Wednesday, June 30, 2010

My newest project: A Hanging Book Shelf



Broken, but Healing

Depression is a very hard disease to describe. There are so many parts that affect it, it's also extremely hard to treat. There is not a fix-all. It is different for everyone.

I have struggled with my latest episode for about a year and a half now. I hit rock bottom last Wednesday. I am too embarrassed to go into much detail, but I was truly praying to my Father in Heaven to let me move on from my struggles, to the peace I know I will feel in the next life. I have tried many, many, many things to try and fix my disease. To make it go away. To feel like me again. From medicine and therapy, to prayer, mediation, exercise, etc. I have tried to stay busy and ignore it. I have tried to think through it. Somethings have helped in bits... but nothing has been the cure-all I was looking for.

I have realized there is no cure-all. This is my climb, my journey. I would say I don't know why me, but I received that answer in a blessing today. It is because I am strong enough to overcome it. I am strong enough to endure to the end. And how much better that peace will feel when I have succeeded in my struggle, when I have won.

There are so many things that I know have contributed to my depression. A big one was not forgiving myself, for so many things.

There is a woman in my mind... the person I should be. She is perfect in every way. Her house is always immaculate. Her children are well behaved, fed the perfect amount of fruits and vegetables, and bathed everyday. Her laundry is never piled. Her makeup never runs. Her husband never reminds her to call the cell phone company or the cable company. She can buy all her groceries without spending a dime. She is great at work, and all her coworkers and those around her adore her. She can do anything and everything she sets her mind too. She is the best at any calling she receives, always does her visiting teaching, always baking, always praying, always reading her scriptures, always attending the temple. She has never had one nasty thought about anyone, ever. She has never said a bad word, never said a cruel word. She is EVERYTHING that I am NOT.

I could not forgive myself for NOT being her. I could not forgive myself for my past transgressions and sins. I could not move on. I have carried a weight on my shoulders most of my life. That weight has very greatly contributed to my depression.

I also know that alot of my problems come from hormones. Chemical imbalances. Some drugs treated it for a while. But they're no longer working. I kind of feel like the doctor who prescribed them wasn't listening to me. Every time I said they weren't working, my doses were upped, in most cases, doubled. I have decided that I'm worse now that I was before taking the medication, so I'm going to see other doctors about coming off of them. Me and Chris have both prayed about this and feel it's the right thing to do. The medication was making it so that I could not think straight. I could not tell what thoughts were my own, prompting from my Father in Heaven, or from somewhere else. I feel like I was/am so medicated, it's hard for me to feel what's right and wrong, real and fake.

The reason I'm sharing all this is because I know lots of people have been checking on me lately... calling to make sure I'm okay.

Yes, I hit rock-bottom last week, but I'm still here. Yes I'm broken, but I'm healing now finally. I finally feel hopeful. Another reason to share is I know I tried for so long to fight this on my own. Chris did not even realize how bad I had gotten until last Wednesday. I have realized now how much I can rely on him. He is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. When I hit the bottom, and could no longer fight for myself... He fought for me. He fights when I loose the strength to. And my Heavenly Father, through prayer, and blessings, and the scriptures, I've come to recognize even more strongly that I truly am a daughter of God. He is completely aware of my pain and struggles. And he is there for me. He has given me the power and tools necessary to beat this. And I know that through him, I will win.

Lastly, I have you all. My friends and family, Thank you all for listening to the promptings of the spirit. I have received so many phone calls, emails, etc, just from people checking in on me. Some are people I've hardly even spoken to in real life before. I may not have called you back, or written back... But I really really really do appreciate you. This may sound totally cheesy, but I been so blessed by all of you. I hope I can someday return the favor.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Rectangles and Circles


We have a special drawer in our kitchen... Full of goodies. Snacks, candy, pudding, fruit cups, bars, cookies... It's a good drawer. The other day, Chris filled it with some yummy candy. Reese's peanut butter cups, and Kit Kat bars. This morning, Taylor got into our snack drawer and ate all the candy. Chris asked her what kind she ate. She told him she ate the circles, and the rectangles. Atleast she knows her shapes!!!

Monday, June 28, 2010

The Girls Room

I've redone the girls room (only like the 2nd or 3rd time, it's not as bad as my office.) If you've been online looking at decorating ideas for girls recently, you've seen bunting!!! It's all over the place. It's not only in girl's rooms, but boys, kitchens, birthdays...

