Some partying going on…

Miranda is a passionate girl. I think that pretty much sums up her personality. You never have to guess how she is feeling;  it’s obvious within moments of interacting with her. Her emotions are right out there on her sleeve for everyone to see. However, they could all change in an instant, so this girlie keeps us on our toes!

Sometimes I think her spirit is way too big for that little body…

Miranda, I can’t believe how you are rocking as a kindergartener! You continue to amaze me with your reading abilities and your “character” awards. You have so many friends and if I let you, you would give all of your belongings to them and your teacher that you love! You are so kind and thoughtful and you bring so much love and excitement to our family. Happy 6th birthday my sweet nugget!

Love your biggest fan…

For The Curious

It’s almost 10pm and I really should go to bed, but instead all I can think of is this from The Pioneer Woman. Thanks a lot Ree…

For the last year, I have been completely obsessed with Philly cheese steak sandwiches. If there is one on the menu I have to try it! P Dub’s sandwich is just close enough to make me want to make a run for some onions and some fresh deli rolls right this minute!

With all of my pregnancies I had totally different cravings. With Maddy I had to have whatever everyone at work was discussing, or something that I saw on a commercial or ad that day. As you can imagine, it was not very convenient or easy to satisfy my cravings, especially if it was late at night!

Miranda’s pregnancy I called the “white trash” pregnancy because I craved cheeseburgers from the dreaded “M” place, nachos (not the gourmet nachos, the fake-cheese ball park kind) and other things that I usually find repulsive. I totally did the whole cliche’ pickle and ice cream thing too. With Patrick I wanted spicy food…and a lot of it! It seems the more I ate with him, the better I felt. Ah, I miss those days…

That brings me to this most recent pregnancy with Geoffrey. With Geoffrey I have been searching for the perfect Philly cheese steak sandwich when I eat out, and I try to make them for dinner as much as the kids will let me about once a month. My version does NOT use the fake cheese that is true to an original cheese steak, I prefer provolone cheese on a bun brushed with olive oil and toasted in the oven. Of course it has green, red and sometimes yellow peppers (when they are on sale for less than 10 dollars a piece! what’s up with that and the price of artichokes anyway?!) sautéed with onions, thin sliced roast beef and mushrooms. My kids and husband all cringe with the mushrooms, so I just keep them to myself.

Just for the record, I am NOT pregnant. Just tired, a little loopy and apparently hungry too. I have stayed up way too late every day this week trying to take the advice of another brilliant blogger Joy. Or to those who know what I’m talking about; the Just Organize Yourself blog.

Joy is the exact opposite of what I am. I’ll admit it. I’ll also admit that I am really having a hard time with the whole 4th kid and 2 kid in school change this year. My “organized chaos” isn’t really cutting it anymore and I have committed to “transforming my chaos into calm”. Just so you know, it takes a long time to change everything you have been doing for the last 8 years to do that.

I really am taking it seriously and have purposely cut out my old fun “down time” to tackle some big projects that couldn’t be ignored anymore. Joy’s first step in getting organized is as follows:

Take a Time-Out

• Just say “NO” to outside obligations while you re-evaluate, re-commit, re-vamp & re-claim your life.
• You must get yourself under control before you can expect your family to follow.

I miss blogging, crafting and playing a right now, but I can already see some good habits forming in myself and more importantly, in my children. My girls have been especially eager to help me, mostly when I am rearranging the furniture or sorting through our never-ending piles of “treasures”. (ie craft supplies) This break is only temporary thank goodness! It’s so I can have my fun time back without worrying what state the house will be in when I finish.

I already have my list of projects lined up for when my house is clutter free and my kids are happily cleaning up after themselves. So you know, maybe in a year or two?…

*Just kidding on the year or two thing. Also while I am re-vamping my life, Jake has promised to re-vamp my blog. {yay!} I was playing around with different ideas and accidently lost my old header. {boo!} Obviously I’m in over my head. The cute brown one will do for now, but hopefully my blog will have a cute fresh look soon. Or maybe not soon. My organizing has been keeping Jake a little busy. Hee hee.

Cool Snowflakes For Crafty Kiddies Take II

I’ve posted this snowflake tutorial here before, but after attempting to make these with my girl scouts last week, I thought a refresher course was needed. . . for me! It had been two years since I first posted this so I was pretty rusty at making them.

The squares I cut for my scouts were 4″ by 4″ and it was too hard for my 8, 9 and 10 year old girls to staple together, so I would try at least 8″. (Just FYI if you decide to try them). Oh, and glitter your paper before you bend the cuts back. Believe me, it would be better that way. We ended up with sticky, flat, but very sparkly flakes. The girls had a lot of fun making them so in my book that makes it a success!

