Not a fan of this photo but I need to go shooting and I don’t have a lot of choices.
Good day! I got up and did a layout and then exercised and then rested some while I snapped a photo of the little boy.
After that, David and I worked for a bit and then I went up to shower while David played Wii and Jake came out to sit with them. When I came down Nathaniel was sitting cradled in his dad’s arm and happy as a clam.
I did another layout while listening to my book which I am almost finished with and Nathaniel walked around and chewed on things. When I went up to take photos of my layout, he looked up at me as he always does.
One more.
I tried to make sure to grab one of David, too. Didn’t come out all that great.
I was going a bit stir-crazy by now so Jake wonderfully agreed to take us all out to my favorite little cafe in Palo Alto. Some yummy food later we came home to watch the Tour and now it’s time to put the kids down and I will likely end the night with another layout. All in all, wonderful day.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. Making two layouts I love.
2. Quick but delicious lunch.
3. Grateful for some simple but wonderful family time.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. playing wii.
2. getting to eat a chocolate croissant.
3. daddy.
Here’s one I didn’t think I would tackle until December but here we are:
38. Make a wreath
I wanted to make an indoor wreath since I already have one on my house door that I love. I searched and searched for a long time and finally settled on this one that I love love loved.
Mine’s a bit different cause I stuck to mostly cone shapes. Not sure why, it spoke to me the most:
I did it mostly as I watched TV, just tore, folded and glued without too much thought.
here’s a bit of a closeup.
I love looking at it on my wall. It makes me happy which I guess means project accomplished.
I snapped this while we were driving through San Fran to go to our camping trip. It was very foggy and I took it from inside the car.
Good day. We woke up too early and I took it easy most of the day but I felt much less cranky than usual. Nathaniel pointed to this toy when I grabbed him out of bed today. We’ve had this since David was a little kid. He never cared for it but Nathaniel loves it. He can’t get it to sing so he keeps brining it to me to press the buttons.
He often takes my breath away.
David’s been teaching him to play legos so he picks the biggest of his small pieces and they sit and play together. I love watching them.
That’s all I really have for today. I haven’t really been as diligent in taking photos. Mostly cause we’ve been lazying around and not doing anything special. Also cause I was cranky. But I am working on getting better at it.
I got my box from Margie today for The Girls’ Paperie Summer CHA and it’s so beautiful and I’ve already completed one layout. It made me so happy just to see the papers. We’re now getting the kids ready for bed so we can go out for date night.
Love date night.
Happy weekend!!
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I am so grateful for the weekend. I need this one.
2. I am grateful for all the yummy goodies I received in the mail. It’s wonderful to design for someone whose product I love so much.
3. I am grateful for a relatively smooth release today especially after yesterday’s nightmare.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. my lego book.
2. building legos with nathaniel.
3. daddy.
Journaling Reads:
My sister and I haven’t always gotten along.
As a child, I am pretty sure I was not what she had in mind when she found out she was getting a sibling. She liked climbing trees and I liked playing with dolls. She was popular and happy and I was not. We had a lot of differences and she was often quite mean to me. I wasn’t a fan.
Then she went away. I was still in high school and she was in Canada. That’s when we realized how much we really loved each other. We wrote letters, sent cards, and really enjoyed each other’s company.
Unfortunately for us, we never really got to be in the same country again. She went from Canada to London and by the time she came back to Turkey, I was leaving for the United States. We never really got to enjoy each other’s company in person. But thanks to the internet and Skype, we get to talk often and our kids get to see each other and know each other and they get to see how much we love each other. I am so grateful for how much she loves my kids and they love her. And I am so grateful that we finally realized how good we had it all along.
Ok, I did do a bit of catch up. I am still not 100% on schedule and decided this is too much. I might go back to doing all of them but for now I need to pare down. So here’s the update.
David:
1. Try one new food every day – He tried salami (he liked) and soy burgers (he did NOT like. more like really disliked).
2. Do 30 minutes of work daily – We did math again. We reviewed the places 1s, 10s, 100s. And then we compared two numbers, two digit ones and 3 digit ones. He circled the bigger of the two numbers. We then talked about addition. He can do addition with his fingers but I wanted him to get out of that habit so now he can mentally add pretty much any two single-digit numbers. We also talked about the Commutative Property of Addition (without mentioning the title) so he could look at two numbers and add them whichever way is easier for him. We also talked about adding zero and adding one as super simple cases. That was it for today.
