creative wednesday | week 3

I started my creative day making a duplicate of the earrings I made last week. One for myself and then one to sell (I will add it to etsy when I can take a decent picture), a necklace to match, and another pair of earrings (I don't want to share just yet because I have someone in mind for them). It was about the time I was finishing up the last pair of earrings that it occurred to me, Christmas is just around the corner...I better start fulfilling my orders for the gratitude journals before my work gets mixed up with the holiday craziness.



So I spent the rest of my time double checking my design and printing copy after copy of the book. In fact my printer is still going. Crazy how long just that step takes. It involves coming back to the computer about every 20-30 minutes reloading paper, checking the printing, printing the reverse side, etc. But I am thankful for this one easy step because the real work is ahead of me. I'm not complaining though, I enjoy making them and knowing they are going to be enjoyed by someone for a whole year gives me enough incentive to spend my time making them.

I'm hoping to make some extras for my etsy shop, but that will all depend on my timing. I'll keep you posted when I have some available for purchase.

xo, amy

**Did you do anything creative today?

missing one

It's just been the four of us for the last few days. Seems like it's been the four of us for a while now since Adam's been traveling almost every week. It's such a strange departure to what his schedule normally is at work it's beginning to wear on me. It's not that I'm frustrated by his going or that I can't be the only parent for a few days, it's just not seeing him each night as we're winding down the day is, well, sad. I miss him.

I realized something though, this time around, the girls and I not only hold the fort down we have a good time doing it. Once they're home from school we get all the unpleasantness out of the way, like homework, then we play. We make dinner together, take walks, play games, or maybe watch a show. Whatever the activity we end up doing it together. It's like we're all keeping each other company until we're all together again. (Once I write it all out it doesn't seem different than any other day, but I guess there aren't a lot of playdates and friends coming over so they're spending that time with me.)

It's 8pm, the kids are up, and were anxiously awaiting Adam's arrival. We're leaving to pick him up in just a few minutes so the house is all a buzz when normally I'd have 3 already in REM.

ok hate to cut it off there, but we've got to go!

xo, amy

who knew sponge bob could bring us together

shades of gray

I was feeling a little stir crazy yesterday evening and believe it or not Tess is usually the one I can count on to come with me without really knowing what we're going to do ahead of time. Not even I knew where we would end up, just that I had to get out of the house.













I love that she's such a quality time kind of girl. That the desire to be with trumps anything else she might be doing at the time. I understand that need and am grateful we have it in common. It makes it easy in the quiet spaces to know we are happy to be here, walking along, holding hands together.

fives steps....

I believe this list was called the plan of life in five, but I can't be certain. I just know I liked it enough to not want to forget it.



01. Come to earth to grow

02. Can't grow without change.

03. No change takes place without conflict.

04. No conflict is solved without sacrifice.

05. All sacrifice creates some kind of pain...emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

missed headlines

What a weird week. I can't say that I'm sad to see it end, though I am looking forward to today so much. I'm so glad the comments on the photos from my last post were seen as being happy because that's exactly what it felt like....happy and joyful. And then something happened. Perhaps it was the full moon, I don't know, but my emotions heightened and I had a few rough, what I like to term, crazy days that followed. Oh wretched hormones please pass quickly...

I was busy which was one of the reasons why I didn't blog and was staying off the internet, but my state of mind led me to believe it was the best thing for everyone. So here are a few of this weeks highlights I think I would have posted about had I had my wits about me:

01. saturday morning


This is what I woke up to last Saturday morning. The four of them singing along to some song on the internet. They were so content in the moment being together I just took a picture and left them to their business and headed back to bed to read. Not a bad start to the day. Today Jill is waking up to my girls and I hope she is given the same amount of peace, though I have a feeling there has already been a lot of asking for food.

