Free Printable Gift Planning Worksheet: Intentional & Stress Free Shopping

Happy Thanksgiving!!! 

But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57)

I put together a printable shopping/gift guide for the holidays to hopefully help keep things more intentional as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday sales flood our social media accounts and mailboxes.

The first page serves as a simple list to write out each recipient and the obtained or planned gift. I highlighted mine to show who I have completed and who is still missing. **Family members if you zoom into this....I'll respect you.**

The second page is a table to fill in shops and sales you want to check out over the weekend (or whenever) it gives you space to write down a promo code or sale time and then items you're looking at.

Here is mine filled out but with a somewhat obstructed view to make it slightly more difficult for my gift recipients to zoom in. You can save and print the two images below if you'd like to use it for yourself this holiday season!

What would you add to make this work better for you? Happy Thanksgiving and happy intentional and stress-free shopping! 

PS digital floral clip art from SmallHouseBigPony check out their beautiful and affordable collection!

Trending Right Now on Romantic Radio...

Just dropping in to write a quick line about something that happened yesterday.  My husband and I were in the kitchen woefully discussing how we have all been sick this past week and hopefully how little L's lack of sleep was related to her illness and would soon be back to "normal."

L was sitting happily in her bumbo chair drooling and boogering all over the place while sucking furiously on the bumbo seat safety strap. Right then in the middle of our mess my husband starts dancing with me in the kitchen like we used to every day before my belly grew too large to move, much less dance.

We were laughing at L and her slobbering mess, commenting on how we used to dance like this all the time and we missed it and then just kept dancing away. It was adorable. He's adorable. He used to always hum the song we danced to at our wedding when we danced. But this time it sounded a bit different. I listened closely and realized that the romantic tune I was gliding around our miniature kitchen to was....

Pop Goes the Weasel.




Oh, parenthood.

Finishing up 2014

I feel like sometimes when December comes around, people are so ready for a fresh start they start to wish away the end of the year in hopes of a better January where you can start new routines, diets, hold yourself suddenly more accountable ;) etc.

I decided a few weeks ago this was not going to be the case for me. I have some unfinished business and I'm settling into a routine right at the end of 2014. And you know what, I think that's good for 2015! Instead of all the pressure mounting, I'm going to work on strengthening that routine and really establishing it in 2015. You know, until the little one comes and at that point my routine will likely just be hers :)

The first thing I started with seems SO silly. I had been looking around online for Christmas gifts and found so many adorable journals I wanted to get...for myself. Because I justified, well if I get new journals I will get newly organized. Well somehow I controlled myself on that one and decided I was going to find all of the journals in our place right now and vow to use every last page. How many of you have ever actually finished a journal??? I was so surprised at the amount I had, with 10-20 pages of scrawled notes or to-dos that had been cast aside. Again, it might sound so small - but it was my first step. So, you'll be proud to know I finished my first one up, filled with to-do lists, grocery lists, priorities for work, meal schedules, everything in one place. And then, I tossed it. Friends, I've NEVER done that before. You know how great that felt? I saw all of these tiny minute things that had piled up, I stuck with it and filled up a book full of them and then once I had used it, it's done.

I'm now onto journal #2 and about halfway through and this seemingly insignificant routine/goal has made me feel surprisingly accomplished.

All I googled was "finish your journal" and this image popped up - so others must have the same issue ;)

The second goal of mine was to go back through my She Reads Truth studies and finish what I didn't start. (Sensing a theme here?) I attended a class through the Influence Network about how to just get into God's word - and they specifically marketed it as appropriate for those of us who pick up a million bible studies and projects and don't often see them through. They don't have it up on their site yet for you to purchase an archived version, but when they do I'll pass it along. It was really REALLY great.

So I'm working on the Advent study and the study in 1st & 2nd Peter at the same time:

 

The third goal of mine is to actually spend time planning the week's meals. I have this printable, and others from Joyful Papery and I love her style. Click the picture below to go to the listing.

We really only eat three different meals because that's what I know how to cook so it's been pretty easy to start doing this and the grocery list on the side really is enough for what I need! I told myself I would make one of these templates myself, but honestly - let's not hold ourselves back from just accomplishing our goal by making all of these other small tasks that get in the way! This was only $4.00 and seriously everything in her shop is awesome :)

So, finish journals, keep up with bible studies and plan meals - I think that sounds like a perfect way to finish 2014!! :)

Back Into the Swing of Things

Blogging has really fell by the wayside for me, I was doing pretty well until this summer. I'm hoping to get back into this regularly, mostly for myself as I really enjoy looking back through my posts and seeing where I've been and watching the journey the Lord has me on.

First announcement - we're expecting a little one, Lydia Violet in March of 2015. She's awesome but definitely took away my energy for anything besides surviving this summer :) hence why the blog was quiet.

As many of you know, we started the process of adoption last September and a wise friend once told us it's all about the journey not the end result. Although we aren't adopting at this point, adoption very much still feels like part of Lydia's story! I love how much we've learned to listen to the Lord, about adoption and particular regions of the world in general and how many conversations we've been able to have with others who are considering starting the process. Carrying Lydia around inside me has also added an entire other dimension to adoption as I try to process what it would be like to give up a child after carrying them for 9 months. This adds so much gravity to my very limited understanding of adoption. 

I'll be sharing more about our gender reveal and other parts of Lydia's story, hopefully more regularly now. :)  I'm attending a class through the Influence Network about blogging so hopefully this encourages me to pick things back up, more on that later! Oh and the paper flowers, more to come on those too!!

so it's been five months...

