This week.

I have been a busy bee this week. We are down to 6 days before the Indie Market! Did I mention yet that I was accepted to sell this time??  As soon as I got the email saying that I was accepted, I blasted it out to Facebook and Twitter but don't remember letting my readers know. My B-A-D. So in my spare time this week I have been sewing away.... I have gotten quite a few toddler girl dresses made up and tonight I even made a diaper bag with a matching plastic wipes case. Now I can only pray that people who shop at the market next week will be people with babies, pregnant women, or people who know people having babies ;0)

Other things that happened this week-- last Saturday I went to The Great Cloth Diaper Change and I have been itching to blog about it, I have pictures but I was hoping that Leeland's certificate of participation would come in so that it could be included. They were mailing them to all the kiddos.  So blog about that coming soon. Also today was Daniel's 2nd powerlifting meet, have I mentioned before that my hubby has incredible biceps? Well, he does! ;0) More to come on that soon when I have pictures to post. A friend ended up taking pictures today because my camera lens had a stubborn smudge and therefore my pictures were all coming out blurry. I guess it's kind of crazy that I have had the fancy camera now for like 8-9 months and have never purchased a lens cleaning cloth.

More to come soon :0)

I won something!

Before I get to the title of this post, I want to share with you that it is GOOD FRIDAY! It is only through the blood of Jesus and the grace of God that we may be born again, made into a new person, and have eternal life. One of my favorite verses says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." 2 Corinthians 5:17. What a beautiful promise that is-- the hard part to swallow though is that we only got there through this, "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." Romans 5:6-9. Sometimes it's difficult for our human emotions to understand but Jesus boar all of our sins.... all of them.... for every murderer, every adulterer, every lustful thought, even every candy bar stolen as a kid. As I have reflected this week on the true meaning of Easter, I feel so humbled and thankful for the blood of Christ. I'm struggling to put my thoughts into words right now.... I just know that I am humbled and love my God for all He has done.

And on to the title of this post, I won a giveaway from one of the blogs that I read! YAY! I won something from Danielle at Take Heart. Here is the link to the sponsor giveaway that I entered, I won giveaway #2 from the marine parents-- a knotted necklace and a rose headband! And here is the link where you can see my name.... I was picked! Yippee!!! You guys should totally check out her blog, she is such a sweet sweet girl with a cute little family. She is doing another giveaway for this next week in honor of her 25th birthday. She is giving away a HUGE lot of stuff that I REALLY REALLY want :0) and in order to enter you have to buy a few children's books off of Amazon for the joyful library at Riley Hospital for children in Indiana! How sweet is that celebrating her birthday and giving to others! Here's the link to that giveaway give to joyful library.

Time is passing me by.

It's been another week already and time just seems to be passing me by and I'm getting nothing done. Of course when I say nothing, I mean nothing out of the ordinary, I'm doing the same old stuff-- laundry, hanging out with my 1 year old, cooking dinner and going to work. Ever feel like the days are just passing you by and your just along for the ride? I've been kind of in a funk lately, it's hard to explain so I will do my best.

I have always found myself in the position of looking forward to something. For example, when I was in High School or in College, I had the goal to finish school and graduate. I accomplished both things, I have my High School Diploma and my BSW now.  When I was engaged, my goal was to plan a beautiful wedding that fit Daniel and I and to well... marry him. I've done that, checked it off my list and we have been happily married for 2 years. Then I had a baby, and then I was a stay at home mom for a while with my baby.... then for financial reasons I have had to go back to work part-time and now I find myself just sitting and waiting. I go to work, I come home, I go to work, I come home.

There has always been an end to something, a finish, a goal that was to be accomplished. Right now, we don't have that. Daniel and I are just waiting. We each have hopes and dreams but they don't seem to be falling into place like we thought they would-- we haven't found the step to take to make them happen and in some cases feel bound where we are. We're waiting and we're praying. We don't know how long we'll have to wait, and we don't even know that His answer will be the one we think we're looking for..... It reminds me of the song by John Waller, "While I'm Waiting," which is really awesome and is found in one of my favorite movies, "Fireproof".   As I sit here waiting, I keep reminding myself about the devotional written by Oswald Chambers that one of my co-workers read during our prayer time last week. Here's what it says, it struck me hard, maybe it will touch you too.

