steph's stuff

Fa la la la la, la la la crap

I am in the middle of decking the halls.

 
When I start decking the halls, I am very excited. Singing Christmas carols around the house, dancing with the kids, clapping with them when we find the M&M Christmas dish - very, very full of Christmas spirit.

When I'm done decking the halls, I will feel very comforted and cozy and much more relaxed. I can picture sitting in my decked-out family room, by the fireplace, looking at the stockings hung with care, dreaming of my kids' faces on Christmas morning and just loving this season.

 
Right now, though, I'm in the middle of it all. Which means boxes half-full of stuff. I have lights hanging out of one box, ornaments and bows spilling out of another, and my dining room basically looks like Christmas threw up in it.

So, I'm at the fa la la la la, la la la crap stage.

So grateful for it all

Our Thanksgiving was not the best one we've ever had but it was not the worst, either. We had some timing issues with dinner, I made the world's worst gravy, and we all ate so many hors d'oeurves that we didn't eat much dinner. But, we were with family, had a lot of laughs, and the hors d'oeurves were fabulous even though dinner wasn't. LOL!

The day after was much of a disaster because I was sick but we're just going to gloss over those details and put up pretty pictures instead. Okay? Okay!

The weekend started with my MeMe's fudge. Scraping out the pan is one of the best holiday traditions around here!

Pouting about not getting any is another.

 
Just some of the amazing hors d'oeurves we had!

 
Since it was our first holiday in this house, I went a bit minimal with the decorations and used candles to fill in the gaps. And I loved it!

The red water goblets always make me smile because we only use them for the winter holidays.

Very simple white plates and white napkin rings with a linen tablecloth and napkins. 

And now it's time for the pretty stuff to come out. I'm so excited about decorating a new house!

This year, I'm so grateful for my family, wonderful friends (old and new), our home, and our happiness. :)

These are not my pants!

Andrew came into our bedroom this morning complaining that he didn't have any clean pants. I knew all of the laundry was done and I also knew that I had seen clean pants in his pile as Emily was folding them. 

I sent him back to his room and told him that he hadn't looked closely enough and to go get dressed. He walked away muttering about girls doing laundry which I ignored.

Stomping indignantly back into our room a few moments later, he held a pair of jeans folded in his hands. With a large flourish and a lot of disgust, he opened up the jeans and thrust them into my face so that I could clearly see the rhinestone flowers embroidered all over the back pockets.

"THESE are not my pants!"

When Tom and I could stop laughing and were able to see through the tears in our eyes, we looked up at him and he was still standing there holding the pants with total disdain and looking at the two of us like we had lost our minds. Which made us laugh even more.

And then I found him some other pants.

When I find the time

I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year, not to mention working on Christmas gifts, have a ton of presents still to buy, have the house to decorate, Christmas photos to take, Christmas cards to design and on and on.... The to-do list just gets longer and longer every single day this time of year.

But, that doesn't stop me from looking at fabric and dreaming of having the free time to play with it. My next project (after Christmas presents) will be the Line Art Quilt from the Fat Quarter Shop.

I've never bought a kit before but I couldn't resist this yummy, spring-like quilt.

And lookie, lookie - a box arrived yesterday!

 
The fabric is the Dream On line from Moda.

 
And the fabric and the pattern are here!

 
 
I may just have to give up sleeping for the next month in order to have time to work on this. :)

I am not as young as I think I am

Sigh. This weekend did me in. Wait - I should clarify. Saturday night's adventures did me in. It's been 36 hours and I still haven't recovered. It's that damn aging thing.

It started out innocently. Dinner with friends to celebrate the husbands' birthdays that are just two days apart. Dinner was great with lots of laughs and a drink or two. After dinner is where the adventures set in. We were done with dinner at 7:20 p.m. and couldn't fathom going home that early when the kids were already taken care of. We were free of kids! So, going home at 7:20 was unthinkable.

And that's where I got stupid. And consumed way more alcohol than I've consumed probably since college. I'm a very, very light drinker. One drink once a month is big for me. Well, I had five months' worth of drinks in three hours.

And woke up the next morning - on my husband's birthday - wishing that a semi-truck would come through the doors and put me out of my misery. It was the longest day of my life. My poor husband deserves an entire do-over for his birthday 'cause I was absolutely no fun to anyone.

All that being said, those three hours were FUN with all caps! I sincerely hope that we can do it again very soon but this time, I will be adding a lot more water and diet coke to my liquid evening.

It's Monday morning and I still don't feel great. And we're hosting Thanksgiving here in three short days. I'm giving myself until noon to wallow in the agony and then I'm cleaning the house. 

Maybe.

Ugh.  

A date with Harry

Emily and I went to the midnight premiere of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part I" last night and it was - pardon the pun - magical. I don't know how much longer she'll want to do these kinds of things with me and I'm so grateful that I let her talk me into it. We had fantastic seats, talked and laughed and played on our phones for 90 minutes until the movie started and then snuggled and laughed throughout the movie. It was a great night with my daughter and an excellent movie. A series that I will never forget because of how strongly Em and I have bonded over this entire series of books and movies since she was in kindergarten.

