I am an insomniac.  When there is nothing saved on the DVR and it is 3:30 a.m. I am faced with few options.  After a traumatic hair disaster last October (recent beauty school grad who I have since dubbed "beauty school dropout" gave me lovely green hair with grey highlights and then couldn't fix it so she then proceed to chop much of it randomly off.  For $80.  Then she asked me to refer my friends to her.  This rant is the only referral she is getting.)  I was boo hooing to  myself in the middle of the night when Jennie Garth popped on the TV raving about the new hair products she was using.  I was hooked.  I was vulnerable.  I bought my first ever thing from an infomercial and I haven't regretted a penny spent.  Mind you, I am addicted to bleach, sunshine and my flat iron.  Add in my long, thick, frizzy/ curly hair and only miracle products can even come close to taming this lion's mane.  Trust me, I have tried every thing.  Every single thing.  Nothing has even come close.  With what I do to my hair it is a miracle that I am not bald.  I have Jennie Garth to thank for that.  You can find it here.  If you hate your hair and your hair hates you, it can broker a peace agreement between both injured parties.

When Lucy was about 17 months old she became fond of sleeping au naturel. This led to many horrible cleaning and subsequent Clorox wipe needing disasters. I tried multiple onesies, multiple layers, but she still found ways to shimmy out of them. When I searched for answers I mostly came up with "duct tape the diaper shut" (impossible since she wears cloth) or "cut the feet off of zipper pajamas and put them on backwards." (I couldn't imagine cutting her cute jammies, and it is stinking hard enough to get her wriggly self into them the right way.) At the end of my rope and dreading every nap and bed time I came along the most brilliant suggestion of all. Hook and eyes. Of to the fabric store I went. Life has never been the same since. It has been nearly a year since I have had to clean poop from the crib railings thanks to these little metal miracles.
All that I had to do was hand stitch the hook and eyes under the zipper part of the pajamas. Her tricky little hands haven't been able to outsmart them. Mind you, she tries, just look at the above picture with her sneaky face and fiddling fingers. My only challenge now is finding zipper pajamas in size 2T that aren't fleece. Thus the blue, very boy looking dinosaur outfit she is currently rocking. Thank you so very much smart mom on some random message board for sharing your brilliance. You saved my sanity!

Ty?  Pennington?  Celebrity spokesperson for baby formula?  Really?  Just like every human with a heart I love Extreme Makeover Home Edition and cry pretty much every episode.  What I have never done is thought "Wow, that Ty Pennington is an amazing designer.  I bet he could invent new packaging for Similac!"  Enter perfect idea for use of new scanner and blog post!  I had to find out more and it turns out that Similac is having a contest to have Ty makeover your nursery.  Maybe they should have put that in the ad.  You can enter here and find out all of the details.  I am good in the nursery department.  Don't really need $10,000 to burn on a place where diapers are changed and sleep is interrupted.  What I would like is $10,ooo to make over my craft room.  Considering that it is currently invisible and non-existent.  I am off to search through Papercrafts magazine to see if Ty is the new rep for Fiskars or some other random craft company in hopes that he can throw some money my way.

So part of me was so proud of her desire to write and draw in the car, but the other part was freaking out about how this would affect this and the next dozen month's mileage.  I decided to pick up a handful of composition books and make a girly princess cover for them.  That way she can still draw away without causing trauma to important papers.
I just sewed a simple cover from a 12 x 24 piece of fabric.  I thought about making a tutorial, but you can find the basics of this construction right here.
This is apparently a drawing of Lucy.  I think it is funny how much hair she gave her, considering how close to bald she really is.    

I honestly find talking to groups of people I don't know exhausting.  My husband finds it exhilarating.  I relish in solitude.  He panics.  I know that a majority of our personalities came already programmed when we were born, but I believe that you can learn the skills necessary to compensate for interactions in the real world.  When I was young my parents would excuse my behavior by telling others "well, she is just shy".  I began to accept it, claim it, and hide behind that label.  I now mask it well, I am a careful listener, ask great questions and can chat with anyone, anytime.  I had to develop this skill in order to survive with a husband much in the public eye at church.  Most who have recently met me would never know how truly difficult social situations are for me.  This week we attended a park day for all incoming Kindergartners at Halley's school.  I took the opportunity not only to seek out others who I did not know, but to gently begin training Halley in the art of friendship and conversation.  She is no where near as shy as I am, yet also not as outgoing as my husband.  It is my heart's desire for her to feel comfortable in new situations as well as seek out and include those kids on the fringe.  We have been talking all week about the importance of being friendly and including new friends in play.  My heart soared when I witnessed her approach a girl who was playing alone, introduce herself and ask her new friend to go on the slide with her.  For the rest of the day they were inseparable and even included other girls in their new little group.

