Author Archives: carrie

Crafty Tuesday

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Last week’s Crafty Tuesday is courtesy of a little baby shower we threw together for Kaori, our pianist that helps out during the girls’ choir practices. She is due in a week with a little girl and we wanted to put together a little quick, after-choir celebration from the kids.

Her nursery is yellow and gray (LOVE!) and since we had to have the shower at church, and after choir (before dinner) it was just a little “quickie” shower where everyone brought munchies.

I found some yellow and gray paper and made a little bunting – my new favorite things. I cut the flags out of paper and tied them together with some baby yellow yarn.

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I made some tissue paper flowers – which are TOTALLY easy to do (learn how here!)…

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But we had a few difficulties with the space and planning. I had intended on all of the tissue flowers to hang over the table at various heights, but the 20 foot ceilings in the hall didn’t allow for us to hang anything from the ceilings.

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My “baby clothesline” didn’t quite work as envisioned either…there really wasn’t any place to hang it, or the bunting…we just made do.

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My favorite was the onesie that Jamie and I put together for the future little chorister…

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That, and watching the kids get so excited when Kaori opened the box o’ baby things that the choir gave her.

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Sprinting out of the gate…or under the net…or something.

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So much for “new & improved” and “more frequent blogging!”

Pssstthh. Also so much for “easing back into” the school/work/chaos routine.

Last week was a lost cause. But tomorrow is a brand-spanking new Monday and a new week. And tomorrow…tomorrow, it is all going to get done.

I did finally get the NEW YEAR’S EVE photos off of my camera, onto my computer and into a usable format. Now if I just had some place to put them and document it all.

Oh, right. Here. That would be a good start.

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Our lovely New Year’s Eve crew who we love spending the evening with.

This year we made it til midnight…Chicago’s midnight that is.  I just told the girls – it really is “your midnight since you were born in Chicago!”

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I also made them do a little homework. They wrote about their favorite parts of 2012, and what they’d like to accomplish in 2013. And then they read them aloud to all of the grown-ups. (That part I didn’t make them do, but they were all very keen on sharing!)

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Fast forward a few days, we decided to take the Girl Scout troop ice skating. We took the metro downtown to the Pershing Square outdoor ice skating rink. The train ride alone was quite the experience for our little sheltered girls – but we had a blast! Are they the cutest bunch or what?

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The weather has been awesome here. VERY wintery and excellent because we’ve been rocking our hats, sweaters and “jackets,” and it was perfect for skating.

And believe it or not, most of the girls even ventured “off the rail” after a little while.

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Then…fast forward to last week. Which was supposed to be a nice, simple, easy week. Em has been asking me if she could try out for the club volleyball team for a few months. Her PE teacher, who also happens to be the 7th/8th grade volleyball coach at the middle school, has made it clear that she has “promise” and should look into the club.

So she wore me down and I took her to try-out and ‘lo and behold – we are now a lucky member of the Starlings volleyball team. Which entails Wednesday and Friday practices from 6-8pm (remember my girls hit bed at 7:30-45!) and tournaments like their first one today. Where the whole family trekked to Anaheim before the sun came up and sat in the Sports Complex for 7 hours. The Sports Complex that has no heat and it was 34-40 degrees for most of the morning.

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But was it worth it? Yes, I think it will be. I just keep telling myself – “this might be her thing.” And what if it is that one thing that she is really good at? I can’t deny her that. And…well, she loves it. So we are trying very hard to remind her gently that it is a sacrifice for the whole family and she needs to appreciate it.

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But…it was kinda fun to see the very few minutes she got to play today. And the whole team aspect and watching her with her new teammates – it is a good thing.

Go #7! (We might have our work cut out for us!)

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Crafty Tuesday

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I know, I know…don’t fall off your chair. We are back with a few crafts. The first craft is a little holiday-ish, but we had so much fun making it.

Of course we “borrowed” the idea from the lovely HowDoesShe? blog and I thought since our friends here in California wouldn’t have a white Christmas they really could use a little snow!

So we set about making some. Cornstarch, kosher salt and lots of glitter. We learned after the first batch that this is best mixed up OUTside.

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Of course, if you need to “make” snow where you live, it is probably nice enough to make the mess out in the courtyard.

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We packaged it up in empty paint cans (we got ours from Ganahl for a few bucks each) –

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Downloaded the label from HowDoesShe and added the paint can opener and a bow –

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And, voila! Fun little gifts that were so much fun to give.

And we brought out Eva and the heat press for a few other gifts to give as well.

A little (pink glitter!) princess tee for a sweet niece –

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And a new logo and some “work” shirts for Mom & Dad –

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I’m antsy to get started on some other projects around here.

Of course, if you are following me on Instagram/Facebook you already know my newest passion…baking BREAD!

