Craft Day

Marissa and I have been getting together about once a week to do a crafty-homey type thing. This project was the result of Marissa wanting to make something in the "home decor" department. We thought letter blocks were cute, but didn't have any wooden blocks. We ended up downloading a paper folding box template and making our non-cubical cubes out of cardboard. (Not recommended, for time management purposes) Then we covered them in paper- black and white scrapbook paper on one set, and brown craft paper on the other. It's all held together with generous amounts of Mod Podge. I love the contrast of the red letters on the black and white. I used wrapping paper to make the letters on the Christmas block set. We traced around enlarged letters from a font we liked on the computer so the letters would match (I don't consider myself an artist in that department at all). Anyway, despite being fairly time consuming (mostly assembling all the little boxes) we had fun putting this project together.

Sweater Love

I love sweaters, but I always have a few that aren't "quite right". It's easy to give many sweaters a style makeover to make them more wearable.
I had fun experimenting with turning pull-over sweaters into cardigan-style sweaters.

My sister and I added some interest to a boring, plain sweater just by sewing on some ribbon and a few buttons. Sorry, I forgot to take "before" pictures of the next couple!


Similarly, this sweater wasn't working for Marissa because the sleeves were an awkward length- too long for 3/4 sleeves, too short for long sleeves. So we decided to go short!

I have a few other ideas for sweater refashioning, which I have yet to try. If they work out, maybe I will post more pictures.

Long Time

Yep, it has been a long time since I posted. A lot has happened in the past month or two. I will try to catch up.
Here are some albums and videos that I meant to post when Gabe turned 15 months old. Now he is nearly 16 months. Wah.





This video is from about a month or so ago, when he was really starting to walk around more. Now he is much more stable and just running all around the house, following me from room to room.

My mom came to visit about 2 weeks ago. We had her stay with us the 5 days she was here, and we had a good time! I was terrible about taking pictures, although I got a few. Some of the things we did were: Go see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal, make applesauce, lots of baking, visiting my Grandma Christensen, driving up Hobble Creek Canyon and taking pictures, barbecuing, and lots of visiting.


Probably the main reason that I haven't posted in a while is that I haven't been feeling too energetic lately because... I'm pregnant with Baby #2! I am due April 28. I have been very fatigued but the nausea is really starting to decrease. Thank goodness. I am definitely showing earlier than with my first pregnancy, although it is definitely the awkward stage where I just look chubby, not pregnant. Thus, no pictures yet. Haha.
Anyway, more to come on some of the other things I have been working on lately.

Time to blog again

Rochelle has been asking me to contribute to the blog again. I remember a time when I was doing much if not most of the writing, and I was the one trying to get Rochelle to write. My, times have changed. But I should be doing more of this. I should be recording history better, and journalling better. We've had a good month. My birthday came and went, and it was fun. We had a couple of different little get-togethers with people, and that's kinda the way I think I prefer it. I enjoy small groups instead of large crowds. I can focus more on the people I'm with instead of trying to say 'hi' to everyone, and bouncing from conversation to conversation. We went to Sam Hawk with Richard, Marissa, Charles, and Annette. I always thoroughly enjoy myself there. The food is great. And the company was splendid. And my parents treated us to a dinner at Teppanyaki. Eating there reminded Rochelle and I of a chance meeting we had had there before we started dating years ago. It's a funny story. I'm not going to take the time to post it here though. At least not right now. ;-) And Rochelle and I celebrated on our own some too. Rochelle decided that for my birthday that we could get a grill. I've always wanted one, but it hadn't always been feasible until recently. So now I'm 30, I have a wife, and son, and a grill. Isn't life grand? I tried it out, and promptly burnt the first thing I cooked on it. It seemed fitting and proper that I did. Traditional. Men around the country burn their meet on the grill and somehow love it all the same. I can now join in their ranks. Well... I could go on, but I've learned that if I blog too much in one post, the post won't get read, and I'm afraid I'm nearing or past that point already. But I will try to post again soon. I like to hear myself talk, and this seems as good of a forum for that as any.

BJ

Happy 30th Birthday BJ!

It's true: BJ has finished his 30th year of life. I am fortunate enough to have spent the last 5 years at his side, and look forward to many more years together.
I could wax profound here, but let me just say that I love you dearly BJ, and wish you the happiest of birthdays!
I will let BJ give the birthday synopsis if he so desires!

