She is at a movie with her dad right now so I can finish up a few little things for Easter tomorrow.

Yesterday Creamie and I went to IKEA  and I found the most life changing little kitchen cart. It has changed the way I use my house, in only 24 hours. Amazing. I wish I’d had something like this 5 years ago!

She helped me put it together.  She’s a team player like that.  Also, she brought me Woody’s hat to hold all the teeny little screws.  Thanks Woody.

Do you see the potential here?  I know.  So so great.  It is already full of all the crap that was on my table.  I only wish it had one more basket/tray/shelf thing to hold my actual sewing machine.  And the best part about the whole thing is that it rolls right into my pantry.  So I can roll it out, work on my projects and then just roll it back so we can eat dinner on the table.  Eating dinner at the table once a week was one of my goals this year.  It’s maybe happened twice.  And only because I sliced my finger and haven’t done much sewing these past few weeks.  But now that will change.  I am so excited about it.  The bet $50 I’ve spent on organization stuff ever.

Alright, I’m back to the last minute Easter things.  When Creamie and Scott get home we are dying Easter eggs and tomorrow morning I need to make three pies before church.  My great grandma’s fresh strawberry, lemon meringue and my favorite rhuberry pie.  Tomorrow is going to be awesome. (Also, Creamie has taken to falling asleep on the floor in the hall at night.  It is hilarious.)

I make green baking powder biscuits every year.  But this year Creamie and I got to go all matchy matchy in striped tights.  Hers are from her Halloween costume, and mine?  Well mine are just for fun.  Happy St. Patricks Day!  Hope you are doing something fun.

PS- Thanks for your nice comments about my cut.  My finger is getting better.  The doc decided (at a lot of urging from me) to leave the stitches in a few more days.  I’m glad he agreed with me.  The last two days it has looked and felt a LOT better.  I hope to be back to my regular (almost) self soon.

After we dropped off Creamie at preschool we went to breakfast.  Like a date.  In the morning.  So so awesome.  Then we did a little thrifting, picked Creamie up and went to lunch.  The afternoon was spent bowling, eating ice cream and setting up a tent (a real tent) in the living room to watch a movie and eat snacks. A bit of happy mail thrown in made the afternoon extra awesome.  And then we had waffles for dinner and finished it off with a little snuggle and TV time which eventually turned into a pillow fight.  Not *that* kind.  We really were just beating each other with pillows.  I think I won, I ended up on the floor with all the pillows.  She with the most wins, right?  It was such a great day.  I can’t wait for 4 more years to do something equally ridiculous.  (I also found this idea this morning and I think I’ll do that this week too.  I’m all about time capsules.  I think. I think I’m all about time capsules.)

And with February over and March officially here I just wanted to tell you I am still right on track with this years 365 Instagram project.  And amazingly I’m still on track for four of the 8 other new years resolutions.  Two months in and a 50% success rate is doing better than average in my opinion!

So while we were visiting Grandpa we hung out at his house a lot.  Had lazy mornings.  Didn’t stress out about not being somewhere by 9 am.  Lovely.  We went to a park Scott remembered from when he was young called The Dennis the Menace Park.  (Seriously.)  He was dissappointed to see that all the cool old toys have been replaced with standard run of the mill hard plastic and metal play equipment.  It used to have a big cool castle theme.  Now it’s just primary colored play equipment.  This sword in the stone was the only thing left from the old park.  Creamie loved it anyway.  We had our picnic, she ran around touching everything and we left before it got too cold for dinner and a little shopping.  A perfect day.

Creamie and Grandpa got along great.  She shared her books and fruitsnacks with him and he sat down and watched cartoons with her.  She talked his ears off I’m sure.  But it was so sweet to see them sitting together on the couch watching cartoons on Sunday morning.  It was one of those things I hope never to forget.  And I hope we can go visit again soon.  Not only is Grandpas house the perfect vacation, it is full of beautiful old things that make me smile just to look at.  Look at the treasure I saw peeking out from the top pantry shelf while I was looking for napkins!  Catherine Holm! And the wallpaper in his dining room is one of the most beautiful patterns ever.  And the little turquoise fawn in the china cabinet…. sigh.  Grandparents always have awesome stuff don’t they.  I should take pictures of every single thing I love about my loved one’s homes.  What a fun little album that would be to look through.

