2009: A year in pictures~

Nostalgic over the years end I decided as seen a la CJane-I thought it was a great idea to document our 2009 in photos. Ones not necessarily shared on here before...

January.....started with my birthday (36th-cough*cough) and long awaited reconnections. Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE facebook? Talking with old friends and posting old goofy pictures and sharing old memories -most not seen since the 4th grade has really made my year-no joke. 26 years.....sigh. Who can find me first? lol

Somebody who didn't have curls yet decided to start crawling......

And the foyer project is officially started. Who knew by December it wouldn't be complete? lol

February has a sleepy baby. A million pictures of him sleeping. Really-there aren't any others all month. Pretty sad.

March brings unseasonably warm weather (just look at the short sleeves!) and a new project underway-turning the garage around! The garage door was flip flopped around to face the alley so we can tear out the driveway and have more yard. I wonder why it took so long for the foyer remodel......anyone else? lol

April is the time little guy decided to start taking his first steps...And first boo-boos on the chin from falling.

And Easter block parties with lots of face painting with friends...


May brings more progress to the foyer remodel. The huge mirror has been swung around to the opposite wall and floors have just been laid.
And a little skirt twirling on wacky clothes day after school.

June brings a family vacation!

Here we are in Carmel, Indiana at an abandoned old church for sale. We fell in love with it right away. That AND the town. I should have photoshopped some fake tan on myself. yeek.
A little trip down to Boogertown....
All of us at the Smokie's sign. I just love Sawyer in this shot. lol.Litte guy turned 1 years old this month. Where?-you may ask are the photos of Sawyer's 1st birthday from June? Why-I haven't a clue. Feeling pretty irked about this too.....

July....Chloe's birthday. Why can't I find photos from her birthday either? What's going on here???

Here's a cute little tush in a romper...love it!
Foyer progress: sanding floors first to stain. And stain he did. 3 times! That meant sanding 3 times as well. It just wasn't coming out right. Hard work paid off-now they look great!

A much needed girls night out!

Sawyer's first boat ride :) This must've been on my Granny's 82nd birthday. We always take a pontoon ride on the lake over at my Aunt and Uncle's house.

August Chloe started 3rd grade back at her old school. A very wise choice and she's thrilled and doing great!
Gabe turned 3 years old!

I hooked up with an old friend, Shannon from way back in the day. She lives a couple hours away and we found each other through facebook. Have I mentioned how much I love facebook? We hadn't seen each other since sophmore year of high school. She came to the state fair with me and we went to see Heart and The Bangles. Had a blast and picked up where we left off-was so much fun!

While at the fair I played around with some photgraphy stuff. Thought this one turned out fun. :)

September was full of jewelry photos. Trying to come up with new lighting techniques,etc.
Gabe had his own soccer photo session.

Chloe had a great fall soccer session.

October had me scrambling to make inventory and gather displays for my first show.

Halloween of coarse. This year we had a butterfly, pirate and a dino.

Gorgeous yellow ginko leaves and blue skies.

Looks like Gabe's the next to get married? lol. He caught the garter at Trav's cousin's wedding. Amazing how fast men scatter away from that thing-hehe.

And Gabe starts preschool.....


November had crazy,warm shorts weather-just amazing for around here! We took full advantage and headed to Allerton Park an hour away and had a picnic and hiked all day-gorgeous!

My first show


Thanksgiving with the Festival of Trees right after dinner. Doesn't Sawyer look like he's deeply contemplating over what he should tell Santa to bring him? Too bad he can't talk to tell him lol.
December had me working on handmade gifts...This is an unfinished (!lol) project for Trav's handmade gift. More on that later...

I was lucky enough to have another night out with a group of us high school gals. We hit the comedy club spent lots of time beforehand eating Mexican and looking at old pictures. And no, we didn't call ahead to color coordinate-lol.

And Christmas was a lovely relaxed day. :)

Since we're fairly boring I will skip sharing pictures from tonite (New Years) since we'll just be asleep-lol.

I do have to say Happy Birthday to my baby brother whose bday is today!! Happy Birthday Clif!

Sorry for the longest post in history. I hope you'll all had a great 2009 and an even better 2010!

Custom Christmas

There was a slew of custom orders for Christmas this year. Here's a handfull of shots-so many gravitated toward the same necklace-the tri color lariat. Here are a few variations of it~

I'm praying since it's officially after Christmas no one will be surprised seeing their kids names on here-lol...

