Mommy School--The W Book

I kinda' fell off the blogging planet, didn't I?  I have been working of stuff, but I've also been having pregnancy complications that make it hard to do too much, including blogging.  Anyone else had the problem of their baby being small for gestational age?  My doctor says there's not too much we can do for sure to help, but anything that's good for me is good for the baby--that means more food, water, rest, sleep...  And more doctor's appointments.  So that's what I've mostly been up to of late.

 Hopefully I can get caught up posting the projects I have been able to get done, anyways.  One thing I'm trying to keep up with is Mommy School.  Boo and I like to make books for the letters, so here's what we did for the letter W.

 I try and come up with lots of words that start with the letter of the week, draw simple pictures, and then Boo colors them.

 This week, we also looked up information (and pictures) about walruses.  Boo had fun seeing the pictures of the walruses, and she decided that she was Baby Walrus and I was Mommy Walrus.  Funny girl--we're different animals every day.  :)  I also used this opportunity to teach Boo about ice--that  water turns into ice when it gets really cold, then it turns back into water when it gets warmer.  We turned some ice cubes back and forth (and back and forth).  It was a fun little science experiment.

Then when all the pages were done, we sewed the book together, like Dana did in this tutorial.

Sometimes Boo chooses her Mommy School books for her bedtime stories.  :)  And she always loves watching me sew the books.  I like having something tangible for Boo to show Daddy and to look back on later to remind her of what she's learned.

(Edited to correct bad writing 10/17/12.)

You'll Never Buy Hamburger Buns Again

When I got pregnant with Boo, it changed how I thought about food.  Before, I liked margarine better than butter because it's softer and easier to spread on toast.  Now, I only use butter to avoid the unhealthy trans fats of margarine.  And I liked Cool Whip better than whipped cream because it tasted better (or so I thought then).  Who cares that it's really sweetened hydrogenated veggie oil?

Basically, now I'm trying to eat real foods now, not the super-processed stuff I used to eat.  That's not to say I eat only garden-fresh, straight-from-the-farmer everything, because I don't.  I buy regular food from the grocery store just like everybody else.  But I just buy less off the processed and fake stuff.  A little bit at a time, I'm trying to replace my artificial flavoring-, additive-, and preservative-laced foods with natural, preferably homemade versions.  (Because homemade = usually cheaper.)

One delicious substitution?  Homemade hamburger buns.  I know, why would you spend all morning making hamburger buns when you can spend ten seconds adding them to your grocery cart?

Because you don't realize how tasteless the store-bought buns are until you make them yourself.

AND this recipe takes less than an hour, including rising (no work needed) and baking (ditto).

It is a seriously easy recipe.  I mean, if I can do it with Boo awake and "helping," it's an easy recipe.

Since it's not my own recipe, I'll just include the link, but be sure to click over and try it!
Taste of Home 40-Minute Hamburger Buns Recipe

You know you want to.  Mmmmmmmm.....  I will definitely be making some of these for the 4th of July.

"Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" Subway Art

I really like all the subway art I see as I stalk Pinterest.  (Who doesn't?  Love subway art, I mean, but who doesn't love stalking Pinterest, too?)  So I thought I'd give creating subway art a try.  I'm very much not a graphic designer, but here's what I came up with.

What do you think?  I think the first version is easier to read, but the second is more fun and happy.

If you like them, I hope you'll leave a comment.  And feel free to download either image and print it out.

An Unexpected Stress-Buster

I've been having a hard time lately.  Nothing's even been that bad, but I have just been feeling stressed about it.  I blame being pregnant.  It's the perfect excuse for anything--forgot a commitment?  Pregnancy brain.  Too tired to do whatever?  Growing a baby--and in this case, my pregnancy hormones probably really are the reason.  But something unexpectedly snapped me out of it.

It started two days ago when Boo decided to not take her nap.  She was super tired by dinner time, but life happens and she got to bed late.  And then she slept badly.  I figured she was just having a hard time sleeping because over-tired little kids have a hard times sleeping (ironically).  Come daylight, we could tell she'd come down with a runny nose, poor thing.  No wonder she slept badly.

And, of course, when a two year old sleeps badly, so do the parents.  Especially not fun when you're pregnant and so tired anyways.