I thought bunting was called pennants, and bunting was something you wrap a baby up in. I guess I was wrong. Anyways, the plain white walls of the girls room were driving me nuts. If I have one bad pet peeve about apartment living, it's the white walls. I hate how uninviting it is... how... sterile. But we can't really paint. Well, that's not true, we could... but then we'd have to paint it all back to white, and I'm just not up for that.

Anyways, I've been thinking about using bunting to help decorate the girls room and add some color. I had thought about sewing it with scraps of fabric, but I don't have alot of fabric, so I'd have to buy some, and we really don't have the money to spend on it. So I kept trying to come up with an idea. I've seen a few blog posts about making bunting out of newspaper... you paint the news paper, glue it to string, and hang it up. It was cute, but not quite what I wanted. I finally figured out a way to make my bunting without having to buy any supplies.

I made a template for my triangles out of plain white paper. I then traced this triangle onto sheets of scrapbooking paper. With the size of the triangle I made, I got 2 large triangles out of each sheet. I'm thinking about using the scraps to make a small thing of bunting to line the girls closet door. Anyways, I then used a hole punch to make two holes in the top corners of the triangles. I then took my ribbon and threaded it through the triangles. I let Taylor decide the order for the bunting.

I think it looks great and adds a special something to the girls room. After putting up the bunting, Maddie's wall looked very undone and blank. So I tried thinking about some other cute stuff I could use to decorate. A while back a friend of mine gave me a HUGE bag full of dress up clothes. In it were a few pairs of butterfly/fairy wings. Some of them attatched using velcro - and we don't have anyway for the girls to wear them so they just sat there. I figured I could use these to decorate Maddie's wall. I love it. I think they look awesome. I have a few other ideas I'm going to try out before I'm done with their room... And I can't wait. I'm also trying to come up with some ways to decorate the walls in my office. If you have any ideas, let me know. I'm in desperate need of some inspiration.

Here are the pictures. The first ones are of my office. The last few are the girls room.


















Re-re-rearranged

Since we moved into our apartment in February, I believe I have rearranged my office about 4 or 5 times. That's pretty much once a month.

I keep changing it because I want it to be a place I love to be. It doesn't have to be perfect, just inviting, easy to access, a place to get my creative juices flowing.

There were a few things cramping my style a bit in my office. First was an organ. My grandmother gave me and Chris an organ as our wedding gift. What we're supposed to do with this organ... I have no idea. So it has been sitting here in my office, taking up TONS of space. I decided it had to get out of here and moved it into my bedroom (we don't have alot of furniture in there.)

Also in my office is a futon (the office is also our guest room.) I enjoy having a futon in here, but really does take up alot of space and doesn't allow for a whole lot of options as far as furniture arrangements go.

I think I have FINALLY figured out my office though. I'm very excited with the direction it's going, but it's by no means done. I've got lots to work on and fix and update and such... but I'm getting things organized, finding a home for all my crafty stuff.

I'm so excited that I have stayed up until 2:45 in the morning getting the room in order. That's pretty excited. I think I'm a bit pooped now though, because I can't think of anything else to say. SO I'll go now, but post pics and more about my newly arranged office later. Nightie night!!!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Sunday, Sunday

I'm rotten. Me and Chris and the girls skipped church yet again this week. There is a kinda good reason... I have to work from 11-5 today. So we would have ended up missing most of it anyways. And Chris is going to my parents house today with the girls... I think. So instead of running around like chickens with our heads cut off, we decided to have a good morning here at home as a family and relax a bit before I head in to work and Chris to my parents.

With all my recent struggles, skipping church is most definitely NOT the answer. But I have been on a slightly spiritual high recently from all the praying I've done and blessings I've received. So yes, we're kinda bad for skipping church... but we'll say our prayers and hopefully read our scriptures tonight to keep us more in tune with the spirit. And sometimes, what the spirit needs is not a sacrament meeting, but time spent with family, enjoying one another. Or atleast that's what I'm telling myself at the moment.

It's time now for me to go shower up (i'm crazy stinky... this humidity is turning my pits into a leaky faucet.) and get ready for a GREAT day at work. I'm going to tell myself that anyways. I hope you all have a great Sunday. It is the Lord's day and even though I do have to work, I'm going to keep my thoughts turned towards him. And it'll help make today better :)

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Bye Bye Facebook!


Everyone knows that I've been struggling with depression for a while now. It has had very bad times, and some not so bad times. Sometimes it is definitely more of a struggle than others. Lately, that struggle has been a bit overwhelming. Yesterday was EXTREMELY hard on me. A lot needs to change in my life right now... There probably isn't one aspect of my life that doesn't need changing at the moment.