A big part of our trip was focused around eating.  As it should be.  We ate at all our favorite places while we were there, the doughnut shop around the corner being one of them.  This girl would do most anything for a rainbow sprinkle doughnut.  Do you remember this post?

I got to do one more REALLY fun thing before we left LA and headed down to San Diego.  I e-met Shannon more than a year ago.  And she is absolutely lovely.  Her blog, Little Luck Tree is full of pretty pictures and tutorials and very doable DIY projects.  She just moved across the country to Hollywood and is living her dream of acting.  I am so excited for her! She came and met me for lunch just before we packed up the car for the second half of our trip and I wished I could have spent another few hours talking.  And we didn’t even get to the shopping or the thrifting!  Also, my face is totally pink from our day at Seal Beach.  I forget how often to reapply sunscreen every time we are on vacation…

Shannon and I met at a cute little spot for lunch (delicious food and real plates!) and talked about life, blogs, geeked out about “famous” people, caught up on all those things in real life that just don’t transfer as well into internet conversations and generally just had a wonderful few hours sitting out in the sunshine.  And when it came time to go, we both admitted we are blogger geeks and had to take a picture.  And then we both pulled out our Instax camera’s and laughed at each other.  She found some poor unsuspecting diner to juggle gigantic oldschool cameras while we stood there like happy idiots.  Thanks diner guy.

I don’t use my camera (an Instax 210 wide) nearly as often as I should.  It was Shannon that actually encouraged me to take it out of the box months ago.  My dad gave it to me for my  birthday last year. (Shannon’s cute little white Instax is the Mini version.)

As for today? I am working on a new project that is totally for me.  I also found out I am going to teach my first class at my local quilt shop at the end of April.  Exciting!  I’ve been eating my mom’s plumberry jam on everything I can add it too, breakfast lunch and dinner.  Creamie asked for some orange juice this afternoon, and after I squeezed her some I decided to try out a green smoothie with some of the baby spinach in the fridge.  I’ll just say I’m a total fan.  It will be hard to not eat one every single day.  Though with two cups of spinach in there and a bunch of fresh fruit that might not be such a bad thing.  I’ll be back soon, I almost feel completely caught up on my life and ready to jump into some new things.

As soon as we laid out our big blanket on the sand Creamie started taking off clothes to get in the water.  Her little skirt was off in no time flat and it was all I could do to keep her underwear on her.  I was glad I found these little boy shorts for her a few days before we left.  I didn’t much mind her walking around in these undiepants.

I found a small bucket of beach toys for $5 before we left and it was one of my best buys.  She was in heaven.  I think she played here in the sand for 3 straight hours.  I took more than 300 pictures, but I’ll spare you the full photo journal.

This was the first of many picnics on this trip.  I can’t count the number of sandwiches I ate.  But I was really glad we took our big picnic blanket.  I used it almost everyday.  It was perfect.  (This is the quilt I made for Scott last year from his dad’s clothes, that post here.)

She was burying her dad’s feet.  And doing a wonderful job of it.  Also, I think I have about 50 pictures of her from this trip with her toungue out.  Beaching is serious concentrating business!

After she fell in the water a few times she got cold and we put her swimming suit on her.  And then she got cold again and we traded a swimming suit for jeans and a fleece jacket.  Going to the beach requires a LOT of stuff.  Especially for us.  At the end of the pier on Seal Beach is a really great restaurant called Ruby’s Diner.  It’s another California favorite.

I love this girl.  Also, I finally found a pair of sunglasses that was under $20 that doesn’t hurt my head when I wear them for more than 10 minutes.  These aren’t them.  I am not letting my new one’s out of my sight ever.  They were too hard to come by!

Most of our time in California it was pretty cold.  Her little fleece jacket got a LOT of use this trip.  So I was glad we went to the beach when we did, it was such perfect weather.  For February.  She has been asking me all morning if she can go to the beach after lunch today.  She sure loved it.

Also, I should point out that I don’t get in the water.  I do the beach in pants and a jacket and stay on the dry sand.  I did walk down to the water to talk to those two while they were playing, but I try to keep my toes out of the surf.  I am a total beach woosie.  But these two?  They’d get in the water if it was 45 degrees.  And they have.  Crazies.

And I don’t ever need an excuse to use washi tape.  This morning while I was writing this post Creamie asked me if her surprise tomorrow could be more little tapes.  I might have created a washi monster yesterday. Haha!