Then I had a pre-migrane.  My migraines always start with strange sparkling lines in my vision (imagine streaks of TV static), but they don't always escalate into a full migraine headache.  This one didn't, thankfully, but I just felt kind of off for a long time.

Next was lunch, and we had one of my favorite foods.  And I ate too much.  So I had a stomach ache.  (I know, poor me, ate too much of my favorite food.  I told you life wasn't actually rough, I just wasn't processing it well.)

After lunch, Boo again had a really short nap, and she woke up all sad.  (Still runny nose, and I think she's trying to outgrow naps.  I hope not, though!)

In the evening, dinner was rushed so Mr. MadeIt could get to scouts on time.  (He teaches the 11 year old Boy Scouts.)  And I had to wait for people to come and pick up some stuff I had for them, so Boo got to bed late again.  She didn't want to go to bed, but at least she settled down fairly quickly.

I needed to wash dishes, but if Boo heard me, she'd want to get up and help.  It would have been...probably half stalling going to bed and half actually wanting to help with dishes.  She loves helping to rinse the dishes.

So while I was waiting for her to be soundly asleep, I decided to take some pictures for my blog--not an easy task after eight at night in a dark basement apartment.  But Mr. MadeIt made me a light box, so I tried to set it up, but wasn't sure how to get it all together.  It kinda' worked, and I took a couple pictures.

I figured Boo was well asleep by that point, and was about to start on the mountain of dishes--really, it was bad--when Boo started crying in her room.  Dang.

I wasn't really feeling up to working through Boo's stall tactics, so I was glad when Mr. MadeIt got home from scouts while I was trying.  We got Boo back to bed, then my wonderful husband rubbed out the knots in my shoulders while I listed out all the things that were making me stressed.  (Including the lack of natural light in our apartment.  I read the other day that women are, as a category, more sensitive to that then men are, so maybe that's why it doesn't bother my husband nearly so much as it bothers me.)  I knew my problems were small, but I just felt that my stress-threshold was really low right then.  It was nice to explain how I was feeling, but I didn't feel less stressed.  (The massage helped, though.)

Then the last person finally came to pick up her stuff...and our talking woke up Boo.  Ugh!  Mr. MadeIt went to help Boo while I helped the visitor.  But when I was done, Boo was still wailing.  I went in to help and I found my husband supporting our little girl over the bathroom sink while she vomited into it.  No wonder she was wailing!

I took over for Mr. MadeIt, and he cleaned up what hadn't made it into the sink.  Sorry if this grosses anyone out, but I figure that if you're a mother, you've probably already had this happen to you.  To avoid too much detail, though, I'll just say that two outfit changes (we thought she was done before she really was, a bowl of Cheerios, and several stories later, Boo was back to sleep in her bed.

Great ending to my already-stressed day, right?  But actually, it was.  Not that I am glad Boo was sick--far from it--but focusing on my little girl's troubles made me not even care about mine anymore.  Who cares about the dishes or the dark apartment when my baby needs me?  I always knew my problems were small, but now I felt that they were.  And so I wasn't stressed anymore.  I just loved my sweet little girl, and wanted her to be happy and well.

(PS  Boo is doing better.  Hopefully she'll be fully over the illness tomorrow.)

What I've been up to for the last month and a half...

Not what you were expecting to see, huh?  I know this isn't the kind of thing I normally post on my blog, but this picture took a month and a half to do (or about 45 hours), so I'm going to show it to you!  In case you're wondering, the Blue-Eyed Painter is the blog I'm posting my artwork to, so I can still share it with the universe without filling (HA!  I just wrote post #4) this crafting/mommy blog with unrelated stuff.  Check it out if you want to.  I won't be offended if you don't.

So, back to the artwork.  About forever ago, a friend of mine asked me to make a piece of artwork for him, something to illustrate the fight between good and evil, Armor of God vs the forces of darkness, that sort of thing.  Well, I finally got it finished!  Hurray!

Sometimes I liked the project, sometimes I wondered why on earth I was doing it at all.  (Oh, yeah--I'm getting paid.)  As you can probably guess, this kind of work isn't really my style, with the monsters and stuff.  Even just having so many characters in the picture is different than what I like to do.  I discovered in one of my illustration classes in college that I am just drawn (no pun intended) to artwork with very few characters who take up the whole picture.  So composing, drawing, and painting (for lack of a better term--it's digital) a scene with so many characters was a little daunting.  I had to talk my friend down to this many characters, even.  He'd first described a whole battle scene.

