Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
People periodically ask me if I think the kids will pick up British accents.
For Jayce, I think, yes. He is in school all day, surrounded by the various accents of his teachers and peers, and it seems pretty inevitable that he'll pick up some of that.
For Hannah, I have always thought, no. She is home with me all day, so presumably she should sound like me.
But I wasn't thinking broadly enough. She is exposed to tv.
The other morning, Peppa Pig's mom said, "Oh dear" and then Hannah parroted her perfectly.
Ooo dee-uh. Oowwhh dee-uhh.
All morning she did this. It was like she was testing the words out. She said it sweetly, a bit high-pitched, calmly, and sometimes almost angrily. And I just grabbed my camera to get video of her in action.
30 seconds of "English Hannah," with a little Will.I.Am and Britney just because. Enjoy. :)
Monday, January 21, 2013
Jayce made this picture last week for his babysitter. It's him, can you tell? Did you notice that he's wearing the same striped pjs in the picture? He's standing next to a tree, that's on fire, (but don't worry they called the fireman), and his old blue house.
When he showed it to me, I immediately reached around and hugged him. Kids' minds are so funny sometimes.
Along those lines, a few weeks ago when Jayce was really sick I slept beside him through the night. I wanted to make sure that he didn't panic if he woke up with a sick stomach and couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. In the middle of the night, while we were both sleeping, he said something that woke me up.I laid there looking at him, waiting to see if he had been talking in his sleep or was trying to get my attention. After a few minutes he said, "Res-cue He-roes, hmmmmm hmmmmm, Res-cue He-roes…" then he opened his eyes, looked over at me and said, "Mom, I gotta go potty!" and ran off to the bathroom.
I know the Rescue Heroes theme song is often running through his mind during the day, and now I know it's also playing in his dreams. I love this little boy.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
(**I'll just start by saying, I don't think anyone still is interested in talking about Christmas decor. I wrote this post a month ago, a month!, and it's been sitting in my drafts for all of that time. So dagonit, I'm going to publish it. It just so happens that a few things that were sprinkled around my home were making their way slowly, ever so slowly as gifts to friends and family in the US, so I didn't want to ruin the surprise. Now that the boxes have finally landed, here goes our little tour.**)
Our Christmas decor and furniture arrangement changed several times over the course of November and December. Since we've only lived here for a few months we are still trying to figure out exactly how to make the space work for us, and adding extra things to a small space, like a tree, requires some finesse. Regardless of all of that, this was how it was set up on the day I went around with my camera. :)
Our Christmas decor and furniture arrangement changed several times over the course of November and December. Since we've only lived here for a few months we are still trying to figure out exactly how to make the space work for us, and adding extra things to a small space, like a tree, requires some finesse. Regardless of all of that, this was how it was set up on the day I went around with my camera. :)
Decorating for Christmas was tricky because I was pretty much starting from scratch. We are still buying "settling into a new space" type of things, (purchases like shelves, and curtains are still on the horizon), and with Christmas around the corner there wasn't extra money to buy brand new decorations for every bit of the house, so I had to get creative. Which I like.I started off by getting some family pictures printed that we had done just before we moved. I decided that the oversized mirror, that is hung slightly low for my preferences, would become our makeshift mantle, and adorned it with some photos.
For actual Christmas decorations, I looked at what I had on hand and it was fabric, so I spread it around the house in many forms. I made this wreath out of a bunch of random things. You wouldn't know it, (I hope), but underneath these pretty stripes is a skinny twig circle, some fluffy carseat strap covers, generic sham wows, and a lot of packing tape. But I love those skinny green stripes on the outside, and that's all that you see. 
Bakers twine is all around the house as well. Jayce used it to string up our Christmas stockings,
and I used it for the fabric Christmas lights, which are sprinkled all around the house, the tree,
Bakers twine is all around the house as well. Jayce used it to string up our Christmas stockings,and I used it for the fabric Christmas lights, which are sprinkled all around the house, the tree,
and hanging over the kitchen window.
