Saturday night Matt and I had a dream date!!  Thanks to several gift cards we were able to go to the movies and to the Cheesecake factory for dinner!  It was so much fun and was flashbacks to life before kids…and life before a non-profit :). 

We spent a good part of dinner dreaming of our coming year and maybe a little about our inspirations of becoming entrepreneurs.  After dinner we came home had some ‘specail’ drinks and cuddled up on the couch for our second movie of the evening.  Ahhhh…relaxation!!  We may or may not have watched Julie & Julia (our second Amy Adams movie of the evening…the first being Leap Year…gotta love her).  So after watching Julie blog about her life…it made me remember mine!  I certainly do not have a love for being in the kitchen and cooking…although I do love to eat…but I do LOVE to craft!  So I got my self thinking between my dinner conversation with my oh SO encouraging husband and watching Julie…”could I add a feature to my blog with my crafts???”  SO I AM! 

Every Monday, I am going to release an item that I have made during the week.  Most items I will also release on my etsy shop, edstitches, where they will be available for purchase. There is a part of me that comes alive when I create so I’m hoping this will help me develop a rhythm of doing just that. I think this will be fun, encouraging, motivating and maybe bring in a little bizzzzz.

So for my first item of release…

‘Let the Wild Rumpus Start’ was inspired by my boys.  When this movie came out this past fall…I really had no inspiration to see it.  I don’t remember the book ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ from my childhood…and any memory I do have of it…I didn’t care for it.  I didnt’ get it.  After seeing the movie and buying the book for my boys for christmas…and maybe being the mom of two boys…I now LOVE the book!  Boys will be boys…with their loud noises, sound effects, rough play, dirty hands, wrestling, and just plain old fashion FUN spirits.  We tell our boys often “I’ll eat you up I love you so”…and now it warms my heart to hear Caleb say those words to Jeremiah.  🙂

I am excited about this new launching of my blog…I hope it inspires you as it is already making my wheels turn with all I could create.  Don’t you worry through this process…I will try to get better updating in general through the week as I am sure more of my creations will also be inspired by my boys- with cute stories to tell!  Cheers!

Details: ($30.00) This painting was painted on a piece of driftwood I found at a friend’s lake house.  I used acrylic paint, and Matt has nailed two hooks in the back for easy hanging.  You could hang this painting in a playroom, kids room-where ever!  Use your imagination!

The best way to spread christmas cheer is to sing loud for all to hear…or just have a Caleb & Jeremiah…

I have really enjoyed my boys this christmas season!  Their ages are so fun and Caleb is able to grasp concepts…which brings a new dimension of parenting as we  try to teach, model, & impress things on him.  Caleb has LOVED singing christmas carols and Frosty The Snowman is his favorite!  We have painted noodles and strung them on string for the tree, painted and created ornaments for “his tree” in his room (that he proudly shows to anyone who enters our house), help hung icicle lights outside on the roof, baked cookies, created christmas presents, seen santa, drove looking at lights, gone to christmas parties, watched christmas movies, built fires, drank hot chocolate….and just been together!  Yesterday, he put all his toys under the christmas tree and proudly showed me what was going to happen on christmas day!  🙂  So excited about another week together before we celebrate our Savior’s birth! 

J has started giving kisses…and it warms my heart!!  What a special boy!  He is enjoying eating 🙂  which I still love!  J’s new favorite toys are the small bouncy balls from the $0.25 machine in Old Navy…which we happen to have a few 🙂  I think he has taken one to bed for the last 3 days for his nap.  He smiles and babbles and is showing lots of his personality-which is so fun!  He’s my sensitive one…he gets upset if he thinks someone is getting hurt.  Example, if Matt starts tickling or wrestling with Caleb…J gets upset because he thinks Caleb is getting hurt…it’s so precious! 

In the midst of some hard family and financial stuff…this has still been my favorite christmas season…and my boys are the reason for it!  We are so blessed with such awesome guys!!

I am so excited about christmas this year!  Our boys are such fun ages to really get into traditions, baking cookies, and making ornaments.  My current project to do soon….is to bead colorful noodles on string with Caleb for our christmas tree.  Don’t you remember doing that??? 

I know there is so much hype around christmas with the shopping and buying.  I fall victim to that OFTEN and want to prayerfully go about this season in a different manner.  I want to make memories and traditions instead of stressing about what to buy and how much money everything costs.  An awesome friend (ahem…Maddie) told me about a tradition she does with her family every year.

They make each other a present!  We are doing that with Matt’s family this year…and I am SO excited about it!  What an awesome illustration of love to devote time to something for someone you love.  I have been rereading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  This book rocked my world a year ago…and I am praying it does the same this time around!  I will tell you this…I read a page a few days a go and I still can’t shake it from my head.  Here is a snip-it from it…

Did you know that a caterpillar has 228 separate and distinct muscles in its head?  That’s quite a few, for a bug.  The average elm tree has approximately 6 million leaves on it.  And your own heart generates enough pressure as it pumps blood throughout your body that it could skirt blood up to 30 feet.  Have you ever thought about how diverse and creative God is?  He didn’t have to make hundreds of different kinds of bananas, but he did.  He didn’t have to put 3,000 different species of trees within one square mile in the Amazon jungle, but he did.  God didn’t have to create so many kinds of laughter.  Think about the different sounds of your freinds’ laughs-wheezes, snorts, silent, loud obnoxious.  How about the way plants defy gravity by drawing water upward from the ground into their stems and veins?  Or did you know that spiders produce three kinds of silk?  When they build their webs, they create sixty feet of silk in one hour, simultaneously producing special oil on their feet that prevents them from sticking to their own web…

I could keep typing, but I will stop there so you have to get the book and continue reading!  🙂  My point in this long message is that we serve an awesome, creative God.  The creativeness he spent on all creation is mind blowing-yet he calls us, humans, his masterpiece (Eph. 2:10).  What a crazy love he has for us!

It is my prayer that I will be able to love others with that crazy love….friends that I have known forever or am really close to and fallen into crazy ruts of no longer investing and pursuing the relationship, neighbors that I love…and also those neighbors that are hard to talk to and let in, strangers that I meet while out with my family, my boys-that I can be patient and intentional with them throughout the day, my husband whom I adore, and my extended family…even when its breaking and you might not agree with everyone’s actions, words, or ways…

God loves us with a crazy love.  Let’s love others the same way!

About a week ago J got his first hair cut!  I was very hesitant to cut it before we returned from our “big trip”, but it got to a point where we had to cut it!!  I kept waiting for it to curl like matt’s…mine…and Caleb’s…but it looks like he might be the only one of us with straight hair!  There is something about your baby getting a hair cut…where they don’t seem as much like a baby!  I can’t believe he will be one in a week!!  The year has flown by!  Here are some pictures from J’s first time in Daddy’s Barber Shop: