Wordfull Wednesday - Unity in Marriage

This will be quick because I have to get back to James Bond but unity is very important. Right now in our little family it has become increasingly more important to make sure that we are consistent. It's been awful to watch our little baby start to twist things between us to get his way. He knows that Dad doesn't like to take his loveys when we go out but mom's a sucker and will let him sneak giraffe into the car.
The best way to stay united is through communication. We live in a time where we can constantly be in contact with our spouses and I am with mine. My husband has a pretty good grasp on what me and Ollie are up to because he gets constant facebook messages, text messages, photos, and he can get on my blog and read up on our activities. It has helped to have Bryan always support and know what is going on. He's fully aware of what is expected and how to deal with things.
Unity hard to break down and talk about because it is marriage. You are united in everything you do - forever. Your decisions will always affect your marriage. It's like plucking a string. When the string is short and the ends are close together if you pluck it then it's a small short ripple but the longer the string the bigger the waves from plucking it will be. No matter what plucks our string as long as we stay close together the effects won't be to big.

To Be Our Brother's Keeper

Creating things brings me a lot of joy and confidence as I am working to create a home all on my own. It's harder than I thought it would be. This isn't another "I wish I had payed more attention to my mom" post but I sure do miss having her around. But Third to my mom and all my wonderful friends out here is the internet, more specifically the blogging nation. I just love that I can find normal people like me trying to be thrifty, crafty, cute, and organized. There are so many beautiful ideas out there and now they are being shared all over the world. It's simply amazing.
This morning I was reading in "Small and Simple Things" and Sister Hinckley said," We all have a responsibility-a responsibility to make a difference, to be an influence, to lift someone. We are all in this together to work out our salvation, to reach our potential, and to be our brother's keeper-to help each other."
That's how I've felt about blogging lately. If I can do my little part to help someone else than I am doing something great and I want to thank all the other people out there posting the things that they are doing. I'm probably using your ideas to help my home and family keep on track. Thanks!

Week 8: Feb. 14-20

Okay, this is small bit of fudging. This actually happened on the 13th but it was part of my birthday/valentine's day so I'm claiming it happened on Valentine's day.

Bryan surprised me with two tickets to Lion King on Broadway. It was certainly a surprise. I had been asking for them every time he asked what I wanted but I didn't really think that would be what I would get. I thought I was getting a mixer but this was so much better.

It was so amazing! The costumes were just beautiful. The music was a good mix of my cartoon favorites and real African feeling music. I was in shock just being there. In fact it's still hard for me to wrap my head around. It was such a wonderful gift and I truly loved it.

Thank you, Bryan!

Week 7: Feb. 7 - 13

2 newest members of the household. Clementine and Churchill.

week 6: Jan 31-Feb. 6

This is like beating a dead horse but this is all that I did that entire week. But I'm still proud of it.

Week 5: Jan 24-30

Working on my Gospel Principles book.

Postcard Swap

Today my husband asked "How much is this postcard swap thing going to cost me? I don't want to spend $70.00* on postage and $100.00* on the actual postcards."

This is where I calmly said, "Honey, 3 months ago when I asked if you thought this would be a fun idea and if we could participate I laid out the cost before you and estimated about $35-40*. You said okay." Really, this was very calm, you can ask him.

Once again Husband replied,"okay."

Phew, now that that was over I could continue with blogging about how great it's been to be receiving postcards in the mail. When Husband says, "Should we start buying these bit by bit so that the cost doesn't take a big chunk out of our budget? When is it our turn to send them out anyway?"

Again I reply in a level tone,"They are in alphabetical order meaning that we are sometime in midmarch and what kind of state is our budget in if we can't take a $40* hit for one month?

Husband replies,"$40*, that's not bad. Okay, that's fine."

Does anyone else feel that I'm talking to myself? Anyways, back to how much fun it has been to receive actual mail in our mailbox. You know, instead of those dang credit card offers (is there a do not mail list?) I search through our mail and pull out that glorious postcard, show Ollie the picture then turn it over and read about the fun facts on the back to him then it is swiftly posted on the fridge.

We now have 3 on our refrigerator and I'm proud of them but the time has come for us to create a place to put them. So right now I'm looking for any ideas on book formats to keep postcard collections for say 50 or so postcards.

And I'd like to say proudly

Mom Mishaps

I have a lot to update on but here is a quick list of a few "Mom Mishaps" that have gone down in our lovely home in the last month:

1- Tried to make cute valentine suckers from Peppermint candy canes - melted them all over my cookie sheet (twice) and had to go buy those store valentine's instead. Bryan voted for the WWF kind but I shot that down quicker than a starving rattle snake and we went with Cars instead.