Our tree has been a constant reminder to me that I never finished decorating, and this week I decided that I'm okay with that. We had the tree for about 10 days before I made it to the store for Christmas lights. (It arrived the day that Chris left for the US and while Jayce had the stomach flu.) I got these plastic Christmas balls when I got the lights, and Hannah has been constantly removing them to throw around the flat. So the ones that are on the tree are all on the top half. She also removes the fabric Christmas lights that I made, and Jayce will periodically pick them up and put them all back on in basically the same spot. Also, less than a week after we lit and decorated the tree, one of the strands of lights burnt out. The underneath strand. Meaning I would have had to remove 2 strands of lights to get rid of the burned out ones. So I've just left it. But it looks great at night when all of the other lights in the room are off. :) 
The best part of our tree is the angel on top that Jayce made at church. I love it.
We've been getting daily use of our Advent calendar, although I'm starting to get a little sick of it to be honest. Maintaining enthusiasm and creativity for 25 days is a row is a little draining, but it's still fun.
The kids still play with the nativity scene, or more accurately, Hannah destroys the nativity scene and Jayce periodically comes over, wrestles the little figures from her hands, and sets it back up. But the other day the she was playing with it, showed me the baby, kissed the baby, and then proceeded to kiss all of the other people. Then she made all of the animals baaa. Sweet!
I made an assortment of fabric trees from Tiffany's tutorial. Every time that I started through my stash for something, I would find another fabric that I thought would be cute and have to try it out. By the time I started wrapping these as presents I had quite a little collection, and this photo doesn't even have all of them. :) But I love them.
I also had a little obsession with felt this year. I cut these circles for a garland while Chris and I were watching a movie, and I would periodically lose the pile. Then I would glance over at Chris, who had picked them up, and would be absentmindedly stacking, unstacking, and sorting them through his hands. It was really hard to resist touching them.
But eventually I sewed them all together and strung them up.
Okay, these have been up since October. Before Halloween. But when you have something so bright and fun to add to your plain white window, it's hard to just sit on it and wait.
I also made these felt polaroid ornaments with photos of our family. (Can you tell that they're polaroids? Some people couldn't. Chris.)
I made an assortment of fabric trees from Tiffany's tutorial. Every time that I started through my stash for something, I would find another fabric that I thought would be cute and have to try it out. By the time I started wrapping these as presents I had quite a little collection, and this photo doesn't even have all of them. :) But I love them.I also had a little obsession with felt this year. I cut these circles for a garland while Chris and I were watching a movie, and I would periodically lose the pile. Then I would glance over at Chris, who had picked them up, and would be absentmindedly stacking, unstacking, and sorting them through his hands. It was really hard to resist touching them.But eventually I sewed them all together and strung them up.Okay, these have been up since October. Before Halloween. But when you have something so bright and fun to add to your plain white window, it's hard to just sit on it and wait.I also made these felt polaroid ornaments with photos of our family. (Can you tell that they're polaroids? Some people couldn't. Chris.) 
They were kind of a hassle to make, but totally worth it. I love them. I wanted to keep them all, but I didn't.
Then there was the felt tree. This thing moved all around the flat, and gave a little festivity to the kids' play area. I had grand ambitions for making ornaments and other things to dress it up, but that never happened. They ended up using leftover circles from the garland, and that was enough to make everyone happy. The kids liked it, and both ran over to decorate it at least once every few days, so it was worth it. I'm sure I'll do more with it in the future.
Speaking of "happy," I put up this little "Happy Christmas" sign as well, which was originally from the kids' birthday party. I realized that I only needed to make 3 new lettered cards to change the sign from "birthday" to "christmas" so I went for it. I originally planned to change out "happy" to "merry" but again, that took a backseat, and it still served it's purpose. Plus, they say Happy Christmas instead of Merry Christmas in England, so it worked.
Aside from that, I sprinkled Jayce's handmade goodies around as well. Our cinnamon ornaments, 
his Christmas card to us and Santa goodie holder,
and the wreath we made together.
I strung up our Christmas bunting clothesline in the kitchen, 
and it gradually got switched over to Christmas cards, which we admire while we eat.
