Pincushion...

When I lived in Hawaii I worked for a lady named Denise. She was my adopted mom in my home away from home. When she heard that I had cancer she sent me a lovely care package full of wonderful Hawaiian goodies.... one being a little coconut shell pincushion. I love that she remembered that I love to sew.

I love this pincushion. I love that it had a hard bottom and will sit on my table without rolling away. I love that it reminds me of Hawaii. I love that it was a very simple gift from someone that I love.

However... Hawaiian print is not really my thing, unfortunately. So I gave it a little makeover one day. I actually bought a glue gun for the first time in my life to get the job done. That's right, I now own a glue gun... heaven help me!

Add a little linen and some lace...

I love it! Even though my husband says it looks "grandmaish" I don't really care. Wood + Linen + Lace... lovely.

I'm back...

I think that I'm ready to come back to the blogging world... after a nice break {ahem... timeout}.

You know, sometimes I think that adults need a timeout. Some good quality time, in the corner. Not doing anything but sitting and thinking about what they have been doing and how it affects themselves and those around them. Reflection time really.

That's what I've been doing for the past few months. Having a nice timeout where I could think about my life and the things in it. Things that I love and enjoy, and things that I don't.

After two incredibly difficult years I needed some time to give myself a break. To not try and put on a "mirage" that I was doing wonderful and jumping back into life like nothing had ever happened. The truth is that I was still trying to keep up some "appearance" that I could handle immense grief, and cancer, being a wife, a mom, working full time, and all the millions of little projects that I like to do and still have any smidgen of sanity left.

It wasn't true.

Truth is, now that the drama has settled a bit in my life... I've been pretty depressed about things. And trying to pretend like I was feeling great wasn't helping me out at all. And I didn't enjoy doing the things that I once liked to do {like crafting, and blogging, and anything else for that matter}... and I didn't like living that way.

So for the past few months I've been living my life just for me and my family. Doing the very basic things that I've needed to do for us to survive. And it's been nice to simplify, and work on a craft when I felt like it and not worry about having to blog about it ;). It's been nice to not have to account for my days, or weeks, with the number of blog posts I've been able to come up with. And it's been nice to put the computer away and focus on my relationship with my husband and son. It's been nice to remember what I like to do again in life besides breathe...

But as time has unraveled this web I've been trapped in... I've come to learn that I do miss blogging. Mainly because I miss connecting with my friends in this way. I miss my friends.

And yes, friends, I'm starting to feel much better now...

So for now, I'm back. But this blog is not just going to be my "crafting" blog. It's going to be my "Meg" blog - minus family stuff. If you are my friend and you want to know how my family is doing, please call me on the phone and talk to me. Because hearing a friends voice is so much better than anything you can ever read on a computer screen {something else I learned while in timeout}.

I don't promise to post anything interesting, or to post regularly, or to entertain anyone with my ideas and thoughts on here. This is merely an extension of myself, in whatever form it takes...

... and today I think I'm ready to come out of the corner.

Hiatus...

I'm going to take a hiatus from blogging for a while and am closing down my tree shop for now. I'm hoping to be back up around Christmas time for holiday orders. Have a great spring everyone!

Meg

One year old{er}...

Yesterday was a special day for me.

One year since my last chemotherapy treatment.

I honestly can't believe that it's been a whole year. It went by pretty fast, I've been a busy girl this year. Someone told me that it would take a whole year before I really started to feel good again and they were right! I'm finally starting to feel like myself again and less like a cancer patient. I'm so grateful that I had this year to heal and recover from chemo. I still have a lot of healing to do, but I am well on my way.

I've been taking pictures of myself every few months to document my recovery this year. So the final picture is now done. I'm so glad that I did this. Sometimes it's hard to see progress when you are looking for it everyday. But looking back now I see enormous progress every few months compared to the last. I'm so happy to be where I am today instead of where I was last year on April 1st.

Here's to health, more birthdays... and great bangs!!!

Easter tree...

We made a cute little Easter tree last week. I was super easy and inexpensive...

1- Go find some old dead branches somewhere and bring them home

2- Spray paint them white

3- Arrange in a vase

4- Hang cute egg ornaments from them

I got our ornaments from the dollar bin at Target. The sequin ones are my favorite.

Baby Steps - Habits...

I'm getting close to the one year mark of when I had my last chemo treatment in a few weeks here. I can hardly believe it's been almost a year. It's been a busy year so time has gone by pretty fast. I was thinking the other day about the changes I've tried to make in my life and what habits have stuck and what haven't over the past year.

Good new habits

 - My kitchen looks a lot different. I couldn't eat fresh fruits and veggies that I couldn't peel while on chemo, so now I have a whole lot more healthy stuff kicking around than I did before. My fruit bowl used to be this white one, but we had to upgrade to the wooden bowl, and we fill it and empty it every week between the 3 of us.

