Project Life 2012

I finally finished my Project Life Album for 2012. It's taken me this long because, well, life is crazy! Most of my scrappin' stuff has been in storage until the basement is finished, but my bestie lets me keep my PL stuff in her craft room and lately we have been escaping while our kiddos play and we scrapbook. I started sorting my printed photos for 2013, hopefully I will finish much earlier this time. Anyways, enjoy!




Details: I used the Cobalt kit and page layout A. I have always loved this layout, it keeps it consistent and simple. I tweaked it a bit this year to accommodate more photos and instagram, I have over 500 pictures in this album and I only used about 1/2 - 3/4 of the core kit. I really love how it turned out, though! There are a few spaces where I know others have the photos I need, but in the meantime I just put pieces of cropped paper in their places. Thanks, Becky Higgins, for developing such an awesome system!


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Packing Lunch

Tomorrow is Ethan's first day of first grade. As I packed his lunch and laid out his clothes for the morning, I found myself wanting to write. Not all the cute mommy blog things like how to pack a healthy lunch for 5 cents or less or organize it really well, but about the feeling behind packing him lunch and getting him ready for the next day.

When we told him it was time to come inside and eat dinner and get ready for bed he said "Yup, I have a big day tomorrow! I better get ready!" He has grown so much over the last year, and I realize I have too. I'm not normally the kind of mommy who cries when her kid goes to school, I have always loved school and have felt nothing but excitement for my kiddos and all the neat things they will get to do. This year feels a little different, though. It's the first year he will be gone all day long. I have never had to pack his lunch before, except for the occasional field trip day. I find myself wondering and almost worrying, where do I pick him up? What if I didn't pack enough for him to eat and he's hungry? What if I pack too much and he gets in trouble for taking too long to eat? What if he's tired at the end of the day? I always thought the mommies who wrote their kids notes inside their lunchboxes were kind of cheesy, yet I wanted to (and did) the same thing because I know I will be thinking about him throughout the day and I hope he thinks about me too. It's funny, I have been looking forward to school starting for weeks, and now that it's finally here I don't know that I'm ready for it. I'm going to miss that little guy.

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International Geocahing Day

Apparently August 17th is International Geocaching Day. We had no idea, we just knew Saturday would be a good day to go Geocaching so we went to Estes Park for the day. Our first stop seemed like it would be pretty easy, but a muggle was landscaping so we decided to leave the cache alone. Our second stop we had heard about from our friends who had found this cache the day before in the dark. Turned out it was in a small cliff face and I just about lost it on the kids, totally convinced they were all going to fall off the cliff face and die. My hubby ended up going to find it by himself.

Our third stop was a bridge with a film canister hidden under it, but without a lid and the bag for the logbook had a hole in it so the log was damp. Cadie did great and found it though!

Our last stop was a cache hidden near an eagle statue along the Thompson River. Hubby looked for it for a half hour but couldn't find it, and our friend had even hidden a replacement recently. We'll go back and find it though, someday.

Photo by  McLeodsOfTomball

On top of all this adventuring, we enjoyed some of Bob and Tony's pizza, homemade ice cream, and walking in the river. Estes Park is definitely one of our favorite places to visit! Happy International Geocaching Day!

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Rainbow Dash Amigurumi

She's done! She's done! Oh boy oh boy, she's done! I finished my second My Little Pony designed by The Nerdy Knitter. This one is Rainbow Dash and I am SO HAPPY with how she turned out!

All of the yarn is Red Heart Super Saver. The eyes are made of felt and sewn together by hand.

The wings were incredibly challenging, as was sewing the tail together, but the instructions really helped me feel like a rock star! The cutie mark was a pain in the neck and I gave up.

My bestie asked me if I try to keep these nice by putting them on display. My answer: Nope! I work on them, take a few nice pictures, and then ask that they just not get covered in mud or sand. What's the point of making toys if the kids can't play with them? I'm taking a break from amigurumi for awhile to work on projects for babies and Christmas, but I have everything to make Applejack, Twilight Sparkle, and Rarity. Maybe someday I will be done! (HA!)

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WIP Monday

I really want to try and keep better track of my progress on projects, so I am hereby dubbing Monday "Work In Progress Monday." Yeah, this will last a whole week....

We will start with the never ending pair of socks. I started these bad boys when baseball season started the first week of June. JUNE, PEOPLE! Usually a pair of socks takes me a couple weeks, maybe a month if I don't work on them a whole lot, but 2 1/2 months!?! I'm ready to stop looking at these. I hope to finish them before school starts so I can start a new pair during pickups and dropoff lags.

