First let me begin with professions of blog guilt….. AUGUST 12!!! The last blog. Wow! No wonder I feel like I was hit by a truck. I just blew by 12 days without blinking. I have excellent excuses reasons for my absence, which I shall name for personal vindication: nine-day work detail at my sister’s house (more on that later), one missed flight, almost-time-for-homeschool-to-start jitters, my brain in a fog… OK, that is all.
Yes, my baby sister, (who is 41) has had a disturbance in the force. Her happy, carefree life in the suburbs of Vancouver, Washington is coming to a close on Tuesday, August 28th when she embarks on the journey of a lifetime. The journey many of us only dream of…. moving to Maui. Yes, the Hawaiian island known for its beauty and luscious beaches. The surroundings sound all wonderful and glorious, but this is a lifestyle change taken on only by the brave of heart.
Selling out. Yes, to God’s call on your life. Yes, to the stuff in the house. Moving from 2200 square feet to probably half that, leaves room for many trips to Goodwill. Baby Sister is the least hoarder in our family, but still, she’s married with three kids and a dog and life in suburbia lends itself to excess. My arrival in WA (leaving the hottest week of the year in Phoenix, THANK GOD!!!) corresponded with the setting up of the massive garage sale that went down in two days as the most successful garage sale of all time. The amount of STUFF that sold was remarkable. The Lord sent people to the sale who loved the color red, were sucked in by half-filled cans of spray paint and needed more Christmas decor. Seriously. Even the yard swing that is covered in moss was dismantled and removed for $25. Really??? Yes.
Once again, I quote my mantra, “What God favors, He funds.”
After the sale packing commenced. In one day, we packed 63 boxes. Then we sat on the couch and stared at Craft Wars for two days…. which was only supposed to be one day, but I was pretty darn sure my flight home was on Wednesday. Turns out it was Tuesday. Oops. My nine-year-old nephew labeled me a “hard worker” and that was all the praise and adoration I needed. My job was done. I am home.
And what does this all boil down to for ME? A dazzling vacation opportunity. YES!
My sister asked me to make an apron for her in April or May. She sent me a picture of what she wanted…. black with tiny polka-dots and a few faint ruffles on the bottom edge. Black didn’t seem practical for baking…. flour, butter and sugar will show up like a fly in the milk. But black and pink are so cute together! I’ve been wanting an apron myself for quite some time, so the idea appealed to me. My sister-in-law, Jennie, came for a visit in March and brought me beautiful Beatrix Potter Benjamin Bunny fabric…. perfect for an apron for a Miss Potter super-fan!
June rolled around and we were off to a cabin for vacation. Before we left I gathered fabric, ric-rac, ribbon, thread and I found a pattern that looked fairly straight forward. The creative juices were flowing…. but sewing time didn’t present itself at the cabin. Bummer.
December rolled around and my sister was coming for Christmas! I had great expectations, but I didn’t actually get the apron sewn before gift giving commenced. It was more of a last day of December gift. She loved it and so did I. I just had to share how cute it turned out. Now hopefully I’ll get mine done before next Christmas baking season!
Eleven years ago, my sister and best friend, moved away from Phoenix to Washington state. REALLY far away. I didn’t want her to move away…. with my two cutie-pie nieces… it was not fair. But life is rarely fair. She left on a Saturday and I woke up Sunday and just cried. Preferably, I like to keep my peeps right close. I did not prefer this arrangement, but knew God’s hand was on their move.
Before Christy left she recorded this song on a cassette tape and gave it to me. (Remember those?) I played it over and over as a sweet salve to my sad soul. My husband got sick of it really fast. Well, maybe it was after the 127th time I had played it. And I usually couldn’t make it through the song without crying either.
A few weeks after Christy’s move and my mourning period had eased, Rick came home to find me crying again. It was totally about something else, but he non-sympathetically asked, “Were you listening to your sister’s tape again?” HAHA. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. Time has a way of changing scenarios.
Still today I love this song. The Lord has blessed me with so many friends through the years. I truly am thankful! Every place we have lived, He supplied a bosom friend for me. I love you, my friends!
And I’m OK with that! I ALWAYS have a project or two or seventeen on the go. When I don’t have projects, I feel lost. I wander the house in my pajamas wondering what I should be doing. Lately, since returning from Colombia with our new daughter, my project in my head was “keep life moving forward as normally as possible.” That’s pretty well all I’ve done for five weeks…. and it’s been exhausting. We are homeschooling. We are going to church and to our neighborhood group. I am grocery shopping and going to the library weekly. Oh, and I’m teaching once a week….. Arizona History to a bunch of homeschooled high school kids. (I guess you could consider it a project!) But it has taken me almost 3 weeks to read the novel sitting on my bedside table. They usually only sit there for 4-5 days.
