ollie's bedtime routine

Here's a photo of the chores after I had them laminated.



We also did the same thing with Ollie's bedtime routine. "Brush Teeth" has been lost probably since the day I tried to use our little velcro system. It never worked, and Ollie has to pull them down if I ever try to tidy up, so I've just given up. I guess at least I was trying, huh?

If the chores are cute, maybe I'll actually do them

Back in December last year, when I was sinking to some new lows in housekeeping, I decided I would make myself a chore chart, and maybe that would help me. Here are a few of those chores. I never worked out a chart, and still haven't used these, even though I have them laminated and thought I would make some fabric pocketed deal of "to do" or "done" and one for Ollie and one for me. Now I'm thinking I might print them smaller and steal my niece's idea. She has a big metal board on her wall and has made a bunch of darling little magnets. (For an example and instructions, click here.)

Yeah. That'll happen. Heh.

pigtails

Going through this sketchbook, I've noticed quite a few doodles of girls with braids or pigtails or funky hair. Here are a few pigtail doodles. One really reminds me of melanie, remember her looooong luscious side ponytail from back in the day?

baby shower

I threw my first baby shower this past weekend. It was a crazy day because we had a primary activity right before, so I ended up with about an hour before the shower to clean house and prep food. But at least all of the food had been obtained before, phew! I'd love to say it was a smashing success, but disappointingly, it wasn't. Only 3 of the 18 people I invited showed up. Is it me? It's me, isn't it? I was left with a TON of food. That cheesecake? Was still as you see it on Monday. I'm not a big fan of most cheesecakes--preferring the homemade pudding type to the baked type--but I know most people love cheesecake, so I got one. I didn't care for any, and apparently nobody else did. Not my family, not Kevin's family. I finally pawned it off on mom to take to her co-workers.

I borrowed a bunch of serving dishes from Kevin's mom, which made a huge difference in the presentation, I think. And the cupcakes! My friend, Melanie, the award-winning cupcake expert, was kind enough to share a couple of recipes for cupcakes with me. Pictured here are her cotton-candy cupcakes, which not only look fabulous, but are also delicious. Thanks, Melanie! I also made the lemon chiffon cupcakes, but it was after the fact, just my family enjoyed those ones, but they were equally, if not more, delicious. These had no problem disappearing.

I also included the digital invite that I had to throw together rather quickly. (Don't mind the blurry scribblies though. I thought it was best to do that with sensitive info. You know.) It was fun designing again. But that's probably because it was for something fun, and I could do whatever I wanted. If anyone needs a digital invitation, let me know, I'll be happy to have a shot at it.

a whole page

Thanks everyone for reading and looking at my doodles and responding!

And here is an entire page of randomness. Wow, aren't you guys so lucky that I'm so completely lazy? Heh.

doesn't she look fabulous

Okay, so the photography is bad, the lights/whites are totally blown out, but doesn't Mindy look so cute? I was snapping shots at Dal and Hi-D's wedding to practice the photography skillz. Heh, didn't make much progress, but I still think the subject matter looks smashing.

another doodle. Wow, this time it's a SET.

Here's a little group of doodles I found nearer the spine than my scanning skillz can obviously handle. Also, am lazy.

Going from the notes surrounding the doodles, I'm thinking I was doodling during a "parenting" class at education week in 2000 or 2001.

twirly dress

Today's daily doodle says a little about how much of a girly-girl I was or wanted to be when I was younger. I did this doodle years ago, but it was because I was thinking about how when I was younger and my mom always made our Sunday dresses/Easter dresses, I pretty much always requested it be a twirly dress. If I could spin around and the dress lifted up to tutu heights, it passed the test. I loved Cinderella's dress, and I had a friend who was a clogger and I loved their clogger dresses with the yards and yards and yards of petticoats. I was fascinated with the dresses I saw where the skirt attached to the hands of the dancer. (Was it a ballroom dance or talent show or play or something on TV? I really don't remember) I loved ballerina tutus and ball gowns and mermaid hair--heh, who cared about the actual dancing or what the story was. The dresses! Truthfully, I'm still pretty much the same. Okay, okay, so that was too long of an explanation for just a silly little doodle, so on with the doodle! Here it is:

how will we ever decide?

After seeing my friend Melanie's son's portraits, we had Mary do our family portrait, and she made us looks fabulous. I really love her photography--beautiful. I'd love to see some of her printmaking masterpieces, as she's also very talented in that area.

But how are we ever going to decide on just a handful of photos? We love every single one she posted on her blog.

And another doodle. It must have been during my lisbeth zwerger phase. I'm still in the phase, it just hasn't manifested itself in any recent doodles because I haven't been doodling:

teddy bear in chair

This doodle is larger than actual size, in real life it's only about as big as my thumb. For a while I was stuck on drawing little teddy bears.

aaaw. cute. (heh.)

doodles

some silly doodles

the irony and another doodle

Yay, Ollie is taking a nap!