I don’t remember having an exact start date, we usually made them about a week or a week and a half before Valentines Day.  And we never got candy in our pockets, it was always a not sugary surprise.  This morning Creamie found a little blue car in hers.  Blue is her favorite color and she carries blue things around with her all the time.

Creamie really loves paper crafts.  That girl is the happiest with scissors and glue and her rainbow of crayons.  The other day I found a blue piece of cardstock glued to her wall behind her door.  Yep, glued.  She tried to hang it up with the magnets from the fridge, and when that didn’t work she grabbed her gluestick.  I just left it there, it was too funny to take down, and I don’t know that I want to see what kind of surprise it leaves on the wall…

To make Valentine pockets each person will need two paper plates, and something to stick them together with.  You can staple, or sew them together with yarn, or anything else that will hold those two together.  And then add in whatever else you have. Crayons, glue, scraps of paper, washi tape, glitter, sparkly confetti, paper doilies, and a big pile of cutout hearts.   See, not an exact science, but a really fun project to do with kids.

So we sat at Scott’s desk yesterday afternoon and cut and glued and crayoned (her word not mine) for 45 minutes or so and it was awesome.  I cut out some hearts and a few letter C’s for her to glue on, but the rest of it was all her.  I think she is of the mindset that more is definitely better. I think she would have piled things on there all day, but we had to leave for dinner at grandmas.  But I think that I’ll make Valentines with her again this week.  She had such a good time.

She wrote her name on hers.  She gets all the letters in there, a different order everytime, but they are all in there.  She always sticks her tongue out when she is concentrating.  And writing your name is serious concentrating business.  Also, I love how her little knee is up on the table.  Better leverage that way.

I cut one of Creamie’s paper plates into a heart shape, which you can kind of see in the lower right picture above.  That way you can put stuff in it easily.  Then I used a hole punch to make holes and gave Creamie a piece of yarn on a bobby pin so she could sew the two plates together.

Then I punched two more holes in the top and added another piece of yarn to hang her pocket up on her doorknob.

She was really into the washi tape.  I think I might have to do more projects with these with her.

We both had our game face on.  This gluing is serious stuff you know.  I think the most important part with making these is to let your child do whatever they want with what you have laid out.  And be prepared to wash glue off the table and out of their hair.  I never could have predicted what Creamie’s would look like.   And I think it will be fun to compare this first one to the next years.  And thanks to digital photography I am pretty sure I’ll have pictures of this process every year.

She was so proud of her creation and so excited to show her finished product to her daddy.  And that makes me smile.

And it made her smile too.  Like a lot.  We are totally doing this again next year, and every other year till she decides she’s too old for treats in a paper Valentine pocket.

OK, so  a few days ago we went to pick up my moms tree because she doesn’t have a car big enough to handle a Christmas tree very well.  We stopped by my  favorite tree lot after I picked up Creamie from her dance class.  It was cold, but I came prepared with boots and gloves and and a hat.  I just didn’t come prepared for how adorable she would be flouncing through the rows of trees playing hide and seek.

When we found the right tree she very happily offered to help the tree guy carry it to the car.  She is so helpful.  And I was so thankful that tree guy humored her and let her help him.  See, people really are good at heart.

Today this arrived, an early Christmas present from my Dad.  Mickey’s Christmas Carol was one of my favorite Christmas movies growing up.  I like it about a million times better than the Muppetts version.  It has been a happy afternoon watching this with Creamie.  But now I’m off to make dinner.  Porkchops with Bean and Butternut Chili and homemade cornbread.  Because it’s one of my favorite things ever.

Also, I am really in love with my little reindeer necklace.  It was my souvenir from our trip this fall.  I found it at a teensy little shop in a teensy little town about 100 miles from the nearest grocery store.  But, I did a quick search on etsy for a silver reindeer necklace and there are a few similar ones. It is going to be my new go to holiday item this season I think.  That and this silver stripey shirt.  I got it free with purchase of a dress last Christmas and yesterday was the first time I’ve worn it.   See, I used to be scared of wearing things with stripes… what if no one recognized me?  (Which has happened.  And it was my sister who didn’t recognize me beacuse I was wearing a striped shirt instead of my standard solid color. Which is a post all by itself. Ha!) Be back soon.  And with real photographs.  I swear.  Also, I did an interview over at MessyLa for her blogiversary, go here to check it out.