Not to mention that Harry is looking very.....ahem....mature....in this movie. ;) Eye candy, for sure. Baby eye candy, but still....

I am the world's biggest sloth today - I only slept from 3:30 - 6:30 a.m. - and have spent the entire day on the couch since the kids went to school. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to sleep - primarily because my head is pounding so badly from lack of sleep. Terribly ironic.

But, I did throw together a layout in about 10 minutes this morning. Just so that I never forget.

 

All supplies from DesignerDigitals and can be found here.

 

I have found the cure!

My neighbors and I joke about male refrigerator blindness. You know how it goes:

Hubby: "Honey, where is the ketchup?"

Wife: "Second shelf on the right."

Hubby: "No, it's not. I don't see it."

Wife: Gets up from her chair where she's reading to the baby, helping the 1st grader with her spelling words, counseling the third grader on how to deal with a science project, making the weekly grocery list, getting the husband's dry cleaning ready, and folding laundry and she slowly walks over to the fridge, leans in front of her husband, and hands him the ketchup which was right under his nose on the second shelf from the right.

That's male refrigerator blindness.

Unfortunately, my husband has whole-house blindness. "Where's my socks? Where's the toothpaste? I can't find my gloves. Where's the hammer? Did you see where the remote went? Where's my dry cleaning?"

Yeah, that's whole-house blindness.

And I have found the cure.

At The Container Store. I WILL be using these.

And I will also be using these. And hoping that Santa actually delivers this year. I'm guessing that once the whole-house blindness issue has been cured, Santa might be able to find the Christmas list. ;)

 
 

I research things to death

When I started scrapbooking, I didn't just enjoy the hobby. I bought ALL of the supplies, printed 1000 pictures out, made a honeymoon album out of our honeymoon photos, made each child a specialized album for that school year, found out about publishing, submitted layouts to be published, started working on design teams for scrapbooking manufacturers, started writing blogs, articles and e-book articles on the topic and on and on.

When I started taking digital photos, it wasn't enough to have a digital camera and print the photos straight out of the camera. I needed to teach myself photoshop, then I needed a better camera, then I need to learn how to use the manual settings on it, then I needed expensive lenses, then I needed an even better camera, then friends started asking me to take their families' photos, then I started a small photography business that became so busy it overwhelmed my life, and on and on.

Next, I discovered quilting. And I inherited a sewing machine, and took many, many online classes and tutorials and I taught myself to sew and then......well, you know the rest. :)

This yellow quilt has been my absolute favorite quilt so far. I've started calling it the sunshine quilt because I can't stop smiling with joy when I see it. I LOVE, LOVE this quilt.

I started with a bunch of fat quarters and cut them into 6" squares.

I then laid out all 99 squares on my dining room table until I had a configuration that felt balanced and yet still organic before I started sewing.

This is what I would see when I walked into the room and why I call it my sunshine quilt.

And this is the whole thing quilted and ready for the binding. Bad, bad light in this photo and the colors are way off. :(  (The problem with all of my hobbies is that I don't give one up for the other. So, I'm still obsessed with photography.)

Sigh. It's just a happy, happy quilt. I don't want to be done with it. And I wish I needed to make another yellow quilt so I could keep playing with these happy colors.  
 
 
 

Ten on Tuesday

A bunch of my blogging friends do a Ten on Tuesday post every week and I thought I'd join in this morning. Considering I have a million boring and unrelated thoughts swirling around in my head this morning, it might actually help me focus.

1.    I didn't really make my husband sleep on the couch last night. See post below if this makes no sense.

2.    Emily is no longer playing Beatles music constantly. Thank you, God!

3.    I think I might actually miss Paul McCartney's voice, though.

4.    Keeping that perspective I found over the weekend is not so easy when you're back in the situation on a daily basis but I'm trying really hard.

5.    I have to do something that I really, really don't want to do and I'm trying to find the motivation to do it - it's hard and there's no immediate gratification and blah.

6.    I now have 3 quilts that are ready to have the binding hand-sewn and my fingers are dreading the week ahead.

7.     I let Emily talk me into taking her to the midnight premiere of the new Harry Potter movie. It's on Thursday. We'll be home by 3 a.m. and have to get up at 5:45 a.m. You probably don't want to hang out with me on Friday.

8.    I am almost giddy for Thanksgiving to be over with so that I can decorate for Christmas. We don't usually pull out the decorations until December 10th or so but this year they're coming out the day after Thanksgiving!

9.    I am so dang proud of my kids for doing so well at school! I've gotten phenomenal reports from all the teachers and it just makes me proud.

10.    This quilt is turning out to be my favorite quilt ever. I think I am totally, totally in love with patchwork.

We interrupt this program...

for an important news bulletin.

According to my husband, I was dishonest in my previous post when I stated that I was "beating my husband at nearly every single game of Words with Friends that we play."

Being the anal lawyerly type that he is, he would like me to make the following statement and correction.

"My husband is now beating me by nearly one hundred points on every game of Words with Friends that we are playing."

I offer up the following screenshot as evidence.

And now I shall go prepare the couch for the night that he will spend on it.