Christmas recap

By a day or two after Christmas, I'm over it all and don't want to see anything Christmas related until after Thanksgiving the next year. So I thought I'd hurry and get a post up with our Christmas decorations for this year commemorated and our baby girl's first Christmas documented so then we can move on to the new year!!

Welcome to our home :) The typewriter serves as our guest book (when I remember to have people "sign" it). The tree is meant to be a card holder, but I like it better by itself, so I ended up using the typewriter as our card holder as you can see further down. I want to spray paint that bright silver star with something bronzish…maybe I'll get that done before I pack it away for next year. The wreath is a fresh one from Trader Joe's.


Thomas Kincaide really isn't my favorite, but the painting below was my husband's before we met, and since it's 5th Avenue in NYC and not a cottage or a lighthouse, and since it covers the weird cut-out nook above our fireplace, it stays. And it works really well for Christmas, I think. I hung ornaments from the top of the frame so they would float in front of the glowing sky.

The vase hold our glass ornaments, since we have a tree-trimming open house every year, and invite plenty of families with children…I put out all of our unbreakable ornaments for that, and keep the glass ones safely out of the way. The stockings are all handmade…mine & Dave's were a wedding gift from my oldest friend…um, not that she's older than all my other friends, but that I've known her longest. Can't figure out how to say that correctly! Lucy's stocking was made by a dear friend back in NY…I love the jingle bells and that her name is knit right into it. The tree needs one more strand of lights, and I think we'll go back to the short-needled kind next year. Much easier to actually hang ornaments from, instead of them sprawling on the surface like they do on this one!


After using whatever I had on hand for the mantle, I decided it needed some candles, so I headed to TJ Maxx…and found my favorite…fake, remote-controlled candles! yay! So weird. And Dave hates the way they smell, so we barely "burned" them at all. But it just cracked me up, the way technology has taken over everything.


I have loved receiving so many Christmas cards from far away friends and family…it's fun to see how folks have changed and grown over the past year.


Here's the card we sent out this year. She really does.



Look what we found under our tree yesterday! A wee bundle of joy. She's my best gift this year, for sure.


She was super smiley, as if she actually knew what was going on.



She did great opening her gifts…and playing with the paper :)



I love how she smiles like crazy for her Daddy…and how he interacts with her. He's her biggest fan.


Sigh. I found her cousin's pictures from last year in this outfit…her cousin who is now walking and talking. That'll be her next year!


This shot will get put into an ornament frame for adding to our tree next year…love how our family has changed each year we've been married.

stretched :: challenged :: stimulated

A couple of weeks ago at work, I had a crisis. I was asked to do something that I felt I truly could not do. I wasn't capable of this task. It was out of my realm of training and experience. It was something I had not ever done before, and something I had said "I can't" to in the past.

This time, however, I was not given the option of saying "I can't." It was something that had to happen, in whatever way I could make it happen. It was so hard to take the step and try. I was close to tears one day, afraid that I wouldn't be able to do it, afraid that I was going to let the whole team down, afraid that my fear was going to put me out of a job. I knew I had to bite the bullet and just do it.

I had to sketch.




Sounds real scary, doesn't it?

You see, when I was in college and was taking the one drawing class required for my major, I had a teacher who erased one of my drawings and redid it, while not even looking at the girl who's profile I had been drawing. I was so upset I was shaking mad. And right then and there was planted a seed of "I can't draw."

I'm not the kind of person to blame each of my failings on some event in the past that scarred me. I know there is more to my fears than that one incident with that one teacher. There is that in me that resists trying harder, attempting new and challenging things and overcoming hurdles that seem too high.

It's largely pride…this fear of failure. I don't want to be humiliated by what I cannot do, so I continue to do the things I know I can do.

But lately, I have not been allowed to just keep on plodding at the same level. I am being stretched, forced outside of the safe, successful boundaries I have lived within for so long.

I'm glad I've been stretched. Because, you see, I have learned that I can sketch. It may not be as good as many others can, and I have a long way to go before I can look at a scene or an object and get all the perspectives correct, but I can do it. I can do what needs to be done for this process. I can do the thing I truly thought I could not do.

Now what else am I claiming I can't do? How about you?

bridal shower design

Well, the wedding is over and done with, and the shower is a distant memory, but I wanted to get a post up about it, because it was really fun to do the design and planning for this shower. The bride was using red in her wedding as her primary color, so I wanted to tie that into the shower. Now, red is not a favorite color of mine, so it took me a while to figure out how to enjoy this color as I planned this shower.

A couple of us had talked about chocolate brown and teal blue as a great color combo to use, but that pretty much didn't tie into the wedding theme, and I like things to be coordinated. Along with the chocolate color theme, we decided to do an actual chocolate theme for the shower. So then we had red and brown. Not really such an appealing color combo.

There are a bunch of design/crafty blogs that I frequent, and a color combo that I kept seeing was red with a robin's egg blue. It wasn't anything I would have thought of, but the more I looked at it, the more I loved it.



Given that the wedding was planned for the 4th of July, a red white & blue theme seemed logical, but I really dislike red and blue together...when it's a dark blue. Sorry, I know it seems un-American and anti- all the multitudes of sports teams that use that pairing. But that's just the way it is. Red & blue are both strong colors, and they just fight when they're married.

