Thursday, March 31, 2011

Get Well Sign

A long, long time ago... In a galaxy far, far away... 

I bought these sheets of already cut out letters:

I hope you can see them properly. It was hard to get a really good pic of it without it looking like just a sheet of scrapbook paper, like below: 

But anyway, these sheets were inspiration for the last card/sign I made for my mother-in-law. She had knee replacement surgery and was having a hard time with recovery, so I thought having a card made by Elijah would cheer her up a little. So what I did was get out a white sheet of these letters and his Pip-squeek markers and let him go to town... supervised of course... Cause I was not in the mood to clean up marker off of the table.

Turns out we made into a sort of game. He would pick the color "How 'bout... Green" then I would suggest a letter to color, since I wanted to make sure he colored in all the letters for the phrase I wanted to do. It worked out really well. After he went to bed that night I pulled the letters, gently, out. Originally I was going to do a card, but these letters were way bigger than would allow for a card front, so I improvised. I got out my pastel card stock, picked a color that would go well and used mini glue dots to adhere the letters to the paper. This is the finished product:



That's all for today. I hope everyone has a good day!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Lesson in Patience

So there is this little thing called patience. It's one of the things I struggle with, on a daily basis. This statement might surprise most of you, but it's true. For the most part I have learned how to settle for what I have now and wait for opportunities to present themselves, because I believe that good things come to those who wait. It's not easy, especially when it comes to wanting to buy a house.

I have been casually looking at houses for a few months now to see what the market is like and what we can afford and what we want vs what we can afford. In our county it is really hard to find a nice house in a nice area for the amount of money we want to spend on a mortgage. I haven't been able to find anything just yet... Except for this one house I have been eyeing for a while now. It seems perfect, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, one car garage, fenced in yard, hardwood floors... The kitchen is a little on the small side, but I could live with that or potentially make it bigger or expand it into another room. And did I mention that it's only about 5 minutes walking distance from where we live now?


There are only a few things holding us back from jumping right in and buying it. First, it's $30,000 more (at this point) than we really want to spend on a house, right now. Second, the price goes down about every 2-3 weeks, so we are kind of waiting to see how low the price might go before they put it up for auction. Third, it's a possible short sale, which we are in no position to fund right now. And it's forclosed on, so there is no telling what kind of condition the house is actually in. With all of this in consideration, I'm still keeping my eye on it, but God is giving me a big dose of "be patient" right now and I don't like it, haha.

He even had someone tell me "be patient", in-directly, at church yesterday. The pastor was talking about debt and how society is always telling us that it's ok to be in debt and you need the latest and greatest things, even if you can't afford them. Wow, did that hit home...  Then he said to all the parents "Raise your hand if you've ever not gotten your children something they wanted" Lots of people raised their hands, us included. The point was that God will give you what you want if and when you are suppose to get it, we shouldn't go into debt to get it.

The whole thing about not getting your children something they really wanted reminded me of something we are going through with Elijah. All last year... and even to this day, every time he sees a skateboard at the store he asks to get it. -Every- -time-, it doesn't matter where or when. So every time I keep telling him no, you're too little. In reality it's because I know if he gets the skateboard, even if he could ride on it, he is not coordinated enough to play with it correctly and would most likely get seriously hurt. So to prevent him from pain and suffering and possible hospital visits in the near future, I said no. He wouldn't understand my reasoning if I explained all of that to him, so I left it at "You're too little".

Sounds a lot like God talking to me about the house... He's saying "No, it's not time yet" and still -every- -time- I think about getting a house I'm like, "Now God?". Nope. Like I tell Elijah, "patience is a virtue"... You would think after saying it enough I would take my own advice. Oh well, eventually I'll get a house, just like one day Elijah will be old enough to get a skateboard. It might take $1,000 more times for each of us to ask, but one day it will happen.

This was a pretty boring blog entry, but I thought I would share in case any of you are feeling the same way regarding different issues. I hope everyone has a great day!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Cards... That I forgot to post last year

During my time away from blogging (also known as my, not so wonderful, first trimester) I had made a few cards for family birthdays and one to tell everyone that we were expecting.

I made this one for my SIL, Katie's birthday

I drew the pot by hand and cut it out. The decorations on the pot are rubons and the flowers are stickers that I put on white cardstock to make them thicker and more durable. Add a button and a circle puffy sticker for the flower centers, use white gel pen to make the stems and leaf and it's done.


This was for my BIL, Mark's, birthday.

It's not the prettiest of cards, I fully admit that... and it's hard to read, but it was an experiment of sorts. I think I would like to do another one like this, but have it be easier to read.

And lastly, this is the card I made my in-laws


It's from all the cousins and the, soon to be, newest addition is all the way on the right.

As an update, of sorts, since I don't post about my pregnancy. Yesterday we found out that it's going to be a Caleb... potentially. I was shocked because ever since I found out I was pregnant I had this feeling it was going to be a girl, so that has been my thought all along. Then I find out it's a boy and it's like "Seriously?" If I didn't see if with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. So I am definitely going to be outnumbered in July. Now to finalize a name... Caleb and Matthew are the front-runners for most potential name. The middle name is what's giving us troubles. I would like the middle name to be a family name on both sides. It's a hard chore, but it worked out for Elijah's middle name. *sigh* I guess this nameless little boy will eventually have a name... hopefully it will be before he's born. :-)