February 1st is the new January 1st

So I was way, WAY too wrapped up in getting my new site launched, finishing up my branding, and going to Disneyland to worry about the start of a new year and all that comes with it on January 1st. Because of where Tuesday’s birthday falls (the 10th), I’m thinking this is going to be an ongoing problem. I decided around the new year that I would hold off on goals and dreams for the year until the 1st of February. I think I did pretty well on my resolutions last year. To be fair though, they were pretty easy. I’m giving myself a few challenges this year.

probably not the best lunch ever

–Eating better via meal planning. I was doing so great. I went 9 months without a fast food meal and about 5 without (purposefully) eating high fructose corn syrup. I cut out diet coke way back in August and have not had one since then. I’m having trouble finding a good rhythm to my day lately and eating well has taken a hit (Burger King for lunch today = big unhappy face). I really don’t know how to get started on this, I’ve never been a cook, Bj makes most of the meals. Ideas?
–Walking & working out. I was so up on the shred! I was two pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and then I don’t even know what happened, I just fell off the wagon. I want to get back out with Tuesday every day like I did her first year. This should be easier since we are not getting any type of winter (boo!!!!) and I need to get back into my yard ASAP. Looking forward to dirt under my fingernails again. Tuesday wants to walk more but gets tired. Oompa was having a 25% off sale and I ordered this tricycle thing with a push bar. I’m hoping it will work for walks to the park vs. taking the stroller or wearing her.
–Recording all the little memories and stories. I’m realizing that if I don’t have time to get them down on an actual page I still need to get them down. I’m going to find a little notebook that works for me to record things as they happen so I can have those little gems (like Tuesday needing to know what we did in the potty. Never go to the bathroom and let Tuesday know. She will not rest until she knows if you PEE PEEd or if you POOPED-poop? mama poop? pee pee?). I really wanted to sign up for the LOAD challenge, but I just don’t think I have it in me this month. Especially because I’m going to be getting a new case soon.

one of my best hauls ever

–Get back into my thrifting groove. It’s hard to get up in the morning when you don’t get much sleep at night and standing outside waiting for someone to open their garage at 8 am just wasn’t my cup of tea much these last few years. Plus Tuesday could only handle so much and I like to be able to jump from sale to sale as needed. I’m going to find someone to watch Tuesday on Friday mornings and get back out there. I have a nice list going of things to look for to share with you soon.
–Set a homeschooling budget. I admit right now the determination of it we get something for Tuesday goes like this: “oooh that’s so cute, ohhh I like that, ohhhh we need that.” Not really a sustainable practice as she gets older and needs actual activities and equipment. We just invested in some furniture and a nice block set for the basement to start off. I’d like to be able to have her take a few classes if she/we want and to be able to add to our materials through the year (vs. asking for a lot of them for Christmas/birthday). Any homeschooling parents out there have ideas on this? Or even if you don’t homeschool how do you budget educational stuff for you kids (when it all can be justified… at least by me!). The plan is to start off with homeschool and see how it goes, but we’re bring pretty laid back about it for now.
–Finish updating the blog/SEO stuff. Yuck. But if you clicked on that thrifting link above you’ll see it’s all wonky. If it’s not that means I got to it, yay! Not everything transferred over from the old Life in Color like I thought it did at first. So I have to go through each post one by one and replace photos, fix links and check formatting. I’m also re-catagorizing and tagging as I go so you can find things you’re looking for. If you ever notice anything weird or need to find something please, just let me know!
–Sticking to our nighttime routine. Hello, that did not happen tonight. But we have been better and she has had stretches of sleeping through the night (three nights in a row, so far). Helping this I think is the fact that she has drastically reduced the number of times she wets the bed. She was wetting multiple times a night, now it’s only once a week. We taught her to yell “mama! papa! potty!” in the middle of the night. It’s pretty much the cutest thing ever (she is a horrible “on purpose” yeller, but if she finds a plastic toy camera wedged in her carseat while you’re driving prepare yourself for screeches!). I would love, LOVE to get the routine down to an hour. We’re at three usually and a ten o’clock bedtime is rough for me because I end up staying up until one to do computer stuff.

Bj and I on our 10,548 mile road trip right after college, 2004.

–Go camping. Easy. I think it will be awesome. I am going to make this happen this year. Bj and I seriously miss road tripping. Some people want to kill each other in a car. We love it.
If you made resolutions how are they going? Any big goals this year? Oh, and last day to enter the giveaway is tomorrow!

Confetti craft

Doing activities with Tuesday is so much fun now that she doesn’t just try to eat everything (at least not right away…). I did something like this project a while ago, using contact paper and scraps to create an art project to hang on our slider door.

