etsyyyyyyyy!

Whew. I'm not going to take the time right now to update you on all the goings on around here for the last few weeks, but I will later. Really quick: I finally started an etsy shop (which I've been wanting to do for a couple of years). My etsy shop can be found at THIS address, and it's called Bring About Art. Check it out and mark that you love it :) Pay no attention to some of the poor-quality photos...I'll get around to fixing that soon. Speaking of that...if YOU have any brilliantly creative (or just more so than what I've got) ideas for displaying my bracelets in my photos, please do share!

You can also see Bring About in Aspen this month at the Aspen Eco Fest where I'll be showing (and hopefully selling) some of my furniture. If not, well, then you can't really put a value on good experience can you??

Promise to add some pictures of the peanut soon!

Drum roll, please...

After a mere 10 months (ha)...

I finally finished the top of our table (the legs still need some work...) and sealed it so once again, we can use our table for more than stacking clean laundry!

I love how it turned out, and I plan on doing some more pieces and I HOPE to sell them at some point, somewhere, some how.

Quick run-down

Ellis attended her first party (Aunt Janae's graduation!!! woot woot!) and she quite enjoyed herself. She spent much of the first half in her Grandma's arms -fast asleep and oblivious to everything around her.  Then she was ready for action during the second half. We discovered her penchant for Dave Matthews' Band as she danced through an entire song and promptly stopped as soon as it was over. Her little legs just kept pumping left-right-left-right throughout the entire song and it was pretty stinkin' adorable.

Here is her Elvis smile from a few days ago:

Bubble bath time:

Here is the (finally) finished product of a dresser I painted for the daughter of some friends.  The blank dresser was given to me the day before I found out I was pregnant...so it took awhile to get around to it:

More Ellis updates:  Ellis now weighs 10 lbs.!!! And she suddenly (as of today) has a severe preference for nursing over bottles. If this continues it could be a long couple of weeks for Gabe until I finish up the school year. 

Soon

 

For some time now (like 5 years, or so) I've considered myself to be in a bit of an artistic slump.  Some may consider 5 years to be more than what qualifies as a "slump" but I'm calling it that anyway.

Ironically enough, I've been an art teacher for the duration of this "slump".  My slump has not included the ability to be creative on other peoples' behalf.  In other words, I think my work with students has not suffered.  My work with students has been what I want it to be (more often than not...), which may in fact be why my own personal creative outlet has not been what I want it to be.

Now I find myself the mama to one sweet little muse, in the springtime, not working, reading all sorts of creative blogs written by all sorts of creative women doing what I want to be doing.  On top of all that, I'm totally sleep-deprived === and most of us know that this is often the state of mind that great ideas appear.  So I've got that going for me.

I'm not going to make any promises that what is on my creative horizon will knock your socks off and I'm not going to start my etsy shop just yet, but I finally feel like I've got some ideas and motivation at the same time.  And that's big for me.

For the time being, you'll find me holding the little babe, daydreaming about sewing and painting and crafting and creating. It's easy enough to blog with one free hand while the other is holding a baby, but threading a needle is another story. But, soon. 

  

Better pictures

Here are some better pictures taken in daylight.  This first one is a blockprint of M.C. Escher's done with iron-on copy transfer paper.  Do you remember the scene in Office Space when they take the copy machine out into a remote field and it shows in slow motion the group of guys brutally "killing" the machine.  This was almost me earlier today, but three different printers/copy machines later I was finally able to make it work. I think it's pretty cute.

This one is a butterfly applique cut out from an old sheet, along with black fabric paint:

This is a fabric applique from old fabric I had, along with black fabric paint:
I've got 3 blank onesies left, but I think I'm done for this weekend.  Hope you all had a nice weekend, too!

What I did today:

Today I woke up and decided to fix up some of the plain white onesies I had on hand.  I've had these old sheets for quite awhile (purchased from Unique Thrift Store months and months ago).  I really like how they turned out!

Step 1:  Have your apprentice cut out the part of the sheet you want to use as an applique.

Step 2: Iron pieces (unless they've never been washed, then you've got to wash and dry them first.)

Step 3: Cut iron-on fusable webbing to match your fabric shapes and iron onto the back.

Step 4: Iron onto onesie (or whatever it is your applique-ing).
I'll post some more pictures tomorrow.  Our champion camera can't take a decent picture without natural sunlight.  It's too dark out now.

Did you think it would ever happen?

Helloooooooooo, everybody!!! Alrighty roo, I have about 30 minutes before going to Gabe's writing class.  What's that, you ask?  Be patient, it's all in this blog.  There's no reason you should know yet, because as you may have noticed, it's been ages since I last blogged anything very informative.

