"where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow"

This time around for "The Creative Collective", the challenge was titled "anything goes art". The challenge was to collect items that you already owned in your home and make art out of them. I don't know if you remember this mobile from the shoppe, that was sold last year- but that was my favorite mobile, and for a while I've been wanting to do another one. I got together my supplies:

mobile

| 1 hardback book

| hot glue (not pictured) 

| twine/thick string (not pictured)

paper flowers

| paper

| watercolor

| tissue paper

| floral tape

The mobile is so simple to make. Simply tear out all of the pages, and glue them "hot dog" style. Drill a hole through the spine of the book to put your twine through- this will serve to hang the mobile from the ceiling. Then start gluing the pages in a waterfall form, shaping it however you like. You can make it as long or short as you like. You don't have to use all of the pages.

I like to add a little extra to the books, so I thought it was only fitting to add paper flowers to "The Secret Garden". I found this really lovely DIY for paper flower making via Kelli Murray's blog. 

So fun. I always forget how lovely these turn out. I'd really like to go book hunting soon at some used book stores. I really love the way yellowing of the older books look. 

You can find this book mobile for sale in the shoppe here. Get it for 40% off with the code "creativecollective" through the rest of February! |||This is a one of a kind mobile and will not be re-crafted ||

Fernversations 1.0

 February 2014 | 21 months 

This little chump has grown quite an extensive vocabulary. THIS stage. This. is what I've been waiting for. I love her little voice and the things she says. The way she pronounces words, and I'm the only one who knows what in the world she's saying. I can't wait until she can form sentences and tell us her thoughts. <3 sweet little dumplin'. Here are some of her favorite words and their pronunciations. 

momma

daddy da-ee

grandma mah-ma

grandpa umpah

Morgan moogie (accompanied by a tilt of her head side to side. every time)

Ashley atchie

Alfie afie

Tianna nana

Mimsy mimee

Christie chistee

Rusty usty

okay otay!

here we go eego!

slide side

park pok

treat teat

snack nak

poop -

toot -

book buk

please peeeeeeeeeeeaase

thank you tankoo

oh no -

uh oh -

Dora - 

arriba (spanish for up) eeba!

abrir (spanish for open) ahbay

off ots

pizza tseetsah

chicken bok bok bok bok (acompanied by "the chicken dance)

fruit fewt

King nee

Caddy taddy

Waylon maymen

Bubble Guppies  buppies

Molly mahee

Nonnie -

milk muk

juice jewsh

cupcake - tuptake

Those are just some of the every day translations, but this girl- she's starting to repeat every little thing. It's so hilarious. She knows all of her body parts, she can count to three, and she's learning her colors. She knows orange, blue, black, purple, pink. She can tell you almost every animal and what they say (my favorite is the elephant). 

She prefers salt to sweet, unless it's her fruit snacks. She'd eat pizza for every meal if I let her, and when it's time for bed she gets excited (usually). We give her her blanket and bunny that she sleeps with, and she's usually so excited because she knows it's bedtime, she'll give off this tired giggle that just melts me to puddles. 

She loves books. We read "goodnight moon" and "the monster book" (<- not the official name ) several times a day. In close company is her "moby dick ocean primer" book and "you're my little cupcake". 

She's very cautious, but courageous at the same time. She likes to keep close to me until she's very comfortable, but once she is she'll run off by herself and do whatever she wants. Loud noises, and animals she doesn't know make her very timid and cautious. She's still not a big fan of most men. Except her daddy, and she's warming up to my grandpa.. but he knows how to make the chicken train go- so.. he's got that on his side. 

I can't believe how much she's growing. 

I need to keep doing little updates like this here and there to track the progress. It's just amazing how much and how quickly they take things in at this age. I'm totally in awe. 

I don't want her to grow up too fast though. 