3. Read 20 minutes a day from a book – This is on hold until my jaw-pain disappears. Might be on hold for a long while.
Art:
1. Draw 100 faces – I did three faces today.
2. Make one art journal page daily – I think this is going to go on hold, too until I am done with my layouts. I still have 3 to do for AMM and I have The Girls’ Paperie CHA stuff on the way and they will need to be turned around quickly. So until mid-month or so, this is on hold.
Health:
1. Exercise for 15-20 minutes 3 times a week -32 minutes on the Wii today.
2. Eat one fruit and one vegetable every day – Watermelon. No veggies. I have veggies at home but I’ve been too tired, sick, or frustrated to take the time to cook them. Gotta work on this one.
Productivity:
1. Do one nagging task daily – I bought stuff for jake that I’d meant to months ago, bought some ink for my printer, scheduled doctor and gynie appointments, checked my sons’ dentist and checkup appointments and added them to my calendar and same with my upcoming hair appointments, and I did one more big nagging task today. Doing ok on this one.
2. Start and End each day better – I’m all over this one. Doing it like a champ.
Soul:
1. Journal for 15 minutes a day – This, too, is going on hold, not feeling it and too tired. Won’t feel guilty about it any more.
2. Mediate for 5 minutes a day – I’ve sort of incorporated this into my morning workout. So far, so good.
3. Write a thank you email every day – Need to catch up on these. I have ones to send to Kayce, Stacy, and Melody. I plan to get on top of this asap. I am not worried though cause I love doing these.
And that’s that. Not doing perfectly but it’s been a rough-ish month so far and this was a lot more stuff than it first looked like.
Well today started out much better. I went to bed early and so wasn’t really worn out when Nathaniel cried at 3:30am. He then went back to sleep (and so did I) until 6:30am. I was tired but not overwhelmingly. I rested a while and then did my exercise and I was feeling so good. Watching the boys play. (I bought this toy years ago for David at a yard sale and he loved loved it, too.)
And he loves David’s legos more than his own, of course.
And anything in any drawer he can get to.
And then he comes up to me with these eyes. I cannot resist them.
And poor David has to clean up after him like ten times a day.
My day got super-stressful and included a lot of screaming and lot of freaking out and stressing. All cause of work. Actually all cause I felt out of my element and I do not like feeling out of my element. I did not handle it well. I am still really hormonal and the two don’t mix well. It was a long, tough day that ended ok but man I have jaw and head and even chest ache now. And feel a collection of regrets of course.
Thankfully, tomorrow is another day.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I am thankful that my husband is an angel and lets me complain and my kids are angels, too and they all forgive me every single day. I am so blessed to have them.
2. I am thankful that things ended up relatively ok. We’ll see in the morning for sure but for now it looks ok.
3. I am grateful there’s only one more day until the weekend.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. playing legos with Nathaniel. Teaching him how to play with legos.
2. playing some wii! (he got to do wii fit after I was finished).
3. daddy. (this is a standing item now.)
We picked When You Reach Me for my book club. It was on my list for 2010 and I am really glad I read it. It is a young adult book or even maybe a kid’s book and I rarely read those but I loved this one. It was a simple and easy read with some interesting bits and a few surprises. For those of you who enjoy novels of this type, it’s highly recommended.
Good news is that my jaw is much better. Bad news is that it’s not all better. And I am grouchy and not motivated to do anything. So I am skipping my Happiness Project for now. It’s probably one of those self-fulfilling prophecies but there we are. I promised myself that I’d get back on the horse tomorrow.
Nathaniel sat down for the first time today and David saw it first and exclaimed and yelled for me to capture it.
And then I took a shot of him. Those eyes.
I love watching my kids play.
Especially when they look up to me with a wide smile.
And I love when they tickle each other and giggle and giggle.
And then quietly play some more.
Life is good. I need to work on being less grouchy. Life is good.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I am grateful that despite my crabbiness, I got a lot of work done today.