14 Months Old!

Well, the time sure does fly. This has been a fun month as we continually see more and more of Gabe's fun personality emerge. Here is his "bio" for the month:

Gabe LIKES: playing with his toys, unstacking and knocking things down, graham crackers, poking people's noses, playing "chase", exploring anything and everything- rooms with open doors, trying to open the toilet lid, opening and closing cupboards and drawers, climbing over obstacles, and watching people blow bubbles.


Gabe LOVES: Grapes, fruit, cheese, playing with Mommy and Daddy, playing peekaboo and pattycake by himself, having stories read to him and turning the pages, going outside, bath time, playing with real or pretend phones, remotes, etc., playing roll the ball and throw the ball (he has pretty good aim too), and kick the ball (with some help), looking at himself and others in the mirror, making people laugh, or gasp with "surprise".

Gabe does NOT like: eggs, nap time, nose wipes, sitting still for too long, being in confined spaces, strangers trying to hold him.

Gabe hasn't started walking independently, not that I think he couldn't, but he seems to be content with crawling (which he started late as well) or holding on to things as he walks. He will take a few steps, but then he "dives" toward whatever his goal is. We put some shoes on him, which may help, but we shall see!
Gabe is starting to communicate more with us, not so much by him speaking, but in gestures, grunts (!), and a few signs. He evidently understands a good deal of what we say to him. He will sometimes point to his mouth when he wants to eat, and clap his hands when he wants more of something. He looks at the picture of Jesus in his room when I say "Where is Jesus?" and he crawls toward me as fast as he can if I get my keys out and say "Let's go bye-bye." When I remind him to be gentle, he reaches out and strokes my hair as "gently" as he can. He gives kisses when asked to, and sometimes without being asked. This week as I have picked him up, he puts his arms around me and pats me on the back.
Gabe still takes a 1 hour morning nap, but I think we are about to phase the afternoon nap out; we end up with a lot of screaming and lately he is pretty happy to just keep playing- and then we put him down for bed an hour earlier, at 7pm. :D Gabe goes to bed pretty easily though, we lay him down while he is still awake, and although we sometimes hear him crying a little bit (like if he hears any loud noises) he usually goes right to sleep and doesn't wake up until 6:30- 7:30 in the morning.
We have had some concerns with Gabe's health this month. First, we were worried that Gabe might have a milk intolerance because he was throwing up for a week, so we took him off milk completely. We have started giving him cheese again and other things with milk, even making rice cereal with milk, and no problems so far, so we will see what happens with that. Then last week we all got pretty sick with congestion, aches, pains, slight fevers, etc. and Gabe started having difficulty breathing with wheezing so we took him in to the after hours clinic and got him started on breathing treatments, which we have been continuing at home, but with less frequency as he is getting better. Poor little guy is used to the mask on his face and just leaves it alone (for the most part) while we sing songs or read books. Then we found out he is getting another ear infection. Big surprise. The doctor really recommended that Gabe gets tubes put in his ears, so we may be doing that soon.
Gabe is really a pretty happy kid. We love him dearly and think the world of him, as parents do of their children. We have so much fun with him and are really enjoying watching his personality develop.

Happy September!

Every September, I feel that mix of sadness at summer coming to an end, and excitement about all things fall. Thinking of all the things that were on my summer- to- do list, and exploring all the possibilities of fun activities yet to try. I am excited for the leaves to change colors and the weather to cool down a bit. I can't help but imagine the smell of crayons, erasers, and freshly sharpened pencils (I might just take a little walk down the aisles at Office Depot for fun). It almost makes me long for school days again. Almost. September also reminds me of canning peaches, immunizations, eating tomatoes, and packing sack lunches with apples and peanut butter sandwiches on homemade bread (notice a food theme there?). But I digress.
With the beginning of September, I have scaled back my work hours a bit, so I am only working 8 hours a week now. It is nice to be able to spend more time with Gabriel. Speaking of Gabe, he is cutting his 13-16th teeth right now, two of which are molars. Poor kid. He also has a cold this morning. In addition, he has to sleep in his pack and play, because we took his crib back to Target last weekend (it was recalled) and we haven't had a chance to get a new crib for him yet.
On the docket for today: naps, sorting through piles and piles of papers, sewing some new pants for Gabe, possibly even making my bed. Ha.

Quilted travel jewelery case

I did a similar case a few months ago for a camera. I used the leftover fabric for this case, making it a little larger, adding a ribbon for easier carrying, and dividing the case so there were two pockets.

 

 

This is a quick and fun project. Visit my previous entry on making the case to see some links to a tutorial and some helpful tips.

