my bloggity blog.

It was a fun and busy weekend around here!

Saturday morning I met my mom for coffee at a little pastry shop downtown, right on the corner of Lemon and Main (which is also where the weekly Farmer’s Market takes place). We had a lovely time chatting and relaxing together. We also walked around and looked in a few shops. I saw a beautiful old china hutch in an antique store that I would have loved to buy. But I have better things to spend $699 on right now, even if it was the white-washed kitchen cabinet of my dreams… Can’t really drive it to the store, you know? A mini van comes first! LOL!

I also made some cute hybrid boxes for my scrap space this weekend:

A peek inside:

And some for Katie to use in her room to hold her own special little trinkets:

(You can read more about them in my article on The Hybrid Chick blog here: Spotlight on: Karen Lewis Designz)

And we took a trip to the library this weekend!

I was really happy to find so many things to check out this time. I ran up and down the aisles as the kids looked at some picture books that were all about Florida birds and mammals. I found books on homeschooling, crafting, cupcakes, homeopathy, running a business and the history of Bible translations. Wow—lots of things to dig into to! I spent the rest of the day on Saturday sitting on the couch (and a good part of Sunday, too!).

One of the books I picked up at the library was on fun reading and writing games for kids. I used one of the ideas this morning during school time:

[Joshua (top) and Katie's (bottom) little Silly Books]

What I did was I wrote out some sentences on construction paper and then snipped them up. I mixed up Katie’s strips and had her sort them by color and then asked her to figure out where each word went in the sentence. I was a little nicer to Joshua (since he’s just four) and I didn’t give him a ton of words to sift through. He did a great job sounding out all his words, though! And Katie was reading like a pro, too. Ah, sweet success!

I thought this little game was a great way to reinforce a few ideas, like “Sentences begin with capital letters” and “They end with punctuation,” by making the lessons a puzzle she had to figure out. After they got the sentences in the right order, we glued them into our little books and the kids each added some drawings.

This is why I love homeschooling… this stuff is just FUN! Good times…

Random bits from this week…

1. I had a midwife appointment this week. Despite all the things I tried over the last month to get my hemoglobin levels up, (including eats lots of spinach salads and adding iron pills to my diet), my numbers stayed the same. That was disappointing! So now I’m on this:

[Floradix Juice. Liquid Iron!]

And let me tell you, it’s… delicious. ::cringe:: I love the taste of liquid B vitamins and metal, don’t you? Yum, yum! Hope this stuff works, because this is a commitment! I discovered this morning that if I drink this with my nose pinched and then chase it with a glass of Green Goodness juice (that I actually do enjoy, because it tastes like apple juice), it’s not so bad. I can mask the aftertaste. Yay!

2. We took a trip to Whole Foods to pick up this power juice… and I was in awe! I can’t remember if I’ve ever visited a Whole Foods before this trip. I was certainly impressed by the vast amounts of stuff they had in their well-being section. Homeopathic remedies, tonics, vitamins. I waded through aisle after aisle looking for the Floradix stuff (of course, it was located in the very last aisle!). I felt like I needed to go home and start reading up on all the things stuff I saw there. Pretty darn cool!

3. I am very proud to say that I (pretty much) successfully completed all the household things I wanted to this week! I cleaned the kitchen on Monday, the bathrooms on Tuesday and the bedrooms on Wednesday, all according to plan. I felt like poo yesterday, though. So, I skipped out on “Dust & Tidy” day. I did a little bit of that this morning, along with catching up on some dishes that were beginning to pile up. All in all, I’d say I accomplished my goal. And the best feeling of all is knowing that I can maintain all the areas I basically “Spring Cleaned” this week next week with a lot less effort. It will be a lot of “Wipe, wipe—done!” Doesn’t that sound lovely? Ah! A lot more lovely then living under an overwhelming pile of chores. “Yay!” for schedules!

4. Working on something hybrid-y for an article on The Hybrid Chick this weekend.

[Future Boxes]

Yes, those are six boxes and 24 flower pieces. I think I’m insane. I thought 24 flower pieces would be no big deal?! Thankfully, it wasn’t too traumatic. I cut out all the pieces while Katie did her schoolwork today… aaand also while I ate lunch. No hand cramps, though! LOL!

