You can love Valentines Day!

I have finally figured it out- how to LOVE Valentines day and be happy whether you are married, dating or single,  whether your special someone is romantic, rich or not.  Here it is: do the things you did when Valentines day was fun! Sounds simple, and it is.
Remember when Valentines day was fun?  When you carefully selected the right cards for your friends and classmates, chose the conversation hearts with just the right sentiment for each one? Carefully stuck the heart sticker on the envelope and decorated your own mailbox with pink and red hearts and doilies?  Do you remember when it stopped being fun, started being filled with anxiety or romantic expectations? 
I do- in 5th grade Eddie Farnsworth gave me a BIG heart shaped box of chocolates.  And no one else.  I had no idea he liked me before then, I hadn't really thought twice about him before then. Suddenly he was looking pretty cute.  I wasn't sure why he chose me, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with my new glasses- they must have made me cuter than I used to be.  I was really excited about my chocolates, eating only a couple a day to make it last. Nothing grew between Eddie and I, I'm pretty sure we didn't talk again after that day. But something changed that year, suddenly Valentines became about romance, getting gifts or attention from boys, and it became disappointing.  It got even worse in Jr High when the halls were filled with girls carrying stupid stuffed animals and giant balloon bouquets.  There was the hope every day that I might get a valentine gram from any one of the boys I had crushes on- and then the disappointment.  The fear that I would never have a good valentines again, no boy would ever get me a huge heart shaped box of chocolates again (I don't think anyone ever did come to think of it...) Then high school, and joy of joys I had a boyfriend!  Surely now I would have the valentines I'd dreamed of!  I waited expectantly for those valentine grams, certainly I'd have something ridiculous to carry around all day and be proud/embarrassed someone loved me so much... but no.  Disappointment every year.  I'm sure I got something- in fact I can remember a couple of actually nice gifts, and I'm sure I was happy about them, but it could never be enough, never live up to some imaginary fantasy of what valentines was "supposed" to be. 
Then there was a low point, the valentines I spent heart broken, days after being dumped- I wallowed and cried and watched valentines specials in my pjs at home, too heartsick to face all the couples in love and their stupid balloons and roses. I remember distinctly wishing I could just curl up and go to sleep for 5 years when things would be better. 
Fast forward those 5 years and it was!  I was married and mature- pregnant with my first baby actually-  but Valentines still wasn't a good day.  Yes! I was no longer single, happily married to a good man who I knew loved me, but something about that holiday- it was still a huge disappointment. Every man is different of course, and some are very romantically inclined, but not mine. And even though some years he's tried more than others, if I expect the day to be anything different than any other day, anything like some romantic movie, it won't be, and it will still be a disappointment!
One year I figured it out- I went to the scrapbook store and picked out a few pink and red sheets of paper and went to work at the die-cutting machine cutting out hundreds of hearts. I went home and sat down with my girls and we glued hearts all over cards and wrote notes to family and friends.  It was so much fun!  I think people liked getting our valentines in the mail too.

That is the secret- make the day what it used to be! Make cards with special messages and hearts for your friends, eat and share heart shaped sweets, decorate with pink and red paper hearts and doilies!  Make the day about DOING, not about waiting for some great expression of love from someone else, and it will still be a great day! Let me know if you have tried this and what you think!

You are welcome!

I've been hooked on Pinterest lately and decided to create a board to pin some of my favorite movie moments & stars- mainly because I watched this the other day and wanted to read this over and over- (Casino Royale)

Click on the picture to check out my pins and then tell me, what movies am I missing? 

Dancing With Myself Friday

Driving the kids to school this morning this song came on and I started wishing someone would do a flash mob dance to it, (I am obviously a deep thinker) then I remembered all my good ideas have already been had so I came home to my friend Google and found it for us- hooray!  Happy Friday- I hope you've got someone to dance with this weekend!