But I survived.  And I like the end result, too.  Painting the monsters was fun once I got some good ideas of how to make them monstrous.  (Let's just say, without my husband's helpful critique, the monsters would have been mildly upset, not-at-all threatening thugs.  Tall thugs, but not really monsters.)

So there's my random tangent of a post.  I'm proud of my work, so I just had to show you.  I will be posting a crafting tutorial soon--I made pearl necklaces for Boo and myself for Easter, so I'll show you how I did it.  Is there anything classier than a pearl necklace?  Hmm, that might be a good Mother's Day present...I might need some more beads...

Until then, happy crafting!

Taking a Break

Yeah, I'm just not feeling doing the whole crafting-blog thing right now.  It has been a lot of fun, but it's time to focus on other things.  (Like the art commission I'm working on--my first non-fundraiser commission!)  So I'll be posting very erratically for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog, and especially to those who comment.  Maybe I'll get back to a regular crafting and posting schedule later.  We'll see.

It's been great.

Bye for now.

"Sometimes Being a Brother" Nursery Decor--Tutorial

Here's the finished crafting project I mentioned in my last post.  I have a friend who's about to have her second baby--another boy.  I made this as a present for her, and so I wanted to give the gift to her before I posted about it.  Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise!

I've barely used my Silhouette since I got it for Christmas.  Shame on me, I know!  I was (and still am) excited about all the many things the Silhouette could help me make...but choosing exactly what to do has been a little harder.  That and my pregnancy-induced tiredness and lack of crafting motivation for several months that is just starting to abate, plus wanting to focus more time on my art and on Mommy School...  But with this friend giving birth early next month,  I had motivation, inspiration, and a deadline!  Deadlines are always very helpful for me.

I wanted to make a sign/wooden wall hanging/whatever with a quote on it so I could use my Silhouette to cut the vinyl.  I also wanted to make a present that was kind of for the mommy and kind of for the big brother, so I was excited when I found this quote:

Sometimes being a brother is better than being a superhero. 

--Marc Brown

How cute is that?  Of course the three-year-old big brother won't care about it now, but I bet he will like it when he is older (and wanting to be a superhero...and is able to read).   

The sign was really easy to make, so much so that I didn't think there was a point to have in-progress pictures.  I'll just explain quickly what I did.

I asked Mr. MadeIt to cut out a 7 1/2" x 9 1/2" rectangle out of some scrap wood we had hanging around.  (Actually, it was a shelf from a wall unit we decided to get rid of.  Let's hear it for recycling!)

Then I spray painted the wood with primer.  I don't think this part is necessary, but I do think I wouldn't have gotten the subtle texture I liked if I hadn't primed the wood first.

Once the primer dried, I painted the wood with tole paints.  I bet whatever acrylic paints you have on hand would work just as well.  Since I wanted the sign to have a subtle texture, I applied the paint unevenly, letting some areas be darker, and others areas lighter.  Because of the primer, the paint didn't soak into the wood, allowing me more time to push it around with the paintbrush to get it just how I wanted it--smooth, but with tonal variations.  (I used Hunter Green + Charcoal, by the way.  For the edges, I had more Charcoal in the mix, so they would be darker.  For the back I mixed the green with black, to make it darker still.)

(So you can see the edges.)

And, of course, I had to make up the design so my Silhouette could cut the vinyl.  If you'd like to use my file, you should be able to download it here.  (This is my first time using Google Docs.  Let me know whether or not this link and the download work!)

If you'd rather make your own file, I used the font Haettenschweiler.  (Goodness!  I'm glad I don't have to actually pronounce that!)

I suggest using transfer paper when applying the letters--I did it without and it was a ROYAL PAIN.  It took forever to get those words on straight!

After that, I though the wood needed to be sealed and the vinyl stuck down permanently.  (No need for inquisitive little fingers to take my hard work apart.)  So I coated the whole thing with my homemade Mod Podge, which is just school glue watered down a little.  (Apply with a paintbrush, and be sure to wash the brush out really well afterwards.)

And that's it!  Except for spending forever getting the words on straight, this was a really quick and easy project.  (I'll have to get myself some transfer paper for next time.)

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

Happy crafting!