Rustic Tree...

This project has been a long time in the making. It probably took me a good five months from beginning to end (I took a lot of breaks in between steps) but it was so worth it! I got the inspiration for this from Three Men and a Lady.

First, we found some old wooden pallets back behind Target one night and brought them home. Then my hubby pulled them apart and nailed them to some boards to make this rugged square. Then I stained the slats a dark wood stain. The search was on to find a tree picture that I liked. This was the winner...

The picture was in color but I made it black and white so that it would be easier to trace onto the boards. I covered the wood with some white contact paper so that I could trace the image onto the wood. I had the picture copied to a transparency at Kinkos and then I borrowed a projector from my church and projected the image onto the wood.

This part was a little nerve wracking. All of those squiggly lines!!! I kept saying, "Honey, do you think people are going to know that this is supposed to be a tree?" I wasn't convinced for a while. The most tedious part of the project was cutting out all of the negative space with an exacto knife. That took forever! Once that was done I put one coat of paint on it and pulled the contact paper off while it was still wet. The paint bled through on some parts and I had to do a little touch up afterwards, but I think that it turned out amazing!!!!

I'm so happy with this project! It's very rustic, so there are lots of imperfections and flaws, but that's what was nice about it. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my crafting so it was nice to have a project that could be a little rough and rugged. I still might take my sander to it and rough it up some more in a few places, you know... to add to the rustic feel. I really do love it. I hate to pick favorites, but I think that this might be my favorite project I have ever made for my house before...

The wheels are turning...

Life has gotten really busy around here lately... which leaves not much time for crafting. I have a few projects so close to being done... but not quite yet!

In the mean time, here are a few things that I'm hoping to start soon when I find some time to craft again!

We bought an old desk over the weekend that needs a new paint job. I think I'm going to do something like this desk from over at A Delightful Blog.

I love this cute little hexagon bib from over at A Quilt is Nice. So adorable! I might need to try this out before I commit to a full hexagon quilt. Maybe make a few of these to add to the "baby gift" stash...

This is an old ad for Alice Lane. I just love those pillows! They are so adorable! I am almost done putting my living room together, and would like to make a few of these in green, brown, and white to finish it off. So cute!

Quilt Pattern found...

Okay, so remember when I said I was in love with this quilt pattern here? Well... I changed my mind. I don't know what it is, maybe that I want to have white bedding and I felt like there was just too much white and not enough color on this one... or maybe it was just that the white and the colors weren't separated enough... not sure. Anyway, I've had my hope valley fabric sitting here waiting for me to make up my mind. Then I saw this beautiful little quilt on a delightful blog and I knew this was the one.

It's the same basic idea, just a little more color mixed in with the white. I love that it's still asymmetrical... I love Denyse Schmidt. I love all of her stuff. Her fabric, her patterns. You can find this one for free here. So I'm going to do that pattern with white and these beautiful fabrics...

I think I'll start tomorrow because I can't wait!

Sunrise...

July 31, 2009 - I was driving home late at night when I made an awful discovery. I don't know if the seat beat was bothering my neck or what, but I reached my hand up and touched my neck just above my collar bone and felt it. A lump, the size of a large grape. "Crap!" I thought, "Please don't let this be cancer." Sure enough, it was cancer. Hodgkin's lymphoma.

July 31, 2010 - I woke up at 3:30 AM. Pulled on my jeans and hiking boots... and glasses cause that is way to early for contacts. Met some friends who pulled up on a four wheeler and we rode to the top of a mountain. Hiked for about 30 minutes and sat at the top of a peak to watch the sunrise. And it was beautiful.

And so is life. Life is beautiful. And I'm happy to still be in the game.

Baby Steps - Sleep...

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Getting good sleep is so important!!! I have had the hardest time going to sleep ever since I became a mom (almost three years ago). I can't even blame it on my kid who has been a great night sleeper ever since he was 5 months old. Nope, it's just me, I have the hardest time falling asleep.

I really think that sleep is essential to being healthy. Your body repairs damaged cells while you are sleeping. I think that it is also easier to eat healthy, and work out when you are well rested.



I've been trying to pay close attention to things I do at night that might be the cause of my not being able to sleep. If I don't get a good nights sleep (at least 7 hours right now) I have a really hard time functioning the next day. It's ridiculous, but important enough that I'm trying to be better at this. I've come up with a few rules that I need to follow in order to get good sleep.

1- If I nap during the day, I have a really hard time falling asleep before midnight. So no naps (this is a hard one because I LOVE naps!)