2- Tried, without success, to keep my house clean. Why I even bother is still a mystery to me.

3- Baked super soft chunky chocolate chips and burned the first batch. Bless my husband, he ate them and said they were wonderful. There is an art to cookie baking that I just plain don't understand. I think I'll just stick with what I know; Tannies.

4- Racked up a $6 library fine then had to use our toll money to pay for it.

5- Over reacted to my husband twice in the last 48 hours.

6- Fell asleep on the couch and woke up to Oliver crying for Giraffe, who never even made it into bed... whoops.

7- Was so busy this month that I forgot to take the time to enjoy those little moments with Oliver. There is going to be some new prioritizing for this month.

Fushful Thinking

I just love this video. I love that it is very simple. I've found that the secret to success is not in some complicated formula but usually in remembering the basics.

Happy Valentine's Day!

New blog title

I've changed my blog title, not my address, that will remain the same. I've put a lot of thought into it and let me tell you why.

Do you remember when all of the sudden it became cool to be uncool? You know, when it became cool to listen to weird twangy indie music, to wear dorky plastic black glasses, to wear clothes that don't fit right, and to say awkward things at awkward moments. Oh yeah, I remember. It happened my senior year. I'd finally given up on trying to be cool and popular.
No one wants to admit that, but I will. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be beautiful, and I wanted to be considered popular.

But middle of Jr. year I gave up on that idea. I was not cool, I liked cartoons, pirates, and fantasy novels. I was liked but in the she's a nice girl, gets along with others type. I wasn't beautiful, I was awkward and teenagery, my hair was cut shorter on the left side. I sure as heck wasn't popular...
Then I came back my senior year and something changed. I know that this is all sounding very much like a good tween novel where I magically changed over the summer to come back and find that boys liked me and what-not but the truth is I didn't change, not an ounce. But the world changed and all the sudden my dorky black plastic glasses were fashionable and cartoons were awesome and entertaining, huh, who would have guessed?

What had really changed was I had never reached the level of maturiosity that most people do in their early high school years. So I was the weird one because I just wasn't on their level and then senior year they came back down and met with me in the middle and the I was acceptable.

Which brings me to my Maturiosity scale. (Inspired by my friend Shane, Who is always making awesome charts.)See we are on varying levels of Maturiosity and looking back through my blog posts I've come to realize that all of you are watching me grow in maturiosity. I don't know if I'm truly a misfit again or if I'm just in the wrong location for my particular brand of misfitness. See I'm in my early 20s. But I'm not still in college and I'm not still shirking responsibilities. In face I'm a 20 something living like a 30 yr. old. I have a husband, a child, a mortgage... While I'm still trying to mesh in funky ska music and wear my beat up plastic rim glasses.

I hope I didn't just weird anyone out with my awkwardness...

Wordfull Wednesday: Love Songs

I don't believe that Bryan and I have a song (who knows, maybe we do and later today Bryan will let me know what that song is.) But I would say that we have a genre; ska. The chaos that ensues when a ska song comes on brings nothing but giggles and fun to our house.
See when you move your body to a ska song it's called skanking. It's generally a mad dance in a circle. (Not American mad but the British kind) You swing your arms around wildly and kick your legs out and spin while circling around something, people, poles, chairs, whatever central point you can find. It's mad fun.
Now a story... Before Bryan and I were married we went on a date to a local concert at the Westwood Theatre. This was a fairly common date for us, especially going to see one of our favorite local ska bands "The Opskamatrists." We met my brother there and he challenged us to a Skank-Off. (Did I mention that ska runs in the family.) This was a true test of strength, love, and physical endurance. It was a test to see who could go the longest. We skanked through the first song intensely, the second song we hit just as hard, but 4 or 5 songs into the set I was looking tired and those comfy theatre seats were looking pretty good but Bryan pulled me up and encouraged me to continue on with the dream. I was like a marathon runner that had only trained to mile 24 but still had 2 more to go. I was fading fast but Bryan pulled me along. Insert short story about how this relates to enduring to the end. Eventually the set ended and I collapsed, too tired to even walk out to the water fountain. We'd done it, we'd taken gold, though if my brother ever reads this he'll definitely debate me on this point.

The Opskamatrists - ICUN Music Video

The Opskamatrists | MySpace Music Videos
So today I'm sharing one of my favorite songs from "The Opskamatrists" Thanks for listening to me share my memories.