Getting Organized

I know my blog has been severely neglected- life just keeps going and blogging doesn't make it up the list- I think laundry has become a full time job in and of itself.... But I had this great idea (that has probably been had by a hundred other people) but it was new to me and so exciting I couldn't wait to share it here!  I saw this "hanging jewelry organizer" and since I own exactly 7 pieces of jewelry besides my wedding ring it looked like the perfect element & embellishment organizer!  It has 33 pockets on each side (that's 66 pockets!) and I was able to clear up so much shelf and desk top space by emptying out little bottles and boxes into the pretty clear pockets.  And the very best thing about it is it's portable!  I can hang it in my "cricut cupboard" (which is my old TV armoire) when I am working out there or haul it back to my bedroom desk when I'm working there.  So fun, it's changing my life already.  I have seen bigger ones (the kind for shoes I think) filled with punches and other tools and I think I need to get one of those now too- it can hang on the outside of my Cricut armoire, or behind my bedroom door.

Orla Kiely Inspired Card

I participated in the Tuesday Trigger Challenge over on Moxie Fab World- I created this card:

inspired by this great image of Orla Kiely tins:

I gravitate to making cards anyways but that picture was just perfect for a card! Love the colors and prints on them.  The papers in MME Darling Dear 6x6 pad had a similar feel. Today's the last day of this challenge but they have a new one each week so go check it out and play along!

Pink and Black and Yellow!

I love having some kind of direction when I'm tyring to make something, and when I saw this Tuesday Trigger Challenge image on the Moxie Fab World I was excited to make a card:

The challenge was to make something inspired by that picture, I loved the colors, the flowers and the crystals, perfect for a card! Here's mine:

Tomorrow there will be a new challenge up, go check it out as well as all the other interpretations!

I just had to share...

I've been skimming through my never-ending back-logged google reader feeds and am seeing so many awesome ideas!  I have been a bit lazy and found it's so easy to click that little "share to Facebook" button and feel like I've done my duty to share, but really I don't think many (if any!) of my Facebook friends care, but you do right?  Here's some favorite ideas out there:

Make these adorable Little Card Pocket Fans from Cathe Holden:

Or make this self zipping coin pouch from a ribbon: (from How About Orange)

And I think this would be a great DIY gift for those hard-to-shop-for tweens- Friendship Bracelet kits! 

Finally, I found a really awsesome designer blog called Sissy Print and it's loaded with gorgeous {free} printables!  She's got a ton of fun back to school things including bookplates and lunch bag tags, and I really love her "quotable Monday" prints, like this one:

Hmm that's what I'm most excited about today anyways, hope you have fun with this stuff too!  Now my head is swirling with ideas, I think I am going to go DO something...?  Good night, if you still read this blog, you're the best!

Fanatical About Botanical Card

Long time no blog! It's summer, and too hot to even breathe really, and I don't have much time when I'm not surrounded by children! Real quick I wanted to share a card I made for the Fanatical About Botanical Challenge in the Moxie Fab World! Really simple, but I think it turned out pretty too. 

For a ton of inspiration go check out what everyone else made!

Who's Your Hero?

Looking forward to the 4th of July weekend, these posters have been on my mind.  I want to teach my children about their country and what makes it great, where it came from and why it is different. (and know better myself)  I love what the artist Steve Nethercott had to say about them:  "In a world full of fantasy heroes and pop-stars, we should never forget the real heroes, with real courage, real strength, and real stories,"  I'm still trying to figure out where I would hang them, but I really want to getting some!  Along with the American Hero posters, he has a set of Bible hero posters and Book of Mormon hero posters that are really awesome. You can see them all HERE.
A few of my other favorites:

Hannah's Promise

Mother's of the Stripling Warriors

David and Goliath

Samuel the Lamanite

People are so good!