 - We've replaced white flour and white rice with whole wheat flour, wild rice and quinoa. We've been incorporating quinoa in a few meals a week and we are all loving it! I do keep a little white flour around to mix in with the wheat in stuff like pizza dough and cookies. Too much wheat makes stuff too heavy sometimes. We've always loved black beans and use a lot of black beans in our meals. But one change is we've started buying them dry instead of canned and we cook up a big batch on Sunday to use throughout the week. I like to cook them with cumin and chili powder, no salt, and they are super tasty.

 - I've stuck to my green drinks in the morning on most mornings. I'm not a real great breakfast eater and it makes me happy to get in a good portion of fruit and veggies first thing in the morning. I make one about 3-4 times a week.

Habits I'm still trying to kick

 - I love sweets. This one is so hard for me. I really do feel like I'm addicted to sugar and need to have it everyday. I'm still trying to figure out a good way to kick this one to the curb but I struggle with it.

 - If I don't plan ahead, then I don't eat very healthy. The days I pack my lunch for work I eat so much better than when I run out the door empty handed, and then I eat the unhealthy stuff that they have around work.

 - Chips... oh gosh. I love chips. And they are a really easy thing to eat at work. I'm trying hard to bring other snacks so that I'm not eating chips.

 - I'm getting more consistant with exercise, but I still have a long way to go. I've been working out about 2-3 times a week. I would really like to get it up to 5-6 times.

Pillows...

I'm trying really hard to de-junk my house right now. Not an easy task... it's been a while! I've gathered up a little collection of homeless throw pillows that have been living under beds, in closets, but not on display at all because they no longer fit the decor that I have around.

Six to be exact! So I've decided to make new homes for them, or they need to go to another home! So for part of my spring cleaning I'm going to make some new covers for them and put them somewhere other than under the bed. My kidlet thinks they are just fine the way they are though.. stacked and ready to jump on.

I've already finished one of them. I've been wanting some knit pillows on the bed in our room. This was fun, but a lot of work for a little pillow! Knitting takes a long time I've found, but I love the texture and the way that it looks. Just a simple ribbed knit pillow...

For the back I knit two panels and overlapped them so that the pillow could slip inside. I measured the pillow and knit all the parts to match up to the size of the pillow. Then I just pinned and sewed them together with my machine. I worked out really well! I love the thick course yarn...

I want to do two more for the bed, probably in cream/off white. I'd really like to do a cable knit pattern, but I've yet to sew a cable knit... so I might be browsing through the thrift stores to see if I can find some cable knit sweaters I can make into pillows.

Hair inspiration...

I love Josie Bissett's hair. She has such cute short hair! I've been gathering pictures of short haircuts that I like in hopes that I can have fun with this short hair while I have it. I think in just a couple of months my hair will be long enough to pull off this look!

I never thought this day would come but I think it's about time to break out the flat iron again. That will be a good day...

Baby Steps- It's not about being skinny...

I'm still here... plugging along. Trying to figure out how to get myself back to what I would like to be. I had a great discovery this last week that I wanted to share. It's pretty simple, but has caused me to think really differently about trying to get back into shape.

The thought is that it's really not about being skinny. It's about being healthy.

Of course I would like to be "skinny", but as I've been trying to loose weight and get in shape I've noticed that when I think about being skinny, I find myself wanting to do things that are not really healthy to get there. I also find myself feeling like by trying to get "skinny" that means that I am not skinny now, that I'm not good enough the way I am now. Which is a really self defeating thought you know. And thoughts like that don't make me want to try really hard, so it's pretty counter productive. When I think about being skinny I think about the way that I look instead of what's really going on inside of my body.

I've found that when I think about being healthy, a whole new world opens up that is a good positive place to be. Suddenly my thoughts turn to if I'm getting enough sleep at night, if I'm using and working my muscles everyday so that they can be stretched and challenged. If I'm eating things that are really going to feed and nourish my body instead of just putting empty calories in there.

Where I work I get to see really sick people all day long. Something that has been surprising to me is that it really doesn't seem to matter what size you are to what health problems a person can encounter. I've seen some really tiny people with a whole host of health problems. High blood pressure and cholesterol, renal failure, missing toes and limbs from diabetes. I think that sometimes we feel like if we can keep our weight in check but still eat whatever we want and not really take care of our bodies that it will be okay... but I don't think that it really works that way in the end.
So I did something this week that I feel pretty good about. I put my scale away. It no longer sits on my bathroom floor, tempting me to step on it to see if I've been successful this week or not (usually not). Instead, I'm really trying hard to think about what I can do to make my body healthy. What things do I need to eat so that I can be healthy... It feels so good to have this refocus, this mini breakthrough for me.