2- No hot baths at night. This is another hard one because I love hot baths!!! But if my body temperature is too hot then I can't sleep. So no more hot baths.


3- If I am too hot, take a cold shower or go to the pool. For some reason I do sleep better if my body is nice and cool so sometimes a cool shower is in order to get some sleep.


4- My feet have to be comfortable in order to get to sleep. I keep a pair of socks by my bed if my feet are too cold, and a bottle of lotion if my feet are too hot. I don't know why but if my feet aren't comfortable, I can't fall asleep.





Have you found any tricks to getting better sleep? If you do please share!

Limes...

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I love limes. I think that they are one of the greatest things on the planet. I love their tartness, and how they intensive the flavor of other foods. Limes are in season right now so they taste so yummy! We've been eating a whole lot of lime around here lately. Here are a few of my favorite lime recipes...





... Shrimp Tacos. I made these twice last week, and might be making it again tonight. I'm in love with this one. You season the shrimp with lime and the pico de gallo. It's just so fresh and yummy!


... Brazilian Limeade. Made this the other night after a long hot day and some time at the pool. It was wonderful! So lime-y! This one is a must to try (thanks Sarah!).


... Sprite + Lime. My favorite easy beverage. So good...


... Lime-Cilantro Rice. I haven't tried this one yet, but it's on the menu tonight! It reminds me of the rice they have at Chipotle, which I'm a big fan of. So hopefully it's great (I'm sure it will be). I'm even going be brave and try the pineapple with it.


... Pineapple Mango Salsa. This is another one that I am dying to try. A nice fresh summer salsa, loaded with lime. Lovely...

H is for Handmade giveaway...

I'm giving away two trees this week over at H is for Handmade... so head on over! You have until Thursday night to enter!

pot holders...

As much as I love these Together Forever bears and the Snowmen potholders that I've been using forever... it was time for a change.

I'm not sure why I never bought new potholders. Ones that actually looked good. Ones that I would be so embarrassed when I pulled them out when company was over. I don't mind the snowmen, but those should have been reserved for Christmas time... not July. The together forever bears were a wedding gift... 7 1/2 years ago... and they didn't look good then... and I'm still using them.

So I've been a little busy correcting this problem of mine...

My friend Linda works for an interior design company and they are always getting different swatches of fabric lines. One night she brought me over this book of sample fabric that had the cutest fabric ever. I'm in love with it, but the pieces are too small to make pillows or something like that out of it... pot holders it was! I think that I'll use the rest to piece a quilt, so more on that later.

I wanted to try my hand at stippling, since I have never really done it before other than just on scrap fabric. Two broken needles, and lots of unpicked thread later... they were stippled. Man, that is some intense stuff. One thing that I learned is to use 100% polyester thread. If I used thread that hand any cotton in it my top thread would bunch all up and break (resulting in unpicking and broken needles). I need a lot more practice before I try stippling something other than... potholders.

I used spray adhesive to hold all my layers together. I tried to pin them but they turned out much better if I used this stuff.

Then I was feeling confident and wanted to try my hand at some fancier stippling. I decided to try out my cursive handwriting that I learned in the fourth grade... I'm really happy with how these turned out.

The backs...

The fronts...

I love how they turned out. I'm excited to use them. I'll try to enjoy them while they are all nice and clean, you know, before they are burned and covered in spaghetti sauce.

Cause in the end... they are just potholders.

Baby Steps - Running with Angels...

I haven't worked out in two weeks. I've been on vacation with my wonderful boys and it was so much fun. I ate more hot dogs and hamburgers over the 4th of July week than I care to disclose... but it was nice to just take a breather and spend the week with our families.




When I got back I had a book on hold at the library called Running With Angels by Pamela Hansen. My mom recommended this book to me right after I lost my son. She told me that this lady had lost a baby shortly after birth and then had a still born son later, so she lost two babies! My response to her recommendation was, "Why on earth would I ever want to read that book? So that I can worry that someday I will go through this again? I know what she is going to say, I know how she feels. I'm sure that I feel about the same way too!"



Since then I've had so many people recommend this book to me I finally decided to read it. And I'm glad I did. Why? Well, yes she lost two babies and she has other children with very serious health problems, but the book really isn't about that. The book is about how she overcame her emotional eating and lost 100 lbs and then completed a marathon. How amazing is that?