02. game night


And I can't talk about the girls having a sleepover without mentioning the reason it came about in the first place. After what seemed like all summer long we are back...game nights have resumed. I didn't realize how much I missed our nights together, laughing, bantering back and forth, winning or loosing in my case until we started up again. Plus it's fun to see how excited the girls are when they know their going to hang out with cousins.

03. smell of rain


It rained this week. A most delicious rain. Megan had a friend over at the time and they went outside to play in it. As I heard their giggles and ran to get my camera I heard Meg say to her friend, "I love the smell of rain it's so...fresh."

04. create wednesday | week 2


My friend Amy called me Thursday and the first thing out of her mouth was, "what did you do for creative wednesday?" It took me a moment to compose myself thinking, oh man did i do something... I was happy to report that I did, in fact, use my time being creative. I made another pair of earrings for my giveaway, I made 1 earring from 2 different earring sets (couldn't decide which one I liked better), I made raspberry freezer jam, and re-covered two long over do chairs. I still have two to go, but I ran out of staples. It's good to know that someone is keeping me accountable for my time, thanks Amy. Did you do something creative this week?

Have a great Saturday!
xo, amy

delightful fall eve | photos

We played outside tonight until we couldn't play any longer. The great thing about fall is you can enjoy the fading sunset without having to wait up til 9:30pm. I do hate loosing that light, but it does make getting kids to bed much easier. Of course after a full day of school and play falling asleep becomes a welcomed reward.















Happy Fall!

fall = delicious

So we may not have to labor to get our pears, no sowing, no tilling the ground, but what little we do do (picking them out of the tree) is more than worth our efforts. Fall is such a beautiful time of year, but it's also delicious.




Ok so maybe it does take more effort to pick them then I'm letting on. We had to get in some crazy positions to get all the pears and we didn't even dent the tree. Ladders are a must.



Picking our pears this year and seeing the excitement & participation of the girls makes me want to start a garden this spring. I literally think about it every year and every year find some reason not to do it...mostly it's just out of laziness because I don't know what I'm doing. We also don't have a lot of space, but I don't want that to be what gets in my way either. I need to do my research and figure out how to start so it doesn't seem so overwhelming.

Do any of you garden?
Know of any good websites or books to help me get started?
Hannah and Jordan I may be calling you come spring.

For now though, before I get to ahead of myself, I am just going to enjoying what little we do get from autumns harvest. Come tomorrow it will be offical....fall is alomost here. :)

giveaway results

Stephanie that means you're the winner! Please email me your address and I'll send the earrings out to you this week.

penciled in with pen

You know when you don't do something a lot and you get out of the habit and your yearning to do it wanes? I have been feeling like that creatively. I think about creating all the time, learning new things, using my hands, getting deep into a project, but for whatever reason am finding other things to do with my free time and not giving myself over to the creative need inside me. I can't really explain my hesitation, but suffice to say, it feels like years since I've gotten my hands dirty and I'm putting my foot down...i miss it.

Ok, so it hasn't been years, but it feels like a really long time since creating has had a regular occurrence in my life. It's time to change that...and I'm being realistic. I've taken a good look at myself and realize I'm a "schedule" person. I like to believe I'm a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of gal, there are times I spontaneously decide to do something completely random, but for the most part I stick to a schedule. So now that I understand that about myself I have decided I need to pick a day dedicated to creating, cement it in my daily schedule so it doesn't get over looked by other non-essential activities.

After 4 weeks of school we are pretty set in our routine and Wednesday seems to be my one day of the week I don't have anything permanent where I can devote a good portion of time creating. I've penciled it in with pen and have even set reminders so I can't possibly forget. And so creative Wednesdays begin.

I'm so giddy about this my wheels are turning with all the things I want to do and try. The cool thing is I'm already on track and can count this week as week 1. Wednesday I did something creative...imagine that. Remember how I mentioned I wanted to make jewelry, well, I follow through. I went to my friend Amy's, used her knowledge, and made these earrings.