My first step towards that change was to deactivate my Facebook account. Facebook is a COLOSSAL waste of my time(not saying it is for everyone... but for me, yes... it was). It is now just another distraction for me and so I'm erasing that distraction from my life. Part of me is kinda wondering who all will notice and what they'll say. One of the biggest realizations of how silly Facebook is has been how often today I have felt the need to get on my computer here and check my Facebook account. The thought crossed my mind, "Where will I write about what I do all day???" HELLO!!!! Remember those things called journals that I used to keep and write in daily, before I had a Myspace, Facebook, or blog!!!! I used to keep amazing journals. So I'm going to be doing that again I guess.

Anyways - I just thought I'd post somewhere on this vast world wide web that I am still alive and kicking... Just not on Facebook anymore. If you feel the need to say hi, check on me, see how the girls are, or ask me a question, feel free to call me. If you don't have my number, maybe I don't want you to have it ;) Just kidding. I still have email, and obviously... the blog. Maybe I'll actually be able to keep up this blog more now that I'm Facebook free!!! I think this first step toward a better life is a good one. I'm already getting more done and not being as distracted... in fact, this is only the 2nd time I've touched my computer all day (the first was to check email this morning.) SO yay... go me.

Bye Bye Facebook. We had our good times, and bad times. But those times are done. For now. Maybe one day we'll meet up again under better circumstances. But for now. I'm done with you! Even deleted you out of my awesome Google chrome toolbar. And my day is so much better for it!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

My latest sewing project: APRONS!

I had to run to walmart today to pick up some more white thread for my rag quilt. While I was there I was trying to think of another quick sewing project I could do. I thought, Why not make some aprons for the girls out of dish towels.

In my mind, I figured I could just cut a dish towel down a bit, fold up the bottom for pockets, and sew on ribbon to make the ties. Very simple and easy.

When I got home from the store and finished the rag quilt, I started looking online for pictures of dish towel aprons. Then I just started looking at cute kids aprons. I remembered all this scrap fabric I had just sitting a drawer, waiting to be used. Most of it coordinated, since they were from another project. I decided to use this fabric to make a super cute apron.

First I sat down and decided what I wanted on it. Taylor insisted on 2 pockets. I had to have a ruffled part somewhere... but I couldn't decide if it should be the lower half of the apron, or just a bit at the bottom. Anyways... Here's the final results:
I have to say that I LOVE IT!!!!!
The bottom ruffle
A pocket
The top
I was working on one for maddie at the same time, but after both top 1/2's were finished, I just worked on Taylor's bottom to make sure I knew how to do it. Now that T's is done, it shouldn't take me anytime to make maddie's bottom half. Then the girls will have super cute and girly matching aprons!

Taylor's so excited to use them for crafts, art, and cooking... She wants to make cookies right now... too bad we don't have the stuff to make some.

Everything was scraps, except for the dishtowels which I bought at walmart 2 for $3. I cut the dishtowel in half so it only formed the bottom half of the apron. So, In other words, I can get 4 aprons for only $3, or $.75 a piece! Not too shabby...

Once the girls go to bed, I may try to make 2 more... maybe I can use them as gifts or take them to work for the little girls there. We'll see... Either way, I'm loving sewing again. And it's super fun to make my own patterns. I wonder what else I can make!!!

My First Rag Quilt: Part 2

Here is what I was talking about before about sewing one strip up and one strip down.This way when you hold it all together to sew it, there isn't just a HUGE bunch of fabric on one side... smart huh? Yup. If I hadn't read that tip, I'd have had all my fabric in one bunch.
Here's another tip... Make sure the top fold of fabric folds towards the sewing machine and the bottom fold away from the sewing machine. You have to watch it cause the sewing machine will push the fabric back and try to fold it over, the opposite way you want it to go. That's why you have the top row folds pointed towards the machine so you can fix it when it tries to do that. If it was the bottom row facing the machine, you'd have all sorts of fun trying to keep it straight.

(does any of this make sense?) Here's a pic
And here is the almost finished product. All the rows are sewn together. All that was left to do was to snip the edges. I went around about ever 1/2 inch and snipped.
All that's left for me to do now is wash it. Once that's done, I'll put the pic up. But I started on another project real fast... I'll post it next!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

My First Rag Quilt: Part 1

Okay, so the pictures are backwards... But I'll go through my steps.

I cut the squares 6x6 cause that's what worked with my blankets.
I folded the blankets in 1/2 so they'd already be wrong side touching and ready to sew.
After all the squares were cut out, I laid them out on the floor to get the pattern for the blanket I wanted... Then I staggered them on top of each other... That's what you'll see in the last picture.