However, (notice the switch from survival mode to productive mode here!) my mother found a darling little wooden chair on clearance (of course) with a cupcake-shaped back that will fit Nora’s tea-table perfectly! Originally I thought that two chairs were sufficient, but her teddy bear always occupies one, so guests sit on the floor. Three chairs are needed. The cupcake chair needs some sanding and painting and tightening and hole-filling. A PROJECT!
Last month my sister was in town putting on a bridal shower for her best friend. My sister is the decorologist for parties! She’s the bomb, baby. Her creativity reminded me how fun it is to decorate and throw parties. And lo and behold, a friend of mine has a birthday next week! She thinks I’m taking her to breakfast, but I’m doing a full-blown pink and turquoise owl-themed party. Today I’m off to find cutesy plates and polka-dotted napkins and ribbons and placemats. A PROJECT!
Here are just the cupcakes my sister made for the shower:
A N D . . . . . I have once again been inspired to start writing. A little birdy put the seed in my heart… the watering began… and I’m off writing on another project. This is a book that I have had on my heart for a long time. About two or three years ago I was having visions of stories running amuck in my mind which prompted me to get out of bed at 2:47 in the morning, find a notepad and jot down ideas. Locked in my master bathroom for an hour, I outlined the entire book! This week I dusted it off. A PROJECT!
This is why the women in the olden days had quilting bees! So they could learn the tricks of the trade from each other. Remember when I learned about the parchment paper on the cookie sheets?!? Well, this new fangled device (the white tube in the upper right of the picture) is a pineapple peeler, corer, slicer and dicer. OK, maybe not a dicer. My sister whipped it out and had the pineapple cut into spiral rings in about three minutes. Yes, the skin stays intact and hollowed out! You simply twist the tube into the top of the pineapple (after the top and bottom are sliced off) and voila! She bought it at the grocery store next to the pineapples for $10. Very handy and slick. Add it to your Christmas list, ladies.
While soaking up the cool breezes at Lake Tahoe, I happened to go to mapquest to see how far away my sister’s house was from the Lake….. I was surprised to find that it was closer than my own home by more than 100 miles. Yes, this is my sister of My Sister’s Jar fame. My mind started scheming. I mentioned to my vacationing, beard-growing husband that it would be cool to “run up to Washington” to see my sister’s family. We figured out that if Rick took off two more days we could vacation for another WEEK! (Gotta love the four-day work week!)
Long story short, Rick called in and they were able to get another pilot to cover his flights… so we drove to Vancouver, WA on Monday. YEAH! All of the people in the Northwest should be thanking us for coming and bringing the nice Phoenix weather with us! Seriously, yesterday was their first day of summer! They are all scorching at 82 degrees, but we are loving it. It was 25 degrees hotter today at home. Makes me want to stay here until October.
(scrap-lifted photo)
To get the most of this non-Arizona weather, we attempted a hike to the Camas Lily Fields above Lakamas Lake yesterday. I say attempted because among our two families, there was not one successful map reading soul. A picture was even taken of the trail map so that I could eventually show the routes that we hiked and re-hiked to find the lily fields. No one told us that they only bloom the week of Mother’s Day. Sheesh. I did capture a photo of every little blinkin’ bloom on the entire trail (partly to make my necessary heart-rate-in-the-danger-zone stops seem of the photo taking nature… and not the totally out-of-shape nature)… much to my speedy marching husband’s dismay. He kept saying, “You know we’re not going to develop all these pictures, right?” Whatever. I decided, while kneeling on the wet path getting the perfect picture of a purple and orange wildflower, that a Wildflowers of Washington (WOW) scrapbook was indeed in my future. I might even give it to Rick for Christmas. Plus, I have 75 free prints on snapfish right now.
I would be showing you some of the photos, but I did not bring the cord for my camera… and my techy brother-in-law doesn’t have the photo card capability on his treasured macs. I didn’t even have the photo card in the camera when we started this adventure on June 9th. I bought a card at Walmart in Nevada… but it didn’t work. I don’t really understand all the little letters printed on those tiny cards. Eventually, I purchased the correct card and it is FULL of pictures that I wish I could share. But no.
It was my last day to play with my baby sister who was in town for the scrapbooking retreat. We went and saw the movie Young Victoria and I LOVED it! It didn’t have the plot intrigue of Miss Potter, but the British accents were darling. I’d like to check a few of the historical facts as well. We just finished studying Kings and Queens, and although we didn’t spend a lot of time on Queen Victoria there were a few bumps in the movie for me. Yes, I’m a closet history buff with very limited historical facts in my head… but I’m pretty sure the new sovereign holds the orb while sitting in the coronation chair. Please correct me if I’m wrong. What is the orb, you ask? Well, when my boys reenacted the coronation, it was a tennis ball. I’m pretty sure theirs is a little fancier… maybe even solid gold. Not lime green and fuzzy.
Moving on, before you’re bored to death, the Scrapbooking Retreat was fabuloso! Here are a few photos… yes, it snowed in AZ last week. It was purely serene… taking me back to my carefree days (before children) living in northern Canada.