It's not what I had planned to do, but I loved them so much I decided to make another pair and give them away. I figured having a giveaway is the best way I know to celebrating this new commitment I have to getting back to doing what it is I love. Plus, I would love for what I create to have more of a purpose...so giveaway it is.

So you know what to do. If you would like to have a chance to win the earrings just comment. I'll announce the winner Saturday evening.


Have a fabulous weekend. We are heading to game night for the first time in months and no one is more excited then my girls...or maybe their counsin Whitney.

Enjoy!
xxox, amy

one direction

[Oregon coast | Aug 2010]

travelling as fast in one direction as she can go before she has second thoughts & goes back to doing the same old stuff

~storypeople

recently

I've been trying to make more of an effort to teach my girls life long skills like cooking. I'm good from time to time including them in what I do, but for the most part it's much easier to just whip dinner up quickly rather than try to teach them to chop. I wish I had given more time to this over the years as I'm finding how enjoyable this time together is and as long as I allow for plenty of time to cook, I have quite a bit of patience.

I've been thinking about making jewelry. I bought a few jewelry supplies years ago to make some earrings and a few bracelets, but that was the extend of my jewelry phase. I've had the urge recently to pull it out and get reacquainted with my stuff. More specifically I'm thinking stamped metal jewelery and using bezel pieces with my photography.


I've been volunteering at the school once a week. Each year I've always volunteered in some way, but this year I really wanted to go at least once a week to each classroom. It takes up a good portion of my Thursday mornings, but find it invaluable to get to know the teachers and children in the classroom with my girls.

Are your kids as into the silly bandz as mine? I've only bought a few packs, but they are eager for more after seeing from their friends at school just how many one arm can hold. There's a boy in Megan's class that's wearing 150. He told me he never takes them off. Oh dear.

I keep wondering how long the skunk will stay in our backyard and it's just now occurring to me that it's taken up permanent residence...is it possible he'll stay for the winter? We are on the list for a trap from the county, but apparently so is everyone else because it's been over 6 weeks and we still don't have it yet. UGH! While I want so badly to have a fondness for it, thinking, at least we don't have problems with other critters, he's making it awfully difficult to enjoy the cooler mornings.

As we drove up to Park City last weekend we were delighted to see the colors starting to change (took this photo while Adam was driving on the freeway). I will admit though, my initially reaction was, so soon. It's so hard to believe we are doing this again...autumn, Halloween, darker evenings, etc. While I'm looking forward to the change, I guess I hesitate because I don't want it to happen too fast. I want it to slow down a bit, not change too quickly, so autumn can linger a little longer this year. Love the fall.

have a good one.

xxox, amy

12of12 | September

[click here to enlarge]

01. reading scriptures in the morning hours.

02. waking up and finding the girls piled on each other reading the friend.

03. orchids that bring color to our living room.

04. bella getting ready for church.

05. adam and I talking before leaving for church.

06. walking to church

07. our primary

08. flowers seen while walking home.

09. eating lunch/dinner together.

10. taking a much needed nap, for some reason I had a strange headache in my eyes. (photo by adam)

11. pears from our pear tree.

12. megan coloring before bed.

I always enjoy capturing days like Sunday that are so different from the rest of the week. I hope it was a good one for you as well.

reminder

Just wanted to remind those of you who are participating in the 12of12 challenge that tomorrow is the 12th. Hard to believe it's upon us already. I'm telling ya, it does make the year go by faster, no?


This is September 2009 12of12. Funny how I can remember this Saturday perfectly. The girls were sick with the flu and we quarantined ourselves. It was a rough weekend to say the least, but I got a lot done. You know how they say when you hear something and write it down you're more likely to retain the information? Apparently taking pictures is the same way too. So there you go, another reason to do 12of12.

Have fun tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing what you captured on Monday.

a happy list

10 reasons why I have a smile on my face

01. new found music. Loving to build a home by The Cinematic Orchestra, jar of hearts by Christina Perri, and the light by Sara Bareilles.