This is the irony: I'm currently starting to read a book about meditation for mothers, and I'm in the chapter on mindfulness. And here is the passage I had to go back and start reading over again, oh, I don't know, perhaps seven times, because my mind was wandering and the thoughts were clamoring:

"Mindfulness saves energy and time. With poor concentration, we need to repeat some of our actions because we didn't perform them mindfully the first time. An unclear mind may cause you to forget where you put things, why you came into a room, whether you locked the car, even your train of thought mid-conversation. Mindfulness counteracts absent-mindedness and cultivates mental sharpness."

Heh, I might add that an unclear mind often requires me to go back and reread a paragraph seven times before I'm finally present and paying attention.


And here is a post from a loose piece of paper that was stashed in an old sketchbook from around 2000-2001. I'm not quite sure when I drew this because I hardly ever dated anything. The next few daily sketches are going to be from this sketchbook. These will be just straight, raw sketches, with no clean-up or touch up. That's just a little disclaimer that my perfectionistic little self had to put out there.



(I think if you click on it you can open it a little larger)

welp, so much for daily doodle

So much for the daily doodle. I suppose it could get boring after a while, eh? Just doodle after doodle after doodle? 365 of them? I'll just try to get something up daily, and it'll probably come out about the right amount, knowing my track record. Maybe I could call it a weekly doodle.

Reading, writing, and commenting on blogs can really eat up your time, can't it? Not to say I don't love it, just an observation.

I'll post a doodle today if Ollie takes a nap.

monday's doodle

I almost didn't get a chance to post something day. I have an idea it's going to be like this on most days. In any case, here is the beginning of a series that I'll have to explain another time, because I don't have time tonight.

daily doodle

happy wedding!

and so begins my daily doodle quest

Several months ago Ollie, Kevin and I went to dinner at our friends the amazing Hippens' house. Both Seth and Karalenn are extremely talented, not only with drawing/painting/creating, but musically and well, in SO MANY WAYS I can't even begin. Heh, I don't know why they are friends with us. ;) We sat and looked through each others' sketchbooks, and they asked me if I still draw. And I was sad to realize that I really haven't even doodled that much since Ollie was born. So part of me thought about starting a little project where I would post a doodle a day, whether it was a doodle I doodled 7 years ago or one that I did while eating breakfast with Oliver. Just to get a pen or pencil or whatever back in my hand. So that I can stop feeling sorry for myself that everyone is so much more accomplished and prolific and creative and talented than me, when really, that's not even the point. My house is getting in order, so I can finally start thinking about having them over HERE for dinner next time. But I digress. Here is the sketch. A little background on it, if you're interested, I was just sitting down to start drawing Dal and Heidi for their wedding announcement and was getting frustrated trying to draw grown-ups, and this is a little sketch of a baby that just seemed to pop up. I guess as I was sitting there I was absent-mindedly thinking about all the babies that seem to be making their debuts. (Or at least soon to be). Babies on the brain. Maybe I'll post that pic of Dal and Hi-D tomorrow. :)

Finarry.

So, I've been thinking of about a gazillion different posts, and have about a gazillion different photos to share, and so here I am (late at night when I should be sleeping) with no idea where to start.

What it is.

So, here is the progress that has been one small (yet so huge) part of my "recovery." It is really embarrassing to show everyone this. So why am I doing it? I don't know, I guess I like pain. No, I guess by doing this it's like it's no longer going to be a shameful deep dark secret. When I finish this post I'm going to proceed with my plans of posting a daily doodle.

Heh, so here goes nothing: (Just please, please don't report me!)

Okay, so I just spent an hour uploading these photos and trying to put them in descending order, but it didn't work. So they are in ascending order. So you'll have to look at them from the end of the post and back to see that I am making progress. Otherwise it looks like I'm backsliding. (which, actually I am, I need to recommit and get back to that good feeling when things are under control and peaceful, and the sink is clean enough at any hour that Ollie can climb in and play, which he loves to do. It had been covered for SO LONG that it was like discovering buried treasure for him. He spent nearly three days straight just playing with measuring cups and colanders and whatever you can think of.)

The last of my photo experiment. Being accountable to the camera really helped motivate me. Maybe I'll have to keep doing that to get myself back on track:



there really is a nice little space hiding under all that mess:


flowers and fruit baskets make me happy:


This is after about two hours of finishing the kitchen and dining area. You can see the piles of trash and items to be recycled to the right:


More from that same night:


Before the two hour clean-up. If I could just maintain it on a regular basis, I wouldn't need to muster enough energy to work for two hours to get it back to how I like it:


Ollie's favorite place to play. This was after a botched dinner attempt. I finally felt good enough to try a new recipe, and it flopped big time. You can see the back up apple jacks in the bowl on the floor.


Shiny sink. Flylady is right. If only I had listened to her before it went so horribly wrong:


now half the kitchen is clean:


You can see where I started, in the right hand corner and the stove. That was one small babystep.


Another "before again" shot:


It's all gone to pot again. "Before" again shot:


This was supposed to be the beginning of the "after" shots, but as you see coming up, it all just went down the tubes again, because I struggle with just daily maintenance and picking up. This was before I committed to just keeping the sink clean and the dishes done no matter what. That was the only babystep to conquer.


Another before shot:


Another "before" shot:


Another "before" shot:


The first "before" shot:



And there you have it. In all it's glory. In reverse order. I hope you enjoyed it. Heh. You can feel free to enjoy as much schadenfreude as you want. ;)