Honestly

I have a friend who does crafts with her children everyday, another who plays with her children (I mean drinks fake tea and sells pretend goods) all the time and another who has her children at the park every possible minute the weather allows. Can I be honest? I admire these women and I feel like such a lousy mom in comparison to them. Comparison. A dangerous thing we do. I am created differently than anyone else so, I'm not sure why I expect to be like anyone else. I struggle to accept me for who I am. I don't like kid's crafts or pretend or playgrounds. I do those things to the extent I can before I go crazy, but it's a process and I am working on it. I saw an art project on Pinterest that I knew I needed to try. I "know" who I am in my head, but my heart has a hard time always believing the truth about who I am... in Christ Jesus. That's the identity I want to focus on. Not the identity I have as a mom or wife or daughter or sister or friend or the identity I think I should live up to. I can stand tall because of who I really am. So, here is who I am:

This process what a bit tedious and the results are not as visually exciting as I had hoped. I am not an artist in the drawing sense, but it was a fun medium to try and it's a great visual reminder. The instructions I found said to use an ink pad to imprint your thumb on the middle of a blank paper. You then scan the picture and enlarge it until it's the full size of the page. Then using a light table or a window, trace the lines for your text. Easy peasy, right? Well, getting a clear imprint that I could enlarge to that size was tricky. I ended up photographing the print for a clearer image and then I monkeyed around with it in my photo program to get a darker image to trace. It wasn't perfect, but it got the job done. I traced roughly with pencil and wrote in the words. I basically copied a couple of printables I found on Pinterest. It took a good portion of the afternoon, but I soaked in each sentence as I wrote it down. It's a start, a way to get the head to the heart.

There are other things that have been on my heart lately, too. I am a creative being. That's one of the reason I blog. I love doing creative thing and I often find there isn't enough time to express that creativity in the daily grind of life. By the time I find time to sit down and create, it isn't a whole lot of time and it is always in sacrifice of other things. (I don't "do it all". I often neglect dishes or other housework in order to craft. I have also sacrificed time I could be spending with my David after the littles are in bed, or *gasp* ignore, to some extent, my littles for a half an interrupted hour at a time.) Those times sometimes feel "stolen" and rushed and not nearly as enjoyable as I'd like them to be. How to find balance is a challenge. I don't want my children to be tasks that I need to get through until I can do other things. Honestly, I've felt that. I'm trying not to focus on the guilt that comes with those feelings, but to recognize them and turn them over to God for Him to help me sort them out.

Do you want to know something cool?! God is teaching me something new for this season I am in. This season of little personal time and a lot of tasks that need my daily attention. His soft direction is guiding me to find the ways I can use the creativity, that He's put inside of me, in the ordinary and everyday tasks. For example, the daily task of doing Abby's hair. I discovered that I like to try new hairstyles in her hair. Abby likes to watch Youtube videos with me as we research new ways to do her hair. I don't like to do kids crafts, but I like to do Abby's hair. Her gratitude after each new hairstyle makes me want to cry. We've found something to do together that we both enjoy and can spend special time just the two of us, everyday. Abby has even begun to play around doing my hair and we can extend that time even longer. Dishes can still wait!

I am inspired by Princes Hairstyles, but often just play around with the basics to create new styles.

This was a revelation to me! I can turn the mundane into creative time. Do you want to know what I'm starting to be excited about now? Making my littles' their school lunches. Me!? I hated making lunches growing up to the point that I quit making lunches and just ate apples that my classmates didn't want. I've stumbled upon Bento box inspired lunches. This certainly isn't new, but I'm loving the possibilities. Cheese animals... just because! I'm sorry moms, if your child is in Abby's class this fall and wants lunches like hers and you're thinking "Aint nobody got time for that!" I'm making time for that and for other ridiculous things that I never thought I'd do. It's only that I want to enjoy my children and not just endure the preschool years until I can do a "real" job. The truth is, this is my real job and I want to do a good job of it. If I am created to create, then I can create to benefit my family and to the glory of God. By the way, I did an amateurish version of a bento box lunch for Abby this week and she was thrilled. It made me feel great blessing her with something so simple.

So, Pinterest might have new function for my creative researching these days. Maybe less sewing tutorials and more lunch ideas or hair ideas or whatever other ways I can make the mundane extraordinary!


P.S. In case you're wondering, I am not giving up on finding time to do my favourite creative things, like sewing, I am just finding ways to be creative in more ways and more often.

P.P.S If you follow me on Instagram, that's where you can see the hair-do's and box lunches (in the fall).

Baby Crafting

I didn't do much sewing during my pregnancy with Hannah, but I like to make something for my babies. Hannah spits up a lot and most of her bibs are hand me downs or they are super big on her yet, so I made some ridiculously cute bibs. Tutorial and pattern here.

 The tutorial had no measurements for the pleating and I'm not super happy with the spacing, but if I didn't say anything, I'd be one of the few to notice.

I like to no fuss option of using lace instead of the pleating, cute and quick.

 Of course, it's super easy and fast to do no embellishments.