AFTER OBEDIENCE - WHAT?
And straightway He constrained His disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side. . . ." Mark 6:45-52 We are apt to imagine that if Jesus Christ constrains us, and we obey Him, He will lead us to great success. We must never put our dreams of success as God's purpose for us; His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have an idea that God is leading us to a particular end, a desired goal; He is not. The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end. What is my dream of God's purpose? His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay in the middle of the turmoil calm and unperplexed, that is the end of the purpose of God. God is not working towards a particular finish; His end is the process - that I see Him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it is all right because I see Him walking on the sea. It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God. God's training is for now, not presently. His purpose is for this minute, not for something in the future. We have nothing to do with the afterwards of obedience; we get wrong when we think of the afterwards. What men call training and preparation, God calls the end. God's end is to enable me to see that He can walk on the chaos of my life just now. If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present: if we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious. Oswald Chambers has some really good stuff that will get you thinking my friends. As I keep waiting,  I'm doing my best to focus on the process, following Him with my whole heart and walking with Him hand in hand. But I appreciate readings like this in "My Utmost For His Highest" which remind me of the process.  And just for fun, here's the AWESOME John Waller song that I occasionally blast in the car and "sing" at the top of my lungs too. John Waller - While I'm Waiting (Official Music Video) from Provident Label Group on Vimeo.

The birthday party!

  Yesterday evening our family got together and celebrated the birth of Leeland. I officially have  a ONE YEAR OLD! I like that, I like that when strangers ask how old he is, I can reply ONE! So cute. Anyways, the birthday party was a small affair, because that's how we felt most comfortable. We just invited our parents, grandparents and all of our siblings. Kind of weird that we had it on a Thursday evening and a bit inconvenient for some but it was his actual birthday and I have to work on Saturday.

Birthday shirt from Etsy

As mentioned before, his party was at Chick-Fil-A, we ordered several trays of chicken nuggets and chicken tenders, with lots of honey mustard and a couple gallons of sweet tea. If people wanted more than that, they had to get it themselves (we aren't made of money) and as you already know, I provided the cake. We started the party out digging into the chicken which Leeland of course LOVED.

nom nom nom chicken!

After chicken, we moved on to presents. He got SO much, a lot more than I ever expected or that I even know what to do with. Our families were so generous to him and truly spoiled him. Once the presents were opened, very quickly because babies aren't really into opening presents, and he was beginning to get a bit over stimulated, it was time for the CAKE! And drum roll.......this is how the cake turned out........after much stress and hard work.........

As you can see in the photos, he LOVED the cake. With all the stress of making the one dinosaur cake, I didn't make him his own personal cake so we just cut up half of the cake to disperse to everyone and then Leeland got to mess up, play with and eat the rest. Once he was done with the cake he was pretty much beyond tired and started to get a little whiny. We cleaned up as best we could and headed home for a bath, put him in his bed and he was passed out within a couple minutes. I think it was the perfect birthday party for him. It was casual and quiet which is more our style and it was just the right amount of time with just the right amount of people to suit him.

Today we went to the doctor for his 12 month check-up and he weighs 19 pounds, 15 ounces and is 31 inches long. This whole year he has remained very low on the percentile charts for his weight and very high for his height. He's just our skinny little boy. I have no idea how his weight remains so low, he eats ALL day long, I like to call it grazing. I wish that I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight. Between his last visit 3 months ago and this visit, he only gained a pound and a half.

Well, one year behind us and many more to come-- Happy birthday to Leeland! Your Mommy and Daddy and "goggy" (dog) love you very much. You have grown into the cutest, sweetest little boy. We can't wait to see what's in store and to watch you grow into a fine man of God. <3 Love you!

12 months=1 year!

My sweet little boy is 1 year old today! Can you believe it? I sure can't..... but I have said that every month when he gets a little older. Last year at this exact time I was in the hospital preparing to give birth to our 1st son. He was born at 6:10pm, 8 pounds 6 ounces and 21 inches long. I fell in the love with him the moment I saw him.  He's grown and learned so much over the past year! Here are some changes from the past month....

--We are still working on weaning Leeland from his bottle, and I must say that he has made it SUPER easy. He doesn't complain at all about milk and doesn't seem to notice the difference between his organic whole milk and his Enfamil AR. We are down to only 1 bottle a day and that happens just before bedtime. Once we are done with our last can of formula, there will be no more. He also calls his sippy cups his "ba-ba" which is his word for bottle so I guess he doesn't mind the cup either.

--There seems to be no such thing as walking anymore, Leeland now prefers to get around by RUNNING! He has a cute little run too. His only issue is he doesn't always look where he's going and will trip over toys, and often the dog.

--He is now riding around in a convertible car seat, or as I like to call it, his "big boy" car seat. It looks super comfortable and from what I can tell, he seems to really like it.

--Recently he has turn into a picky eater when he has NEVER been picky before. I think it is mostly due to the transition of solid table food. I guess when you're used to eating pureed green beans, a real green bean would be weird in your mouth. Trial and error, he tries some things and spits them out and I just keep trying them. I wish that he was completely off of baby food but we're not there yet.

--Lately he continues to refuse his 2nd nap.... I think we may be down to just 1 nap a day. Sad to see that 2nd one go but I think it's pretty typical for a 1 year old to only take 1 nap a day.

