Bed Rest Is OVER!

The Little Mister was finally born at 5am on
Tuesday, March 22nd 2011
8lbs 14oz 20in

I say finally but, just like his big brothers, he did mamma a favor and came 2 weeks early, sparing me additional bed rest. I didn't have to be induced, yea! I avoided an epidural, I didn't want this to be my first, but I did go a new road and opted for some IV drug to take off the edge. And thank goodness for that, Little Mister was in the "Sunnyside Up" position (facing up instead of down-the easier way) making him a doozy to birth, even with the drugs. And again, just like his brothers, he was very considerate and was born swiftly. Even with trying to arrive extra early, not waiting for 5 min contractions, we were only in the hospital about 3 hours before his arrival. What a wonderful date to be born. As my good friend pointed out the numbers are 32211, super cool! And it's my maternal grandfather's birthday, making it a day with extra special meaning.

Final bed rest count: 3 weeks to the day. Thanks to my mom-in-law I survived with sanity mostly in tact and a clean and fully stocked house waiting for us when we returned from the hospital. If only those three weeks of rest could be stowed away and used during these first few exhausting months of newbornhood. Unfortunately the body does not stock pile rest and I'm blissfully exhausted.

Crafty Hearted: Better Than Diamonds

I am proud that my boys are so incredibly creative already, not so they can be my little drones, but because I feel like creativity is an incredibly important skill. It's something I can nurture in them that the school system can't. Whether they become artists or bean counters, it will be something they can use to express themselves or problem solve. It gives me a little reward to see their little minds at work, it's like a whisper letting me know that keeping them home with me until Kindergarten didn't damage them with my imperfection. Add creativity to the sweet generosity of a little kid and my heart is mush, especially when that kid is mine.

Mr. Golden Curls is 6 years old now and he has always been a creative spirit and a problem solver. At Christmas time with my parents we were all sitting around after having opened gifts and he was roaming around the house. He kept passing through saying "I'm looking for a bead. Do you have a bead?" It is not strange for him to be on a mission to make something but when he presented my mom with this ring made out of a twist tie from one of his new toys and a cut piece of straw for a bead we were pretty blown away. As far as I know he's never seen jewelry made like this but he had the ability to go measure Grammy's finger, create a bead, and get it twisted onto the wire just right. Then he gave it to her with the words, "I didn't have anything to give you for Christmas so I made you this."

Van Gogh: A First Grader's Account

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh

Conversation with my 6 year old:

"What did you do in art today?"
"Watched a movie."
"A movie, in art class?"
"Yeah. It was about an artist, I don't remember his name but he did a bunch of stuff before he was an artist. Then he was so sad he cut his ear off and sent it in the mail. Then he was friends with this other artist and he went home and got so mad at his friend that he shot himself."

My husband and I looked at each other with hugely wide eyes, my 5 year old laughed and we spent the next 5 minutes explaining why that was sad and not funny and wondering why the heck a first grader needs that much background on an artist. Then when they were in bed we howled with laughter and wondered, who's next on the list?!

Snow? Ohh! Scrapbook Layout

Promised you new layouts featuring my bitty's first year yesterday and already delivering! You may want to duck, it's been a long time since I've been so on top of something and it's bound to lead to mass chaos!

I'm going simple with my personal page layouts these days and relying heavily on printed papers to do the work for me. I'm just so poor, in time and money, that this is all I can handle...that way I can splurge for my Papercut Kitchen goodies!

I Am A Robot...Craft Project

Introducing Skippy Bowlingball (made by Lil' Spitfire), Stella (made by me) and the robot who never ended up with a name because Mr. Golden Curls couldn't decide on the perfect one. He was, however, positive that this was "a talking baby robot."

Robot voices abounded yesterday as the boys and I made one of our coolest kid projects to date, paper robots! This idea was even sweeter because it was 100% my 5 year old's idea. He had seen my Skull and Crossbones garland on the tree, asked what held them together and you could see his wheels turning. On the way to school he told Pappa all about the robot he was going to make using brads for joints. He's home all week for Christmas break so every day we're going to do something extra fun. Yesterday was robot making day!

It was such an easy, fun project that I thought I'd share. The cardstock we used was perfect. It's from a package my mom got me from Michaels of metallics in all different colors by American Crafts. Brads weren't hard for us to come by, I'm slightly addicted. The brads I use come in a multi-pack of lots of different metallic colors from Hobby Lobby. We used a small hole punch to help us with the brads, a large hole punch for one of the mouths, stencils and cut free form shapes and that's that.

Silly pictures using the timer on the camera have become a tradition in our family, so here you have it, Robot style silly.