I read the book in a day and have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I have made new friends who have lost babies, and I have made new friends who have suffered through cancer. I have never met someone who has gone through both in the same year. In some insane way though, reading about this authors trials and struggles finally made me feel like someone out there might understand the way that I feel. She gave some specific examples about losing her babies that we're almost exactly what I experienced. Things that when she said them I had to close the book and say, "Do I really want to read this, and relive this?" Yes, because I want to know how she got through this! The stress of having a loved one going through a major health condition. The many many doctors appointments, the tests, the waiting for answers, the not knowing how things were going to turn out. Even though for her it was experiencing this with a child and for me it is myself going through it, I think that the same feelings of helplessness, worry, concern for your family and how all this is affecting your family are very much the same.



She talked about feeling like a failure for gaining 100 lbs. Not being anything close to the woman that her husband married so long ago. Feeling like she doesn't have time to care for herself anymore because she had to focus on her family. This book just hit me in a way that I don't think anything else could have. I haven't gained 100 lbs, but I am about 35lbs more than when I got married and have been bald for most of the year so I too feel like I am a very different girl than the one my husband married and I feel bad about that.



She always had a dream of running a marathon, and she lost 100 lbs over 18 months and then did it! How amazing is that. What I love about this is that she lost the weight by walking and joining Weight Watchers. There was no magic pill, no fad diet, just lots and lots of hard work. Lots of determination, self acceptance, will power, sticking to her plan even though her will power was gone. She talked about the feelings that are associated with being over weight and hating herself for letting herself get to this point.



This was a really inspirational book for me to read because it focused so much on the emotional side of things instead of just, "eat this, do this, and you will lose weight". I know how to lose weight, I've done it before. What I'm struggling with is knowing how to handle all of these emotions that I'm feeling and figuring out how to not let them control my life. This book has given me a lot to think about and has given me a lot of hope that someday things will be better, and I will feel better about myself and my life!



And maybe even run in a race again someday...

Road Trips...

I haven't been crafting as much as I would like to this summer. One thing that I have been doing is spending a lot of time in the car going on different road trips! It's been a lot of fun, and I've really enjoyed the scenery as we've driven along.

On one trip I was loving how blue the sky was and how amazing it looked with the green green grass. It was so inspirational I thought the whole way about making a quilt out of greens and blues. I was so in love with the color combination that's all I could think about.

But then a few weeks later on another trip there was a huge storm and the whole sky was gray. I loved how the gray looked against the green... and then I started to change my mind.

I'm not sure which I like better now, gray + green or blue + green...

Either way, I'm pretty sure that mother nature puts together the best color combinations that there are...

Baby Steps - The Wagon...

I have temporarily fallen off the wagon.... geez.

I had a rough little while there emotionally and it threw me completely off my diet. As in, my husband knew I was feeling blue and bought me a lemon delight cake from Costco and I spent the whole weekend eating a whole cake... that kind of falling off the wagon.

I still believe in my eat sweets on the weekend stuff, but I don't think that eating a WHOLE ENTIRE CAKE is what I had in mind.

I've had a hard time getting back on track ever since. Emotional eating is a rough rough rough thing. You know, that's what got me into this mess (this gained 25 lbs mess) in the first place. And something that I'm finding super difficult is that the emotions are still all there. The hard times are still there, I'm just trying to not eat my way through them which I'm having a hard time with.

I thought that it was a great time to start trying to lose weight because I was not on chemo anymore so health wise it was a good time to start. But all the emotions of losing a baby and having cancer are still there, and I have a hard time coping with it all when I go through one of my moods. I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with my emotions without including food in the mix. It's rough sometimes...

So I haven't gained any weight from my escapades, but I haven't lost any either. I think that I will keep one foot in the wagon and one out of it over the holiday weekend, and then get back on track... because I'm not giving up yet!

Style Blogs...

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I'm not the most stylish girl in the world... but I would like to be better. I think that I've moved past the phase of not wanting to spend money on clothes because there are other things I could be spending money on, to realizing that it feels really good to like the way that you look. I don't think that there is anything wrong with trying to look your best and to have fun with it! We all have to wear clothes, might as well look good! I'm also realizing that it doesn't have to cost a fortune to look good, there are always deals and sales going on if you look for them.





I've been looking at lots of different style blogs lately, trying to get ideas of cute outfits. Here are some of my favorites in no particular order...

Classic Coquette (my own personal style consultant just started one!!!)

Kendi Everyday

For the Love

academichic

Sensibly Styled

Clothed Much

So tell me... where do you go for your fashion inspiration?? Do you know any other good style blogs that I should know about... please help a girl out!

Favorite Corner...