I have been planning my strategy for mucho amounts of scrapbooking for months. Realizing that my scrapbooks are all events (like Christmas or a vacation) or a conglomeration of my favorite photos that have nothing to do with each other, I decided to do a Daily Life book for 2009. I completed Jan – Nov.!!!!! So a few more pages and the album is done. No, it is not the fancy-shmancy kind of pages that I like to use to showcase every blinking blingy item in my scrap box. They are functionally beautiful and the kids truly enjoy looking at them. Pictures of homeschooling and friends and piano lessons and spring break. I should really take a few pictures of the pages and share, but I’m off to watch the Olympics at my parent’s house. This is the only time I regret not having a TV. But alas, we have family and friends who like to show off their big screens. For their generosity and large TVs I’m thankful.
There has to be at least one genealogy-happy person in each generation to keep the family heritage alive and growing. I am it for my generation of Nikander children. I have a brother, a sister and two guy cousins….NONE of which is even slightly interested in old fuzzy photos, dusty family Bibles or traipsing through cemeteries to take pictures of headstones. I am it. (Stop rolling your eyes, Christy.)
Somewhere in my journeys I saw a beautiful photo display wall of all the the female ancestors of some such person, whom I forget the identity of at present. It inspired me. About eight years back I painstakingly copied all the old family photos that I could get my grubby little hands on and started a heritage scrapbook album. But still in the back of my mind, I could see the wall of women… women who carried on family names and traditions. Fast forward to about two years back when I found a darling oval frame with a mat that could hold seven pictures. I envisioned my female ancestors looking out from those holes. I brought it home, painted over the glittery silver finish with a flat off-white and hung the frame on the wall….. waiting for the photos.
The photos that I gathered were ALL the wrong size. So the empty frame hung on my wall for years. (yes, I know, embarrassing.) Then I read a story from the book Welcome to the Funny Farm about a blank frame on that author’s wall… and I got things in motion once again. On Memorial Day, this past Monday, my dear father scanned, re-sized, touched up and got my seven matronly photos to fit my framed mat. Thanks, Dad. In honor of dear old dad, I decided to put my Paternal Female Ancestors in the frame, being that I happened to have seven pictures.
So, yesterday I had out-patient surgery to remove some fatty lipomas from my neck, that were obviously lost and never found my backside. So today, I finally printed the names and dates of the dear ladies and finished the eight year project. Ta Da! I love it. I realize what a treasure it is to have Great Great Great Grandmother pictures…. and I’m hoping and praying that someday I can give this to the solitary person in the next generation who will love and appreciate it too. I’m thinking it might be my niece, Katelyn. Since she was two she was fascinated with who was whose sister, mother, daughter. Keeping my fingers crossed. She called me once to ask what percentage of nationalities she was. See! I’m the only one with the valuable, treasured information for the next generation.
That’s Craft Warehouse Design Team, in case you aren’t in the know. YES! My baby sister, Christy, just found out she is one of the ten women who were chosen for the Scrapbook Design Team from Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Isn’t that so cool??? Here is one of her layouts that she submitted:
They had to send in 2 scrapbook page layouts, 2 cards and some other non-card or page craft deal to show their versatility and creativity. So, she’s on the team for eight months and will be given supplies to create six projects that will be used in stores for examples and in their advertising online and in mailers. So cool. But that’s not the coolest part…. she receives $500 of scrap supplies for her own use…. BUT it’s with a 20% off discount… so I’ve already figured it out for her husband, Brian… THAT’S $625 worth of bling bling goodness. I’m so proud of her! And I’m so glad our mother taught us to share.
Some background is needed here so you truly understand the importance of this moment. I was the creative child with the glue-gun on my belt. I lived for visits to Craft Barn. Christy was born with a microphone in her hand. She sang her whole life and claimed that she wasn’t crafty at all. Her degree is in Vocal Performance. My minor is Art. Christy didn’t do a crafty thing until she was forced to after she moved away from Mom and I. Then, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, Crafty Christy was born. She started designing greeting cards that were sold to the public in stores. And her scrapbooking was transformed from the stickers and wavy scissors to what it is today… gutsy, bold and blinged.
And to think that I taught her all she knows! Oh, it makes the tutor so proud when a pupil reaches such grand heights.
Oh, you have to go see my sister’s photos of her springtime flowers up in the great Northwest. Makes me unlove the cactus growing at my house in the desert.
Welcome to My Sister's Jar. The story behind the blog lies in the original post on Feb. 2, 2008. Type "giddy moments" into the search box to find it.
I'm a homeschool mom who loves to speak and write, encouraging moms to press-on in motherhood. Two of my books are available NOW! Laughing in the Midst of Mothering and Laughing in the Midst of Marriage. See them at www.LindaCrosby.com or www.cbd.com.
I have four children, one of whom is adopted from Colombia, so there are LOTS of adoption tidbits here.
~~~~~~ Linda Ann Crosby
My Sister's Jar 