I never wear it around my neck because the horrible faux leather combined with my heavy lens strangles me.  Quite a few horrific drops and broken filters could have been avoided by just keeping it attached to me.  Shealynn  is making the cutest strap covers to solve my exact problem.  She is even giving one away here.  How cute would this be on your camera?  Watch out, I just might beat you to it!
Does this look like any old messenger bag to you?  Don't be fooled!  Look at what is hiding inside:

That sneak peak was mean wasn't it?  Here are the finished products.  We are having our second Aqua Apron Sisters events for one of our own.  The gender of this little one is a mystery which makes planning shower a fun challenge.  I found the idea here (I can't resist borrowing one of the best invite ideas ever) months back and was just waiting for one of my friends to get pregnant so I could use it.  Alicia and I stayed up late chatting, cutting, sewing and gluing and we are so thrilled with the end result.

So you are at a dinner party... what two topics should you never bring up?  Religion and politics.  Being married to a pastor means the conversations either become lively between new people I meet or they suddenly rush off to refill their punch.  Being a Christian is so much a part of my every day life and who I am that it does not even occur to me to not talk about it.  In each word I speak I always want to be loving and encouraging above all, in the same way Jesus was to all who came across his path.  I know at times I fail miserably and am not exactly a perfect example.  But I try.

My knowledge and passion for politics is rather small, yet when I heard that Pastor Rick Warren from Saddleback Church was hosting Senators McCain and Obama for a civil forum I knew that somehow I needed to be there.  To actually witness the person who will lead our country answer questions posed by a man who I respect immensely would be eye opening and life changing.  Jason and I both put our names into the lottery system for the free tickets to view the event on campus in a tent.  We both figured that being chosen was an impossibility.  However, a friendly email in my inbox Tuesday night informed me that my name was chosen.  We couldn't believe that we would be witnessing history, even if on a TV screen.  We arrived hours early yesterday in order to be shuttled in and to go through the elaborate security screening process.  Right as we were about to walk into the venue a random man who I have never seen before asked me if I was going to Tent 3.  Assuming he needed directions, I answered yes and he proceeded to tell me that his friends could not make it, and would I like two tickets to the main auditorium.  Confused and dumbfounded I asked him why he wanted to give them to us (they are really pricey seats and he was asking for nothing in return) and he just smiled and handed them over.  Elated we jumped over to the auditorium line to go through more security checkpoints.  In the back of my mind I thought that maybe these amazing tickets would fall through and we would go back down to the tent.  Instead we were led to our seats in the 10th row.  We watched Pastor Rick boldly ask the candidates about faith, worldview, evil, taxes, marriage, rights of the unborn, adoption, war, education, and moral failure.  I walked away much more knowledgeable as well as amazed that these two men agreed to come into a church and face difficult and dangerous questions.  I am still in shock that we were actually there and immensely grateful that a sweet man that I might never see again gave us such a gift in those tickets.

So we went to the craft store today and I let the girls each pick a paint.  I also grabbed some foam brushes and a two pack of 16 x 20  pre-stretched canvases.
We went out in the backyard and painted away.  Lucy takes a more liberal approach and covered the canvas in seconds.
Halley is focused and trying her best not to get paint on herself.  She could spend hours covering the canvas perfectly.
While the paint was wet I wiped off their hands and feet and put them on the canvas.  Their clean, dry hands take off just a bit of the wet paint leaving a simple, perfect outline of their hand and footprints.  I found the idea here and am so glad that I actually decided to do it, instead of just bookmarking it.  A few minutes in the tub and they were sparkling clean and proud of what they created.  I need to do this more often.