School again

We started school again yesterday.  We had the longest, most amazing Christmas Vacation ever!  It's not that our Christmas was amazing or our New Year's.

My parents asked if my oldest daughter (13) could go with them to Colorado to go to my cousin's wedding and to be my mom's companion while my dad worked.  My husband and I thought and prayed about it and gave her a "thumbs up".  My daughter was ecstatic.  She spent 1-on-1 time with Grandma and got a breakfast date with Grandpa.  She saw the Garden of the Gods and went to Focus on the Family's Whit's End.  She even got to drink a world famous chocolate soda which the call a "wo-fam-choc-sod"  (hyphenated so you can read it).

My other daughter (12) stayed home with us.  I told her to write down all the things she wanted to do and we'd do them.  We marked off everything on her list (except horseback riding-$) even the ones we, her parents, added.  We painted ceramics, organized her room, bought her nice clothes, got her a new haircut, checked out Barnes and Noble, drank hot chocolate from Starbucks (very popular out here), took a trip to IKEA, went bowling, played some games at a video arcade place called the Boardwalk, got a chocolate dipped cone from McDonalds.

Plus my friend, who is currently living in Germany due to husband's job, came out and we got to spend time hitting all the thrift stores by my house.  See, we don't have garage sales out here in San Diego like they do in other places.  How I wish we did!  I could find all kinds of goodies....muuah ha ha.  For creative purposes of course.

So, everyone's back to their normal habits.  Yuck.  I really prefer not having everything being so mundane.  But, what do you do when your husband has a job and kids need school!

I found a headboard sitting out on my neighbor's curb about a month back.  I'm finally getting around to antiquing it.  I'm going to turn it into a bench, if I'm successful.   Otherwise,  I don't know.......

figuine

I painted the girl figurine last night.  She's turned out quite cute!

And here she is!

The yellow is actually glittery, but with the light and the camera shot, you can't really see it. 

Anyway.  It's my first shot at doing a paper mache figurine.  Ta-da!  

Not bad.  Not bad, at all.

Christmas presents

I bought some shoes at Payless and I made these.

I saw a tutorial here.  They were pretty easy to do.  I found the comics online, googling Mickey Mouse comics.

I also made glitter flats.  I will have to show them to you later.

She art figurine raw

She art figurine raw, a photo by LoveRenewed on Flickr.

I'm taking an online class called "She Art 2".  It's put on by Christy Tomlinson.  This is one of the things I am making from that class.  When it dries, I'm gonna paint it.  It's going in a Christmas gift basket.  I have to make 2 baskets for gift giving.  One will be art things and the other will be baked goods and homemade items that are usable.  

I'm also going to be making these for gifts...

and these...

But it won't be Superman and Batman.  Mickey Mouse or something more cutesy than superhero stuff.

Yay!!! So fun!

Pictures of Christmas things

Totally in the mood to create prettiness!  

I've been wanting to find Christmas-y stuff that's not really Christmassy. (Is that a word?)  To be able to turn it into really anything.

This is what I found...

These sparkly metal "trees" are at Target, or they were.  I can't find any more.  (pout)  I would love to be able to find another set.  The pinecones are from my neighbor's tree that's been dropping on our driveway.  The wine glasses are from the local thrift store (so many finds!) and in them are battery operated candles (from the dollar store).

This is a cupcake holder from World Market/Cost Plus.  My mom was looking for cupcake holders for my dad's 60th birthday bash back in June.  She bought 3 and I bought 1 because I think it's so darn cute!  I added granny smith apples, more pinecones from my neighbor's tree and pomegranates.  The table runner is from Target.  The white tablecloth is from my grandma, she found it at a garage sale.  The words on my dining room wall are from Uppercase Living (vinyl lettering), Michael's (wood letters) and Joann's (metal words).  The lazy susan is from IKEA.

This is an advent calendar thing I made in February or March, I think.  I made 4.  My mom bought them from me to give to my siblings.  This is called 3D peek a box and it comes with the numbers.  I bought the paper online.  I filled mine yesterday with candy and the kids get to open one each day!  So cute!

My husband pulled out the boxes full of Christmas stuff.  I realized we don't have much-4 boxes.  One for the tree including our stockings, one with all my nativity scenes (4, I think), one with random stuff that I place in our bathrooms.  The last box has my Willow Tree nativity pieces.  I have Mary and Joseph and the shepherd sets; both given to me as gifts.  (Nothing better than receiving Willow Tree figurines as gifts!)  I'm also going through the boxes to find what things I want to keep and things I think are totally hokey (and cheap ie Oriental Trading-ish) and shopping for something to take their places.  The above centerpieces are examples of what I've found so far.  (Big, content smiles.)

The latest

So, this image has been in my head for a couple of days and I just had to get it out.  I love it.  I think it's so soft and gentle.  I'm not sure where it's going but I think it's going to be one of my new favorites.

So, what do you think?

Looking forward to Christmas this year.  Loving the smells.  Gonna bake Christmas goodies with Grandma, buy decorations for the house, put up lights, and we are hosting the family Christmas Eve party.

Very festive.

On my to do list:

Work on the project in the garage (I'm thinking of turning the headboard I found a couple days ago into a bench.)

Paint the office yellow.

Re-design my parents' kitchen.  (They just moved last weekend into a fixer-upper.)

Today, in My Utmost for His Highest- written by Oswald Chambers in the early 1900's, I was reading about shallow things.  You know, eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, housework, homework, driving....  He said, "Even oceans (the deep) have shores (the shallow).


I can't help but think about my daughter.  She doesn't think before she talks.  It just all comes out.  I'm not saying that she bad-mouths people.  She just talks non-stop about everything and it's a long, run-on sentence.  I thought maybe she'd grow out of it, but she's 12 now and I'm beginning to think that this is going to stick around for a long while.


I would get so frustrated with her because I want to have conversations that are deep and meaningful while she wants to talk about the shapes of the clouds or how she's going to protect our animals from coyotes or other "off the top of her head" conversation.  I began to tune her out.  Now all I do is say "uh-huh" and keep doing what I'm doing and not listening at all.  That's just how it's progressed.


Today's devotional really hit me between the eyes because it's saying: 
"Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow concerns of life are not ordained of God; they are as much of God as the profound. It is not your devotion to God that makes you refuse to be shallow, but your wish to impress other people with the fact that you are not shallow, which is a sure sign that you are a spiritual prig. Be careful of the production of contempt in yourself, it always comes along this line, and causes you to go about as a walking rebuke to other people because they are more shallow than you are. Beware of posing as a profound person; God became a Baby."   


Ouch.  I asked God why I long for this "deepness".  He showed me when I was younger, before I was a teenager, I desired to be deeper because I thought my dad was deep and that the only way I'd get his attention was to be deep too.   I wanted to be proud of my wisdom.  And thus I have become.  BUT, I have contempt for others who are shallow.  And yet God became a baby.  He took the steps to come to the shallow and show them the profound, yet simple truth.  LOVE.  The real definition of LOVE.  not lust (which gratifies self).


I have given God that wound.  I want to be open to my shallow yet simple daughter.  I know there are others out there just like her.  I don't want to have contempt for people who won't (or rather can't) reach to my level.  It's totally ok.  BECAUSE  God told me that everyone has a different relationship with him.  We are not all the same.  Just like in a bouquet of flowers, you have the greenery, baby's breath, sunflowers and the lillies-just to name a few.  We are all part of a bouquet.  (I hope we smell delightful!)