I was totally impressed with the boys. Mr. Golden Curls made his completely by himself, punching holes and all. Lil' Spitfire required very little assistance, he's almost four, I had to punch the holes for him and bend the brads but everything else was all him. He even came up with the idea of hole punching the mouth. And how could I miss out on the action? I couldn't! So I made my own robot who currently resides on the Christmas tree.

Upsetting The Delicate Balance

Mr. Golden Curls and Mr. Cash all tuckered out.

NOTE: My shop The Beehive is now Papercut Kitchen! Please visit my shop Papercut Kitchen by clicking here.

Just letting you know we're still alive. My computer died, again. This time it looks as though it is not to rise from the dead and through this I'm realizing what a big online addict I really am. And how much I hate to have my routine upset. On the upside, my house is starting to look a lot cleaner! I am managing to get some things done in the mornings and evenings on my husband's laptop so be sure to check out the latest to my shop!

All Coming Together

Things are slowly coming together. The paper order that was MIA and then arrived only in part is hopefully being fixed and then some. Hard to make paper crafts without paper! I am getting some paper bead bracelets whipped up, perfect Earth Day craft! And keeping busy with some other little crafty things. Today I'll be getting ready for the family invasion happening this weekend, I'm so excited to see everyone! Saturday Mr. Golden Curls has a party in celebration of his 5th birthday! So I'm doing the cleaning. Not just the normal, keeping the house from total chaos cleaning but the oh my goodness family, friends, and new neighbors we barely know will be in our house kind of cleaning. Huge difference!

The Joys Of Boys Scrapbook Layout

Just a little show and tell! This is another page layout I did for my youngest boys' scrapbook. I'm going for more simple layouts in my personal scrapbooks for economy and so I can get his book finished before he graduates from college! I think it looks nice and love the rhinestones in the corners of the photo mattes, even boys' scrapbook pages and layouts can handle a little bling! I also like the pocket/photo matte on the right that holds an over-sized journaling tag. The blank space surrounded by photo corners is also for journaling but is blank right now because I do all the journaling at once. So, when I'm finally done with his two, heavily stuffed albums covering only the first year of his existence I'll buy a bright and shiny new pen and have a writing party! I'm hoping to get a boat load of scrapping done this weekend, for myself and for my etsy shop so stay tuned!

Smiling All Over

While blog surfing the other day I saw someone had been tagged to post a certain number image from a certain number folder on their computer. Just out of curiosity I wanted to see what picture that would be for me and this is it. It was too perfect to keep to myself and in the spirit of impending spring I thought I'd share. I love this picture, those beautiful curls, the gorgeous smile and the perfect spring flowers. That's my Mr. Golden Curls nearly two years ago!

Identity Crisis

That was then...

...this is now.

Every once in awhile I go through this little artistic identity crisis. I look at myself and think that I must have split personalities, I wonder where the old me is lurking, I long for it, then I wonder if I even care to resurrect it. Around Christmas time this was all drudged back up when the boys got a ton of art supplies. One thing they got was a giant art tackle box and it reminded me of my supply box in college, only cheerier, and without all the stickered sarcasm.



Then I dug out some jars for the boys to use while painting and as I sat there watching Lil' Spitfire clean his brush in one of the jars I realized just how long that jar had been with me. Since before my beautiful children and my incredible husband. Well, before we were married anyway, not much has been around since before him! It still had my paint sludge in the bottom. It was one of the silly jars I used while making my giant, brooding, moody paintings and my other random mixed media work. Including the thing I did with a bloody abandoned baby discarded in a trashcan lit from the inside with a strobe light. Needless to say having a flashback that included that image and then looking up to see my own baby's tiny hand in the same jar was a little bizarre. Probably not as bizarre as making a bloody baby though, just guessing.


That was then...

...this is now.


Now here I am, a wife, a mamma, a scrapbooker? Seriously, scrapbooking?! But I used to laugh at those people with their silly coordinating sticker obsessions and enough ribbon to hang several convicts! I also swore I'd never be a graphic designer so how's that for never say never? Speaking of graphic design here was another funny past life vs. new life occurrence, Lil' Spitfire got a Fisher-Price digital art studio with a pen tablet for his birthday! Man I fought the Wacom back in the day, I used it like I was holding it with my toes for about a week. Then mmmm, pen tablet love!



I'll have to show off some more of my past life art sometime soon. Hopefully I can dig up some clearer pictures than the first one in this post!

Boy Little Scrapbook Layout

You know those dreams where you're trying desperately to run but you move like you're running through a beach of molasses? That's the way it's been for me since this weekend. A little bit of everything is getting done but nothing is getting done thoroughly or very well. I have managed to do a few more personal scrapbook pages, yippee! I've decided it's time I wrapped up my 3 year old's baby book for his first year. These pages are from his 8th month, I'm a smidge behind.