So I am currently in the very comfortable second trimester of my pregnancy.  Amen for that.  Literally overnight (a few weeks ago, now) I woke up back to (almost) my normal self.  Rather than becoming an incoherent blob around 3:00, I now make it all the way to 9 pm.  I no longer require 18 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period, and standing up from the sofa does not cause me to need an immediate nap.  This is much easier to live with.  PLUS, my constant state of being is queasy?  No sir, not anymore.  After three months of it, I actually got pretty used to always feeling like if I thought about it too much I could throw up at any given moment.  So when I woke up that glorious day feeling fine again, I have to say, I was not just a little worried that something was wrong.  I've now come to accept and embrace this not nauseous feeling.

We have our next dr's appointment on Tuesday.  Say a little (or big) prayer that everything is on track and developing normally.  If we have an ultrasound, we should be able to find out the gender---but I'm not sure we'll have another u.s. until November.  Yes.  We are finding out if Bobbie is a boy or girl.  And I'm very excited to find out. I don't know how people can wait.

Since my last respectable blog, Tim and Kristi have been back to visit twice and since moved to Vancouver.  We were very happy to spend time with them in Aurora, as well as on a trip to Indiana...more on that later.

Here are Maci and Kya at Sonya and Kendal's the night we had dinner over there during T and K's first visit.  
Chrissie and Krisit:

This was FOREVER ago! For whatever reason, since I've been prego, I have taken an interest in cooking!  Who would have though?!  This was one of my first big endeavors, a wild rice and wild mushroom soup with garlic butter.  It was delicious and I was quite proud of how similar my soup looked to the picture.  At the stage of cooking skill I am currently at, I generally prefer to cook recipes that show me what the outcome should look like.  Very helpful.
Magazine photo on left, my soup on right:

Gabe is teaching his final creative writing class tonight, a requirement for grad school.  I think it's been eight weeks.  I took this on the first Wednesday.  Notice how bright it was at 7 pm.  No longer.  It's pitch black out now, and I need to leave soon.  He does a fantastic job, and even someone like me (who isn't all that interested in creative writing) has enjoyed and benefitted from his creativity and ideas.  
Daly basking:
Some student projects:

This was Tate's first birthday party.  Notice the four heads facing away from the camera in the second photo (Dylan, Maci, Kya, Conner)---all related to each other, either sibling or cousin.  Anyway, don't they all have amazing hair?  I get a little jealous every time I see them :)

This was on the last day of our family trip to Plymouth, IN.  Gabe's grandparents, Vic and MaryLou celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, and we all got to be there to share it with them.  It was a fantastic weekend.  I got to meet a lot of Gabe's relatives for the first time.   We had a really nice time.   Here is the family band, Gabe, Kristi and Janae---rocking that church youth building like it's never been rocked before.  On this last day, Gabe's cousin Kristi Kavicky put together a surprise baby shower for us, which was so thoughtful.  We felt very loved.



Here is Kristi's little boy, Jacob being rolled in a tire by his dad, Eric.  There were all sorts of giggles coming from the rolling tire.
I will post some belly progress pictures soon...

jettisoning and the wall that will never be

It seems I was storing quite a bit of stuff at Granny's house, so because we had driven to Iowa, my mom and I went through it and packed up six boxes for me to take home with us.  It's truly amazing the amount of insignificant rubbish I thought important enough to save at some point.

Once we got home I decided to clean out the basement to organize and eliminate more of my meaningless possessions.  It feels SOOOOO good to be rid of so much stuff that was cluttering my life.  Just because it wasn't in clear view, does not mean that it wasn't cluttering my mind/life.  It was very freeing to take account and reorganize. 

BEFORE:  

AFTER:

That's it!  And the top bin is still empty.  About a third of the boxes in the before picture are empty, but still, it's incredible to me to see how much condensing and discarding was possible. I even got all of our Christmas decorations/ornaments into the green containers.  One container is Gabe's memorabilia, and the other four are mine.  Disproportionate, I know, but still worlds better than before.

Here are the after pictures of a white wall I painted in one of our school's girls' bathrooms just before going to Iowa.  I spent five hours creating a mural I thought girls would really enjoy. Our school beautification committee wanted to brighten up the bathrooms, among other things. The principal agreed to pay me to come in and do some painting.  But thanks to district policies this is now the before picture to a newly painted white wall.  Just like every other wall in our building.  Five hours for nothing.  Kids will never even know this was here.  Bummer, huh?