Update on Gabe

Today we took Gabe to Primary Children's Hospital to see a craniofacial specialist, and good news: we were reassured that the ridge on his head will not get any worse, his brain development will not be poorly affected, and the ridge may even disappear as Gabe grows. We were pretty much expecting that, but wanted to hear it from someone who could tell us confidently that that was the case. So now we have our peace of mind and are able to lay our anxieties to rest. Yay!

Happy 5 Year Anniversary!

I would certainly be remiss if I did not mention that BJ and I just celebrated our 5th Anniversary. At the risk of sounding a little mushy, these past five years have been the happiest of my life, and I consider myself blessed to be married to such a fun, kind, witty, patient, cool, talented, smart guy. We have had so many wonderful times, and I still get excited thinking about what our future holds.
So last week we headed out to Oregon to stay with my family for a while. We went swimming (one of Gabe's favorite things to do), hiking to Multnomah Falls, BJ took Cara's senior pictures, and we went to the Portland LDS Temple where we were married. On our Anniversary, BJ and I left Gabe with my family and we drove out to the coast. We honeymooned at Cannon Beach after we were married, and decided we would go back on our 5th anniversary. This time we stayed at a cute, oddly-shaped Bed and Breakfast right on the Oceanfront in Seaside. We had a really nice time, eating at Camp 18 (a really cool restaurant on Highway 26) like we did on our first trip to the beach together, right before we got engaged. We enjoyed walking on the boardwalk and down the beach. It was kind of cool and stormy, just like it was on our honeymoon. We went into a couple of really cool toy shops and bought some fun games- Mancala, Pass the Pigs, and Banana Grams, which is like the game Syzygy, which I love. My family drove out to the beach the next day, bringing Gabe of course, and we headed to Indian Beach. Love that beach. The Oregon Coast is so picturesque! The weather warmed up quite a bit. Anyway, Gabe LOVED the ocean. He is definitely a water baby. We walked him down to the waves (the tiny ones) and jumped him over each one. He loved it. He didn't care that his legs were all cold he was just enthralled the whole time. He was not happy with us when we decided that he had had enough and it was time to go warm up. We ate at Camp 18 again (my family wanted to go)on our way back and had fun playing games at the table and watching Gabe's antics.
We had a great time in Oregon, and it was kind of hard to come back and get back in to work and more work.

Here is another web album from my dad with a few more pictures.

Man's Shirt to Woman's Shirt Tutorial

Here is my own take on the man's shirt to woman's shirt refashion that has been going around the online sewing/ crafting community lately. There are quite a few different styles out there. Clothing refashioning really appeals to me, especially pattern-less refashioning.
After some hesitation, I decided to share pictures I took along the way with commentary, tutorial- style. I am a little nervous to share; this is the first tutorial I have ever written for something that I made up. If there is anything that is unclear, please let me know and I will try to clarify.
Click on the album below if you would like to be able to see the instructions. They were too long to include in the slideshow here, but you can see them in the album itself. I appreciate any feedback on whether this format is useful for a tutorial, if anyone tries it.

Brief update

It's been another interesting week so far. We got news on Saturday that my dad had been in an ATV accident and was in the hospital, fortunately, he was discharged only a few hours later, with painful but minor injuries that will heal in time. To read his account of what happened, see this post. We are so grateful that he is alright.
Today Gabe went to the pediatrician to get his ears checked to see if he would need tubes. One ear had some fluid in it but neither ear was infected. Yay! We have not had any sickness or infection for a few weeks. (Knock on wood.)
We are looking forward to seeing my family in the near future, and celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary. More on that to come.

Photos, photos, and more photos

Rochelle has asked me to post some of my favorite photos from recent activities, and so here it goes. Moving in chronological order, we'll start with Charles and Annette who graciously allowed me to take their pictures for their engagement and their bridals. It was a lot of fun... and they make a great couple. Here's a few of my favorites from those photo shoots.



This next slide show may be a little long, so you may just want to skim through it if you are short on time. Rochelle's mom asked me to take photos of their production "The Music Man". She was vocal music director for the show. The slide show is up for the benefit of the people who were in the show, and therefore every picture that turned out is posted here.



And last, but not least, are some pics I took of Gabe today while he was playing. It is getting much more difficult to take his picture since he is so mobile now. He doesn't stay put. When I get the camera out, he immediately starts crawling towards me, and climbing on me. And so many of these pictures are taken an arms length away. All the same, I really like how some of these turned out. Some of these really make me laugh.



Well, that's the end of the slide shows. Hope you enjoyed them.