After a unannounced summer hiatus. (Sorry, more to come on that later.) I'm here and attempting to put things back together.

I'm sitting here staring at boxes full of my Etsy shop that need to be unpacked, however I just re-opened my shop. I'm the kind of person that needs inspiration to get things done. Unpacking and cleaning up my office? Yes, I'm going to need a few orders to force me to untape them and find my glue-gun. I have an email from someone talking about a project where they share the work-spaces of bloggers. I said I was interested in more details, but wow, that would definitely be inspiration to get my things back in their spots. Yikes - but in a good way, I guess. I've been looking at the boxes for almost two months!

I never posted about our plans before I fell off the radar, we spent the summer in the DC area while my husband interned. Now (cough - as of almost two months ago) we're back to our cozy little place in Williamsburg enjoying the unlimited free apple cider, tree frogs on our front door and pitch black nights.

It's almost halloween and I really can't stand the holiday but fall is my favorite season so I'm going to attempt this year to do a few fall related things before it's too late. The first on the list is to make apple cider with actual apples. I found this recipe from My Heart Beets that seems simple enough. I am, however, laughing to myself that it asks for whole cloves and one whole nutmeg. I have no idea what those are or where I will find them. But I will. A nutmeg is a thing? Maybe it's one of those funky looking items in the produce section that has spikes on it that I always want to buy (likely not.)

We're going to go to a pumpkin patch, I think the same one we visited last year, but a little earlier this time. I believe last year we put our pumpkins out just in time for Halloween, didn't get a single trick-or-treater and then left them on the front step for two months. Then come December, we tossed them into the woods, the trees were bare and we could see them out our window for the next 2 months. Talk about an honest depiction there folks, no sugar coating that experience. We're hoping to do things differently this time.

I loved the white pumpkins we got last year and I want to find a few more again this time. I love these colors in the palette on the right from Design Seeds. I'm sure you've been to their site, but if not - it's so great! Our lower level has all of these colors except the plum/purple so it will be easy to add that in I think.

So, pretty ambitious goals - make some real apple cider and attempt to find something plum and purple to add in on our table to make it look like fall. Shouldn't be too difficult. :)
 
I'll be posting soon with a few pics customers sent me this summer, they are great and I honestly can't wait to share - they were a big inspiration for finally sitting down at the blog again.

Paper Flowers, Provision & Promises

Friends. I just posted that we were able to sponsor our first child through No Ordinary Love Ministries yesterday!

For a little back story. I had been praying about this for the past few weeks. The month of April was the slowest month for Pancakes & Glue Guns in almost a year, it brought it approximately 1/3 of the profit it normally brings in. It was during this month that I reached out to No Ordinary Love Ministries.

The entire month I waited and waited for the shop to return to its former glory, but it didn't - it was slow! I've always said that God's hand on this shop is so perfect as I have rest exactly when I need it, it provides a distraction from work stress when I need it, and it provides finances the exact minute we need them. All of this never happens in a "safe" way, instead the shop is constantly fluctuating in sales and profit month by month to provide exactly what we need when we need it. For instance, in April I finally had some time to make my paper flower crosses and after making a few was inpsired to reach out to Hope Spoken about being a vendor in their market. Without that down time to create these I wouldn't have pursued it. God is so good and perfect!

When I first contacted No Ordinary Love Ministires, providing a sponsorship for a child once a month was actually in the excess of my shop. I would definitely notice it, but it didn't require too much faith to make it work.  I kept telling myself, well April was a little slow - so let's just start the sponsorship thing in May. But then as the days went on and I was in the Word I read about how giving in faith as a sacrifice is a form of worship to the Lord  is so pleasing to Him.

So, I went ahead and did it - the funds from April went 100% to sponsoring a child at No Ordinary Love Ministries - there wasn't any excess, this wasn't an easy donation as it forced us to rely on faith to provide what we needed for the rest of the month.

Well, two hours later the Hope Spoken instagram account shared a picture of one of my crosses and I had dozens of new followers inquiring about custom orders in my Etsy shop. Then the next hour my husband receives an email that his scholarship for his summer internship had been increased by about $500 - the amount of the sponsorship.

Step out in faith friends, the Lord always keeps his promises. I am so blessed to be used by Him through my paper flowers. :)

Hebrews 13:16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Phillipians 4:19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

May Sponsorship & Hope Spoken

Friends, we've sponsored our first child through No Ordinary Love Ministries' home-based reunification services.  You can read his story here. Please pray for him and his family. :)

Thanks for supporting Pancakes & Glue Guns this April and helping me use this shop for His glory!

And another exciting note: I'll be attending the Hope Spoken conference in Dallas next March and will be a vendor in their handmade market! I'm also providing some free swag for their "swag bags." More to come on my idea for that soon!

I'll be building up an inventory of paper flower crosses for the market. It's going to take me the entire 10 months to make enough...!! Exciting though :)

 

Reflections from the Calvary Chapel Philly Conference

I'm going to share my reflections from the Calvary Chapel women's conference in Philadelphia this past weekend. I don't normally do this, but I'm feeling challenged to do so and a few people have asked so here goes...

