Summer Break

I'm taking a bit of a blog break to soak in as much summer as possible. Our summer calendar in July is completely full. Vacations, camps, day trips, and a bit of laziness by the pool are filling our days. I'm looking forward to some more unplugged time this month. Blogging will be hit and miss through the end of July.  I'll be back to more regular posts in August.  I hope you have a great July!

Photo credit: Andrew of Cuba Gallery.  Check out his work. So amazing.  I love the colors, light, and minimalistic quality of the photos. The one above screams summer to me. Love it!

Blog Share: Dottie Angel

Always good for a vintage, thrifty, handmade fix- Dottie Angel is a good read. And she has chickens. I want chickens. Oh, and I just found a vintage thermos set just like the one in that picture. Happy! Check it out.

Isn't that a great picture? Looks like a mini vacation spot you could have in your own backyard. Reminds me of my grandmas house. At family parties when I was a girl, we'd pull out a bunch of her quilts and play with vintage barbies under a big pine tree with all my girl cousins.  There'd usually be homemade ice cream churning away. My grandpa would be manning it, know just when it was perfect, and serve it up to all of us anxious kids.  I loved that.

P.S. Have you checked out the Good Look Cookbook lately? Last Friday I posted a blog design inspired by a vintage juice bottle label. It's so much fun.

Happy Trails

Part of the Evo Conference last weekend was a closing western themed party sponsored by Bush's Beans and Park City Mountain Resort.  We had a blast! If you haven't been to Park City Resort lately, it's great family fun. The Alpine slide and new Alpine coaster are so fun. My littlest guy is three and he yelled WOOHOO the whole way down.

There is also a zip line, which we didn't go on- the line was longer than we had time for. But it looked so fun. Everyone coming down had huge smiles on their faces. There's also a climbing wall, a jumpy-bungee thing, and a few of smaller rides for the littles.

There was dancing at the end of the night and my little guy is quite the dancer. He REALLY wanted to get on the dance floor but was scared of all the ladies. So he threw a move or two then would run back to me. He cracks me up.

I love family activities like this. It's great to just play and have fun with the kids- breathes freshness into family relationships I think.

Baked in a Jar

I think these are cute. They'd be a fun thing to take to a party or summer picnic. And supposedly, the chocolate cake can be self sealed in the jar and stay fresh on the shelf for up to six months.

Clockwise from top left these recipes are found:

Pies Baked in Jars from Not Martha

Cheesecake in a Jar from Chez Pim

Red Velvet Cupcakes in a Jar from Cakies

Chocolate Cake in a Jar from Instructables

Mini Print: Ordinary Moments

I had the chance to attend Evo Conference last weekend. It's a conference for women in social media. Wow! Amazing stuff. The presenters and speakers were so wonderful. I learned a lot. Can I share a few themes that stuck out to me? Then this mini print will make more sense. The first thing is that everyone has a story to tell. No matter who you are- your life is important and what you do in your life is worth recording and sharing. Social media- blogging, twitter, facebook status updates, etc. all are just tools to help you record then lines and threads of your story.

The thing with these stories is that each one is unique. No other person in the world has your exact story to tell. There may be similar in theme but they are different. The trick is to tell your own story in authentic way so that you are true to yourself and the life you've been given.

I loved this idea but it's hard to do sometimes. I see things around me that make me feel like my own story is not as important or maybe I'm not as important. Or maybe there is not room for someone like me here.

One of the speakers, Brene Brown said that this is one of the biggest negatives of Social Media. It makes people feel like only extraordinary things are valuable and worthy. It encourages you to compare your ordinary with someone else's extraordinary.

This is where the second point comes in that I'd like to share. Ordinary does not equal unimportant. Brene shared stories from her research with survivors of traumatic events & people who have lost loved ones to traumatic events. The one thing they all said was they wished they could just have the ordinary moments back.

The moments that might be considered mundane or trivial are actually the things they miss most. 

Wow, right? That really struck me. I am sometimes guilty of not appreciate those ordinary moments. Sometimes when I am smack in the middle of a humongous pile of laundry, or a ginormous stack of dishes I think of all the perfectly styled hair, homes, and children... and well, my life doesn't seem to match up very well.

That's the whole thing about telling your own story and appreciating those ordinary moments. Everyone's normal is different. Everyone's ordinary is different. But they are all important and valuable and worth celebrating.

Dear readers of my blog. I know some of you personally. Some of you, I don't. Those of you who know me personally know that my house is CRAZY sometimes. I don't profess to have all the answers or be great at anything. I have dust on the tops of my picture frames, dishes waiting in my sink, and clothes that will probably never get mended before they are outgrown. I have 30 pounds to lose and have a temper sometimes. I am insecure a lot. I take things personally that I shouldn't.  I've had sad things happen to me. I've had happy things happen to me. I am real.

I hope to be more authentic at telling my story here.  I will still post things I love. Things that inspire me. Things I make, write, and do with my family. Things that make me laugh. And things that I hope will help me become better. A better woman. A better wife. A better mom.