And that's pretty much it. There is a bit more, of course, but these are the main things we'll remember about our "Christmas house," from our first Christmas in London. Warm, happy, and a bit home made. :) Monday, January 14, 2013
(It snowed this morning! This has nothing to do with this post, other than, it's snowing as I write this! Snow snow snow!) Well, I post a list of my 2013 to dos and then I take off, right? How annoying. Let me assure you that no one was more annoyed last week than me. I have spent the last 5 days with a computer that is out of working order, and had a few moments of tears and despair, (like when I thought that I had lost every single picture, document, download, and file from the last 4 years.) But I hadn't.
I had a few triumphs last week as well. 36 hours in a row(ish) of fussing with this or that on the computer, taking cues on what to do next via Facebook chat, text messages, emails, internet searches, and forms from the Apple store finally put me back in working order. Whew. It turns out that I can install a hard drive, and reconfigure, and install, and setup, and move a bunch of crap around until it is all in happy working order.
That said, I don't think I'll ever do it again. Sometimes money saved is not worth the headache, or the emotional torment of 2 days of constantly fluctuating between "It's working!" and "It's ruined!" But still, there has been learning.
1.) Turning my brain off turned my brain on.Seriously. Giving the creative parts of my brain "the month off" has actually kicked them up a notch. I'd been thinking "don't make anything, just do photography stuff" and then a window dressing solution just popped into my mind with things I already had on hand, I made it, and I love it. It was a bit like how you can't remember something when you're trying, but when you're falling asleep it suddenly is there. Kind of weird, but great. I hope this happens in some other places this month too.
2.) I don't know what I'm doing.I have been so eager to take a photography course just so that I could learn what I've been doing wrong. But it's still hard, particularly when there are certain "rules" that I've been following that I shouldn't have been following. But I posted a question on the wall the other day and was like, "Wait a minute. I thought that…" and it turns out that a few other people had this question too. And the teacher really liked this image of mine, and I'm happy with that. Particularly since my computer was dead to me all week when I needed it, and I just grabbed this one and two others from my camera, quickly edited them and threw them onto my class' Facebook page. Whew. But next week starts the very critical critiques, and I'll be hunkering down with some chocolate beforehand to nurse my poor wounded ego. But I kind of can't wait. How weird is that?
3.) I like what I like, and that's okay too.After the kids were down last night I was flipping through my pictures and came across this one of Hannah, which I remember taking and thinking "that's my shot." I also thought, "the teacher won't like this one." Not that it's bad, because it's not, but because it wasn't what she was trying to get us to do.
But I still love it. Chris saw it and immediately started talking about Hannah and I did too. It's the type of picture that perfectly captures one half of her personality. A moment where she is all sweetness and chubby cheeks and a kissable neck. These are the moments when I'm so glad that I have my camera around, and I know how to use it well enough, if not perfectly.
I know that I'm a perfectionist and a bit of a people pleaser, but I'm aiming to be refined by my class, not completely changed. Or am I just being preemptively stubborn in the anticipation of critique? I'm not sure.
Either way, wish me luck. :)
Linking to Miscellaneous Monday.
Linking to Miscellaneous Monday.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
When Chris and I moved to London, we talked a bit about what I would like to do now.
Now that Jayce is in school all day long and I have a little more time to myself. Now that we live in this amazing city with so many resources to take advantage of. Now that Hannah is closer to sleeping through the night than she has been in the past. Now that our whole life seems to be a clean slate, waiting for us to fill it up with whatever we'd like: meeting friends, joining a church, making new habits, filling a new home, and setting up our routines. When we lived in Lincoln I threw myself into different things at different times: thrifting, DIY-ing, painting, blogging, photographing, sewing, writing, reading, running...what would be my London thing? Or things?
I think the new year has provided me with the perfect opportunity to figure out how and where to organize my time and energy in the form of resolutions. I've seen a few other bloggers do this sort of monthly change-up, (here and here are a few favorites), and I think it is a system that will work perfectly for me. Having one month set aside for each task will help me to focus my energy so much better, instead of feeling like I need to be doing a little bit of everything all the time, which is how I feel now.All of that said, here is my 2013 monthly lineup.
