My brother & sister-in-law’s baby surprised us all by showing up 2 months early. Scott went to CA this weekend to visit them and I wanted to send a baby gift. I immediately thought of the adorable newborn gown my friend, Jen at One Project a Day made. (I am so blessed that creative Jen is my friend in real life, not just in my mind like the other craft bloggers I aspire to.) So following this tutorial, and with Jen’s guidance and tutelage, I set to work. I was thrilled with the results.

The little ribbon tag was my favorite part.

After looking at it, I realized how big it was. Tiny Colton is less than 4 lbs now and it would be a long while for him to be able to fit in it. So I thought I would try to make a smaller one that might be more likely to fit him once he gets home from the hospital. I thought the first one was the cutest thing until I finished this….

The trim on the neckline makes such a difference. I love it so much. Jen was such a good friend and gushed over it with me and then let me dress up her daughter’s doll for a photo shoot.

Scott thinks I should make more and sell them. I really am tempted. But for now Colton has a one of kind:)

I look at swim team as an intense form of swim lessons for my kids. I love that swim meets give my kids a time to measure their progress. Yesterday, despite the immense heat outside, was a good day. Cami beat her freestyle time, Mac beat his backstroke time, and Kadie beat her freestyle and her backstroke times, both by 10+ seconds.

I have a dream to be crafty and domestic.

Both are titles that never really mattered to me until recently.

My guess is that some (most likely career oriented) women probably would not find the title of domestic attractive, but for me I think to myself, “I am a stay-at-home mom – a domestic engineer. That is my career right now. Shouldn’t I be good at cooking, & sewing, & homemaking? Or at least in the last 12 years, shouldn’t I have become good at it?”

I do know and realize that there are other important aspects of motherhood than cooking, sewing, and homemaking. I do know that I have wonderful kids and I know that they know that they are loved and I hope I have taught them to be good people.

But I also think there is a yearning in each of us for external validation of accomplishment. I think we all love to hear a “Good Job!” every so often or at least look at something and say “I did that.” In the workplace it is a lot easier to see and feel that external validation on a more regular basis. Maybe that is a prideful thought to say that we need that, but I do think everyone wants to feel good about themselves, at least to some degree.

I grew up with a crafty mom. She made stuff all the time. She had her own business (Classic Touches by Ro’s Brushes), sold stuff at craft shows and boutiques. We even had a boutique in our home every year for a while. My mom toll painted, and glued stuff (flowers, lace, etc.), but she did not sew. Her motto was “If I can’t glue it, I can’t do it.” I guess I was kind of raised that way. Whenever we needed something sewn, we went to someone else. Even though I envied the kids who moms could whip up a cute Halloween costume or sew a quilt for their graduation, I think I sub-consciously convinced myself that motto applied to me. I just couldn’t sew.

My grandmother (seeing as how my mom wasn’t going to teach me) offered to teach me to sew when I was about 12 or so. I remember we went to the store, picked out some fabric and a pattern for some shorts and a top. I am not sure why, and I feel bad now, but I was really not that interested. I remember sitting there thinking how boring it was. Sewing an outfit took forever and involved tracing patterns, which I didn’t understand, and even worse working with the IRON.

-side note: I have a huge aversion – maybe fear – of the iron. If you asked my husband, he would tell you I avoided the iron as much as possible the first 12 years of our marriage, and still do avoid it when I can.

Anyways, looking back I wonder if because my mom thought sewing was too hard to learn, I just adopted her philosophy and never got into trying to learn. I do wish I would paid more attention to what my grandma was trying to teach me back then though.

Later I got married and wanted to start making things for my home. I went to church craft nights and always ended up frustrated. Here is where my perfectionism came into play. I felt like I could never make anything as cute as the sample. Looking back, I was overly hard on myself and focused on the imperfections. When my projects got home, away from the sample, they did look much better. I managed to sew a few very simple tie-quilts, but the sewing machine I had didn’t work so great and made it very difficult. Eventually I gave up sewing altogether.

But I think my thoughts of “I can’t sew“ graduated to “I am not crafty“ and even included “I can’t cook.” It just seemed like an easy explanation and I accepted it, but deep down I secretly wished I could do all of that.

Over the last year, I have come to realize that the only reason I am not any of those things is because I have not made the effort to learn. It was a bit of a sobering thought, that it really was my fault and that I couldn’t just blame it on my genes. But it is also liberating to think that I can eventually be “domestic”, if I suck it up and work to put forth the effort. Not that I think I was lazy, I think I was more of a coward. I was afraid of failure. What I have learned is that it is okay to fail a bit. Sometimes that is what it takes to learn to be better.

A while ago, I found the world of domestic blogs – cooking blogs, and sewing blogs, and craft blogs – Domestic Divas sharing their wisdom. They provided step by step tutorials for really cute stuff and so many times I would think “I can do that.” I started seeing that so many of the really cute projects involved sewing. So my sweet hubby bought me a nice sewing machine for Christmas. It truly has been one of the best presents ever. I love it.

Crafting has become a bit of an obsession for me. One of my friend’s screen name is “Crafting is my Therapy.” That is so how I feel sometimes.

And I have really grown to love sewing. Who knew that was possible? I am not great, I don’t know if I would even consider myself good at it yet, but I love it and find I am learning new things each time a sit down to work. Each project is a little better than the next and I truly find joy and satisfaction from creating something useful or pretty or both.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said

“The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before… Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty…”

Isn’t that beautiful? Eventually, when I have my craft room done, I think that will go on the wall in vinyl.