First of all, I just want to say that this church was huge! There were about 2,000 women there for the weekend. And it's not even as big as some of the other Calvary Chapels are. They have a school, a huge parking lot with parking attendants (speaking of parking attendants I'm a firm believer that the Trader Joe's in my area needs some of these to keep things civil), and baseball fields. When we arrived on the second day everyone was waiting in line for the doors to open - check out this line in the picture to the right! Everyone was peaceful and it was awesome to see so many people there for a conference on the gospel, this wasn't a line for a 1999 N*Sync concert or something :) (haha).

The theme for the conference was "The Glorious Gospel of Christ" centered around 2 Corinthians 4:4-18. 

In the first session by Pastor Raul Ries, we learned it's not just how we share the gospel with our words, but it's how we LIVE it. He showed us that the Glorious Gospel of Christ will set us apart (Romans 1:1), will open doors (2 Corinthians 2:12), and will reach all the ends of the world (Matthew 24:14).  His wife then spoke the following morning and one thing that stood out to me was her point that we have to focus on preaching Christ, not ourselves. The son of man came to serve (Matthew 20:27-28). And to preach is to serve, not to elevate ourselves. Similarly, the third speaker, Karyn Johnson highlighted 2 Corinthians 4:7 "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." So from the first session we learned that it is how we LIVE the gospel, but then this is qualified that it isn't focused on ourselves. So this means that we need to be setting an example for others about the truth of the gospel while also making sure that the focus isn't on us, but instead the work that God is doing in us. Great, super easy right?!

Of course it's not easy! No one is perfect at this, and God doesn't expect us to be. What a relief. 

Setting an example is something we've learned from our earliest days from our parents (hopefully :)), especially those of us who have younger siblings. People are always observing our lives, especially with social media now. Acting as an example while we put some of the most minute details of our lives on the internet can be a challenge! I think what makes this most difficult is that we never know where others are at in their lives truly. Someone may be really struggling with their job and or finances, drinking, or struggling in their marriage and a photo of us or a physical example of us drinking, posting a complaint about a co-worker or our job or making a joke about how "awful" our spouse is for something silly could change the entire focus of their day or challenge how they are feeling. We never want to be stumbling blocks to others and everything we do as examples could influence how non-believers and believers alike think about Christ. What a difficult, but great challenge. I remember thinking to myself regarding various examples and things that were posted on Facebook and that I saw in real life: "Oh! She's a believer so that must mean it's ok for me to do X or say Y" and relying on the examples of fellow believers instead of the Word.  Obviously that isn't a great practice, but for newer believers, that may be the case and it's important for us to realize. I'm also not attempting to make rules or laws for us to follow, I'm just showing examples from my personal life of how lives of other believers have influenced my idea about the Word of God. 

Several of the speakers light heartedly joked about social media and blogging, but that particularly stood out to me as I obviously am writing a blog post right now and I spend countless hours trying to pick out beautiful colors for it :). They stated that obviously these tools can be used for good, but they can also quickly turn into a "self-focused" platform. One of the speakers made a joke that we'll post a bible verse, then we'll post a selfie, then we'll post a bible verse and then we'll post a selfie. Everyone laughed, but it made me think. It's an illustration of how easy it is for some of us to quickly snap a photo of what we're looking like that day but we might not as quickly be comfortable to drop a line about how we are feeling spiritually each day when our spiritual self is SO much more important than our new hair-do (is that just a term from the 50s? I'm laughing now re-reading this before I post it) or glasses!

The speaker also told us that when our eyes are not on the treasure, they'll fall on the vessel. How true that is! I'll often talk about some of my favorite bloggers and when I explain why I like them, some of the first things out of my mind are - they are so artistic, I love her style, she posts the cutest outfits on instagram, or the blog is beautifully designed and I'll just leave everything about their Christ-centered message out.

And my favorite - one of the last sessions was Adie Camp. She talked about in order to fully understand the cross we must die to our selves daily. This literally means to give up our lives to allow Christ to reside in us. 

Adie talked about God's perfect plan and that through suffering and hard times we have a great opportunity to depend fully on the Lord. He doesn't create these bad things that happen in our world, but he does allow things to happen that he knows we can handle or be perfected through.  She mentioned the emphasis of our society to always focus on being happy and not letting things bother us, to move on, to distract ourselves from our burdens. But, she also mentioned that one can be in a time of sorrow and unhappiness but still find joy in the Lord. 

God allowing suffering is a tough thing to think about and something that many of my friends who aren't believers ask me about. For me, the foundation of my faith is that I believe in the absolute perfection of God's plan for the world and I also believe that I will never fully understand it because we just aren't able to while we are on Earth. If we understood every detail of his plan and how it works - we'd be equal with God.  As I grow in faith I find that He's revealed more and more and I've come to a fuller and better understanding that can't be easily explained. It's a gift that comes with time! Taking that into account, there are some things that I know I won't be able to figure out, but when it comes to the bad things that happen here - what if they didn't? What if the world was perfect, no evil. Would we even need God? Would we willingly choose to enter into a relationship if we can already have perfection here on Earth? He doesn't force us to believe or enter into a relationship with him, he wants us to choose that. 

In Adie's talk she talked about the importance of really understanding the cross of Christ referencing Phillipians 3:10 "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death." Suffering allows us to really know Him and become like him, and while the world may say this is a burden - is it really? 

I think the Lord's heart breaks for the terrible things that happen to His people, but Romans 8:28 tells us "and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose." In Genesis 50:20 an example "as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." 