This version of a contact paper craft helps with hand eye coordination and small muscles of the hand.

(awesome excuse to get the three in one butterfly punch, hey we needed more shapes!) As you can see Tuesday does like to pick up the punched shapes (I used ones I have on hand: 3 in 1 flower punch, heart confetti punch, mini heart hole punch, even tinier heart hole punch, regular hole punch, square hole punch, star squeeze punch and others) from the re-used meat trays. Punches are my number one thing to buy at Michael’s when I have a coupon and don’t know what to get (and yes I should just leave with nothing, but that’s hard to do when you drive 20 minutes somewhere with a toddler!).

But she is a toddler and her number one method of learning right now is cause and effect. She likes to dump them, transfer them from hand to hand, line them up, try to stick them on top of each other, tilt up the paper to feel the sticky on the back, etc.

She REALLY wants to punch. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a Gripmaster in her crib because she is trying to will her hands to be stronger to get them to work. I showed her how to put one hand on top of the other to put more pressure on the lever but it still wasn’t enough.
I’m pretty sure this (or some version of this) project came from First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos. I love that book. It’s all about the process, and not the end result. Though I have to say having these on the slider does make me pretty happy.
Meanwhile I  had a little time to work on my own craft project:

Scheming, planning… what ever you want to call it. Now that all that ribbon is gone I have a blank slate!
P.S. Don’t forget the giveaway for a photo shoot and scrapbooking kit is still going, click on this post to enter.

The biggest giveaway

Okay so I wanted to do something awesome for all you wonderful readers! Thank you so much for coming over to my newly designed blog at this new address (and for updating your links)! I am so excited about this new adventure, as I’m sure you can tell 🙂 So what am I giving away?
Well first up it’s a family photo shoot and $300 worth of products (prints, canvases or digital negatives). For a total value of $450 (yes, really!).

The details. The shoot is for a family of 6 or less, I can accommodate more but it will be an additional charge. I serve the mid-Willamette Valley, travel 60 miles from zip code 97308 is included. The prizes are in the form of a gift certificate (which will expire January 31st, 2012). If you would like a friend or relative to enter for you so you get another chance, that’s fine (one comment per person/household please!), I’d love more people to check out the new blog! To be entered in this giveaway just comment and include GIVEAWAY #1.
Of course I couldn’t forget all my wonderful readers who don’t live near me!
The second giveaway is for the first ever Life in Color scrapbook kit (hehehe). Valued at… um, wait, my husband reads this blog. Let’s just say it has lots of awesome stuff in it.

Want a few detail shots of that goodness?


I’ll ship this kit anywhere, so yes my readers in Canada, Germany, and anywhere else can enter too! Just leave a comment with GIVEAWAY #2 in the comments section below.
To repeat: To enter the photo shoot giveaway leave a comment with GIVEAWAY #1. For the scrapbook kit leave a comment with GIVEAWAY #2, and if you want to be entered in both just leave ONE comment with both GIVEAWAY #1 and GIVEAWAY #2 on it (I’m sorry but if your comment doesn’t include either one of those you will not be entered). That’s one comment per person/household. You don’t need to tweet, blog, facebook (ooh but I do have a page now) or anything else. But if you WANT to that is awesome, I’d love to spread the word about my blog!
The giveaways are open until Wednesday, February 2nd, and winners will be chosen randomly and announced here Thursday, February 3rd. If the winner(s) can’t be reached by February 8th a new winner will be chosen. If any questions pop up I’ll edit the post and answer them here instead of the comments section.

Your guess on pronunciation in the comments section

When Ceara was here for Christmas (yay!!!!) I was able to shoot her family.

I know there are people I talk about over and over on the blog that you really don’t know, and Ceara is one of them. Ceara and I grew up together and really became close in middle school when she befriended me even though at her sleep over birthday party I hid in her room reading baby-sitter club books while the other guests watched a scary movie (I think it was Aracnophobia, but we can’t really remember). We were on dance team together, sang silly songs (mostly Madonna) together very loudly in the car and obsessed about movie stars (her = George Clooney, me = David Duchovny) through high school. She went to U of O, I went to Oregon State (supposed enemies, but I’m not very into that rivalry). The main bummer about that was the distance. We talked at least once a week and her parents would come get me at my dorm when they went down to watch her perform (she was a music major and has an amazing voice). Then she went and met this hot guy who she fell in love with and MOVED ACROSS THE COUNTRY (is this not acrossed the country? Have I been saying this wrong my whole life?).
So I visited her in Arkansas where she got married, and in Vermont where she lives now. I’ve been there three times, twice with Tuesday. Vermont is very pretty, but too far away. This was never more clear than the family shoot. Her darling boy (here 8 months) has changed so much from the little cute lump from when I visited last time.