By doing so, I hope you know that I post them because they have meaning in my life. If they don't have meaning in yours- that's okay. I appreciate you visiting anyway. I am freeing myself from worrying if people will like what I put here. Or if they won't. I am freeing myself from trying to live up to someone else's extraordinary. My ordinary will do just fine. It's my story after all and who better to tell it than me.

When I am old and my children are grown. I want to have extraordinary memories of our ordinary moments. I made a mini print for me and I'd love to share it with you, if you'd like it. You can download the [Ordinary Moments Mini Print] for personal use. Just option click (mac) or right click (pc) on the previous link. If you click on the image, you'll just get a png file- which is fine if you want to share this on the web. But if you click on the link, you'll download a pdf file that you can print onto cardstock on your home printer.

Giveaway Winner

Yeah! The winner is... TRISH! Email me your mailing address and I'll put your new vintage party book in the mail.

Thanks to everyone who entered and shared your party memories with me! I loved them! I wish I  had a book for all of you.  I don't- but I'd still like to send you some happy mail. Email me your mailing addresses and I'll send you each out a little something just for playing :)

Vintage Betsy McCall Paper Dolls

Fun printable Betsy McCall paper doll sets. There are 10 years of these sets starting from 1951. Each year has multiple sets.  I think it'd be great road trip activity! These plus some safety scissors for each girl would keep them busy for quite a while.

Fabric Expandable File

This was a crazy project. I wanted to try and make a fabric expandable file folder. I didn't do a good job of step by step instructions or photos but I thought I'd show you anyway. I kind of like how it turned out. I was making it up as I went along and probably should have used black thread- my white thread shows my crazy stitching too much. Oh well.

I found a cheap plastic file folder at a thrift store and took it apart to use as a pattern. I carefully ripped out the accordion folded sides & the plastic dividers. I planned on using the dividers again. The accordion folded plastic sides would just be used for a pattern.

After I had it all taken apart, I used each piece and traced around it on my new fabric. I cut two fabric pieces per plastic pattern piece plus some heavy fabric interfacing for each.

After I had all the pieces cut, I pinned them right sides together, added the interfacing, sewed up the shell like a pillowcase, turned it right side out and pressed it.

For the accordion sides, I sewed the small pieces together first then fan folded and pressed them into shape. Then I sewed in the plastic dividers to each corresponding fold on both of the accordion sides. That part was kind of tricky. I unpicked it a few times. Then just sewed the accordion side edges with the attached plastic to my outer shell and added a ribbon to tie it together.

I took it on a road trip and filled it with magazines I wanted to read. Fun!

Growing a Garden

This is our fourth year planting a garden. This year was a really late winter/spring and we are now just seeing some of the plants coming up. I love it. Putting seeds into the ground and watching as they grow into something to feed your family is so amazing and gratifying. I don't really know what I am doing. It's just fun to learn as I go and get some healthy groceries in the process.

A few months ago my husband and I watched Food, Inc. & King Corn.  I'd recommend watching them both- you can find them on Netflix. Whew! Be warned you might not look at food the same again.

First up: Food Inc.



Next King Corn:



Third: Love this video too- wouldn't it be cool if every town had it's own mini dairy like this?


Brown Family Dairy from UM Media Documentary Projects on Vimeo.

Quote of the Week

I love this quote! Life is a lot like a journey at sea. Lots of nice calm days and lots of storms to ride out. I like the idea that I consented to leave the safety of the shore to reach a new land.  Reminds me of when as a newly married couple, by husband and I packed our little car and drove off to law school. I had never lived this far away from my family for an extended period of time and it felt like I was really pushing off from the shore and heading into uncharted waters. I think I cried for the first hour or two of the journey.

We were wait listed at one school and accepted at another. My husband REALLY wanted to go to the wait listed school but the other one started a few weeks earlier. We drove to the first school and enrolled. But we planned on packing up in a few weeks and heading to the new school so we didn't want to make any housing arrangements. We camped in the KOA while my husband started school.  He'd study his books by Coleman lantern at night, careful not to mark his books since we were sure he'd just be returning them.

I'd hang out at the campground or go in with him to campus. After a few weeks passed, we found out he didn't get in to the wait listed school.  We were heartbroken and felt like we really were lost at sea. Some kind people we met in church took us under their wing and were horrified that we'd been camping that whole time. They invited us to stay with them until we found somewhere to live. They were a lifeboat to us and we will never forget their kindness.

We ended up finding an apartment and moved in with the contents of our little car. We had a blue folding camp table, a borrowed foam pad, a camp cook set and a few bags of clothes and camp supplies. The rest of our belongings were back home waiting to be shipped to us via freight when we had settled in a place.  When we realized we were staying and not moving on to the other school, we sent for our stuff and waited. We slept on that foam pad, cooked with our camp dishes and chopped veggies with a pocket knife in an empty apartment for another month until our shipment arrived. What a great day that was! It felt so amazing to unpack dishes, sleep in an actual bed, and have the rest of our belongings with us.

What we didn't know then, is that this experience early on in our life together would start us off on a grand adventure and shape our relationship. We ended up LOVING the school, the town, & our neighborhood. We loved this new land we had discovered. Three years later, when it was time to move on again, I was better prepared for the journey ahead and a little sad to see that experience end.