I've been intentionally going simple so I can make some progress but as simple as this layout is I really like it. It's some nice rough and tumble boy paper and simple cut from coordinating paper embellishment. The brads holding the stars on the right hand side spell "boy" and under it are sticker letters that spell "little". Boy Little is what we called Lil' Spitfire when he was a baby. It was his super hero name.

A Day With A Budding Artist

We've been trying hard lately to make sure we spend some one-on-one time with the boys. They just do so much better when they aren't together all the time and it gives us a chance to appreciate their individuality. It also gives them the much needed chance for some undivided attention. Last week the Bohemian and Mr. Golden Curls drove to Little Rock to spend his gift card on me, get a purple milkshake at The Purple Cow etc etc. and Lil' Spitfire and I stayed home. This was not at all ok with Spitfire until I leaned over and whispered in his ear "We can get out the new paints you got for Christmas." Suddenly going with Pappa was not at all important and they couldn't leave fast enough for his liking, he was ready to paint. Now that's my boy!

I had so much fun with my little man!

I'm amazed at his concentration and the fact that he does more than just play in the mess of it as though he's playing in a sand box. He actually tries different things to see what happens and made the discovery of mixing paint to make new colors. He absolutely loves the huge set of glitter Cars paints he got for Christmas. Well, technically that was probably brother's gift, but what belongs to one belongs to both! He was also very excited to painting on canvas.

When he switched to the water color paint palette I looked over at him cleaning his brush in this jar and had some kind of bizarre clash of worlds-nostalgia-flashback thing happen. This silly jar is one of the things I used all the time when I painted my gigantic, moody, abstract, mixed media pieces in college. It still has my paint ringed around the inside and sludging up the bottom and now here it was on the kitchen table with my child's sweet tiny little hand in it painting on a coloring page.

While he got into flinging paint I decided to test out our new portable DVD player. So I could go ahead and completely brain wash him into being an artist, I went ahead and played my new Living Art Museum Tour DVD. My parents got it for me so I couldn't complain again that they'd never taken me to an art museum. I don't know, seems a shoddy replacement and I'm still waiting for them to send me to the MOMA to make up for all my pain and suffering as a child! Actually Spitfire really liked the DVD and every time the painting changed would look up and ask "what's that one?"

He painted and painted for about an hour and a half before it was lunch time. I had to bribe it all away from him to avoid a fit pitchin', I don't know how long he'd paint if left to his own devices. After lunch we did some serious building with his new bristle blocks and then it was off to naptime when I actually got several hours of 100% peace because his brother wasn't home to roll around yacking and "napping" on the couch.

Best day ever!

Present But Not Accounted For

I've been having a hard time with this move. I can't believe we moved here a whole 5 months ago because I don't feel any more at home than the first day we arrived. Our house is coming together slowly and I'm trying to get into, and adhere to, a new routine/schedule. And I swear I'm trying my hardest to see in this town what others seem to but it just seems to me a really sad place to live. Every time I drive through town I wonder what I should be doing to make this community better because it seems so obvious to me that it needs some serious love. We've been so busy since moving too! I don't think we've ever traveled so much in a 5 month period, Florida, North Carolina, many trips back and forth to parents' houses, which are much further away now. I would guess that half of the weekends since moving have not even been spent in our new house.

I've also realized that ever since we moved I kind of lost my coveted day off filled with mocha, scrapbooking in a gorgeous store, and anything else my little heart desired without any mothering duties. Isn't my husband awesome for recognizing mothering is a job! I'm a person who requires a larger than normal amount of alone time. I need time to be able to think without being interrupted, to daydream, to gain positive perspective on my life. Without that chance to look in at my life from the outside I go a teensy bit crazy and start to dislike it. Absence really does make my heart grow fonder. That day off helped me make it through the week, no matter how rotten it was. Lately I've been more and more nutso and driving my family down with me. "Why am I so much crazier these days? Oh, yea, I'm not taking a day off!" Even when the Bohemian would send me out of the house or take charge of the boys I wasn't really taking advantage of that. I changed that today! I clocked out of mothering gig, sent to boys to Pappa with 100% of their requests, locked myself in my craft room with music blaring, took Mr. Cash on a Pug date to Petco and Starbucks, accomplished, daydreamed, refreshed, ahhhhh. I'm so much better now!

The Photoshop B-I-B-L-E

What better way to spend the evening and work to grow your child's spiritual development than a bedtime story from the Bible?! Every night before bedtime we read the boys a story that they pick and then a story from their devotional Bible. It seems the Bohemian got a little confused on this night, he must've had projects on the brain! Actually Lil' Spitfire was enthralled, Mr. Golden Curls on the other hand was a little thrown off and ready to resume the routine!