What a week

It's been another busy/ good week. We went to the Orem Owlz baseball game on Monday with some friends of ours in our ward. I hadn't been to a baseball game since high school. We really enjoyed it and Gabe did really well too.

I made my first ever zucchini bread this week as well, from a great recipe I got from BJ's mom. YUM. (Thanks, Suzanne!) We even used some zucchini that we picked from our garden. I froze the rest of the zucchini we had for easy zucchini bread- making in the future. Oh, I got a bunch of flowers (Zinnias) from my garden too, which I love!

Another "highlight" of the week was taking our old white car in for what we hoped was a minor repair, and ending up having to pay nearly $700 to get it fixed. Boo. That was not news we were happy to receive.
On to more important things:
Gabe is 13 months old today. He started standing up by himself with no support several weeks ago, for just a few seconds at a time, and now he is able to stand for quite a bit longer. Last night he took three steps by himself toward me. It is so funny to watch him as he does this. He laughs and gasps, as if he is just thrilled that he is doing it by himself, but also a little scared. Besides walking, he is very mobile, crawling all over the place. He still frequently crawls with one knee down, and his other foot on the floor, if that makes sense. He loves to play roll the ball with us, and crawls after his ball as fast as he can to roll it back to us. One of his favorite toys is still the push cart/ walker thingy. He loves to push it down the hall at a run! When he runs into something and can't go forward anymore, he gets really upset and will sometimes scream until I come turn him around. I guess we will have to work on teaching him to turn himself around. Haha.

Last week he started teething again. He popped three teeth through all about at the same time, and one more is about to cut through. All on the bottom- 2 canines, and 2 molars. He has been remarkably cheerful.
Gabe has also finally consented to holding his own sippy cup while he drinks. For the longest time he would throw his arms behind him and make us hold the cup while he drank, but now he's got it all figured out, and he has even branched out to a couple of new kinds of sippy cups too, although the ones with the straws are his favorites.
One of the sweetest things Gabe does right now is if you tell him you love him or ask for a kiss, he will start smacking his lips, lean forward, and kiss you- sometimes with a smack, sometimes open- mouthed. Then he says "tiss, tiss, tiss." That is pretty much his only word that he says consistently that we understand the meaning for. He understands lots of words and responds to them, but he doesn't use much verbal language himself yet.
This seems to be an age of curiosity. He is in to anything and everything. It is stressful to me at times, as I am realizing I have some more baby- proofing to do, but I am loving watching him develop and learn. Like most babies, he is doing an in- depth, independent study of gravity. Haha.
I love this kid!


Thanks for letting me record this here- I know not everybody likes to read this kind of stuff, but for me, at least right now, it is how I am journaling Gabriel's growth and so it is important to me.

Baby Alert!

Someone should invent some sort of alarm that goes off when your child is about to get into something they shouldn't. I would buy one.
Gabe is only a year old, but he's at the stage where he is very curious, fairly mobile, and loves to put things in his mouth. Dangerous combination! It means that he needs fairly constant supervision. I am learning not to be lulled into a false sense of security when Gabe is quiet. A few times today I have looked up or around the corner after noticing that Gabe was being quieter than usual, only to find him getting into something he shouldn't. He knows it too, because he jumps when he sees me and puts the thing (whatever it is) down. Usually the "thing" I find is a piece of lint, carpet, kleenex (or what's left of it) or nasty old piece of food or dirt. How does he even find that stuff? Sometimes, though, I find him getting into my purse (why did I leave it on the floor again?), trying to chew on the power cord to BJ's computer or the vertical blinds on our sliding glass door, or reaching into the bathroom garbage. Why do these things hold such attraction to babies? I understand that they are curious and trying to learn about the world around them. I don't want to stifle that. Yet I want to keep Gabe safe and not let him get into things that are going to hurt him or make him sick.
Going outside is a whole different ballgame. Most kids love to be outside, but there isn't much out there that I am thrilled to see him put in his mouth. I've seen parents go to both extremes on this; some almost wont put their kids (babies/ toddlers) down when they go outside, others let their kids pick up, play with, and taste anything that isn't poop or poison.
My questions for you all are:
1. What are the strangest, funniest, icky-est things that your kids, siblings, nieces/ nephews etc. have tried to eat?
2. Did those kids eventually learn on their own not to put nasty things in their mouths, or did it take constant vigilance on the parent's part for the first several years of their lives?
3. Should babies be allowed to pick up, play with, and lick/chew anything that doesn't pose a threat to their safety, whether inside or outside?
Feel free to answer one or all of the questions!
Thanks in advance!