This is my favorite corner in our house. It's in my sons bedroom and this is often where the most precious moments of our day take place. We love to sit and read books in this chair and I like to rock him and sing him songs before bedtime.

The chair was found on Craigslist for super cheap. A few coats of Ivy Pasture from Valspar is all it needed. The basket on the floor has his books in it, while the shelves hold the books I don't want him to touch all the time and his library books.

The shelves were made out of wine crates from Costco (they were free). I stained the outside and painted the inside. Sock monkey was made by my sister in law and was a gift for his first birthday.

I love this picture. It's a page from the book Welcome to the Zoo, which is a darling picture book that my son has loved to death and totally fell apart. This is one of the only pages left that was not ripped so I kept it and threw the rest of the book away. I glued some of his little animals inside of an IKEA frame. I love it. I got the idea from here.

Baby Steps- The No S Diet...

So maybe we should talk a little bit about diet...





I hate diets. Really, I do. Why? I don't think that most of them are very realistic. I have never been a fan of diets that make you eat cabbage soup (gross) for weeks on end, or that make you completely cut out major food groups. Or that have you only eating 500 calories a day. I've had a lot of people tell me over the last few months that I really should go on a completely raw fruits and vegetable diet since I've had cancer. Really? I just don't think that is the healthiest way to go.





I've been pondering diets a lot lately since I'm trying to lose weight here. I knew that I needed to overhaul my diet since I've mainly been eating anything under the sun that I wanted and I also was not able to eat raw fruits and veggies while I was on chemo. I thought that by adding in salads and fresh fruit again would do the trick and the weight would just start falling off... but that didn't happen.

I also didn't want to go on some crazy diet because I really want my body to be healthy. My poor body... has been through great torture the last little while. Being on chemo affected every single system in my body. Having poison run through my veins for six months has left my body extremely depleted and I want my body to heal. I don't feel comfortable putting my body through more torture right now, I want to give it the food that it needs to heal.





While I was roaming the Internet one day I found this little diet trick, that I'm loving. So here it goes. It's called the No S Diet...

No Snacks

No Sweets

No Seconds

Except for on days that start with an S.

There you go friends. I have to say that I love this. I love it because this is where my problem really stems from. I love sweets. I really could eat them all day everyday and sometimes have. I'm always snacking on stuff all day long. I almost always grab seconds at dinner, just cause it's there and the food is good. I like that I'm not cutting out complete food groups like carbs or protein, just sweets... because that's really not a food group that one needs all the time now is it.

It took me a few weeks to really get the hang of this. It was really hard for me to go without sweets for five whole days!!! After about two weeks though I was good. I no longer crave sweets all day long. It's also been kind of nice to plan out a nice dessert for Sunday nights that I can totally indulge in, and I have the whole week to look forward to it. I like that I am starting to feel like I have control over what I eat, not that food has control over me. I like that it's just a quick little saying that I can repeat in my head when I'm tempted to cheat a little. And I also like that the weight is starting to come off... and that is a good good thing.

I don't want to go on a diet that is going to make me lose weight, but then be impossible to maintain in my life after that. This is something that I can stick to because it still gives me freedom to eat something other than celery sticks, but reins me in where I need to be reigned in.

So I've been eating four times a day... breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner. While I eat what I want to I've been eating pretty healthy. Oatmeal with wheat germ and flax seed for breakfast, salad with black beans for lunch, string cheese and fruit for a snack, and a healthy dinner with protein, carbs, and veggies. If I decide to stray a little, I don't freak out about it, I just make sure my next meal is a healthier one.

So there you have it... what little diet tricks have you found that have helped you out?

***** My Progress*****

Well, I've now lost 7 lbs. I moved up one notch on my belt today, so that's exciting stuff. I have not missed a workout yet, still just doing three times a week. I haven't been running outside though because these 100+ days are killing me. So I've been doing Jillian Michael's 30 day shred workout dvd instead. I'm moving up to level 2 tomorrow... go me!

Curtains...

I finally got the curtains finished and hung in our guest room. I love all Joel Dewberry fabrics, they are amazing. I found this print that I've been eyeing forever over at Quilt Shops. I found this site after I called every single quilt store in the city I live in to find a certain fabric and none of the stores in my area had any more of it. This site is great if you are looking for a specific fabric, or specific designer, especially if the fabric you want is from a discontinued line (like this one) and is no longer being made. I found this print from his Chestnut Hill line for only $3.50 a yard!!! That's a steal! I'm totally in love with it.

And he has a blog... Joel does... that his wife runs. Love it. I might need to start stocking up on his fabrics now that I know where to find them.