A Christmas Kid Craft Classic

Mr. Golden Curls has been asking me daily "how long before it's Christmas?" I think mostly because he wants to see his Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Pete and, maybe most importantly, the four cousins that are part of that brood. After he asked for the three millionth time I decided it was time to whip up the 'ole grade school classic, the countdown to Christmas chain. Now every morning we can pull off a link and when he asks "how long before it's Christmas?" I can just point to the chain and say "that long!" I'll let you know if it actually works.

Edible Fun

Over Thanksgiving the boys got to play with this really cool stuff, cookie play dough. It looks just like play dough and they can make stuff out of it and then bake them up and eat them! They LOVED it and it kept them entertained at the end of the weekend when they were pretty frazzled.

Mr. Golden Curls tries to decide which beautiful color to use first.

Lil' Spitfire digs right in with the cookie cutters.

Of course Mr. Golden Curls picks the set of train cookie cutters, he's a boy obsessed when it comes to trains, thanks a lot Thomas!

Lil' Spitfire just wants to play around in the dough but he actually gets pretty good with the cookie cutters for a 2 year old.

"Are they ready yet?!" A watched cookie never bakes!

The beauties all baked up. The one in the middle was what most of Lil' Spitfire's cookies ended up being.

Mamma vs. Crafter

Sometimes it can be pretty tough to get much of anything accomplished around here, as most of you can imagine! Many of you don't have to imagine because you live it too. The other day I got asked if I was going to list more of my Jesus Saves cards. I was tremendously flattered and of course set about to oblige. Yesterday and today I worked way harder on finishing such a meager number of cards than is healthy for the maintenance of sanity. Good grief, I thought I wouldn't get them finished until the boys moved off to college!

I felt a little guilty being frustrated with my precious angels with a dozen or so smiling Jesus faces staring at me. Soccer goalie or not, He's the baddest cat on this block!


Part of my frustration stemmed from the fact that I was working at the kitchen table, just like the olden days. Why was I doing this when I have a fantastic new craft room at my disposal? I think the next picture might answer that quite nicely!

The whole room looks like this! It's like a paper bomb went off and ever since creating my lovely light box I've been lacking a work table. Ok, I know, if I would take a moment to reorganize and tidy up a bit it would be functional. That's the first thing on my to-do list for tomorrow! Sometimes it's hard to do that part when all you want to do is make stuff!


Some of the interruptions while creating cards today:

• Lil' Spitfire getting up from nap 4 times
• Dog needs let out as soon as my bum finally hits the chair
• Delivery guy brings a delivery, as they're prone to doing (the boys' Halloween costumes, yea!)
• Mr. Golden Curls tries on his costume
• The dog "needs" out again
• Too late for napping now, I let Spitfire get up
• Spitfire sees his costume so he has to try it on
• I pin the arms and legs on his costume while he's wearing it. Sort of along the lines of trying to put a sweater on a crazed Chihuahua I imagine.
• Help Spitfire on/off the potty
• I rue the decision to let Spitfire get up as he throws a massive tantrum about anything and everything while I frantically try to glue card parts together between (or during) outbursts and timeouts so they'll be finished by the time we leave for church where, for some unknown reason, I've taken on co-teaching the Jr. High Girls Bible Study.
• I have to referee several fights between two boys, neither of whom took a nap or really even rested and therefore are grumpy and impossible to reason with.

Four hours later I've managed to complete four measly sets of Jesus Saves cards! I know, woe is me! But sometimes it really does feel like woe is me! The amazing thing is that even with all the woe is me-ing I do, being a mamma and getting to stay home with my boys and craft on the side is the most rockin' awesome job I could ever have dreamed of having!

Wish You Were Here

I don't think there could possibly be anything more wonderful than drinking my morning coffee while staring at the ocean with my feet buried in the sand. We're back now but I think I can hold this image in my happy place file, something to think of when other things don't feel so great.

I had promised the boys a trip to the beach. We didn't make it while in Destin so we detoured to Gulf Shores, Mississippi on the way home. That's where I finally had my relaxing coffee in the sand and the boys got to see the ocean. They've both seen it before but Lil' Spitfire was only about 3 months old. They were super adorable as usual!

The water was a little too cold that morning to tempt the boys too far in, I was kind of glad since that meant I didn't have to go swimming.

I think what this kid really needs is one more character in this outfit! Buzz Lightyear hat, Batman sunglasses, Curious George shirt, Nemo trunks, good grief! And may I just say this was one of my pre-mamma nevers: I will never put a piece of clothing on my kid that has a character on it. Oh well!

Brother's a close second with Jack Skellington hat, Batman sunglasses and Cars shirt.

My little boy isn't seeming so little anymore. I'm having a lot of those sighing-my baby's not a baby anymore- Mamma moments over my Mr. Golden Curls lately.