I’ve mentioned over the past few months that Scott got a new job, is now working crazy hours and is gone a lot more than he was.  What I haven’t so much mentioned is anything about his old job.  He and a few partners owned a civil engineering firm.  It was a wonderful opportunity for a while, but after the housing bubble burst here in the USA things changed.  (Civil Engineering is designing subdivisions,  roadways, pipelines, sewer systems, etc.  All things that are in about as much demand as new subdivisions.  Which lately has been zero.)  Their firm layed off a lot of employees just a few months after Creamie was born in 2009.  That allowed them to keep the company open and still give a few people work on a contract basis, but still save a lot of money in taxes and medical insurance premiums.  They had some good projects.  We were surviving.  Barely.  But making it more or less.

Things went along for better or worse for two years.  We always felt like we were still doing what we were supposed to be doing. We still felt like we were on the right path.  They were working hard.  Constantly trying out new projects and areas.  Solar, Hydro-power, all sorts of awesome new things.  They always had a few good projects in the works the kept us all afloat.  And then this past spring things changed drastically.  Work was scarcer, clients had gone bankrupt or disappeared leaving us with piles of open invoices.  Lots of interest in the new kinds of projects, but no money to fund them.  And everything was hanging (and still is) on one last big project that has been pushed back and postponed for one reason or another for the past 3 years.  (On December 19th cross your fingers for us, we are getting closer to seeing this one become a reality, just a few more hoops to jump… I hope.)  By the beginning of summer we knew we had to look for something else.  Now.  Things quickly got worse at work.  Then worse again.  Who knows how many paychecks we have skipped over the past few years, but this spring and summer were particularly bad.  For the first time ever we knew we had to find something else immediately.  Scott applied for jobs.  Lots of jobs.  Applied for jobs for 8 hours a day.  And we heard nothing.  I cried a lot.  I ate a lot of Oreos.  Standard coping mechanisms.

And then the first of August he finally got an interview.  One interview.  He aced it.  He was hired out of 140 applicants and 11 interviewees in a unanimous board decision.  It was not a moment too soon.  (And perhaps a few moments later than I would have preferred.)  But the Lord works in mysterious ways and looking back we can see that He prepared us for this opportunity for a long time.  Anyway, his new job is awesome.   His coworkers are awesome.  He loves his work.  We have great benefits.  Good insurance, with zero out of pocket premium for us.  I have dental insurance for the first time in my life.  I might get my wisdom teeth out next year! (Yep, all four are hanging out in there hurting and driving me nuts everytime I brush my teeth.)  But the best part?  He goes to work every week and they pay him for that.  Like, hand out paychecks on Fridays and stuff.  But wait, get this, the money is magically already in the bank.  They just stick it right in your account.  It is amazing.  And then two weeks later They. Do. It. Again.  And then again.  It’s a beautiful system.  Really, an amazingly beautiful system.

Anyway, that was four months ago.  And things are better.  So so much better.  But there are still those three-ish years of missed paychecks and bankrupt/dirty-rotten-no-good-corrupt clients to deal with.  And it will take time to be out from under all of that.  This Christmas was looking to be really lean.  Leaner than any other we’ve had in our almost 8 years.  I have enough craft supplies and fabric that Creamie would never know the difference.  She is all set to wake up to a child’s dreamland of handmade toys on Christmas morning.  And Scott and I were OK deciding to forgo gifts this year.  We have each other, we have a warm home, food to eat and clothes to wear.  We have a good job and a lot of faith that all things will eventually work out for our good in the end.  But I knew that there wasn’t any extra money this Christmas.  None, not even for little things.  We got slapped with a $300 HOA fee from our less than awesome condo board a few weeks ago and it had to be paid.  (Everyone under our HOA board jurisdiction had to pay it.  It’s not because we didn’t clean up our patio or had weird crap hung in the windows or anything.)  And there went Christmas.  To the HOA board.  Lame.

I don’t care about the presents, neither does Scott.  What I really want for Christmas is a whole weekend to work in my craft room and sew and make pie.  And like I said, there is enough fabric stacked up in my house that Creamie will have the best handmade Christmas a girl could hope to have.  But what it really meant was that there was no money for a tree this year.  Not even a little one.  I arrived at this conclusion the day before Thanksgiving.  It was horrible.  I cried.  And cried.  And then I opened the pantry and made seventeen pies.  I am not joking.  I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but by that weekend I was sobbing. A lot. At the smallest thing I’d tear up again.

