now i have to actually sew?

As many of you know, I've been threatening to re-do my curtains for awhile now. John gave me a small portion of the proceeds from the pool table and today I finally got off my lazy bum to search for fabric. I'm on a pretty tight budget. So I scooted up to a relatively inexpensive, but HUGE, fabric store on the other end of town. 

I found some nice textured mustard fabric, but it was still a bit pricey--and maybe too plain?? My family room has always been a struggle for me to decorate. It does not have a lot of architectural charm, and so the curtain fabric needs a little bit of action.

Then I happened upon some perfect mustard-yellow pom-poms...they were a must have. I swooped on them like a vulture. They did not go with the above mustard fabric, so I switched gears and started looking for some fabric to go with my pom-poms. 

Then I saw some peacock blue patterned fabric. I liked the vintage look of it, and more importantly, it went with the mustard pom-poms. My accent color will be grey. Now, the blue patterned fabric is not my all-time favorite fabric in the entire world, but I think it will do the trick for now. It was a great deal, and if it doesn't work out for eternity, that's fine. It was inexpensive and anything is better than my current fabric. I am just tired of looking for the perfect fabric. So, without any further adieu...

And even better yet, it all goes with my yellow chair! I can finally bring it out of hiding from my bedroom. And I can't wait to embroider some funky pillows. Oh the excitement of the dawning of a new era. And John is even willing to paint the walls.

The only problem is, now I actually have to sit down and sew curtains. Not my favorite task.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve morning, I awoke feeling a little bit ill.

This was not morning sickness.

No, this was a small case of the jitters. In just 5 short hours, my first-born son would be playing his drums to accompany the children's choir at our church's three Christmas Eve services.

All along, I had pictured a little rinky-dink church service. What did I know? I had never been to one of our Christmas Eve services. But I should have known better. Nothing our church puts on is rinky-dink in nature.

Dress rehearsal the day before clued me in real fast. Professional sound-people racing to and fro...directors hustling by...the lights turned down low with spotlights on performers...gulp. Of course Finn had a very small role in all of this, but still. This was an actual production.

At that rehearsal, I somehow decided to go and sit directly behind Finn's drums, to hear what was going on. And it's a good thing I did. John was on the piano, Uncle Mark was playing his guitar, cousins Emma and Brooke were part of the choir and Auntie Paula was directing the choir. When John started to play the piano, I felt a bit panicky. Finn and I could not hear a single thing, except wild static blaring directly at us from a huge speaker. Finn started playing his drums anyway and we could just barely hear the faint sounds of the children's choir.

Something had gone terribly wrong. Finn was basically playing in the dark. Finally, I gathered my senses and hailed down a sound guy.

"Finn needs to hear his daddy playing the piano", I frantically explained.

A few moments later, the sound guy fixed the speaker and we could hear John playing the piano. From then on, things went fine, without a hitch. But still, I was a bit shaken. I had a whole new level of respect for the whole sound system and how completely dependent we were on these sound guys.

Hence my nerves that next morning. And excitement. Let's not forget excitement. John and Finn were not phased in the least. 

I guess I was going to have to be nervous for the both of them.  I consoled myself with the fact that this whole production was to celebrate the birth of our King, and that it was not about any of us anyway.

My mom drove down to watch and before we knew it, we were sitting in a darkened audience waiting for our Finn-boy.

And then his tiny little face emerged behind his enormous drums.

John and Finn playing together under the green spotlight. Oh gosh, Finn was oh-so-serious.


Everything went well and it was all so, so cute. Finn did his thing...the kids sang...they did this for 3 separate services. Whew!

I am a terrible videographer. Here is my feeble attempt to capture some of this action on my point-and-shoot(During the song, members from the audience were participating by hanging stars on the stage--that was kind of chaotic).

Watching John and Finn play together was the perfect Christmas gift for me. I could not have asked for more!

end of an era

Presents were wrapped with the utmost of care. 



 

My spooky Christmas tags.

Presents were unwrapped. We love our birds, cups and saucers Lor!

( btw, the green shirt I'm wearing...look familiar Christie? She wore it to church one Sunday and I just had to have it. So yah, I'm a complete and total COPYCAT. Hope you aren't too disturbed, Christie).