I set this shot up and her husband held down the shutter and hoped for the best. I think he took like 20 shots in 2 minutes, hehehe.
Love this woman and her family. I’m so glad we got these photos. The only time I could shoot them was on Christmas eve morning because her husband is an athletic trainer and had to work up until the holiday, and leave right after. I walked into her dad’s home not knowing what to expect (like most shoots!). But I’m not afraid to move furniture and open doors to get some light (like I did here). I don’t mind a little noise (if it was film you’d call it grain). I prefer it actually to smooth weird processed looking skin. The shot you see when my blogs header starts up (if you haven’t clicked over to the actual site from reader or an RSS the header is a slideshow, check it out) is her baby when he first woke up from a nap. Ceara was snuggling him and it was so sweet, so glad I brought my camera in to capture it.
So, how do you think you say her name? Trust me, she’s heard it all!

What can an (almost) two year old get out of Disneyland?

So we took Tuesday to Disneyland for her second birthday….

Yes, yes, we took an almost two year old to the “greatest place on earth.” Now I know right up front that not everyone is a huge Disney fan, that’s totally fine because honestly I’m not that into Disney myself. Tuesday doesn’t watch any TV or movies at all*, so we were not going to show her all the characters. People did wonder why take her then. Well I didn’t watch much TV when I was young myself, and we went to Disneyland for vacations and I just remember it being an AWESOME vacation place. I know how much she likes to watch people and knew she would have fun just doing that if nothing else. We got a bit of flack at the decision to take such a young kid and I was worried that it would be super over stimulating for her. As a precaution we decided to stay right on the property so that if we needed to we could go back to the hotel easily. So how did it work out?
Whatever you think of Disney they sure know families, and kids especially. The last time I went to Disneyland was on my honeymoon and it was like we were at a totally different park this time with a kid. I passed by all the little boat rides, the play areas, the slower things when I was there just with Bj, but this time that was mostly what we did. As an added bonus we had two sets of grandparents, two uncles and an aunt to keep Tuesday entertained (and allow Bj and I to go on some fast rides—hello space mountain!). I love family vacations and I hadn’t been on a big one in so long. It was three days of fun and family.
Staying in park was so cool. Between the hotel, downtown Disney, California Adventure, and Disneyland (my mom and step-dad got us park hopper passes) we never left the magical little bubble. It was weird to go on a long walk all the way around Disney the last day and see the “real world” just outside it. Tuesday did so well and had so much fun running everywhere and pointing out the train, or any roller coaster that looked like a train. Talk about heaven for our train obsessed girl. She’d point to one and insist mama or papa go on it so she could watch! It was a lot of work to keep up with her and I only brought my camera into the park for an hour one day, on her “birthday”. So most of these photos are from relatives (thanks!).

(trying out my blogs gallery function, I think you’ll have to pop out of reader to use it, not sure. Hmm, not liking the slideshow so much, I’ll have to mess around with it some more, sorry it’s so huge, I have no idea why!). So have you been to Disney with or without a kid? What did you think? Have you ever been on a birthday? Because Tuesday was treated like a super star (I’m sure the cape helped). She met princesses and loved them, even though she had no clue who they were besides pretty dressed up ladies giving her hugs. The one thing she did not like? Any character with a fake head! Ha!

*A couple days before we left Tuesday and I both got sick, she was puking and I was drowning in the sorrow of a terrible cold. I popped in two Disney movies: Toy Story 3 (Tuesday speak: “the guy show”) and Monsters, Inc (“the Monkey show”) since we could both barely move. I can’t believe how quickly she knew these characters and pointed them out in Disneyland. Man they suck your kids in quick, watch out!

It’s not about the sewing

This weekend I had a much MUCH needed sewing day at my friend Kristen’s home.

And I actually did get a lot done (that’s the beginning of my entry into the second project modern challenge). But after a long and challenging week (Mostly sleep wise. As in, I’m not getting any because someone is waking up SIX times a night) this was so needed. Not the sewing as much as the girl talk. The laughing.

Machines chugging along, seam rippers always at the ready. Sciarrino just took one to this:

With great results (I’m sure she’ll share soon). I know not everyone understands or enjoys crafts and traditional women’s work. I think there is something liberating about it now that it can be done just for fun, instead of necessity (luckily for most I know). The thing about it being necessary back in the day was that almost all women did it. They had to. Now that is not the case, so it’s easy to feel alone in a little craft bubble. Maybe you tell someone you spent hours spinning a skein of yarn and they look at you like, “um, you can buy that made… and out of washable acrylic too!” They don’t understand. These girls, all my craft buddies (and most of you I’m guessing) get it. They get the community aspect of it, the fun, the freedom of a thread, glue, yarn, fiber, paper.
And we laugh and eat, and eat, and sew, and eat, and laugh. And it’s quite fabulous really.