5. In our house, we like to teach the little ones to say “Please” with Baby Sign Language (so that instead of just yelling at us when they want something, they can really communicate!). And it’s adorable. Katie was the first to conquer this concept of patting her little chest to say “Please” (really, you are supposed to put your hand on your chest and move it in a circular motion, but this worked better for us). I remember Joshua just being stubborn about it and looking at me like “What?! I don’t get it! Why can’t I have the thing I want?! WAIL!” So… I gave up on teaching him. Ha! As for Penny, she’s been really cute with this. First, she would pat her chest. Then, when she got really excited, she started smacking herself on the side of the head. Kinda funny, kinda odd. Now her sign has evolved into her playing Indian:

[Penny saying "Please"]

She even says “Ohh, ohh, ohh” when she does it. It’s adorable! And she’s really got the concept this week. She’s even stopped herself mid-yell to start saying “Please!” This morning, she was chasing after Daddy saying “Please! [Won't you pick me up? I'm cute!].” How could he resist? Here, she is asking me if she can see herself on the camera’s preview panel. Fast learner—that one.

Maybe I’m nesting…

I’m certainly experiencing the “Super Mommy 2nd Trimester” feeling these last few days!

Katie and I had a fun day of shopping together yesterday afternoon. We spend about an hour and a half at Jo-ann’s getting fabric for some aprons we’re going to make, as well as things for a dress for Penny. I love craft stores! We also made an unexpected stop at Pier 1 (since I had a gift card to spend) and we walked away after only spending 62 cents cash. That felt good!

While at Pier 1, I saw some cute things in their stationary department including a chore list for grown ups… which had me thinking about my old “Clean a Room a Day” system I used to be so good at using (you can see it here under the heading “How Can you Do it All?”: Homemaking & Housekeeping).

Here’s my new plan that I started today:

• Monday: Clean the Kitchen Day. Scrub, wipe, toss… there’s a lot to do in the kitchen, isn’t there?
• Tuesday: Detail the Bathroom Day. Good times!
• Wednesday: Pretty up the Bedroom Day. Right now, our bedroom looks like a storage room, since we toss things we don’t want Penny getting into in there and then close the door. ::roll eyes::
• Thursday:Tidy & Dust Day. The day to make the Living Room look fabulous.
• Friday: Hit the Hot Spots Day. A day to vacuum, tidy up and make sure the dishes aren’t taking over the sink before the weekend comes.
• Saturday: Laundry Day. Since Travis is home and so are all his work clothes.

While at Pier 1, we found some pretty baskets on sale. They were perfect for Katie’s room. So, today I told her it was her job to set her closet straight. Here’s what she accomplished all by herself:

Katie felt accomplished. When she was done she told me “I just want to go in my room and stare at my closet!” Mommy was impressed. Pretty darn awesome for a seven year old. I like having a seven year old! I tell you—I was so tired of trying to conquer and divide all their stuff by myself. Hopefully now she will feel like she has a good grasp on where all her things go. ::fingers crossed::

Ah! There’s nothing like being organized! Such a good feeling. I only wish I was always in the mood for it. LOL!

It’s been a busy week! And a good week, too.

Something I was rather excited about was that an episode of a podcast that I was invited to be a part of aired this week! Steph (from The Daily Digi—a fabulous blog all about digital scrapbooking) is the host of The Paperclipping Digi Show and I was sent an invitation to be a part of episode 12!

Past guests on the show have included Ali Edwards, C.D. Muckosky, Anna Aspnes and Liz Tamanaha… and each one in my mind is a Creating Keepsakes rockstar (which is a popular scrapbooking magazine, if you are not knee-deep into this stuff like I am—LOL!)

Can you see why I initially freaked out?! My first thought was “Oh my gosh! Why do they want me?!” I thought for sure we’d be talking about hybrid scrapping or papercrafting (because of The Hybrid Chick, The Digichick’s sister site that I run)… that’s all I could think of! LOL! But it turns out, no… they just wanted me for me. Now that make me feel like a superstar, too! I was on Cloud 9.

If you’d like to listen along to the episode, you can find it here: PDS 012 – Not Ready to Go There (you can listen right there on the site or subscribe in iTunes, too).

You’ll get to hear me ramble on about my multiple design personalities, lenses for SLR cameras and the topic of the day: How to do hidden journaling on a digital page. Yup! You heard that right! Took me a while to come up with an answer that was more elaborate than “Well… you can’t.” HA! I appreciate Steph’s confidence in me as a panelist—because that was one hard topic! But we did it. And I think we brought some great ideas to the table, too.

I thought I’d post a video here for you as well. Last year when Travis and I were working on a redesign for The Digichick, we used a site for chatting with the designers and creative team girls while we waited for things to be back up. Travis discovered that you could also post videos, so we made a few for everyone to see. We just dug them up and moved them over to Travis’ YouTube Channel, so we wouldn’t loose them again.

If you’re curious about how I not only sound, but how I look in person, here you go! Seitler Family Funnies:

That just cracks me up every time I watch it.

In other news… Socks! Not just one, but two!