Here is one requested in gold and silver only.

With all metals represented (brass, sterling and copper) with a 4th charm...
With 2 children we came up with something extra to fill it in some and think this worked well! :) Mom and Dad's initials with a cut out heart.

Once again all metals with 4 charms~

And the classic one with 3 charms.

They are so simple, sweet and lightweight. Just love them. I keep saying I'm going to make one for myself but haven't gotten to that yet. Each charm is slightly smaller than a dime and spin around and jingle against each other and lay higher on the chest-picture clasping just under the collar bone and the charms lying underneath...Just love em...

Christmas Goodies

I sure hope everyone had a great Christmas! Between all of the different grandparents we're still not finished up with Christmas get together's-it makes it feel like the holiday lasts a good long time :)

We did have a bit of a scare on Christmas night. Someone was beating on our door and ringing the bell over and over. We woke panicked-convinced our house was on fire. It ended up being a deaf man unable to communicate with us and left. We have since found out this same man was arrested not long ago for a robbery at a candy store around the corner. I was convinced he was scoping out the house before he was going to break in-unfortunately it looks like I was right. Thankfully nothing happened and all is well.


Looks like Sawyer claimed Gabe's big-wheel for himself.
A shot of Chloe at Nana's house in front of the tree. I was playing around with a bokeh technique I'd read about over on Amanda's blog.


It's a bird......it's a plane.......

I had to add the picture of these curls....we probably won't be seeing them around here for much longer. It's almost haircut time for this little guy and he'll start looking like a big boy.....:(

Sharing my Grandmother's tree. It's not big or fancy-but there's something comforting about it to me.

My plan was to start showing some handmade gifts we made for the kids this week but between wading through all of the new toys and my weak attempt at home organization I haven't had a chance to compile the pictures. I'll get to that soon!!

Christmas ramblings

I just ran across this on a blog I follow (Peanut Petunia) and had to post it-got a good chuckle out of it.

I've been lacking about things to talk about. After the stress of the last couple of weeks with all the *hurry up and wait* with those darned tests I feel like I've just kind of collapsed in a heap then buried in wrapping paper-lol. In good news-I'm caught up with the shopping/wrapping! Yea!!

I wish I could show you the handmade gifts we've been working on for the kids!! BUT-Chloe gets on my blog all the time so I can't yet. After Christmas I suppose.....But I will say one thing I made her turned out so cute!!! She's going to be so surprised....

~A few updates~
My dad and stepmom just got in from Florida and we're all excited to see them....Things have shifted in the family dynamic (in a good way) for our family get-together on Christmas eve....The kids are hyper for Santa and Gabe is realllllly getting into the whole Santa thing this year..... It's so sweet now that he remembers the words to songs he's learned at school and is singing Rudolf all day long.....Sawyer's a little stinker and we can't have any wrapped presents under the tree til the actual morning.....

I've had a bunch of custom stamped neclace and glass pendant orders~Thanks to you ALL! I'd love to share photos but once again-they'll have to wait until after Christmas.....

Ahhhhhh-it's so nice to sit and have some coffee without the alarm and rushing to school.....

I can finally breathe

WHEWWWWW!!!

That's all I have to say.

All is well.

One foot in front of the other

Gabe and I at the Festival of Trees on Thanksgiving night

Well, I'd calmed down since the previous post but now my PET scan is approaching fast (tomorrow morning) and I'm starting to slowly freak out. I found out through a friend in radiology that I can't be around (mainly) Sawyer for at least 8 hours afterwards since I'll be putting off radiation. Sigh. So the plan is for Trav to take the whole day off and for me to stay out of the house and finish up Christmas shopping and delivering jewelry orders. Hoping I can at least get a lot accomplished while childless...

I'm hoping I don't end up melting into a puddle of fear afterwards knowing that I will have to wait until next Monday to get any results. I'm just praying it's scar tissue from the pneumonia I had a few months ago and not anything serious.....I'll tell ya what-it's funny how it takes times like this to make you sit back and readjust your priorities and look at your life from a new angle...

Attaching photos from the Festival of Trees since #1 I never got around to it and #2 I hate blogging w/o pictures. Even "poor me" posts like this one-lol.

Gabe and Trav

Alice in Wonderland theme tree

Twilight theme tree-hmm...I like Twilight and all but......

Chloe and Nana

Doesn't Gabe look almost giddy?

Poor Sawyer-he was there you just wouldn't know it! Maybe my next post should be about that little guy-lol.