For me, being away from home and all of my family and friends can be really tough, but in this time when I haven't had that support system to rely on I'm closer to the Lord and I'd move out here and be "lonely" all over again for that. Now some of you may be saying "my burden is worse - that's not an extreme example of suffering", but in this point in my life I trust that the Lord knows I can handle this and knows what you can handle and he's using this period of being alone to perfect me. I am so comforted in the fact that I'll only be dealt what He knows I can handle. 

Remembering what was said before about using suffering to become more Christ like and dying to our selves, Adie gave awesome examples of what this could look like in someone's everyday life. She talked about those who were struggling in their marriage, instead of fighting based on what their emotions or feelings told them to do, choosing to give up their personal desire to defend themselves.  She also talked about those who are burdened with something as simple as their page-long list of monotonous household chores, to essentially not allow these things to frustrate us but instead give them to the Lord and tell Him your heart, because he already knows it and we don't have to hide it. And after we've been honest, we need to give these things up, die to our selves and pick up the cross that God has asked us to carry. Whatever our cross is, in carrying it and dying to our selves we allow Christ to live through us. Galations 5:24 says "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." 

Last but certainly not least, imprisoned pastor Saeed Abedini's wife Naghmeh was the last speaker. Naghmeh was such a perfect example of a real life person who was living her life as an example to others, dying to her self and allowing the Lord to work through her in unbelievable ways. It was so abundantly clear that the Lord was using her. I've been following Saeed's situation for a long time now and was excited to see her. Naghmeh talked about the overwhelming peace she has received from the Lord and the amazing chances she's had to share the gospel with the UN, over 50 million Iranians via television and other world leaders she never dreamed she would meet. Every time she speaks about her husband's situation she emphasizes the peace she has and explains that this peace would not be possible without the Lord. She also explained how she does not like public speaking and she does not like flying - but through this experience she has had to die to her self almost every day and allow the Lord to use her. She is an amazing individual and her strength in the Lord is so awesome to see in person. If you haven't heard about her husband read the link above, pray, and follow along! His suffering has allowed millions to hear the gospel. He also released an Easter message about the same verses Naghmeh spoke about at our conference. You can find the letter here. 

Almost the end, I have to include something about the music! The Scott Cunningham Band from Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa performed throughout the weekend, this was my favorite. I LOVE that song and their music, check it out if you don't know them!

Ok obviously that's a ton of information. On top of that we had the strangest hotel experience ever where we saw someone in a full glitter body suit, our room was a mess like someone else was already living there and we found a champagne bottle topper on the floor and then when housekeeping came to change the sheets they instead just sprayed our sheets with lysol to make it "all better." (Since then we've been refunded in full for the room without me asking for that so that was good!) I also was terrible at giving directions on the "turnpike" or whatever the crazy 12 lane road right outside of Philly is called, and we also got ourselves some true Philly cheesesteaks. All in all an awesome time.

Thanks for reading friends <3

Hello Wednesday: So you're wondering what it's like to help your husband study for law school exams?

Time has been weird this week, feels like Monday and feels like Friday at the same time. Ever have one of those weeks?  My husband just started his second semester of law school exams. Where has the year gone?! Williamsburg feels like home to us, but just missing our family, wish everyone was here!

So you're wondering what it's like to help your husband study for law school exams? Glad you asked because I'm going to share.

While studying for exams may really stink for him, it's been a surprisingly "fun" (I use that term lightly) time for us these past few days. He spends many many days in a row watching tutoring videos and writing an outline that's 100 pages. It's an outline, isn't it supposed to be like, two pages? A 100 page outline is a book. I rest my case. (HA, the law school puns and ridiculous jokes I produce these days are second to none.) But anyway, he spends a lot of time writing and sighing really heavily.

But then after his outline is finished, it's flashcards time! I am a visual person, so I tend to think that if we move around a lot and study flashcards he'll remember the time we talked about defeasible somethings or fee simplys (whatever they are called, you get the point) and be able to think about a unique location to jog his memory. Or maybe I'm just hungry and want to go to more than one fast food restuarant in a day.

So for instance, here's how we did flashcards for his property exam.

Round 1: At Jimmy Johns while eating a humongous pickle. We got a booth and I spread the cards out everywhere. So many of these cases were brother v. brother - that made me sad. I made up stories for each of the characters. I also made up a really elaborate story about a lady who wanted to sell her house but was really sad about leaving the coy pond in the back so she wanted to make sure the next owner took care of them. That scenario stuck with us all day!

Round 2: Eating sweet frog in a little down town center. That was fun until we realized we were sitting on a pile of ants. Literal ants in the pants. You bet he remembers those cases!

Round 3: On the way to Taco Bell. What did this look like? It looked like a flash card, and then a 30 second discussion about if we should just get regular tacos or a crunchwrap supreme, and then a flash card, and then me questioning if I think this is going to make me sick, and then a flash card, you get the idea...

Round 4: In the Taco Bell parking lot while eating tacos. Why didn't we go inside Taco Bell? I dunno, our car was like a safe little nighttime club house. So we nommed on some tacos - I got a crunchy potato soft taco. Only $.99. I love them. We ate and quizzed some more flash cards.

Round 5: Taco Bell drive through round #2 to get some carmel apple empanadas. We debated for about 5 minutes if it would be embarassing if the guy at the drive through window would remember us. We have an Alaska Airlines card, so we decided that was really noticeable and instead scrounged up all of the change in our car to pay with that instead. LOL Really? I'm seriously laughing about this in hindsight, but it was a very serious decision at the time.