My first batch was for our New Year’s Eve dinner with our good friends. I got the recipe from King Arthur’s Flour and I used herbs de Provence and butter in between each “slab.” It was really pretty good.

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And then I decided that I was going to try my hand at sandwich bread since the girls headed back to school this week and would need lunches every day. The sandwich bread has been a huge hit.

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I love the fact that the bread is really only 4 or 5 ingredients. No high fructose corn syrups, no preservatives I can’t pronounce. It makes me feel better to have control over one small part of our every day eating.

Tonight I tried Kaiser rolls since we were having pulled pork sandwiches and I didn’t have any rolls. They were really good – nice and dense and able to withstand a big helping of meat.

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I’ve been using Nick Malieri’s Bread book. It is so easy to follow and has all kinds of other recipes. I’m sure the book and I will become great friends.

So that is a few things that have been going on around here. Tell me what great Christmas crafting you all did over our break?

 

New Year’s Resolutions

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This year I resolve…no more resolutions.

The “goals” that I worked on last year, seemed to do alright by me, and those that didn’t can stick around this year and we’ll see if we can make them work. Let’s take a peek back and see how well we did:

(If you remember I was trying to make all my goals fit into the three categories of Connect, Improve and Focus.)

12 for 2012

1. Spend some time catching up with old friends. I have really enjoyed re-connecting with my high school friends this past year and have many other old friends who deserve at the very least a phone call or email this year. (Connect) – Success! I feel like I managed to connect and spend time with lots of old (and new!) friends over the year. Still a goal I’d like to keep in this year’s lineup.

2. Schedule a one-on-one date with Emma and Addie and Daddy at least once a month so I can really focus on each of them and give them their own time. (Connect and Focus) – OH, so failed. We had some date nights but so did not get a once monthly in. Has to stay on this year’s list.

3. Run more. Sign up for a half-marathon in May (and maybe a 2nd in October) which will force me to train. (Focus and Improve) – Eh, sort of half and half. I did run, but that “more” part didn’t really happen. I’ve signed up for a couple races, so this should force the “more” part to happen this year.

4. Up my yoga to 2-3 days a week, mostly to combat the increase in running on my joints & muscles, but also to help find my happy place. (Focus and Improve) I didn’t up my yoga – but I was consistent on at least one class each week. So I call that a success.

5. Try a new recipe/cooking technique once a week. I was going to say healthy but – that might not always be a goal that I can follow. (Improve) – Fail. I definitely branched “out” – I learned to use my pressure cooker, found some great new slow cooker recipes, and am learning to be a bread baker right now, but that “once a week” might need to be changed to maybe “once a month!”

6. Picking up my camera and taking an “OMG, this is my fave photo of the week!” photo every single week. – (Improve) – EPIC fail. I can’t believe how few photos I took this year. I did a lot of iphone shooting, Instagramming and such but when I went through Flickr to get photos for the calendar…yikes! We had slim pickings. I’m definitely keeping this one on 2013’s list.

7. Organize the sewing/craft/spare bedroom so I can make some time for some creating. (Focus and Improve) – Success! The sewing and crafts are back down in the playroom, but we are organized and we created a lot of great things this year! But let’s keep the momentum going and leave it on the list.

8. Paint our kitchen cabinets and blinds. (IMPROVE) – Success!! Happily can remove that one from the list. Hopefully forever.

9. Read (and blog about) one book each month for the year. (Improve) – I read far more than a book each month. But didn’t really blog about any of them. Maybe we could do a little online book club? Anyone interested in that?

10. Turn 40 gracefully. (Hmmm…Improve, I guess?) – Oaf. I guess I was somewhat graceful when I turned 40? It was a great year, so I’m not complaining about 40. Yet.

11. Take a cruise with my family and r-e-l-a-x during a massage on the beach. (Connect) Success! How I’d love to keep this on the list, but since we are celebrating our 20 year anniversary in August, I think our family vacation is going to head down to Key West instead.

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12. Ask myself “Does this help me connect, focus or improve myself or my family?” before I say yes to ANY volunteer activities this year. – I think that I succeeded here. I really did say NO to a lot of things that didn’t “work” for us this year. And although our life is crazy most days and full of chaos, I think it is all for the good of our family and I know the girls will look back on their childhood years and remember all of the great things we got to do and experience.

I really liked our goals from last year, and so a lot of these I’m just going to cruise on into 2013 and continue to work on. Anything on your list that I should be considering??

Christmas Coma

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Thought that I’d better wrap it up over here before Christmas got too far away from me. Does it feel like Christmas was weeks ago to anyone else but me? I’ve been meaning to revisit old resolutions and make some new ones since I’m very excited for 2013, but I need to get Christmas 2012 documented and packed away (just like our decorations that are finally all put up!).