That's about all I can think of that's changed for now-- I'm too anxious and excited for his birthday party to think. I will surely post once the birthday party is here and over. We also go to the doctor on Friday for his 1 year check-up and I'm excited to see how much our boy has grown. He feels super heavy now to me but that could just be because I've been so tired and weak lately.

Birthday Cake-tastrophe.

    Do you remember this post from a month ago? All about making the perfect dinosaur cake for my little dinosaurs 1st birthday party..... well, it was a great idea in my head. And even a great idea online considering I found it on the Wilton website. I was SO excited about making this birthday cake for my little man that I bought the pan a month before his birthday. My husband warned me and said, "are you going to try that out before his birthday?" and my arrogant self thought "no, it's just a pan... it has instructions.... I've made TONS of cakes!"  Well lets just say if I had tried it out, I would've returned the pan to the store A LOT sooner!
    It all started last night-- typically when I bake a cake I bake the cake the day before to let it cool for a full day before icing. It helps keep less crumbs out of the icing I think. But this time with his party on Thursday, I wanted to bake the cake on Tuesday night and decorate on Wednesday leaving me time to spend with he and Daniel on his birthday and also it left a buffer in case something went wrong, which I am really happy I had. So last night we read all of the instructions to the pan... twice, and we get the cake in the oven. I typically let cakes cool IN the pan for an hour or so before taking it out, but for whatever reason, the instructions say only let it cool 5-10 minutes and then rotate letting steam out of each side because it's 3-D. Took the front side off and the cake crumbled right before my eyes.
.........
I cried!.... No, seriously I cried. I remember Daniel hugging me and me blubbering something about wanting Leeland's birthday to be perfect and not understanding why it didn't work. I followed the instructions!! By this point I was exhausted-- Tuesday's are my long day at work, and I was tired of standing in the kitchen, and I was majorly bummed out, so I went to bed at 9pm last night.

I woke up this morning still frustrated but headed on to work. After work I stopped at the store and got some more butter and more eggs because I was determined to find my error and try again. I got home and got to mixing some more cake batter-- I was going to make this dinosaur! I read the instructions 2 more times and placed everything in the oven again with my fingers crossed. Took it out of the oven, let it cool, went to take one of the sides off and........ it crumbled again!!! At this point I was just plain angry, there were no tears. I chucked the cake in the trash, washed the pan, put it in the box and took it back to the store for a refund. I didn't have my receipt so they could only offer me store credit, but that was fine by me because I really just didn't want to see the pan ever again.... and it was expensive.

With my store credit, I purchased this pan....

It's not 3-D, but it's a dinosaur darn-it! I just baked the 3rd cake in THIS pan, and it came out lovely. I am currently waiting on it to cool so that I can decorate it. Hopefully I won't be up too late tonight so that I can be rested and better enjoy my sweet boy's big day tomorrow!

What I've been up to.

This week has FLOWN by and I have been super exhausted-- sorry for the lack of posts, I should do better. With that said, here's what my week looked like....

MONDAY- Monday I had to work in the afternoon and while I was away my Granny was watching Leeland. It was really nice too because she came to our house to watch him which was easier on me and easier on Leeland.

TUESDAY- Tuesday's are my long days at work, I only work 20 hours a week and it's split among 4 days. Tuesday is like my hump day, it's the day that I dread and the day that once it's done, I know that I'm almost to the weekend. I worked 9-5 and then went out afterward to volunteer. I found out last week about a local organization called "Sweet Cheeks Diaper Kits", they donate diapers to low income families through our local WIC office. There's currently a waiting list because of the demand which is pretty awesome. It's great to hear that lots more mommies are interested in cloth diapering and yet sad at the same time that the cannot afford them. So sweet cheeks gets major companies to donate diapers and they also do t-shirt drives and make diapers from the t-shirts. Once a month they get a group of volunteers together to work on making the diapers from t-shirts. It's an assembly line process, some cutting the design, some pinning the layers together, others marking them for snaps, and others putting on the snaps. Once all that is complete, a couple of the ladies add elastic from home and one lady serges them. The end result is a fitted diaper with snaps and 2 snap in doublers. Really neat! I was hesitant to go because it put me away from Leeland ALL day, but it's only once a month and it felt really good to help out. In case your wondering, I was doing the snaps on the assembly line. :0)

WEDNESDAY- I worked in the morning on Wednesday and then I did lots of laundry. I also made a run to Goodwill. For whatever reason, I felt the need to clean out this week and get rid of some things. It felt good. I got home Wednesday night and did even more cleaning out to do another Goodwill run on Thursday.