Round 6: Eating the carmel apple empanadas and more flash cards. I think we were talking about landlords and stuff.

Round 7: On the drive home and then walking to the mailbox. (Gotta fit one in wherever you can!)

Round 8: Taking a walk on the golfcourse at 8:00pm. It's pretty dark at 8:00pm so when it was time to read a flash card I'd have to stop and read very slowly, I couldn't even pronounce half of the words anyway "alienability"  somehow became ""an alien's ability to rent a property..." which I legitimately thought was a question a law school teacher would ask with their crazy hypotheticals. Apparently not. It was literally pitch black by the time we finished walking. I caught a frog and picked him up - that was fun. This was our view in the picture to the right. We walked quite a distance away to the 18th hole across the little lake. (Side note: look for a blog post from me soon about my adventures catching a bull frog in the pond....I hear them and I want to catch one!)

So what do you do when an exam is over? You order a tray of 60 chicken nuggets for the two of you and eat them all.

Tips for Working Remotely: Reflections from the Past Year

I've just finished up the first academic year of working remotely. It was quite the experience. I thought if I made a plan with a set schedule I'd be good to go, it would be just like working in the office - right?! Wrong, in general it's not an easy thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I am so beyond blessed that I was allowed to keep my job when we moved for law school, but I've definitely learned a few things this year about how to do this semi-successfully I wish I knew ahead of time.

I think it's really important you feel like your home is a safe and relaxing place to be, and when you work in your home it can easily turn into a reminder of your never-ending to-do list or your work deadlines. I've put together a few tips to remind myself for next year and to potentially help anyone else out there who may be transitioning to work remotely. Everyone works differently, so these might be very specific to my work-habits. I still wanted to share.

1. Seasonal Schedule
First tip: don't create a year-round schedule, try to change it with the season (if you're allowed to do this). After this year, I have now reflectively found that a seasonal schedule makes much more sense. When I say seasonal schedule, I mean maybe just an hour or two adjustment throughout the week.  Looking back I would have adjusted my schedule during the winter so that I would have been able to go outside or enjoy a bit of sunlight. Maybe worked from 11-7 three days a week and had a few mornings to get out and run errands. Working during the sunlight hours and then concluding when it's dark is one thing if you're in an office, but if you attempt to do this in your home it can be a bit depressing if you're like me and don't really like to go out or run errands when it's dark out.

2. Field Trips
Find somewhere outside of your home at least once a week, if not more. This isn't possible for everyone, but I work out of the law school library 1-2 times a week. This has done wonders! I'm relieved when I walk in the door in the evening to be home - that's not something you feel often when you work from home. It can be a bit sad that after all of the energy you put into building a home, you just can't wait to escape it because you've been working in it all day. So, find a chance to get out and allow yourself to be relieved to come home at least once a week!

3. Schedule Chores
Working from home can be distracting, I think people mostly have one of two situations - they are either completely distracted by things going on in the home and end up not working as much as they should, or they are too busy during their work hours to tend to anything around the house but it stresses them out to look around at the household chores that need to get done. I'm the latter. When you normally leave to go to an office in the morning you can leave the dishes in the sink and not think about them until you come home. If you work from your home, you are reminded that things are left un-done. I created a very detailed google calendar, one has the hours that I am online working and another with my personal life. I sometimes will schedule these down to the 15 minutes (I'm not crazy, my entire calendar is not in 15 minutes, I'm just saying that if something only takes 15 minutes I schedule it for 15 minutes, I don't milk it out and put an hour that only makes the problem worse!). I put in a 15 minute break 2-3 times a day with a specific task like laundry, dishes or whatever else is relevant at the time. This is great for two reasons: first, if your work is challenging that day and things just aren't coming off of the to-do list, this is a great way to feel like you accomplished something and to re-energize you; second, you can do both things at once while being very mindful of your work schedule. The key here is to force yourself to be ok to do one chore at a time. I used to want a two hour block to clean, do laundry, run errands, all at once, but that just wasn't compatible with when I needed to be online for work. Breaking these down into smaller tasks throughout my day makes me more efficient in all areas.

4. Look Good
Even if you know you are staying home for the day and you'll be in front of your computer all of the time, more often than not, try to put on an outfit you'd be ok with in public - and if you can, something nice! Now, when I first moved out here I was beyond thrilled to wear yoga pants every day with my new handmade tank tops from old-tshirts. However, after awhile this can wear you down! I'm not sure what it is that makes me feel better and work better when I am dressed up - but it works. No way do I do this every day, but I try to at least 3 of the 5 work days. I also realized that my husband would come home from school lookin' fly, open the door with a look of excitement to see me, and surprise! Here I would come looking like a swamp creature. So I figured we all benefit if I take a few extra minutes to brush my hair and put on matching socks. (HA, who has matching socks?!)

5. Take Charge of Your Health
Working from home provides an amazing advantage to increase your health. You are not constrained to an office chair 8 hours a day and instead you can be very purposeful about where and how you are sitting. I break my day into three time chunks. I spend the first chunk in one particular chair, the next chunk at the office table and the third chunk on the floor. Think about what is good for your circulation and health and take advantage of the fact that you can do this. I'm sure individuals who work 9-5 in an office chair would earnestly encourage you to do this, as they can't! Figure out what works for your posture, your circulation, your energy and change it up. I've seen a lot of articles about making a designated office so you aren't distracted and I certainly see the merits of that. However moving around throughout the day (with a purpose and schedule) can really help.