Let’s see, when we last left off we were crafting up a storm to try to get all of our Boutique orders fulfilled. We did and I think Birdie #2 and I learned some very valuable lessons. 1. Stock up on supplies when they are on sale (and available!) and 2. start in about July for Christmas items. It is just a little bit too much to be trying to get orders done and our own Christmas stuff done. Lessons learned. And thankfully we are smart Birdies and we learn our lessons well…might be the hard way, but we do learn them.

And I fully realize that I’ve skipped about a dozen Crafty Tuesdays, but I will have many CTs in the upcoming weeks, so it is back on. Next week.

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(Christmas card photo reject.)

Amidst all of the boutique stuff, we had the normal end of term chaos, teacher gifts, appreciation lunches, holiday parties at school and with ballet classes and friends, Christmas cards, and a ride through our town with Santa on an old fire engine. It pays to know the fire chief. (He is one of my Girl Scout’s dad and he’s fantastic!)

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Then it was time for the grand-daddy of all Christmas pageants! Em had a little solo bit as one of the three kings. She was “really nervous” but did a fantastic job. I was really proud of her. We have the whole pageant on video…but it is far too long to put up here on the web. I’ll just post the highlights….and a few other pics, of course.

The cutest barncat in the stable.

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Our “Kings” getting into their kingly groove.

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And Em’s song.

COS Christmas Pageant 2012 from carrie voris on Vimeo.

I need to get a few other clips of some of the songs they did as a group. I love to watch Addie sing…she just belts it out and I can always hear her over all the other kids in the pack.

After the pageant, we raced home to get ready for Santa! We were frosting cookies pretty much an hour before it was time to put them out for him, but the big man did get some tasty cookies!

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And then we woke up and magically…Santa came in the middle of the night and transformed our living room from a serene scene like this…

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and this…

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To this…

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Yikes. But the best part was that it stayed that way and we stayed in our jammies almost the entire day! It was pure heaven.

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Our favorite 6-year old.

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Today just kind of flew by in a we-are-doing-a-lot-of-lazy-nothingness kind of way.
We are still on vacation but we missed calling our favorite (now!)
6-year old cousin/niece!
Aunt Bean is still mad at herself over here. So sorry, Ella.

Hope you had a great day Sass-er-Ella! I just know SIX is going to be great!

Happy Birthday. We love you.
Uncle, J., Aunt Bean, Em & Ad

Catchin’ Up.

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Ahem. So how have you been? – Says this girl sheepishly as brushes off the crafting dust from her hands. I know! We have not fallen into the Pacific over here, it has just been a wee little bit hectic and I’ve been incredibly preoccupied with trying to get Christmas going around here and finishing up all the boutique goodies at the same time.

I can happily report that we are just about done on all fronts. The boutique orders are almost filled, Christmas gifts that had to travel over state lines were sent out today, Christmas cards are out, *other* gifts have been purchased for the girls, we are in the homestretch. Vacation is so close I can taste it. But before we go into hibernation – I owe you all a little update and some videos!

Em’s piano recital from a few weeks ago.

Song #1:

Em’s Instrument Recital 11/30/12 – part 1 from carrie voris on Vimeo.

and Song #2. Angels We Have Heard On High – my favorite that she is learning as a Christmas present to me. Awww…

Em’s Instrument Recital 11/30/12 – part 2 from carrie voris on Vimeo.

Both girls are busy prepping for the Christmas pageant next week. Addie is a barn cat (because you know they had those in the nativity scene!) and she has one line. Em is a king this year and sings a solo part in the king’s song. We are all very excited for the premiere. Which reminds me that I think I have a few costumes that need to be mended. No rest for the exhausted.

Crafty (oh-so-late) Tuesday

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It IS still Tuesday, but I can’t believe how far behind I am over here. I owe you all kinds of stuff, we have been moving and shaking and Birdie #2 and I are up to our earlobes in orders from our boutique…so we have been crafting like crazy, but I haven’t had a free moment to show you all what we’ve been up to.

I do however want to share this little goodie. Especially since we have delivered to all of our neighbors and teachers already, so it is safe to share!

Behold…holiday lanterns, wait for it…personalized with etching!

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We were going to do Merry Christmas, then decided if we did house numbers, they could clear out the holiday extras when Christmas was over and use it year-round!

Another one we did for Greta and her monastery.

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Oops, looks like this one didn’t get a ribbon yet. The lanterns are from Ikea, we etched on one side, stuck a candle and some holiday greenery. Done! And so far they have been a huge hit.

In other news, my face is healing incredibly well! As soon as the black eye fades, I think most people who didn’t know I had it done will not even be able to see the incision. I’m apparently a super-healer. Woo hoo! Thanks for all of your wishes and good thoughts. (And dinner! I’m looking at you Diane!) Love you all.

I PROMISE, so promise – to be back soon with all the happenings around here. Just need to finish up a few more orders so we can start on OUR Christmas!