A little reverse appliqué is cute, too.

Before Christmas I wanted to crochet myself a hat. I found a pattern I liked and when I didn't have the proper size hook or yarn to make the gauge requirements, I decided I would practise using what I had and I figured it might fit Abby or Hannah. Sure enough it looks awfully cute on my Hannah. I ended trying one for me later and it was a big fail. Oh well.

Spring is here!

Hello! I hope you are all well and finally enjoying spring, wherever you are. Today the sun is shining and the window is open letting in a delicious spring breeze. What a relief! I have a bit of crafty goodness to share today.

In honour of spring and the hope of it's coming, I redecorated my tree. Apple blossoms and butterflies seemed like a nice and spring~y thing to decorate with.

Behind the tree you'll see my new wall art. I simply cut out letters out of foam board and painted them with acrylic paint. You can't tell in the picture, but the "o" is metallic teal and quite lovely.

I have had fun over the last few days preparing a few packages for my prayer partner in Romania. My friend's parents are missionaries in Romania and have connected some of us gals to pray with a lady in Romania. We were invited to send little gifts to our prayer partners and since our missionaries are coming to Canada this month I put together three packages (to be staggered in their delivery) to send to my prayer partner. I don't know anything about her except her name and what she looks like. I do have a nice picture of her and a list of suggested things to pray for her. Many of the families are poor and in need of consistent jobs, firewood and food. These are basic needs that we take so much for granted.

I wondered what my friend would like. I wanted to give her pretty and useful gifts that aren't frivolous, but might make her feel special for having received them. Here's what I came up with:

The first thing I thought that would be pretty and practical was an apron. I sewed this one up with the waist straps adjusting the neck strap - super handy and cute. Then I thought, I could sew up a little zipper pouch to put it in and fill with little goodies. The picture below shows some of what I put in, but in the end it contained the apron, chocolate, a broach, 4 different flavours of tea, a letter with pictures of my family in it and a felt banner of butterflies and hearts. I used google translate to help me with the letter. I wrote it out by hand in English and then Romanian, sentence by sentence. 

The second package I worked on came with a sudden inspiration. A sewing kit is useful and could be made pretty. I've made these little potholder bags before. They're super handy and a quick project.
I then had fun filling it with supplies. (click to enlarge the picture) I filled two little baggies with buttons. One in rainbow colours and one in black and white. I filled another little baggie with rainbow coloured hair elastics, I use these to sew with all the time. I printed out some cute thread bobbins and wound some thread onto them.  I put in scissors, a stitch ripper, tailors chalk, zippers, lace and ribbon.

I also made a needle book, found the idea on Pinterest (of course) and it's genius!

The last package has a bunch of pretty little things. If it had a commercial wrapper on it, I covered it or replaced it with pretty paper and used google translate to label them. I whipped up another zipper pouch (why use wrapping paper when you can put it in something useful and cute?) and it contains 4 more teas, 2 packages of lifesavers, lip balm, hand lotion, bobby pins for her hair, a little note and a mini bar of my favourite bar soap.

"For your hair"

 

Don't they look cute?

 Abigail has also been getting her craft on. It started with a special picture for Grandma Ang on her birthday.

Abby didn't want Grandpa to feel left out though, so she made this...

"tell Grandpa that it isn't meant to be paper underwear with rhinoceros teeth, but it's meant to be a castle."

Now you know!

Checking In

Well, we're in the thick of flu season, but I figured I could sit at the computer while holding a little and give a small update. I don't have a lot of pictures to go with my update, so I'll entertain you with pictures of my littles.

• Aside from the flu, it's been a bit of a crazy month. David went back to work after being on parental leave. Being our fourth, I've lowered my expectations a whole lot as to what I can accomplish the first two weeks, so we went into survival mode and we made it through.

It looks like Micah is about to give Hannah a "wet willy"

•  Is there anyone out there not tired of winter yet? We have had spring fever for a month (at least).

Abby's getting into posing for pictures and Malachi is in his "uniform" super hero costume

The Gingras littles' album cover

• Hannah is three months old today! Wow! 

•  April is looking to be a fun month filled with celebrations. I won't be hosting a party this spring like I usually do (there are plenty of fun events to go to), but David and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary this August and there are rumours of a party. This pretty much means that I have something to obsess over plan for months to come. I LOVE IT!

Poor Hannah... what happens when she doesn't see

or maybe she does know

•  I am looking for a dress. I found a cute pattern, but I don't sew clothing. My David says it's time to get my feet wet in that department, but it's intimidating to me. I need a seasoned seamstress to coach me through the fitting process. I did find a blog sew-a-long for that specific pattern, so I might struggle through, but if you're reading this (in Winnipeg) and want to help, please let me know!

• In actual news, the girls got their ears pierced a few weeks ago. It was a special sister date and they both did great.

Cold Saturday morning dance party (in their dancing clothes)

•  David did some ingenious arranging in the living room. We needed to reclaim our third bedroom as a bedroom again, so the office and craft room needed to be evicted. I want to show you, but need to take some good pictures and that requires time to clean up better. It's been a disaster area around here, but I am slowly attempting to catch up. Hopefully soon. 