So what do you think? Have any tips? These tips might make it seem like I've got it all figured out, but this is still a constant struggle for me. I find I over-work, my house isn't always relaxing, and household chores stress me out much more as in my mind I clump them together with work tasks. However, it's getting better day by day. Please do comment if you have other suggestions or modifications to the above, I'm interested!

25: Singing Monsters Style!

I've recently come across a game, My Singing Monsters, that I believe was made just for me. You hatch little creatures, they each sing a different note or sound, and together they make the funniest music. I just love it. (My facebook friends probably see the updates that I've hatched a monster or made it to a new level, sorry - I can't figure out how to unlink that....)

So, for my 25th birthday my sister made me a "My Singing Monsters" inspired birthday cake. It was probably one of the cutest things I've seen! The monsters are brownies that were baked in a cake pop tray and then frosted.

Just wanted to share!

The tube.

Moving away for law school and becoming a single income family meant we didn't purchase a cable plan. (Might I add we still have a humongous TV transferred from the husband's first apartment and gifted from a precious soul, it has been turned on a record of 3 times - one of which was to stream the superbowl from our laptops.) This might seem like a ridiculous post but here's what I've been thinking lately about "the tube" and I want to remember this in the future when we decide about cable again.

1. This is number 1 for a reason! Listening to sports games on the radio is fun. We really only listen to hockey games, and sometimes football - but you learn the game so quickly when you listen to the announcer and then picture it in your head. I like it.

2. Not having a TV and needing to listen to games on the radio is the perfect excuse for a late night date or drive to get a milkshake or soda while we listen to the third period or quarter of whatever game it is.

3. When you don't have a TV, it doesn't mean you don't watch TV shows. Instead, watching TV series becomes a different experience for you. You rely on Netflix which means instead of catching a show once a week you choose a show and then watch all 4+ seasons within an unreasonable period of time. That's not necessarily healthy - but I do want to add I spend hours and hours making paper flowers for my shop where I can't do anything else with my hands so watching a TV show is one of my options. What is interesting about this is that you can certainly fall prey to an addictive series, but you make very conscious choices about what you watch. There's definitely more ownership over the process and channel surfing is no more!

4.. Without a TV, we don't spend time on the couch in a living room really. So why do you have one? It's made me think about how that space could be better used and what we should do with it. Um, if you're expecting that idea to be further explained any futher I've hit a dead end, so yeah - more to come on that. A second craft room? OK!

5. Silence in the background of your day is not a bad thing! In our old apartment, the TV used to be on at all times in the background. I'm not sure why - we were in a different room and not watching at all times, but it was always on. Sometimes I have music on now, but most of the time I'm just ok being able to hear my own thoughts!

6. Not having a TV means you have no idea what movies are in the theaters because you never see previews anymore. When you decide to go see a movie, you look at the list and have no idea what any of them are. That's more strange than you think!

7. When your TV is your laptop, you have to force yourself to pick one activity over the other. I used to sit in front of my TV with my laptop on - why? I have no idea, maybe I enjoyed sensory overloads. I would watch TV and surf the web at the same time.. It's impossible to do that now. Well, ok smart phones but I don't surf the web on my iphone - I just play "my singing monsters." That game deserves its own special blog post.

8. When you don't have a TV it's awkward to invite people over for the first time without a sports game as an excuse. You actually have to...talk to them. Which is probably why we haven't invited anyone over. HA, that was honest.

9. When I do have access to a TV with cable at my parents house I want to watch the most obscure things that I can't find online, like a show about the top music videos of the 2000s and I genuinely enjoy channel surfing instead of watching one show. Ask any of my family members -they seriously avoid handing me the remote.

I will go ahead and say that I think I'd really prefer not to have a functioning TV with cable ever again. Everyone can point and laugh in a few years when I have one in every room of our house and write a post about how I cannot imagine living without cable. :)

Halloween and Fall Decor: Glitter & Gold

I don't really like Halloween or the colors orange and black, but I do love fall! I'm never inspired to decorate for fall but I think this year I might try to do a few things here or there.

I found this pin on pinterest and checked out her blog, I love her idea of decorating with gold, click the picture to go to her blog. I love the gold lanterns in the bottom right with small pumpkins.

EatSleepDecorate.Blogspot.com

Also, I'm really liking white pumpkins, who knew they existed:

I think I want to try something I saw on Pinterest with gold glitter mason jars, but on white pumpkins, these are from Etsy - click to go to the shop: 

                                          

Now, I remember how the glitter from my 10th grade homecoming dress stayed in my car for approximately 8 years so I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to attempt this, but I think it could be really pretty so I might try! I just need to find where I can get one of these white pumpkins, or three. 

Of course, I'm acting like this is a novel idea - but then I remembered I already liked gold glitter last year when I spray painted the sticks and pinecones. By the way, I still love these and I actually have all of the gold glitter sticks in a large vase on our table right now. 

I'll post an update when it's done, I'm sure it will be completely different from my original ideas - but that's ok!

Craft Fair Nightmares, 30 Days & Counting

I think I have more nightmares about my first craft fair than anything else going on right now.

What if there are craft-fair bullies who tell me my stuff looks like a 5 year old made it?

What if people come to look at my table and then point and laugh at me?

What if I don't sell a single thing and instead just buy a bunch of things from other people and come back in debt?

Ah.