Here you go. Pretty snowflakes taught to us by Maddy’s school librarian. Enjoy!

1) Ok, first start with 6 squares of paper, all the same size. Then fold each one into a triangle, and fold again, making a smaller triangle like this:

2) Next, make four cuts along the longest end of the triangle, taking care not to cut the fold. Do this to all 6 triangles:

3) Now, unfold the triangle, and it should look like this:

4) Take the very middle piece of paper and roll the ends together and tape.

5) Do the same thing with the next ‘ring’ but fold it BACKWARD. The next one is FORWARD again, and you alternate until it looks like this:

6)Now do that to all of the 6 pieces and then you will attach the SIDES of 3 papers you have rolled. Like this:

7) Take the ends of the three now hooked together and staple all three together at the bottom .

8)Repeat step 4 and 5 with the remaining pieces, and then staple the two sides together in the middle and. . . you’re done!

These are so easy to make and you could easily add some ‘bling’ with glitter, or use sparkly paper. My oldest loves to make snowflakes and these ones don’t require picking up millions of paper scraps when you’re done. Nice.

And I’m back…

I always have a hard time knowing how to jump into posting again when I have taken such a long break. I tend to over complicate things, so instead I’ll just list a few things that have been on my mind lately.

• First, packing up a family of 6 (one being an infant) to spend the holidays with family out of state is so much work. SO, SO, SO much work. But it is still worth it. Just barely though. We’ll see if I forget how hard it all was by next Christmas.

• Beatles Rock Band was the best money my little brother has spent in a long time. Not that I know what else he has spent his money on recently, but I’ll bet I’m right on this one.

• The more organized I get, the more I realize how unorganized I have been in the past. Now replace the word organized in this sentence with your choice of a  hundred different words and they would probably apply as well.

• I’m never happier to be living in Arizona than mid January when we’re spending our time outside in the beautiful weather. It also makes it a lot easier to leave our wonderful families after Christmas knowing that we are coming back to 70 degrees and sunshine.

• I have way too much “stuff”. Even after an entire year of purging and simplifying, I still feel like I have excess.

• Now that my baby is 6 months old, I feel like my old self again. Don’t quite look like her yet, but I’m feeling like I can take on all of my old responsibilities again. (I’m sure my husband is very pleased about this one.)

• Responsibilities are fine, but I don’t think resolutions are going to be part of the plan this year.

• I think I may be addicted to crafting. Or maybe just to the idea of crafting. ie; bookmarking 20 craft blogs a day and printing out countless tutorials, patterns, recipes, etc. hoping that I’ll have some free time to actually make something. HA!

• Dunkin Donuts are just not that good. They taste like donuts from any grocery store bakery. I have a feeling I’m going to get crap for this one, but seriously, warm Krispy Kreme donuts are the only ones worth all the fat and calories. It’s a really good thing it was not the latter that just opened a few miles away…

• I miss writing here. Not just updating mind you, actual writing that requires actual thought. I think I’ll be trying more of that as the year progresses.

• This year is going to be better. Not that last year was terrible or anything. In fact, it was a really great year, I just know this one will be even better.

Now if I had a resolution this year, (which I don’t because I’m already freaking out about my list), it would be to just do everything better. I’ve added all that I want to add to my life and weeded out all that didn’t belong, and now I need to focus on being better with my time, energy and deliberateness. (Don’t worry, I may have just made up that word. ).

My morning routine can be improved by getting enough sleep at night and relying on a consistent routine. Time spent with my kids could have added benefits if I lead our dialogue in certain directions to teach while we work or play, and try to have projects on hand to pull out when the tv gets turned on too long or fighting is breaking out a little too often.

That’s just a few examples of the areas that I could improve plan to improve in, but I think you get the idea. Overall, I feel great. I’m refreshed, renewed, inspired, empowered, grateful and ready to tip my hat and say adios to 2009.

So what’s your plan for 2010? How will this year be better than the last?…

And with those last words I just have to add some Counting Crows. Enjoy.

Merry Merry

Taking a short break, but wanted to wish you all much love and holiday wishes from my family to yours…

Christmas Spirit

With all the packing, wrapping and stressing this weekend, I really needed this reminder…

Sew Busy…

Wow. So I totally abandoned my blog there for a while, didn’t I? Sorry about that!

It’s been a crazy few weeks here and it doesn’t seem to be calming down anytime soon. I have been sewing and crafting every free minute I have (which usually only happens between 10pm and 2am) to get some Christmas projects done before heading up north next week, and I’m starting to get in full panic mode. Sometimes that’s the only way I really get anything done, so I guess it’s okay.