I decided that I would meet Second Sock Syndrome head-on and go ahead and start on #2 right away. Since this pattern calls for a set of #7s and a set of #8s, once I switched needles on Sock #1, I cast-on for #2! It was good timing, too. We were about to watch a movie the other night, so I wouldn’t have been able to focus on all the crazy “K1, Sl1, K1, psso” stuff that was waiting for me on Sock #1. And in the process, I knit 7 inches of ribbing for Sock #2. Woo-hoo! That was pretty awesome. And I redeemed the night—because the movie was awful.

So… very soon… these darn socks will be off my conscious! I’m so excited. I mean—I’m excited to give my husband such a nice and comfortable gift! That’s what I’m excited about.

Some happy, random things to note.

1. I spent a lovely long weekend with my family this weekend (which unfortunately has left me out-of-sync with everything else in my work life). I kept thinking to myself, “You need to get on the computer and work on the kit you want to release soon…” but I wasn’t feeling creative this weekend, so I didn’t push myself to do it. Instead, I spent two days and three nights enjoying life off-line—going shopping for clothes for the family (since we had a tax free weekend here in Florida), going out to eat with just Travis and Penny (since my mom had the other two kiddos spending the night), going swimming (twice!) with the kiddos, sneaking in a nap (twice!) just for me, shopping for books and homeschooling supplies (yay!), watching the Food Network and HGTV while knitting… and generally having a lovely, relaxing time!

2. I woke up this morning though… and I remembered that I had a new kit debut at my guest shop at SUN this weekend, and I had not posted a darn thing about it. No newsletter, no tweets, no blog post, no fan page updates. And it was on sale just for Saturday and Sunday! ACK! #TotalDesignerFail. Couldn’t help but feel like a dunce about that all day long, which is certainly a mojo killer! I did let my customers know I made a coupon just for them, though and hopefully that made up for my bout of “Mommy Brain.” And I learned my lesson: When I tell myself “Oh, there’s probably nothing you need to check in on” it means that I have something big I’ve forgotten and I need to turn my computer on ASAP!

3. I discovered the secret to my creativity is a box of Junior Mints. Good news, bad news or delicious news?

4. In other news, swimming lessons are over for the year now. I’m thrilled with Katie’s progress! She went from knowing nothing at all to being able to almost do the Front Crawl stoke on her own now. Most of the time, she just kicks and leaves her arms at her sides while swimming around under the water like a little mermaid. Joshua made good progress in his class, too. He never did became comfortable with putting his whole face in the water, but he did blow lots of bubbles for me while we scooted around the pool on different floaty toys like kick-boards and noodles. I’m so pleased!

5. My girlfriend turned to me with a gleam in her eye this Sunday as she told me that since I will be about 9 months pregnant at Christmas, this year I could play Mary and let her off the hook. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry! We were in Drama Club together in high school, which is how we became best friends. I’m guessing that because of that background, she’s been sucked into performing in anything the church puts on, especially at Christmas and Easter time. Hope it will be a musical number so that we can relive our glory days when we did Godspell together. And I honestly hope she’s not serious…

Oh! By the way… I finished something. (In record time, no less!)

[Chloe for Penny]

Just awaiting some finishing touches with a button or two.

From cast on to cast off = 13 days. And only because “real life” and work got in the way.

And I would have shown it to you sooner, but… um… I needed to block it a second time. The first time I blocked it, I was just too darn excited. When it was still a little damp, I picked it up and tried it on Penny. She liked it so much, she yelled at me like I was trying to take a toy away from her when I attempted to take it back off. Well, it appears that I should have been more patient. It curled up again as if it had just come off the needles, so a few days later I blocked it again and didn’t touch it. Yay! I had self-control!

I could totally see me knocking another one of these out over a long weekend. This project left me with itchy “I-want-to-knit-something-and-I-want-to-knit-it-now!” fingers. I almost did cast on for another sweater after blocking this one! But I restrained myself. I think this weekend, I’ll be going out to Joann’s to pick up some DPNs in a smaller size so that I can actually… well… you know… (knit some socks?). Better save myself for that one. The man is overdue for his pair of socks!

Cute family moment:

I asked Joshua today if he’d like to feed Penny her pears for lunch. He was very excited and said “Yeah!” Katie and I were impressed and we told him he was doing a great job. I think Penny thought we were talking to her, because she started smiling and clapping, saying “Yay!” (but she was not looking at him at all). Ha!

Is it just me, or does that face say “Are you sure you trust him?! I don’t know about this…”

Too cute!

I think after this photo, he somehow ended up with pears on the side of his shirt. But all in all, he did a great job! What a wonderful big brother. Sigh. They are all growing up way too fast!

Well, the weekend holds more swimming lessons, maybe a trip to the Farmer’s Market and certainly a long overdue trip to the library! It’s school season again. We need us some BOOKS! Good times. Looking forward to it…