This is my biggest question right now, which my craft-mentor mother and I disagree about: If you're walking around a craft show, do you want the different artists and vendors to engage you in small talk as you approach and browse, or just let you browse peacefully without any pressure. (You can tell my stance from the way I worded this.)

This coming from the girl who really hated trick or treating because I didn't want to ask for Candy and also the girl who would have an anxiety attack when the school fundraisers went around and I'd just hope that my mom would buy the minimum number of orders herself and it would all be over. ;)

Let me know what you think!

Sick Day: Cook Out, Sasquatch, JFK & Ramen.

Because you didn't ask, here is a fieldtrip into my brian on a sick day, when I have lots of time to think:

Cook Out. It's a fast-food chain. It's awesome. But seriously. $4.69 for a jumbo sized sweet tea, a grilled chicken sandwhich BBQ style, a side of hushpuppies, and another side of a chicken wrap. Yes, a chicken wrap. Also yes, a chicken wrap could be an entire separate meal but they have ridiculous choices for sides like: a quesadilla, a chicken wrap, a corn dog, a hot dog. Also they have that really good crushed ice that tastes like a slushie. And John 3:16 is on all of their styrofoam cups. Check it out here: http://www.cookoutnc.com/ My venti soy vanilla latte is $4.69. Sheesh. What a deal.

Finding Bigfoot really bothers me. I really want to know if Sasquatch is real but they literally never find anything convincing. Why don't they just use all of the money they get from the show to put tracking cameras in every single forest instead of relying on their little cameras. Am I right? Seriously. I just want to know already. This thought made me search Etsy for Sasquatch related items, of course. I came across the neatest shop: ShopAmySullivan where you can find the print to the right. LOVE it.

Moving on, next thought - What's going to be the next popular color for weddings and baby showers? Blush and ivory or blush and grey are popular and my yellow and grey items are really popular right now, but I want to start making things for the next popular color pattern...no idea what it will be.

My 11 year old sister-in-law showed me this music video and I'm so mad at her for doing so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE I mean seriously? What on earth? In case you're wondering, I can make all of the sounds they make in this video.

I met a lady who works at the post-office who said she met JFK when he came to drop off mail when she worked in NYC. He was wearing a mask because he was riding his bike in between all of the taxis. She told him she couldn't process what he requested without ID and without him taking his mask off. Then she found out it was JFK. She told me this because my name is Jacqueline and her daughter's name is Jacqueline and she named her after Jackie O. Anyway, I'm just randomly thinking about that.

I really like Ramen noodles and I wanted some right now, but when you leave them alone for like 30 minutes to an hour they turn into this weird jello. Whenever I see that I hate the fact that I love them.

I think Adam is going to win The Voice this year. Well, maybe Cee-lo. Who knows.

You're welcome.

Guest Blog - Innovations That Changed the World: A Man’s Take on “Color”

Below you'll find a guest blog entry written by my husband, whose ridiculous idea outlined below was cause for a good amount of laughter and heated discussion. I hope you enjoy his thoughts on "color" as much as I do. 

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From the wheel roughly 10,000 years ago to penicillin in the late 1920s to the new color system invented in the summer of 2013, the history of man has been altered and dare I say bettered by men bold enough to change the world they live in for the common good.

I can’t say for sure how the wheel was invented. Can anyone really? But, as all great minds do I have my theories. The thread that connects them is one simple fact - one day a man, probably sick from bouncing around and pulling carts with square tires thought there had to be a better way. He thought to himself – what causes my stomach to churn with every bump in the road and my back to ache with every rotation of this square rock attached to the bottom of my cart? He probably stared at his square wheels for a brief moment of time as a crow circled above him waiting for the tired soul to give up, but then he noticed the culprit, the corners. Take away the corners and we are smooth sailing. Well technically smooth riding – the guy probably didn’t also invent a system to utilize wind for transportation, someone had already beaten him to it. You are probably asking yourself why I am pontificating on this word picture and I will tell you. Just such an important innovation has finally been realized and for the greater good I will now share it with you. I give to you people of this simplistic world, children, creatures and blog readers the newly improved color system.