January: Photography.This item is first, because this week I started a photography course. Three years ago I was dying to take some photography lessons or a course, but there wasn't anything available anywhere near us. I am thrilled to be able to push myself more in this area, and excited to get some feedback from the instructor and the other students since I've never really had anything like that before. I'm also pretty nervous, but for right now the excited is bigger than the nervous, so I'm clinging to that. :)
February: Knit.I think this one is fairly self-explanatory. Joining the knitting group was a wonderful start, and introduced me to just how many beautiful projects are out there, but it's difficult for me to learn much with Hannah by my side, or, more accurately, running away. I need to set aside some time to read a book/watch a youtube video (or ten), and practice, some things that I haven't made the time to do. But in February, I'm going to make it happen.
March: Decorate.I've said it before, but having an entire flat to decorate, all at once, when you're starting with nothing…well, it's a daunting task. There is everything from furniture to storage, from curtains to rugs, from art to finishing pieces, and for EVERY room. I need a month so that I can focus on putting this place together now that we've lived her for a little bit and have a better sense of what we want and need.
April: Blog.I spend a lot of time on this blog, it's the main window that a lot of friends and family have for our life, and I want it to be good. There are some things I want to do differently, things I want to do better, things I want to update and things to change. There also is a backlog of posts that are important to me that I need to catch up on. Did you know that I took photos of every room of our old home for a little walk down memory lane/home tour? Have I mentioned that we took the kids to Edinburgh last month? And I know that I still have most of the flat to show off. I'm going to update as much as possible.
May: Sew.I sewed a LOT throughout the months of October and November, mostly for gifts and decorations for our home. But there are still a lot of things that I'd like to try: little projects that I've been putting off, bigger projects that will push my skill level to the next level, and just having some time to sit down at my machine and figure out how to make my sewing time and projects to be smooth and efficient.
June: Decorate.Yes, I know this is on here twice. But there is a whole downstairs AND an upstairs, and I know I will run out of time and money in March before I finish it all. Really, I should call this one, "decorate the kids' rooms." We'll be having some visitors this summer, (yay!), and this will give me the motivation to get some of the home projects completely finished.
July: Light Room.All of my photos are edited in Light Room. Yet even though I've been using it every week for over 2 years, I am still learning how to use it best. I know that there are short cuts that can speed up my workflow and tools that I should take advantage of to achieve better results, but this requires time to learn, practice, and implement these things. Enter July.
August: Visit.We are tentatively planning to come home the month of August for some family and friend time. I cannot wait. This is my goal for the month: see and visit with the people that I love, get in some major quality time, and just soak it all up. That's it. Its a month I am very much looking forward to.
September: Join.Jayce (and Chris) will have just started back at school and our family will be setting up a new routine in line with the new school year. So this seems like a perfect time to evaluate our commitments and activities and perhaps plug into some new ones.
October: Make.This past October I was busy making Christmas things the second week of October, and I think it was a good practice. It helped me to get a start on things before the craziness of Halloween/my birthday/Chris' SBL trip/the Christmas season. So I'm giving myself permission to focus my time just on creating something or another. I'm sure I will make more than just one thing, or maybe as many as I possibly can in one month.
November: Me.What is something that I would like to do, just for me, that I always put on the back burner and chose busyness instead? Read? Exercise? Nap? Study? Go out with friends? Go out with Chris?
The week that Chris was in the US and the kids were sick, I made a deal with myself that in my "free time" (once they were in bed or napping), I was going to do whatever I needed the most. This meant that a few times I chose to take a nap instead of attend to chores, ate dinner while watching Greys Anatomy instead of answering emails, and read a book that kept me up past a responsible bedtime hour. But these were good things, and in my birthday month, I'm going to chose me with my free time again. It will likely end in sewing/blogging/Light Room anyway, but hopefully there will be at least an instance or two of reading in tub.
December: Cook.I hate cooking. Which is why this is last. But putting forth the effort to find new dishes to add to the rota is nothing to shake a stick at. I found this last month, and though it is a hassle, I have made it twice since then, except covered in dark chocolate. It's amazing. If I think about it too much, I'm going to start gnawing on my hand. Finding recipes like this is the reason I need to make an attempt to try more.
Wish me luck!! Anyone else doing some form of resolutions this year?
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