This is a sampling of what I’m working on this week. I got commissioned to make some half-aprons for my sister to give as gifts, and then I am trading more aprons for gifts for my sisters that I’m really excited about. In all, there was about 12 aprons to make. I am only finished with 5, but most of the rest are at least cut out or half-sewn. Do you recognize that purple fabric from this quilt? (I didn’t do any denim quilts this year for Christmas, but I just revamped the office to accommodate my sewing machine and scrapbooking items, so I’m hoping this next year will be full of crafting.)

Between my new church calling, and my family gift list, I have also had the chance to try some great tutorials I have found online from some crafty bloggers. I thought it would be fun to post my results and pass on any tips I learned while attempting some of these projects.  The first one I tried is a car cozy that I found here. This would also be fun to use girly material and use it for Polly pockets or crayons, etc.

This was a great tutorial and a quick, fun project. The only things I did differently were to change the size of the road stripes, and add one of my girls’ elastic hair bands to the outside instead of ribbon. That was actually Jake’s recommendation after her reminded me that most 3 year olds aren’t able to tie. Oh yeah, right. (for more pictures, click on my Flickr link on the right) I have a few more projects that I will post after the holidays when I have some time.

We were also lucky enough to have Jake’s Grandma stay with us for most of the week last week (which was a total surprise). The kids loved singing Christmas songs and reading Christmas books with her.

Geoffrey was especially fond of Grandma Fernie and would smile the whole time she held him. I was impressed that this cute 88 year old could even pick up my chunky monkey. Patrick just wanted Grandma to light saber battle with him, but settled for her to do his Spiderman puzzle with him instead. I was keeping the video camera close hoping Grandma would pick up a light saber so I could catch her fighting him on video. No luck. I guess I’ll try again when we see her again next week.

Okay. My break is up. Time to get crafting again. Anyone else have some fun projects you are working on?…

Getting Into The Holiday Spirit

Sometimes I think I take too many photos. But if I didn’t always have my camera close by I would totally miss out on great shots of my kids like these:

“Santa Baby”

Santa’s strange sister “Indian Girl”.

See what I mean?

Hope this made you smile and I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families and friends!

Be safe…

*I apologize for the graphic nature of the first photo for those of you who are unaccustomed to icky baby puke. Apparently we are so desensitized here that we laugh and take pictures… we’re heathens I tell ya!

Not On The List

So today is my birthday.  It’s not a significant birthday (as birthdays go). I am now 34. However, what that means is that I have only one year to try to complete my 35 before 35 list. For the last month I have been mulling this fact over, wondering how I can possibly accomplish all of my lofty goals in one short year. One year goes by fast. Too fast…

I can’t even believe that almost 2 years have gone by since I made this list. Honestly, until last month I hadn’t even looked at it since the last update. There are a few things that I know are not going to happen, like taking my kids somewhere new once a month. Um, yeah. The novelty of moving to a new state wore off quite a while ago and I don’t have what many people would call “free time”. Also, I don’t think it’s feasible to learn Spanish in 12 months. Well, not for me anyway.

I was happy to find that some areas on my list that were lacking before, ie; giving service, volunteering, writing thank you notes, have become an almost weekly event for me now. And there are a few things that I am confident that I can tackle in this next year. Biking a century, starting a journal, and participating in a triathlon are definitely doable! And surfing. Yes. That is one goal I really want to do! I finally got a chance to go to the ocean last month, but I was still out of shape from baby and the weather was too chilly for this desert momma.

Speaking of baby. He wasn’t on the list. I had no idea that we would be adding a new member to our already semi-largish family this year. That was a major glitch in my plans, but a very sweet, adorable, loving, chubby little glitch that I now couldn’t think of my life without!

I’m a different kspin than I was when I started this blog and mapped out my personal goals. The old me would be more than a little bugged that I wasn’t well on my way to completing this list, but the new me (Karolee, remember?) is pleased with all that I have accomplished with many things that weren’t even planned, let alone on any of my lists.

There are many reasons for this change, but the main one has everything to do with goal number 3:  Be more spiritual. If every item on my list was scratched off, save number 3. . . well, lets just say I would be a mess. And unhappy, unfulfilled, and lots of other uns too. Just knowing that I am right back on track spiritually has made many other areas of my life seem trivial and non-goal worthy anymore. If I left my list just as it is, I would still feel like I had made some incredible progress. (more on this topic later)

Of course I’ll still try to cross off as many of the 35 items as I can. I had really put some thought into these goals, and I don’t want to treat them as unimportant. I mean, what would people think if they knew I had never done karaoke?…

Just Because

Just because I don’t have time for a real post, and because this cute little guy will be 4 months old in a few days is now over 4 months,  I thought a new Geoffrey photo was in order. This is actually a few weeks old, so of course he has already changed. He just gets chubbier and sweeter everyday.

Now if he would just sleep through the night. Please? Just once? One night would be heaven…