it wasn’t them, it’s just life.

And sometimes it gets the better of me.

I’m sorry.

Changing Tactics

I tried to be the kind of homemaker that had a daily schedule. You know:

Monday: Vacuuming

Tuesday: Laundry

Wednesday: Baking

etc.

But, I realized, I’m just not that kind of homemaker. I prefer to clean it all in a frenzy. ALL of it. Well, the majority of it. On the weekend when the toddler is otherwise occupied.  And then I pick a room or something that needs deep cleaning and maybe work on that when I can, and do clutter busting and other stuff through the week that requires just a short burst of focused time.

I’m finding that I’m much happier this way with the results. The laundry gets clean all on the weekends, which leaves the washer free for diapers through the week. (Although, I am REALLY hoping we’re getting closer to not needing diapers soon…more to come on that.) The house just needs a quick pick up and swipe and vacuum if we’re having friends over through the week. And, it leaves me much more time to focus on parenting, which has been somewhat of a desperate situation lately. Have I mentioned I have a toddler?

It also has freed me up to be more active in the prep of dinner. We have done a lot of eating out in the past which is neither wallet or weight loss friendly. Since I get the majority of the cleaning and laundry done on the weekends, I can have more time on the week days to chop and get things ready for that night’s dinner, or throw something in the crock pot around noon, and then dinner is ready or close to ready when we get home from the gym.

I think this will also really work in my favor when I return to work in December for tax season.

I have a 4th Grader?!?!?

Someone, please tell me when this happened??

My heart ACHES to think I already have a 4th grader.

This is the forever picture I have in my mind of him. He’ll always be this little boy. Full of smiles saying things like, “Mommy, I love you AND I like you.” Sniff….

This is his self portrait from the other day:

Still smiley. I love this boy so much. I don’t think he’ll ever know just how much. He makes mothering easy. Something I look forward to. Something I live for.

This is what things are like

at my house. I have a toddler. She runs around in her diaper. (At least it’s cute, right?) She also likes to throw tantrums. (This picture was taken whilst her screaming “NOOOOOO” and burying her head into my chair.) She will eat like I have never fed her before at one meal, and then not touch a bite the next.

She dances and sings and laughs with abandon.

She spontaneously will burst out with an, “I love you” for no particular reason.

She is mine. And, for better or for worse I thank God for her. She tests my every boundary. The boundaries of my patience, the boundaries of experiencing joy, and the boundaries of loving someone that is both incredibly lovable and unlovable all wrapped up in one crazy package.

Quilting 103

I finally decided to get in gear and take pictures of my Quilting 103 project. I call it that, but the class was actually called, “From Blocks to Tops”. In this class, we learned to take the blocks that we made in a previous class, “Fast, Fun and Easy Blocks” and square them up, and add borders and sashing to complete the top to make a crib size or wall hanging sized quilt.

Here it is!

I love it!!! I am really pretty proud of this one. Now, I just need to take “Machine Quilting” and then I think I’d like to take a private lesson on binding. I have figured out for myself that I really learn by doing, and although there are LOTS of binding tutorials online, I think for me having immediate feedback on my learning is key to my success.

A compliment.

I went to the gym on Friday to swim. I have now passed the mile marker! I still marvel at it and am continuously grateful that I am able to swim!

My times are still quite slow, and I am really working on not letting that bother me. My goal lately in all things is not to compare myself to others but to just focus on how I can improve myself.

However, sometimes that’s hard. There was a swimmer next to me on Friday. Six pack abs, sleek physique, wearing a race cap from a triathlon. She lapped me several times during our swim time “together.” I’ll admit it was hard to not compare! I had to continuously remind myself how awesome it was that I was going to complete a full mile.

I finished and was just sort of stretching and enjoying being in the water, and she walked over to me. My heart started to panic. It was like I was almost afraid she was going to tell me, “get out of the water, Fatty, and leave the swimming to the pros.” or something. But, what she said was,

“I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but you are an excellent swimmer.”

Um, what?!?! Did this goddess of a woman just say I was an excellent swimmer?!?!? Me?!?!?

Yeah, she did.

I’m pretty sure I turned 50 shades of red and said, “thank you, that really made my day.”

Made my year, my decade…

Super cute place mats!!!

I somehow stumbled upon this super cute blog and after seeing the adorable place mats Sarah had written a pattern for, I knew I had to purchase it and make some of my own!

I just managed to only finish one top, but I’m in love already!

Quilting Bee Block #5 and #6

I have found throughout this bee that the more confident I get with my quilting abilities, the more fun I am having and the more I look forward to different techniques and challenges.

Amy, from Midnight Quilt Mom is part of my bee and she had a string quilt in store for us with the brightest, cheeriest fabrics! This was a really fun block to do! The wheels are really spinning on my own version!

Then, Kierra, from A Pumpkin to Myself submitted a block that incorporated paper piecing and applique. After my struggles with applique on the first block, I was really intimidated. I kept putting her block off. Now I’m sorry I did! It actually went really quickly. Except for my stupidity when it comes using stabilizers. I applied the stabilizer for the circle, and appliqued the WHOLE THING and then realized I never pulled the paper backing off!!!!

DOH!

So, I had to rip out all of those teeeeeeny, tiiiiiiiiiiiny satin stitches out. UGH.

But, once it was done, I was pretty proud of it, and now I have yet another plan for a quilt. Sigh.

A cute little quilt. And…

it is my first, fully finished quilt!!! I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I was pretty nervous because a friend was going to make this quilt for her daughter, but then she got awfully tired and unmotivated, (as women in their few weeks before delivery tend to do) and so I offered to do it for her.

She wanted a simple block construction and OBV (organic bamboo velour) for the backing. I figured that I would want to quilt velour, so I decided to turn and top-stitch instead of binding it and then hand tied it using some sort of tied cotton thread.

What do you think?

If I stare at it a long time, I can see issues with color distribution, but over all I am pretty happy.

Quilting 102 Class

It really isn’t called Quilting 102, but that is a pretty fitting description in the next offering I took at the Creative Needle.

The actual title was something like, “Fast, Fun and Easy Blocks”. At any rate, we assembled most of the pieces in class and then took a lot of the project home as homework. In two days, I’ll go back for Quilting 103, or…”From Blocks to Tops”.

Here is what I’ve managed to get done in the last couple of days:

I have one more block to assemble and then in class we’ll put them all together with sashing and borders.