So through creation, I am on a mission to become crafty, creative and domestic. Maybe by the time my kids are grown, I will get there:)

The main purpose of my blog is to record my family’s story. I think my endeavors to be crafty and domestic are part of my story so in addition to pics and stories of us, I will continue to post my creations and new recipes that I try. Not because I need to hear “Good job!” all the time, but more to document my progress and hopefully inspire others too.

I have been working on a few things lately, so hopefully over the next few days, I will get pics together and post them up. Some came out pretty cute.

Ok-maybe this was a lot of history – as after I wrote this, I realized that it is kind of a long post, but it was very cathartic. Thanks for bearing with me.

I had stored all of my favorite recipes on my old website. I originally planned to move them all over one at a time, as I made them and post something nice and pretty about each one, but I am getting ready to cancel that website, so I decided to just copy and paste them over now. I love having my recipes here because it makes it so much easier to find what I want, rather than sorting through all of the cookbooks in my cupboard. So even though they are not prettily formatted with pictures, they are all listed in the Recipe Box section of the blog.

My family’s favorite meal is:

BBQ Meatloaf

Creamy Cheesy Corn

Mashed Potatoes

When I find new recipes to add to my collection, I will still add them in a post to share. The one I want to share today is from Wendi, a friend of mine who participated in our menu exchange. She calls it Easy Italian Dish, we call it Faux Lasagna (Faux is a fancy word for “fake”). My kids ate this up and kept asking for more fake lasagna since it tasted like a cheesy lasagna, similar to the one from Costco.

Faux Lasagna

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 lb. mostacholi noodles

1 lb. ricotta cheese

6 oz. grated Romano cheese

16 oz. mozzarella cheese, shredded

¼ bottle parsley flakes

1 egg

Salt and pepper

2 – 24oz. or 26 oz. jars of your favorite Spaghetti sauce

Directions:

Boil mostacholi for 10 minutes and drain. Mix cheeses, parsley, egg, one bottle of sauce, and salt and pepper in a bowl. Spread half of remaining jar of sauce in the bottom of a 9×13 pan. Top with cooked noodles and the rest of the sauce. Top with cheese mixture. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

I have not blogged much and life is still passing by, so I thought I would show what we have been up to.

7 on 7 Football

Mac just finished his Spring season of 7 on 7.

Funny story – Mac had his playoff games this past Friday night. It was a play until you lose thing. I wasn’t able to get to the first game, but I told Scott to call me if they were playing a second game and I would come up. So Scott calls asks me to bring Mac’s mouthpiece to the 2nd game, because he will be unable to play. I hurry up there thinking, how did he play the first game? Well, he puffed up his lips when he went out on the field and faked having a mouth piece. Apparently, no one noticed, not even Scott. Well, he got his mouthpiece, and even thought they lost their 2nd game, it was a close, fun game to watch.

Dentist

Making sure 4 kids all get to the dentist, is a long process. It seemed like for a while, I was there every day, but I thought this pic of Kadie was funny. She totally fell asleep in the dentist chair, with the suction tube and everything. The dental assistants thought it was so funny, they had me come back from the waiting room to take a picture.

Swim Team

Cami, Kadie, & Mac have enjoyed participating in our neighborhood swim team. We signed up, not to be competitive, but to become better swimmers. It involves swim practice 4 days a week and long meets on Saturdays, but the kids have already improved and are having a great time.

Beach/Shark Fishing

This past weekend Scott, took the scouts shark fishing. My friend, Diana and I decided to go along and enjoy a day out at the beach. . A few small fish were caught, but it is still a bit early in the season for sharks. Even with the lack of shrks, the weather was great and the kids had a ton of fun. I figure we will go again in a few weeks.

Where’s T?

You have probably notice that of all the pics above, I have none of Trenton. He finished all of his school work by the beginning of May, and is enjoying a vacation in CA with his grandparents.

He is living it up and enjoying a taste of being the only child. He had a great time at Disneyland with his Uncles and floated a Duck in the Rubber Duck Derby. I know our family is enjoying spoiling him, but I do miss him dearly and am looking forward to him getting back next week.

Three years ago we bought our kitchen table and chairs. At the time the warranty sounded like a good idea. A few months ago, one of the kids broke a small chunk of the table off while messing with the leaf. The warranty company then sent us a brand new table! Yay! But seeing the new table next to our old table it became very obvious how hard our family is on furniture. Since we no longer have a warranty on the table (one time replacement clause), I decided I needed to find a better way to protect this new table.

I have a love-hate relationship with tablecloths. Love that they protect the table from getting as dirty and dinged up. HATE that the never stay in place and so often cause additional spills. So I decided to find a way to create a table cover that would function well and look good. Here is what I came up with:

I made it out of oilcloth, which is one of my new favorite fabrics. It is so easy to clean off and looks so nice. I used my crop-a-dile puncher to punch 4 grommit holes on each corner and then tied it with the ribbon. I’d love to say it took 15 minutes, which is what it would take anyone else, but it took me 30 minutes as I had to process and think it all out of how I would make it work. All in all, a very easy project that I love.

And Scott loves it too. He thinks we should start a business, but since most people could easily do it themselves, I decided against it:)

Oh, and the warranty company sold us the old table cheap, so guess what? I have a new craft table for my sewing machine, etc. Woohoo!