Happy (belated) St. Patrick's Day

Well, that's all for now. It wasn't all that exciting, but it's where we are right now. Hope you and yours aren't buried in a flu cycle and your snow (if you have any) melts!

TaDa!

I have finally declared my first crochet afghan FINISHED!

I began last winter and I wasn't 100% sure that I would even have it in me to finish a large crochet project, but I did it! I was inspired by this afghan when I saw it on Pinterest I thought to myself "I want to try one like that. By changing stitches often I won't likely get bored with it." Not having $80 to invest in yarn all at once, I grabbed a skein of red that I had already and decided that I would use it up and when I ran out I would go buy another colour.

Teal came next, then hunter green dark purple, grey, fuchsia and orange. This is where I really began to like my work and became a little bit picky. The orange I bought I didn't really like how bright it was in comparison to the rest of the colours. I left it after only one row, though I do enjoy the contrast right there.

I also didn't like the first section of red I did. The colour was nice, but it was a different texture than the rest of the yarn I had used and it was bugging me. On a whim I ripped it out. This almost wrecked my afghan! I was freaked out for several hours as I tried to salvage what I had done. I managed to save the blanket and replaced the red with chocolate brown. The seam between the two colours is horrendous, but my "fix" turned out kinda pretty as I crocheted a thin row of lilac right over top.

Chocolate brown then red (in the same brand and texture of yarn), cornflower blue and lilac finished the bottom. After the orange came navy and light green to finish the top. I then did a single row of kelly green to begin a border and finished with the dark purple. The process of this blanket was fun for me. I loved making it up as I went. Somewhere in the new red section, I got a book, Crochet Stitch Dictionary and my rows became even more thought out and fancy. Up to that point I surfed Pinterest and YouTube to decide my next stitch and often learned new stitches for a change. My favourite section (for detail, not necessarily for colour) is the cornflower blue. I love how it turned out. I added a little heart to the corner and eep!

I've come a long way in skill since I first began and you can visually see the difference in the skill level throughout the blanket. It's also quite a bit wider at one end than the other, though blocking did help some. I am so proud of the project, though and won't change another bit of it. The lighting wasn't great for these pictures and so, the flash kinda skews the colours, but I couldn't wait to show you, so these will have to do. Just for one, I've added one with my newest model, Hannah...

I turned off the flash so I wouldn't blind her, so it looks really dark here.

Checking In

Phew! I knew I had a lot to show, but this is almost ridiculous. Here we go, one more post to check in and be caught up!

• Did you see my new bed on Facebook? Well, my David bought me a gorgeous bed for Valentine's Day. We always look in the "as-is" section at Ikea and this was a display bed for a ridiculous low price. It's been so nice to have our mattress off the floor as we've been without a bed frame for the length of our marriage.

• We needed a sound buffer in our bedroom and so we ordered this area rug from Walmart online. We had it in the living room for the first few days while we waited for the underlay to come and now I want another for our living room. It's so fun and pretty and homey. The underlay came in yesterday and so it's now in our bedroom and I do love getting out of bed onto a carpet again.

• So, Valentines weekend, we went to a family retreat. It was so much fun. I am part of a moms' group and we planned this weekend retreat. I got to do the fun work of the weekend which included the welcome gifts. You've probably seen the snowman kits from my last post. I also put in small jars of hot chocolate that I dressed up a little. There was a lot of goodies in that bag. It was super fun to put together.

• David and I were also in charge of putting together a photo booth. We picked up these bare wood props at Michaels and I did a quick sharpie doodle on them to dress them up. We will have to do this again sometime. The weekend was plenty busy and there wasn't enough time or space to leave it up longer.

• Our fourth little Gingras baby has been such a blessing to our family. The boys have loved her so much that she's caught her first cold. Despite that, she's doing well. Her 2 month doctors appointment was yesterday and she weighs a healthy 11 pounds 12 ounces. She outgrew the bassinet that we have borrowed and have moved her into a cradle and into the other room. Micah only lasted about one week in our room, so it feels a bit strange to have waited this long and yet, knowing she is our last baby, I was almost sad. Here she is with her new woobie. Abby still has hers and I love that it's such a special thing for our girls.

• My David brought home these pretty flowers for me last week. Abigail is convinced that I have to share with her and Hannah any flowers that I get. I let her think they are ours, sometimes.

• Hannah is a bit young yet for me to leave her with a sitter for long yet, so David and I are dating at home these days. Friday night I ran to the grocery store and bought some fancy desserts and some Tazo chai latte syrup. We made our own cozy spot in the living room (on our rug) in front of our fake fireplace, with a fake rain storm for ambiance along with some jazz music in the background. David read to me while I cuddled Hannah and worked on my crochet project. It was perhaps my favourite date that we've had in a long time. We just finished Illusion by Frank Perretti. It was such an intriguing story and I love how imaginative it was.

• It's been a cold winter, but not without a few days of warm play weather. We had a nice time on the Monday holiday.