Hello, My name is ClarisaJo and I watch too much HGTV

This week has been a flurry of tape, rollers, and paint! I've been working on getting Ollie's room put together how I've been planning since me and Bryan were engaged. I've always loved the idea of planning and creating beautiful living spaces. But...we've always rented apartments. Which means don't put too many holes in the wall, don't paint, and don't have any fun. Now that we have our own house I've been very surprised that it has taken me this long to break out the paint.I've always wanted to paint a cool design on my kids bedroom wall. It started as polka dots, then changed to stripes, checkered, diamonds, and finally evolved into a full form idea of argyle. Then I saw what Cocoa had done to her girls room and knew that that is what I wanted; with a little variation.This is what the wall looked like originally. Pretty lame, I know.I started by painting the whole wall a light flat orange. 2 coats.
I didn't want to have an overwhelming wall with lots of different colors. Especially since it was Orange. Orange can get overwhelming. Hence the only one wall and the 2 different shades of orange. I measured three feet across the top and the bottom of both walls, leaving small pencils marks in my wake. Then I took a string and connected all the lines diagonally and taped INSIDE each of the diamonds and painted the triangles a darker semigloss orange. The different textures of paint just gives the wall a little bit of dimension. I peeled the tape away and it looked like this. And let me tell you at this point I was done. I thought it looked good and could be left this way and I could love the wall just as much as if it had actually been argyle but Bryan convinced me that I needed to continue on. So I cracked open a can of brown paint and continued on by measuring 3 feet on the wall again but opposite of what I'd done previously. Laying my tape and then putting another piece really really close to the first then marking every 2 inches. I painted every other 2 inch block all the way down the wall. Let it dry, paint a second coat, then remove the tape.TADA!! An orange Argyle wall.

Gospel Principles Book

This is my disclaimer before I start posting my crafting projects up on my blog. I'm not a neat crafter, in fact some would call it just plain sloppy. So if you are offended by misaligned edges, unmeasured squares, and fingerprints in paint then these are probably sections that should be skipped. Well, with that said, let me explain: I'm trying to keep up on my scripture study this year and follow the church curriculum. So to help me to keep up in the Old Testament I made these book marks:
You are welcome to download this. Just save it to your computer but make sure you click on it first so that you can get the larger file.

Then I decided to make a bookmark for Relief Society:Both of these have been awesome for keeping me on track. I really like to mark them off and show that I'm keeping up. The problem happened when I crawled into bed one evening, looked down at my list and realized that it was a Teaching For Our Times section. Oh, crap, here I am all cozy in bed and I have to read a talk from General Conference. So I pull out my trusty iphone and read the talk on there. But that got me thinking; what if my iphone hadn't been available, or if one of our 3 computers wasn't available, or possibly if a ninja broke into our home and pilfered our copy of the ensign (excuse my last one, it was in the heat of the moment and I fully realize that Ninjas don't pilfer, pirates do. Just roll with it.) To make sure that the talks and the book are all in the same easy to reach place I decided that I would print them all out, fold them in half, and stick them in between the pages of my book. Simple right, wrong, I have a toddler and nothing slid into a book stays "slid" in. So I spiral bound my book and actually bound the talks inside the book in chronological order so that I could just open up and start reading where ever I left off. Awesome, huh?


The sad part is that as cool as my book is...I am not in RS. I'm in the YW and no one will ever see it or hear my awesome answers to the questions because I came prepared.

Trains

Oliver really loves trains. He plays with them at friends houses, at the library, at Grandpa's house. But the truly great place he plays trains is at our house; where we don't actually have a train set. Instead he PRETENDS by placing all his cars in a row and saying Choo Choo he pushes them from behind and of course they all jumble up but he patiently puts them all back in their place and starts again. I love to watch him play trains. It reminds of so many things that I feel have been lost in a lot of children today. First: Oliver pretends. I love to watch his imagination grow. It's amazing to see the connections he makes. I know that I wouldn't look at a car and think train even though they are very similar I know that a train is a train and a car is a car. Second: Sorting. It's so good to see him sort. We have a couple different sets of cars. A set that we got him for Christmas last year, a set that we got him for Christmas this year, and a set from Grandma and Grandpa Williams. With all these cars he puts them all in the correct line and the Grandma and Grandpa set doesn't get mixed in with the last year christmas set. and Third: Patience, even though the cars crumple up on each other he still puts them back in the correct place and tries it again. He'll play all afternoon if I don't have anything else going on.
I love playing "Trains."