2. I’ve been scrapping a lot lately. Just for fun even. I love that. I am grateful for it even more than usual.
3. I am grateful for good audiobooks again today. Been listening to Lonesome Dove as I scrap and I love it.
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. my legos.
2. playing with Yona’s toy.
3. daddy. (this is a standing item now.)
Catalyst One Hundred and Fifteen is: What was the saddest moment of your life?
Thoughts:
I thought about this one for a long long time. I know I’ve written about this before but (besides the deaths in my family) the saddest moment in my life was when I walked away from my commitment to Teach For America. I really believe in following my commitments to the end and quitting this one was the hardest, saddest thing I ever did. It’s something I still think of all the time and feel bad about, despite knowing it was the right thing to do. Quitting is not what I do.
I woke up this morning at 5am to excruciating pain. My jaw was in so much pain I could barely see. And all day I’ve been taking as much Advil as it’s safe to take just to keep the pain down. This seems to happen to me about once a month for a few days lately. I think the camping exacerbated it. It’s been hell so I’ve been lying on the couch, feeling sorry for my poor self, listening to my book and scrapping.
David has been quiet and helpful and kind.
for the most part. Nathaniel, too. Playing and going through everything.
Coming over to visit me.
Bothering David.
And playing with everything inside all the drawers in the kitchen. I’ve already had to move everything glass from anywhere he can reach.
I wonder if all this is conspiring against my happiness project. Then I tell myself, it’s ok. Take another day off, it’s no big deal. Your body and mind need the rest. And so does my jaw, apparently. So I am resting.
And telling myself it’s ok.
Three Things I’m Grateful For:
1. I am grateful for Advil today. It’s working its magic.
2. I am grateful that for the most part my kids are amazing, kind and understanding.
3. I am grateful for scrapbooking and for the two awesome packages I got in the mail today. Happy mail!
Two Things David’s Grateful For:
1. Legos.
2. playing with my toys.
It’s amazing how many people come in and out of our lives every single day. People we don’t always pay attention to. The mailman who delivers your mail every day, rain or shine. The FedEx guy and the UPS one. The garbage and recycling collectors. The people who clean the streets you walk down. And the ones who keep the city you live in safe.
I read a short story collection recently called Let the Great World Spin and it’s about several interconnected stories that are taking place at the same time. And there’s a person or two that’s connected in each of them, some more visibly than others. That made me realize that if we were to zoom way way out and look down upon our lives, we’d discover that so many of us come in and out of each other’s lives daily. The woman you pay at the grocery store and the neighbor who’s walking his dog. The waitress who brings your sandwich or the one who prepares your coffee. We touch each other’s lives in small and big ways, often without even realizing it.
Who knows what’s happening in their lives. What tragedies they might be facing. What sickness. Or anticipation of something big. Fear. Even joy.
So, I thought, today we should take a moment to express some gratitude to the people in the edges of our life. The people that otherwise recede to the background. Maybe with a wide smile. Or a little note in the mailbox. A big tip.
You never know, it might be the highlight of their day. What you do know is that it’s guaranteed to be one of yours.
The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.
I decided to combine day 4 and 5 since both of them were mostly days off for us.
David:
1. Try one new food every day – He tried lychee which he wasn’t a fan of. Neither was I and nor was Jake. We didn’t make Nathaniel try.
2. Do 30 minutes of work daily – We skipped this.
3. Read 20 minutes a day from a book – Skipped this, too.
Art:
1. Draw 100 faces – No faces but maybe I’ll do one tonight.
2. Make one art journal page daily – I did a big zentangle and colored with my copics.
Health:
1. Exercise for 15-20 minutes 3 times a week – I think a lot of the camping work I did counts but I didn’t do Wii.
2. Eat one fruit and one vegetable every day – Banana and strawberries. No veggies.
Productivity:
1. Do one nagging task daily – I registered for a 5K, woot!
2. Start and End each day better – I’m all over this one. Doing it like a champ.
Soul:
1. Journal for 15 minutes a day – none of this. I know I’ve been slacking on it.
2. Mediate for 5 minutes a day – I think the very quiet time this morning counts.
3. Write a thank you email every day – Not one yet but I will send one to Katie and one to Opal today.
And that’s that.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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