I started the Christmas stockings again. I have knit a total of 12 of these so far and I have a goal to make seven this year. This one is for my nephew, Sammy, and will be followed by Charlie's. I am currently working on the Santa faces, which often includes much swearing and finnicky lines of yarn getting tangled up. It's funny though, every time I finish one of these I am so thrilled with the product that I am glad I did it. Let's just say that satisfaction makes it so I can stand to continue working on the countless others I plan on doing.

The last thing I have going right now is the Shale baby blanket. My knitting group at church planned out all of the baby blankets we will need for babies being born. We figured out we needed 5, and I found out about 2 more, so we have to get crackin'! I really want to make this pattern for mine, I just need to get some actual baby yarn to do it with. In the meantime I amp practicing this pattern with some leftover Caron One Pound from the blanket I made for my cousin. I like the color so much that I might just finish it and make it Charlie's.

GeoCaching Adventures

I keep meaning to blog about this, and I keep forgetting. Our family has continuted GeoCaching, though a lot more as of late. It actually really makes my day that my hubby loves it, I think we found the right niche for him between technology and the outdoors. Here are a couple of our adventures over the last month:

My dad hid this one by his work. Turns out it's a really common place for homeless people to come sleep at night.

My sister and her husband hid this one, a total of 16 containers in a Choose Your Own Adventure type of cache hidden throughout Loveland and Fort Collins.We started this one in the beginning of July...

This one was hidden near the river that runs through our hometown. We discovered it while playing on the banks of the river and catching toads.

This one was hidden in a lampost and SCARED THE CRAP out of me when it fell out and wiggled :D

A park we had never been to.

My dad hid this one, had to make the kids stay on the asphalt as there was broken glass and asbestos everywhere.

Finally discovered our first "fate" in the Zombie cache. We hope to eventually find all the containers.

I found this one in a lampost in the parking lot during my husband's visit to the doctor.

At the nearby Cracker Barrel.

We were never able to find this one, but we did find several unused (thank God) condoms and beer bottle caps. I suspect some over anxious teenagers took it.

We visited Denver and took our cousin caching, found in a lamp post.

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Happy Birthday JoJo!

Happy birthday to my sweet, wonderful little girl!! I love you oh so very much!

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Crocheted Baby Doll Carriers

I found this SUPER CUTE pattern on Ravelry the other day and I just had to make one for JoJo! (I asked Cadie and Ethan if they wanted one too, not interested.) It worked up super fast and I LOVED how it turned out, and already one of my friends asked me to make one for her little girl! They are a blast to make and I decided to list them on my Etsy shop. Enjoy!

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The Most Amazing Day Ever

I really wanted to sit down and write about our day yesterday. Life has been hard, and we have had some really rough days in our household lately. My kids have been way too saturated in media lately because, well, it's just easier to put on a show than deal with the fighting. I have really wanted us to be more active and outdoorsy as a family though, so yesterday we went to a local reservoir to fish, something our family has never done before. I tried to set up our bait well, but honestly my husband and I have NO IDEA what we are doing when it comes to fishing so we definitely did not catch anything. The kids had fun trying though, and of course they had to play in the water almost the whole time we were there. My friend Jim took some beautiful pictures of our kids while we were there and I have to share them because I love them so much!

We had gotten all packed up to leave the lake when I got a text message from my sister that said "The cache was published." She and her husband have been working on a complex geocache for weeks that they refused to tell us anything about, so naturally we had to look it up on the website immediately. To our complete surprise, they had come up with a cache commemorating the Legend of Zelda games, our all time favorite family video game! They hid three individual caches for each piece of the triforce (power, courage, and wisdom) and each container showed a clue for opening the fourth cache, the Master Sword. It kills me that I shouldn't post pictures of any of it here because I don't want to give anything away, but I can tell you they did an amazing job with this Geocache! During our first stop we were "First to Find" that particular container, and an officer pulled up and asked Dave if he was looking for something. Dave said yes, a GeoCache, and the officer said he knew because he just got the notifications for a new cache and, while he couldn't search himself because he was on duty, he was enjoying watching the race for First to Find. We found the other two pretty easily too, with Cadie finding the third one all by herself! The final container was awesome, TJ had put a lot of work into making this amazing container and a great locking mechanism on it. We were First to Find that one as well because the other searchers had decided to only do one or two that day to spread them out over Groundspeak's "31 Days of Geocaching." I am allowed to post one photo, our swag from inside the containers:

I knew Jenilee had bought Shrinky Dinks, I had no idea she really went all out with them! Each container had several inside as different icons from the game. This cache allowed us to TOTALLY GEEK OUT the entire time and be in awe of the work they both put in to this cache. TJ is already planning out the next one they want to build, and I can hardly wait to see it!

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