But this pale, crisp blue with the red: it's lovely! Fresh & Springy...a great color scheme for a May shower.

So I played around with a logo/monogram of sorts...their first names both start with "J" so I kept it simple. Drew a simple flower and I had a launch pad for invitations, decorations and favors.

I wanted to do really nice invitations, so I splurged on some great paper. A really rich red and a metallic pale blue...with red envelopes...worth every penny!



Those Martha Stewart flattened marble magnets were really making the rounds in blogland, so I decided to make some of those for favors. A friend had some Kraft boxes we could use, so I packaged them up with custom stickers, a couple of magnets and a piece of chocolate in each. yummy fun.





I picked up a bunch of red stuff and chocolate at Valentines Day clearance sales, and ended up with just the right amount of stuff for decorating. Each table had its own fondue pot, so not everyone would steal chocolate from the bride's fountain. It only worked for so long.



And lastly, we have a blurry photo of the mantle with monograms & flowers hanging from bags full of geraniums and tulips. A smashing success all around.



Now, I must say I'm curious if anyone even made it to the end of this post…not really very interesting to people not into design or party planning...don't worry, the whales are next. I think.

Italy night

Michael and Erika Barone are missionaries on their way to Italy. I've been working with them for the past several months on their printed materials they'll use as they travel on deputation. It's been a fun & challenging process, and I think we came up with some good quality pieces for them to use! other than some printing issues that lots of people won't even notice, I'm pleased with how the different pieces turned out.

The image above is the three banners that we had printed 3 feet high. Another friend built a frame for these to hang from so the Barones can set them up on a table and still travel with them easily.

Last night, the Barones hosted an Italy night at our church. Michael preached and showed their informational DVD, and Erika led the teen choir singing a song in Italian. She's quite a talented music director/musician. And she had just had a baby 4 days before. Amazing woman.

They had Italian food at a reception afterwards...pizzelles (note to self: powdered sugar and black dresses do not mix well), chicken cacciatore, and some pasta and veggies dish. It was the best meal I'd had all week! I think they had about twice as many people show up as they had expected, which was a huge blessing. I don't think the church has been that full on a Sunday night all summer long!

Mike & Erika...I'm excited to see the Lord continue to work in your lives as you start on this journey together. Glad I've been able to be a part of it.

a passion for God

we brainstormed through dozens of possible themes for our missions conference in 2006. there were a lot of good thoughts, a lot of trite phrases, and a lot of promising starts. the more we talked, and as we had further meetings, it looked like "a passion for God" was winning out.

because, really, missions is about our passion for God spilling out as we share the good news with those around us, far and near. the more we get to know who God is, the more we want more people to recognize his amazingness! He is worth it!

so we went with "a passion for God" with several different phrases after that: "for He is worthy" "that all may hear" and so on. this logo came to me more quickly than any other logo ever has. i saw it in my mind, did a couple variations, and we were done. it's still one of my favorites. nothing fancy or complicated, just a basic color scheme and simple lines.


we like to have a little something to give out as reminders in the weeks leading up to a missions conference, so we did some magnets and bookmarks. I won't be ordering magnets from that particular company again, as they barely held themselves on to a surface, let alone even the thinnest piece of paper! color registration was less than stellar also.

the bookmarks were much more successful...we had them printed up as 2-sided postcards cut in half, so there were a total of 4 different sides of bookmarks. i took photos of maps—a world map, and a local map and did a grainy gray treatment on them with our theme verse printed on top. they're quite handy to have around...as bookmarks and as a reminder of who I am and what I'm called to...

raccoons and missionaries

so, today I thought I'd write a post just so that I could begin a third post in a row with the word "so." I believe this originated with my friend Jen Elmo (who is no longer Jen Elmo, but Jen Corey!), as she would often completely change the subject of conversation while making it sound like it was what we'd been talking about all along by starting with "so..."

for example: say we'd been talking right along about where we were going to go to dinner. at some point in the discussion of Japanese vs. Thai vs. Indian, Jenny would say something like this: "…so, I have a nest of baby raccoons living in my attic." or some other such totally unrelated item that felt like it should have been preceded with something more dramatic than "so." This was not an exact transcript of a particular conversation, but we have eaten Japanese, Thai & Indian food together (I think?) and she did, at one point, have a family of raccoons living in her attic.

you've probably figured out that the image above has nothing to do with raccoons or Thai food. it's part of a project I've been working on with Michael and Erika for a several months now to help them out with their deputation process. I've known them for several years now, designed their wedding invitations, and have been going through the process of creating a brochure, prayer card, letterhead and some banners for them to use as they travel around raising support for heading off to Italy in the hopefully near future.

It's fun working with them, as Michael usually has a pretty clear idea of what he wants, and I just need to figure out how to make it work. It's been a learning process all along for both of us as decisions are made about which printers to use, which pieces to focus our efforts on first, etc. I have had to try to get a bit better with managing my time wisely so I can get these pieces out the door after working my normal 9-5 job. I wish I could spend much more of my time doing projects like this for missionaries...it seems like it may actually make an impact on the world for good...more so than the woodworking tools catalog I've been doing at my full-time job.