Then I sewed a square around each square, just simple straight stitch, with a 1/2 inch seam. (the 3rd pic from the bottom!)

Then you start sewing squares together by laying one on top of the other and sewing along with a 1/2 inch seam. (3rd pic from top!)

This is what a finished row looks like (2nd pic from top)

Once you have your rows done, you start sewing them together. A little trick I learned is that you have to iron your edges down going opposite directions... The top row you iron going left, the bottom row you iron going right.
Then you lay them together with the backsides touching (sides without edges out)
You want the edges to be going opposite directions so when you sew, you don't have 12 sheets of fabric going through at once, you only have 8 at a time at the most. make sense?

I'll try to take a picture of that next to make sure you get what I mean.

So far, these two rows are all I've done, but Maddie won't let them go. She's so excited to have a blanket that mommy is making. :) It completely makes this little project worth it!

Oh, and It's going by so fast, I'm sure if you had an uninterrupted afternoon to make one in, it'd take just a couple hours! But I'm doing it bit by bit. Maybe I can get a few more rows done tonight... who knows. Between being sick myself, sick kids and a sick husband, I'm fitting it in when I can.

But yeah... I'm excited. Can't wait til it's done.







Sick sick sick


We are sick. Very very sick. I've missed this week at work, Chris came home early, we woke up one night a throw up covered Taylor at the foot of our bed, and Maddie's had a fever over 105.

Needless to say, not much has gotten done here lately. I'm hoping to work on some quilting tonight though, and if I do, I'll post up some pics...

OH, I have organized my office a bit more. Maybe I'll post up some pics of that soon too.

Hope everyone else is healthy and having a great summer!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Latest Project: Quilting

There is TONS going on right now. Personal and church and work... But for some reason I still am finding the need to tackle a new project.

Here's how it started:

I had saved the baby bedding I used on the crib for both Taylor and Maddie. I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do with it. It really cute (Green Elephant Amy Coe bedding.) It will be so long before we have more kids that I didn't really want to keep it and use it again... but I didn't want to get rid of it either.

So I decided to make a quilt out of all of it. I had 3 sheets, 1 duvet cover for the comforter, the bed skirt, the bumper, and 3 flannel blankets that matched. I decided I had enough material without the flannel blankets so I decided not to use them.

I finally decided to start on this project today. It'll be an extremely simple quilt. I'll cut all the fabric into 5x5 squares I think. Then just piece it all together. This will be my first real quilt. Today, I started out by taking apart all the pieces. I took the elastic out of the sheets. I'm going to cut the corners and lay it out flat... ironing it and then cutting out the squares. I cut apart the duvet cover and will also iron it and cut out squares. The bed skirt was green in the center with stripped fabric around, so I cut those apart. That's as far as I've gotten so far. I'm not sure at this point if I"ll use the bumper or not. I'm going to see how much fabric I have so far. It is alot already. But I also forgot to mention that I'm actually making 2 quilts. One for each girl. When I'm done with the quilts, I'll take them and have their names and maybe their birthdays embroidered on them.

Ok... now back to the flannel blankets... These were just little rectangle pieces of flannel that matched the rest of the bedding. I decided while I was sitting here cutting that I wanted to make something with them also. I figured a rag quilt will be super easy, and a great place to practice before I actually do the other 2. So I've started cutting squares out of those flannel blankets too. The squares are 6x6, because that's what measurement worked best with the size of the blankets.

I actually folded the blankets in half with the wrong sides touching. That way, my squares are all ready to just sew around... From what I understand, all i do now is sew around the squares (1/2 inch seam), lay out the pieces in the pattern I want, sew into strips, sew strips together, then start cutting the edges of the flannel to help it fray.

If I had a sewing machine, I don't think it'd take more than an afternoon... but I don't have one (I'm asking for $$ instead of gifts for my birthday and christmas so I can save up for a nice one!) So I'm going to have to borrow one, or go to someone's house. Either way, I'm excited. I'll probably keep the rag quilt... unless It's big enough to make 2, then each girl can again have their own. I'm not sure... I'll figure it out when I piece it together.

sorry there are no pictures yet. I'll show you as I go along. I hope to have all these done by the end of the summer. Definitely the rag quilt by the end of the month. Quilting is completely new to me, and I'm learning as I go... so wish me luck. I'm a bit nervous. Will the girls like them if they turn out crooked? I hope so, but it's the thought that counts right?