If you follow my wife’s quite impressive, creative and overall just plain adorable blog you have probably figured out she is fond of incorporating various colors into her creations and manipulates often unknown colors to add the perfect touch. As a supportive husband and fan I actually do care to listen to her ideas and plans. So when she tells me that she is going to use chalk paint on a china hutch (if anyone can answer what a china hutch is I would appreciate it – I think she might be painting our nice plates) well I was more than supportive. I have to admit though that I hesitated when she told me what color she was going to paint it. She proclaimed she was going to use a mixture of white and provenḉe. My first thought was that the city of Providence, Rhode Island had its own color. My next thought was that I actually have no clue what that color is. For all I know she just told me our china hutch was going to be painted white and chicken. I let this one slide though because, per usual, I am confident she will make it look good. Not too much longer after this provenḉe incident we had, one could say, a little misunderstanding. Home Depot played the set to our next little adventure. She was looking for a new color for her office and pointed at a color on an example sheet and said, “This looks nice.” I agreed and said that’s a nice light blue. “What? It’s Sea Breeze.” UNCONTROLLABLE FACE SEIZURE. Oh excuse me, sea breeze, of course. When you say sea breeze I immediately think of one specific color. Oh wait, no I do not. Are we talking the Atlantic Ocean near Maryland breezy color, or perhaps the old classic Oahu breeze hue, or dare I bring up the BLACK SEA. Who names a color after a noun, it’s ridiculous and dare I say on behalf of supportive significant others everywhere it is bordering on irresponsible. In an effort to not show my complete bewilderment in such a fine establishment I once again, let this one go. I cannot say the same for the last incident, the catalyst for my invention. While driving to the in-laws and once again talking about colors another ambiguous hue was strewn about in our conversation like an algebra problem on an English test. I cannot remember in what context this color was brought up, but it was and I cannot forget it. My wonderful wife mentioned painting something, somewhere grass green. GRASS GREEN. Whose lawn are we talking about here because in the car at that very instant I was looking at her neighbor’s grass and I saw 15 different shades of green and because the guy is a little lazy on his lawn maintenance I saw a couple shades of brown too. Sorry for throwing you under the bus buddy, but you are proving a point here for me. Are we talking about Alabama creeping green, Bermuda grass, or for heaven’s sake Kentucky BLUE grass?! Yes blue green grass. Try to wrap your head around the guy who invented the name for blue grass and you can understand my frustration. At this point I lost it and immediately my fantastical brain got to work and the idea came to me like lightning. We, as a society, need to stop naming colors ridiculous things like malachite, provenḉe, and razzmatazz (honestly razzmatazz – I know what color grass the guy was smoking who named that one) and come up with a simple number system.

Here is how the system works. Each color is given a number on a scale of 0-1. You take the basic primary colors, for this example let’s use blue. A normal, everyday blue is 0.5 blue. A darker blue say navy blue for some color snobs out there is now a 0.75 blue. Your night sky blue, yup that’s about a 0.9 blue. That light blue I discussed earlier, cough sea breeze cough, is now 0.2 blue. Now instead of asking me what I think about the color of that wall in sea breeze and my brain freezes up like I just consumed a large Wendy’s Frosty in one gulp you can say “what do you think of that wall in oh let’s say a 0.2 blue” and BAM I know exactly what you’re talking about. You can now describe anything to me or anyone else using the new color system, and your every day, nay not just every day, your peasant off the street who has lived on an uninhabited island for his entire life will be able to follow you.

Let’s try a little exercise. You say, picture the BP logo it is forest green with an inner layer of grass green, followed by another inside layer of icterine hue and then some white. Okay, now let’s pretend I’ve never seen the BP logo. You just mentioned an inner layer of icterine and I’m a bit worried that the icterine is malignant or possibly spreading throughout my body because I’m so confused by what you just said, but I move on, unable to complete your simple task of picturing the BP logo. Now let’s use my system. In that system you would describe the BP logo as an 18-point flower with the first, most outer layer of the flower, being a 0.65 green, followed by the next layer of the flower as a 0.3 green, once again followed by a 0.6 yellow and finally 0.5 white. I would then say “wait are you talking about this thing I see on the side of the road all the time and now sponsoring ridiculously cheesy ‘Visit the Gulf because we didn’t screw it up too too bad’ commercials?”

Now my lovely wife was helpful enough to point out what she thought was a flaw in this system (turns out it was just an innovation to my innovation). She pointed to my shirt, she described as “teal” and said “what color is that?” First I thought – what did she just say…teal? Did she bite her tongue trying to talk about seals? What is this teal you speak of? I responded that the new system can be used like latitude-longitude. This shirt is a 0.3 blue and 0.7 green. BOOM. Now that may equate to a 0.5 teal but no one knows what on Earth that is so let’s go with my system.

As a reader and follower to this creative work of genius my wife has created you may be hesitant to accept this innovation in color, but do me a favor, go grab your husband, boyfriend, father, brother or nearest guy to you and run the idea by him. I’m pretty sure he will say it’s like seeing 0.5 blue sky for the first time.

Our New Place! Williamsburg: Home of the Frogs

Well, we are here! Finally moved in and most of our stuff is unpacked. Everything went really smoothly with the help of our families.

We drove up on Friday night to drop off a lot of fragile items and take a look at the place before everyone joined us on Monday. We decided we needed to paint the downstairs bedroom which was previously a pretty bright shade of green. After unloading the cars we took a trip to Lowe's where we met a really nice paint guy, people here are reallllly nice. Anyway, we got some paint and all of the supplies we needed and headed back. We unloaded them into the front bedroom and then turned the light switch. Well, you guessed it, no light. And no - of course we didn't bring lamps with us our first trip down. So instead of saving the task for another day (it's 9pm by the way) we scramble through all of our boxes and find a very small desk lamp I had in my old office.  The lamp literally served NO purpose in my old office beyond looking cute but we plugged it in anyway. It lit up about a 1' radius. So we took of the lamp shade, sat there for awhile and waited for our eyes to adjust to the darkness and decided midnight painting in the dark was certainly in our plans.

           

 

Finally around 1:30am we finished up and drove 3 hours back to the DC area.

So, for the biggest surprise of the evening/early morning...our patio is home to a whole large extended family of frogs and salamanders. And they aren't the ugly croaking frogs, they are teeny tiny little bright green guys! And they are everywhere. When you open the door they fall from the sky, like one of the plagues, and they smack their bellies on the ground - that's a little stressful for me. Here's one of the little guys that lives on our door frame.

This past Monday we drove down again to check out our midnight paint mess and to move in the rest of our stuff.

I wasn't able to spend as much time as I wanted getting all of our things together because of some orders that came in over the moving days!

More picture updates to come soon!