Hot chocolate was consumed and faces were stuffed.

Lorie led us to her latest spot, where many photos were taken.

I love this green tool table. Too bad it's probably full of lead, or I would have dragged it home.









Could we take ourselves any more seriously??





Above photo by Ellie Grover. I am around 18 weeks pregnant here. This is my most documented child yet. My morning sickness is fading fast. I'm a little nauseous most mornings and completely exhausted by most afternoons, but I am starting to come out of the black hole I have lived in the past few months. Don't expect too much from me though. I'm still pretty pathetic:)

And that brings us to this girl.

This girl called Ellie Grover, who has single-handedly turned my life upside down from the moment I met her.  She has challenged the way I see just about everything. She is wise beyond her years and talented beyond measure. And so sweet and kind. She's one of the few people I can talk to on the phone without getting stage-fright. As a kid I hated talking on the phone. My mom used to force...er...encourage me to talk on the phone with my friends. I think I hate the phone because I cannot see your eyes. Ok, I am rambling.

But she is leaving me. Leaving us.

For good. 

She is moving far away and I am so sad. 

She first told us of her plans to move months ago in Starbucks of all places. Lorie and I did not take the news too well. In fact, we made such blubbering spectacles of ourselves, that we had to leave because everyone was staring at us.

So we went to Target. 

More stares. So we went home. 

 

In one week, Ellie will be gone.

Good-bye dearest Ellie Grover. I miss you already. 

meet the scream extractor...

...Finn's latest obsession. The scream extractor is the contraption from the movie Monster's Inc that hooks up to a child to extract a scream for energy.

And here is Finn's artistic rendering of the scream extractor from the movie. Pictured here is Randall, the purple monster, extracting a scream from Mike, the green monster.

(Finn's caption...something...something...N SA HLO TOO THU SKE ISTKR= ...AND SAY HELLO TO THE SCREAM EXTRACTOR).

And the red monster pictured below is Randall's sidekick, Fungus. The other night, Finn suggested that we name our new baby "Fungus". Nice try Finn!

Meet the whole cast(this is for you Jessica). My sister Jessica is too afraid to watch this movie. Sorry to those of you who already know the characters. I do not mean to insult your intelligence.

Finn's cast. Finn likes to cram as many things onto the paper as possible.

In case you had not noticed, Finn's favorite character is Randall, one of the main villians. He is a slithery and horrid monster and I can't understand why Finn likes him so much. I find it rather disturbing, though I guess it's not too abnormal, considering a lot of little boys like villians such as Darth Vader.

In this drawing, Randall is standing near Boo's flowered door(Finn's caption: Randl the noow scar ledre= Randall the new scare leader).

And here is Boo's actual door. Jess, Boo is so cute. I love the movie because of her.

Finn also likes to draw the other villain, Mr. Waternoos. He's the attractive octopus-like creature to the right.

I love it that Finn drew the little red vest on "MESTR WODR NOOS".

Meet the lovely creature, Roz.

I pretty much died when Finn drew Roz. The boys refer to Roz as a "him", LOL.

These yellow monsters, the CDA(Child Protection Agency) are a big part of the movie.

Finn likes to draw mass quantities of CDA monsters.

And here is the cute couple, Mike and Celia.

They really are cute!

And Finn is not the only one that likes to draw monsters these days. Calvin has been getting in on the action too. I will always treasure his little yellow sun monster.

Finn has literally been drawing page-after-page of creatures these days. He still likes to draw Nemo. He has also been drawing the animals from Word World, one of our favorite TV shows. If you look closely, you can see that all of the animals from Word World are constructed from the letters that are used to spell them. 

Another representative sample shown below is Super Why. I am not too fond of the show, but the boys like it.

And as I type, Finn is in the other room drawing yet another picture of Randall. He just told me "Randall is funny because he disappears and then comes back". With all this drawing, I really do wish I had a giant craft table in my family room. I searched high and low for a table at all of my favorite antique stores, but came up empty-handed:( I will just have to be patient while I wait for the right piece of furniture.