02. this quote

03. a friend I can call at odd hours and ask about strange rashes. never a bad idea to have friends in the medical field. thanks amy.

04. having a stack of books waiting for me to read.

05. spending the night celebrating lolo's birthday.


06. discovering this photo. still perplexed as to what these girls are looking at? any ideas.

07. a neighbor so generously gave us a basket of goodness from his garden.

08. remembering last nights blunder of not fully locking our bedroom door.

09. the fallish type weather.

10. realizing tomorrow is wide open.

small black book

Last night I had the privilege of listening to Emily Freeman speak, the author of 21 Days Closer to Christ. She spoke about many things that touched my heart, in fact, I frantically took notes while silently giving a prayer of thanks that I was there soaking up her goodness.

She made me really think and evaluate the way I pray and the way I study the scriptures. She reaffirmed my desire to focus on the important things in life and gave me another push to continue to seek for experiences to change my day, to focus on relationships, and to search for my purpose and what it is I have to offer the world.



But the one thing that stood out to me more than any other was to remember the special moments in my life. I think I do a pretty good job of this actually, but she made me think of it in a different way. The reason why we need to not only remember, but to document the special moments/spiritual experiences is so when the hard days come, when frustration and sadness rear it's ugly head, when all we want to do is curl up and hide from the world we can look back at our special moments and remember we are not alone. Remember we are loved. Remember who we are. Remembering is what will give us the push to get on our knees and ask for the strength we need to move forward. "A prayer for strength never goes unanswered." -emily freeman

I heard a talk a couple years ago that spoke on a very similar topic of writing our experiences down and I recall it's what pushed me to look at my photography differently. It's then I started focusing on documenting my everyday life. While I love this tremendously and feel like I have folders and folders of captured memories, I realize there are still so many moments that need to be documented that can't be captured in a photograph.

Today I'm devoting my afternoon to making a small book I can carry around with me so I can write down my special moments wherever and whenever they happen. So I'll never have to wonder and I'll always know God knows and is aware of me.

xoxo,
amy


--do you have a book for your special moments?

Yellowstone in photos

Let the road trip begin. I couldn't believe how quickly the 5 hours passed. I'm use to driving to St. George (4 hours) which seems to take forever. It was a welcome change to go north.


The river right across from the cabin. The water was cold cold cold.






morning exploring


and I thought we waited a long time to get into Zions. It took about 30 minutes to get into the park.




Basically traffic would come to a stand still when animals were spotted and many cars would pull over to the side to take pictures. This was our first encounter...elk. We actually didn't see a varied of animals like we had hoped, but what we did see was very exciting. The kids were happy to drive along looking for animals along the way. This picture cracks me up of the crowds.






Firehole Falls


I met this man while taking photos of the falls. I walked passed him and said, "nice equipment" (he was using what I was using). He smiled and asked, "are you into Canon?" I replied with an affirmative. He invited me to come see what he had with him. So I followed him and his wife and saw the awesomeness he was packing. Oh my goodness. My dream never looked so good. He's a retired man travelling the globe taking pictures. Exactly what I hope to do with Adam when we're his age.


A lone bison seen from the road...took this one while driving.




Old Faithful proved to be faithful to us. Literally the moment we walked up to wait for it to blow it started. It really is such a wonder. The kids loved it.


Taken inside the 97 year old Old Faithful Inn.


The cause of many traffic jams.




The cabin we stayed in.


Adam as always keep the kids entertained.





It wasn't what I remembered as a kid, but it's exactly what I hoped it would be. We spent a relaxing weekend in a beautiful part of the country with some of our favorite people taking pictures, laughing, looking for animals, playing games, talking, and enjoying the surroundings. There is just something so beautiful about the quiet wide open spaces.

It went so well we are already planning our next adventure together.

xxox,
amy