But now I'm curious. What things do you do to be HEALTHY? And what does being healthy mean to you?

Acorns...

I was walking outside the other day and noticed that a tree by our house was dropping some acorns on the ground. So today my boy and I went outside and gathered up the ones that we could. We had quite a few talks about how we needed to be soft putting them into the bowl so that their little "hats" didn't come off.
As you can see we weren't super successful at that, but a lot of them managed to keep their hats on.

I think they are beautiful! I've always loved acorns. I think they are super cute. I think that we will go back out in a few days to see if some more have dropped and we can get our little vase filled.

I resolve - January...

I started out the year fixing a dress that I already owned that was too short. I have only worn this dress twice because it really was too short for me and I wasn't very comfortable in it. This dress has sentimental value to me, it's the dress that I wore to my sons burial, so I didn't want to throw it out. I decided to make it into a skirt so that it would be wearable.

Just for the record, I like it a whole lot better as a dress, but it sat in my closet unworn. I wanted to add some fabric to the bottom to make it longer but I wasn't able to find any that looked good with it. I ended up measuring the length, cutting it off, and making a waistband out of the top part of the dress, and sewing them together. I added a zipper and  hook and eye on the side.

It was really simple to get it put together. Now it's functional and cute! I'm sure I will be wearing this a lot more now that it's long enough and I feel like I can move around in it.

Twins...

My cute sister in law is expecting twin baby boys any day now! I am so excited for them. I can't wait to see their cute little faces. It was fun to put together a twin package for her. I haven't done a gift for twins before so I decided to do everything similar, but not quite the same. I put together some of my favorite baby things...

 I love these little guy ties. This is such a great pattern! They aren't too difficult to make and they don't take too much time. And what couldn't be cuter than a little baby boy in a tie?

This is my favorite baby book ever!!! I wish I had read it before I became a mom, or shortly there after. I didn't read it until my son was almost 5 months old and it totally changed our lives!!! I know I sound dramatic, but it really is so good. I try to give this to all the new moms I can because it was a real life saver for us {well... more of a sanity saver really}.

These are my favorite baby pacifiers. I'm a big believer in pacifiers. Once again, a sanity saver for us as parents. I also made a few binkie clips to go with them from this wonderful tutorial here.

Last but not least, a pair of knit hats. I found the pattern from Ravelry, and they knit up super quick. I love it when I can start and finish a project in one day! These were perfect for that. I just love little cute hats for babies.





Chocolate truffles...

This year for Christmas treats we made some yummy truffles. We did a variation of this recipe (I think we added a little butter in there somewhere). We heated up the cream until it was really hot (not boiling) and then added the chocolate and let it sit for about 5 minutes off of the heat before we stirred it all together.

We rolled them in coconut, crushed up candy canes, and cocoa. My favorite were the cocoa ones, I like the bitter mixed with the sweet taste.

These could be done up for Valentines too. Instead of doing the candy cane version you could roll them in red sprinkles or something... lots of possibilities here!

Wooden spoons...

I got a few new wooden spoons to add to my collection for Christmas this year. So last week I got them all clean and rubbed them down with some spoon oil (great instructions for spoon oil here).

This one isn't new... but it's my favorite. It's a deep wooden ladle for soups. I love it!

This is one that my husband got me for Christmas. It's hand carved and the wood has the prettiest grain running through it! Almost to pretty to cook with... almost.

Sometimes I feel silly that I get so excited over wooden spoons, but I really do love them. I love cooking with them. I actually have enough now that I got rid of all of my plastic cooking spoons. Slowly but surely I'm trying to get rid of most of the plastic in my kitchen, I'd like to just use wood, metal, and glass for most things.

I highly recommend the spoon oil though. It keeps my wood looking great and not cracking when they get wet.

I resolve - 2011...

I am very excited for this year's New Year's Resolution! The idea came a few weeks ago when I was sitting at church. I looked down at my favorite denim skirt that I wear almost every week... Why do I wear this skirt every week? Because I love denim... and it fits me! Yes, my closet is severely lacking in the skirt department right now. I have a lot of skirts/dresses that I wore before I became a mom, but they have just never fit the same since. Well, it's time to remedy this situation don't you think?

My New Year's Resolution for 2011 is to...

Sew a new skirt or dress every other month.

I wish I could commit to every month, but I really want to do this so I'm cutting myself a little slack here. I think every other month is very doable, and I'm sure some months I might be able to do an extra one.

I'm so excited for this! Mainly because when I first learned to sew it was sewing clothes. I used to make myself dresses and skirts in high school and I really loved it. I've sort of fallen away from sewing clothes and really sew more blankets and such now. So I'm excited to get back into sewing from a pattern, button holes, zippers, lining, the whole nine yards!!!

I've already got the first skirt all figured out! I can't wait to get started...

What's your resolution for 2011?