I just had to send a big thank you out to the strangers that came to our rescue yesterday!  Miss B is celebrating the big 1-0 this weekend and we have a little craft project planned for her party and I decided that I had just enough time before dinner to run to Hobby Lobby for supplies.  We were doing good for time until we got to the car to go home and I realized that I had locked my keys in the car!  And it was like one hundred and a million degrees outside! And it turned out to be a really great experience.  I had left my windows cracked, so we headed back into the store to find some kind of wire to make a door-unlocking tool.  A long stemmed sunflower seemed perfect, but once back out in the (aforementioned) heat I was not having much luck.  After a few minutes a man came over and offered to help and he seemed to have some good ideas so I let him have a go at it and within a few minutes he did it!  He confessed to having a lot of experience- not because he steals cars- but because he was a police officer!  I was so thankful to him and his wife/girlfriend who asked or at leasted allowed him to help us! As I was buckleing everyone in a woman drove up and handed me a bag full of ice cold water bottles and snacks she had picked up for us while we were out there and insisted I still take them.  My kids were so grateful and so happy that we had been so blessed by kind strangers.  I can't wait to pay it forward next time I see someone in a similar situation.  Thanks to our mystery heros! 

Oh and happy birthday to my first born!  She is such a great kid, I just wish she would stop growing up!

Finally! Pretty Forever Stamps!

I like the idea of buying stamps that will work forever, but I confess I can't stand the original "bell" design so when I saw these I was so excited!  They're so pretty! I don't know how long they've been out, but you can get them here. There are a bunch of other fun, new forever designs as well, including these:

Blossoms of Blue

image from Raceytay on etsy

Morning started out well- made it (almost) on time for church, heard some wonderful stories from a couple that just returned home from a mission in Zimbabwe, kids sang mother songs, made me some cute cards, and presented me with flowers, came home, had lunch and even got a little nap.  Woke up from my nap and started going through e-mails, when my hard drive started acting up, restarted my computer and found no files or programs showing up anywhere.  Sick computer.  (I'm on the backup now) Then one by one kids got really whiny, and HOT.  3 sick kids with fevers and various aches- (all in bed now) So no mother's day dinner at my mom's now darn it!  (happy Mother's Day mom!)  Frozen pizza for us.  Any hope of everyone sleeping all night?  Luckily the oldest 2 seem to be fine, so far. Sam's out of town this week and assuming everyone is well I'll be joining him Thursday night for the weekend- yippee!  Sunday is usually TV free at our house, but I always make exceptions when someone is sick- I'm thinking maybe that means I get to watch some shows tonight too? On to season 3 of Veronica Mars :-) 
(PS- what's a good TV series that I can start on Netflix when I'm done with this one??)

Teacher Appreciation Time!

I just wanted to share these little matchbook chocolate holders I did for all the teachers at the kids school.  I used the Ghiradelli Chocolate squares (currently come in bags of 50 at Costco) and they were pretty quick and simple to make. 

 I finally got some good use out of my MS scoring board and it made these go pretty quickly.  I cut a strip of patterned cardstock (American Crafts) 6 1/2" long by 2" wide, and scored it at 3/4", 3 1/2", and 3 7/8", then stuck in the note, folded it up, and stapled in the chocolate.

I also had to share that I won one of the random drawings at Moxie Fab World for a copy of 350 Cards & Gifts!  It arrived today and I am so excited- so many GREAT ideas, I knew I would probably have to go buy it if I didn't win it, but it was pretty exciting to win. :-)  There are also lots of great ideas on the site that can be used for teacher appreciation, Mother's Day and any other occasion you might want to make a little something for!

Tuesday Trigger Challenge- and I'm out!

I saw the Tuesday Trigger challenge over at Moxie Fab World and knew I had to do something with those colors for Charlie's overdue birthday thank you cards! He had a Buzz Lightyear party so the colors were perfect and I had this polka dot paper that worked too!  Click HERE to play along!

Here's the "trigger" picture:

And in other news I'm heading out of town tomorrow for a couple days with a friend (and her mom!) to Utah and I'm excited! I'm also nervous, not so much that things will fall apart here without me, but more that they'll go so smoothly no one will want me back! (though that might not be so bad after all...)