Acceptance—Middle School Style

Kristen from Lovely Lydia Design and I are taking a photography lighting class through the local community college. This class happens to be in a public middle school. On a bathroom break we spotted a gem of a poster, made a few years ago. It was a giant rainbow and each student must have been given an index card to write what they were going to be more accepting of in 2009. The rainbow was to signify colors of people and other differences. Some students went another way with what they were going to accept in 2009.





What I would like know is how do teachers keep a straight face through these kinds of projects? Do they take a special class on not busting up? Are you a teacher? Have you ever had to hold it in and then run to the teachers lounge and burst out laughing after class? Because I can see that happening a lot.

What about all that ribbon?

If you have read my mom’s blog in the last few days than it’s not a secret to you… My mom has taken the helm of Ribbon Jar. I am so excited for her, and for me.
New Ribbon Jar owner
Even though I had slowed way down on the Ribbon Jar (not getting as much new stuff, making fewer jars) the last few years I was so afraid to let it go. I created the Ribbon Jar six years ago and it’s been a huge part of me. When people ask me what I do I always answer, “I own an online ribbon shop.” I talk about ribbon, I use ribbon and, until the first of the year, I was packing ribbon orders every day. I sent them all over the United States, to Canada, South Africa, Switzerland, Singapore and everywhere in between.
The new Ribbon Jar
New Years weekend we moved everything over to an office in my brother’s building, where my mom already has her design office (she is an interior designer). We were just about done when Tuesday started melting down and I had to go nurse her to nap time. It took a while and when I came downstairs everyone had left. It was empty, all the ribbon was gone. I started crying a bit. I mean, what was I doing?!?!?! I had a good business and a just starting Photography thing (whose website was kicking my butt). I was overwhelmed and a little scared to just move on. Bj knew it was time before me and had been gently suggesting I sell for a while. When I met with a broker he told me most likely I would sell to someone I knew. I didn’t think so, everyone who knew me knew you had to work every day. They knew I was up late working to get newsletters out. They knew because they helped me a lot. My mom basically took over everything for weeks after I had Tuesday so I could have a mini maternity leave. She would take my packages to the post office almost every day so I didn’t have to get Tuesday all bundled up to go out that first crazy year.
The ribbon wall
I’m glad I’m writing this post a few weeks in. My mom is AMAZING. If I were her I would be just trying to tread water for a while to get everything figured out. She’s not afraid of pushing herself and taking on anything. I let my stock dwindle knowing I was going to sell and my mom has been working around the clock sourcing and ordering the coolest stuff. She’s putting new ribbon into the shop daily. She designed these ribbon racks in her new space and by the end of the month they will be overflowing with goodness.
New ribbon at the Ribbon Jar
Some of her new finds, and restocking favorites (the birds, how I love them!).
That’s my super long winded way to say I’ve handed the Ribbon Jar over and I’m full on into this next adventure. I am so thankful for everyone whose supported me over the years. Out of college I worked for I Remember When (a now defunct scrapbooking company). I was a purchaser and warehouse manager and learned so much. I went to my first trade shows with them. Then embarking on my own my mom and her husband Bill helped support me when I moved back home for a year so I could save money. My dad built jar storage with me. Sciarrino designed for me for next to nothing. My brother helped me move multiple times and I took over his room in our family house when I was at home; filling it with ribbon. My step-sister was my poorly paid intern for a summer. Sciarrino and my mom both came with me on purchasing trips. I had so many great guest designers. Bj. Bj did so much for me. He helped me with code, he helped me through slow times. He loaded boxes. He’s everything and always supportive, I couldn’t ask for anything more in a partner.
And you. My readers, thank you! Every comment and purchase. Everyone who signed up for the newsletter, who spread the word about my site. Everyone who linked to me. It means so much. I’m relearning now just how hard it is to start up a site. To get back into search rankings. I sort of forgot how much work that was at the beginning (please update your links/bookmarks/feeds to me if you haven’t already, thank you).
But I’m willing to put in the work. Because I believe in myself. I know from my experience with the Ribbon Jar that if you have a good idea and you believe it in you can make it happen.
To my mom best of luck to you! I love you so much. I was seriously surprised when you offered to take over; but I shouldn’t have been… you’re amazing and I know you’ll take the Ribbon Jar to the next level. See you in Martha darling!