THURSDAY- Worked in the morning again, and did yet again another Goodwill run. I also did some deep cleaning around the house on this day. Lots of dusting and vacuuming, and I even removed the couch cushion covers and threw them in the washing machine. Sprayed all fabrics down with Febreze and got some new air fresheners. Our whole apartment smells like Febreze Thai Dragon Fruit, it's quite lovely and I will admit that I bought that scent simply because "thai" was in the name.

FRIDAY- My off day! Woo hoo! And with all the organizing, cleaning and laundry done, it was just a day to hang out with my little man. Lots of playing and reading books. We went out to Joann fabrics to look at what they had. I'm wanting to make a diaper bag, but none of the fabrics on Friday screamed out to me "I'm your diaper bag!" I'll try again another day I guess. I did purchase the candy melts I needed to make dinosaur pops for Leeland's birthday party. I made the dinosaur pops and they are safely wrapped up in our refrigerator. I also made 3 more diaper clutches on this day out of the green flower fabric that you can find in this post. I also have gotten a little dress about half way finished (pictures coming).  And went to G-Mart and got 3 varieties of Mochi Ice Cream and have almost ate them all... just being honest.  I returned our cable box this day to Time Warner and canceled all services--we're pretty excited about it, it's too expensive and there's nothing but junk on it.

SATURDAY- Daniel, Leeland and I got up in the morning and headed out the the "Triad Health, Wellness, Green Living Show" (I probably just butchered the name but it's far too long anyways.) We got breakfast at Chick-Fil-A on the way. It was a really neat show, we enjoyed mingling with the people and learning about different products out there. This cloth diaper boutique  was there and we chatted with them and I couldn't resist purchasing something-- I bought Leeland a really cool pair of swim trunks that have the cloth diaper built into them so he only has to wear one piece. After we walked around the whole fair, we all came home and took a nap before Daniel had to go to work.  While Daniel was at work, Leeland and I played and read books during the thunderstorm and I washed diapers. I also registered for the great cloth diaper change and pre-ordered my special edition Fuzzibunz Earth Day diaper because I couldn't resist... cute diaper

SUNDAY (today)- We went to church this morning and then Daniel had to go to work right after. My in-laws stopped by after church for just a minute and gave Leeland an early birthday present..... drum roll.... a convertible car seat!!! He's officially a big boy and my car just got A LOT smaller! The rest of the day was spent hanging out with the little man. Though I just cleaned everything on Thursday, the house is a mess again but I unfortunately don't have the energy to deal with it. No idea why I have been so exhausted lately... I do know that Leeland has been refusing his 2nd nap the past few days. I hope and pray that the days of 2 naps aren't over yet. It may sound selfish, but Mommy needs her time too.

That's all for now folks, sorry for such a long post.... gotta go, sleepy momma and fussy baby. Another busy week ahead, it's Leeland's birthday week!!! And then Saturday is the annual walk for life  at work, praying that the 60% chance of rain their calling for is an error.... or maybe the storm can just come in the evening once we're done. If you're local, you should consider coming out... lots of refreshments, games, fun, and an open house!

Glasses free!

The last time I had an eye exam was at least 3 years ago, possibly 4 years. I have been dying to get my eyes checked for the past couple months-- my vision was starting to get blurry and I was having trouble seeing far away. It's quite a shame when your at church trying to read the projector screen and your squinting WITH your glasses on. With all that said, I made an appointment to the eye doctor and went this past Friday. Daniel wears contacts so I had asked him about them and how they feel-- he persuaded me to try them. 

It took me forever the past couple days to put them in and take them out, but other than that, it's going pretty well! So for now, I am glasses free! (I feel naked.) Of course, I still think my glasses are adorable, so I'm sure there will be days that they are brought out, but it's been fun seeing myself with nothing on my face.

Sunday, crafty Sunday!

Our weekend was full of ups and downs but for the most part, Sunday was pretty chill. We attended church this morning, then went out to lunch with Daniel's parents, and his brother and wife that were in town. Once we got home, my boys had their belly's full and were ready for a nap so I took advantage of the quiet moment and did some crafting. I went to the First Friday Indie Market this past Friday so I guess that was just the motivation I needed to do some more sewing. I had applied to sell there but didn't get accepted. This past weekend though, the application for May went up.  I filled one out, so now I'm just waiting to see what happens.

Here's some pictures of what I got accomplished today.

4 nursing clips-- go around the neck and clip a blanket, rag, shirt... whatever

you choose to use to cover while you are nursing. 

Up close of the clips-- sorry about the glare. 

Also made more diaper clutches-- 3 of them in this pretty blue

fabric! (Holds cloth diapers and wipes too of course! :0)

That's all the sewing I completed today. Into the 3rd diaper clutch, my ankle started cramping from my sewing pedal. Maybe sewing is sort of like playing guitar-- you have to build ups some calluses... er, ankle strength.