Creamie has been asking for a Christmas tree since we took it down last Christmas.  That girl has a memory like a steel trap, nothing slips through that little mind of hers.  We looked into a few cut your own tree lots, because they are usually a little less expensive.  And we looked into a few programs to cut a tree from government land, but all the permits were all sold out already.  I even looked at fake trees at thrift stores, but they are almost as much as a cut your own lot.  And I had pretty much come to the conclusion that there would be no Christmas tree with popcorn garland and gingerbread boys in my living room this year.  I thought maybe on Christmas Eve I could convince my favorite tree lot guy (we get our trees from him every year, and have since I was a girl) to let me have whatever he had left and we could decorate it then.  And it would be fine.  And Creamie would love it.  But I would have felt like Christmas was missing at my house for the whole of December.  And that made my heart sick and it made me cry.

And then a small miracle happened.  One that restores my faith in people, faith in Christmas, faith in love and goodwill toward men.  Friday afternoon there was a loud knock on my door.  REALLY loud. And the doorbell at the same time.  I looked out the peephole (because that is what you do when someone pounds on your door) and there was a miracle on the porch.  A big green miracle that brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Our Christmas was at the door. We have been doorbell ditched with a huge beautiful Christmas tree.

We had to snip off the top to fit it in the house it was so tall.  Creamie saw it and freaked out, screaming in pure joy.  I just stood there and said a silent prayer of thanks.  Even thinking about it now it makes me cry.  We pulled out the Christmas things.  I opened box after box.  I tested lights and mixed up gingerbread boys and made popcorn.  We spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday stringing popcorn and baking cookies into gingerbread ornaments and hanging candy canes and jinglebells on our big beautiful tree. First thing out of Creamie’s mouth every morning is “Can I do some more Christmas things on the tree?”

It takes up a whole corner of the room, and it looks like it is on fire what with the 1600 lights on it.  (I could have used 700 or so more.  I didn’t do any lights on the bottom half on the side facing the wall.)  And everysingle time I look at it I am reminded of how good some people really are.  And how if we pay attention to the feelings and nudges we have we can work miracles in other people’s lives.  I am so grateful for this small miracle in mine.  I know it is “just a Christmas tree.”  But more than that it is a reminder to me of new life.  Of hope.  Of love.  That no matter how hard or crazy or crappy things are right now, that it will change.  We will get through it.  If pine trees can survive the harsh cold winters year after year and stay beautiful and alive surely I can do this right now.  Things really are going to work out.  Somehow.  Things are going to be “OK”, whatever that means.  Christmas is here in our little house.  And thanks to the kindness of our Christmas Angel it is in my heart too.

I made her apron, bloomers and hat and then on Monday afternoon decided she needed a matching candy sack too.  I finished up her bag about 4:00 and then hurried to take pictures before we went trick or treating.  Unfortunately I forgot to put the little polka dots on her face until I was nearly finished.  Bummer.

I tried painting a pair of white tights with green stripes and it was a total failure.  I ordered these stripey tights on Thursday and was beyond ecstatic when they arrived on Monday afternoon.  Yay for $6 expedited shipping! (Of course, that made her tights about $12, more than everything else combined!)

I had to fix her hat one more time before we went trick or treating.  I made this hat about 4 times before I got it to look and fit right.  And after we were done taking pictures I pinned an elastic headband to the inside which kept it on much better.  I sewed one of my bath loofah’s to the inside to keep it all puffy.  And if I hadn’t had to make it four times I would have had time to make a little strawberry pincushion for the very top.

Last year on Halloween it was rainy and cold and just plain awful weather.  This year it was 70 degrees and perfect.  Creamie loved trick or treating, and her bag got so heavy she wouldn’t carry it anymore.   But the only thing she wanted to eat was one dumdum sucker.  Then she told me she’d had enough and she would save the rest for tomorrow.  I don’t know where she comes from sometimes.

I can’t wait to figure out what she is going to be next year!  And maybe I’ll actually make myself a costume for next year too.  I better start in January, or it might not happen. Ha!

Creamie is wearing a thrifted vintage flannel dress, leggings from Walmart and thrifted red maryjanes.  Also, this pumpkin didn’t make the cut because it was too huge.  According to her.

Just the right size.  She’s been carrying it around everywhere since we brought it home.

We don’t have big plans for the weekend, mostly just enjoy our time together.  I’ll post pictures (I hope!) of Creamie’s Halloween costume on Monday.  It might be my new favorite thing I’ve ever made!  See you soon.