Stay little, Fernie... <3

(this is my 100th blog post, by the way)

Weekly Wishes || 4

Another week of goal setting. I am SET! Here's a re-cap of last week:

- Study 3 nights this week
- Plan meals for next week
- Bake cookies for Fern's Valentines Party -done
- Mentally prepare for a (surprise) new hair color -done
- Find my planner - done
-Find last minute Valentines for Fern's party - done

So, I ALMOST studied for 3 nights this week, but orders got in the way, so I had to finish and deliver a few of those locally. BUT- I also double timed one day and finished an entire chapter, which would have usually taken me the whole 3 days. So I'm not marking it off, but I got the work done plus some. I'm not mad. :)

I totally rocked Fern's Valentines Day Party with this cute (and easy) recipe for vanilla shortbread cookies by Sweet Lavender Bake Shoppe, and these amazingly cute (and free) Valentines Day cards from Smitten Blog Design. I mean.. I spent literally $0.00 for this party. Mom-win. (which is also great, because she chose to throw the most hideous fit 5 minutes into the party and we had to leave.)

Also, Saturday was the end of the hair poll. All the votes are in and I am currently preparing myself for my very new hair in the color of.... LAVENDER! I love that my husband was so excited to wait and be the very last vote.  Seriously, his computer screen was loading with a slow connection at 11:58 and the poll ended at noon. It was dramatic. and awesome. love him.

OH! and Tristan found my planner. It was under the bed. Last week I asked him if he'd seen it and he said "have you looked under the bed?". Which I took to mean.. "nope". Because how would he know if my planner was under the bed. So this week when I was a little more frazzled than usual and I asked him again- "hey.. you haven't seen my planer anywhere have you? I still can't find it" he said "Oh, it wasn't under the bed?".. I checked, and it was. So there's that. Thanks T.

Planning meals kind of went like this... it didn't. I've been working on a few custom orders for the shoppe this week, and let me tell you- meal planning just didn't make the cut yo. I really want to get in a schedule of doing this though- like.. Mondays are laundry day- so Mondays while the first load is washing and there's nothing to fold- make a list? This might make a list somewhere in the upcoming weeks, but I'm just not super passionate about it today. So it's not going to be attempted again this week.



this week, here's what's up.

- get rolling with this new book I've started
- make a garland -done
- make something for the Collective Creative challenge -done
- Get my hurr did. (I said it)
- Do something nice for my husband for no reason at all.
- Make 4 more Dreamcatchers for "the big order"
- Make new Dreamcatchers with leftover supplies
- Come up with a custom design for a potential order -done

a lot of "making" going on this week. Yowza. I love it!

February Sponsors & their crushes

Happy Valentines Day friends! I figure, I post enough mushy gushy stuff about my family throughout the rest of the year, that I didn't really need to today. BUT! I also thought, how fun would it be to hear from my sponsors today!

I asked these fun ladies: "who was your very first crush and who are your currently crushing on?" Here's what they had to say:

"My first crush I ever had was a boy named Cody, he went to my elementary school. When we played the "kissy game", (you know the one where the boy chases you and then once he catches you, he kisses you) I would pretend to trip so he could kiss me. HaHa! The crush I have right now is currently on Charlie Hunnam! He is exceptionally attractive and I love his interviews. That long hair, and the accent! O man!"

facebook | salon facebook

   

"My first legitimate crush was on this boy named Bradley who I did community theater with, but my current crush is on my boyfriend AJ, the man of my dreams!"

blog | facebook | twitter

" I don't really like to get too caught up in Valentines day. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy getting cute things fixed up for my daughters daycare class because it's fun for her but sometimes I feel like it's way to commercial and a money holiday. My husband and I don't ever feel like we have to have a fancy dinner and all of the flowers and such. We usually end up on the couch cuddled up with popcorn and a movie. However, he usually ends up surprising me with something which is very sweet. :) my first crush was probably one of the members of NSYNC that goes by JT. How 90's of me. :)  but now I'm totally over the frosted hair and currently crushing on my hot husband. ;)"

blog | instagram | pinterest

 "My first legitimate crush had to be on one of the New Kids on the Block: either Jonathan Knight or Joey McIntyre! Now I would say that although I absolutely LOVE my husband, I definitely crush on Brandon Flowers from the Killers! I think I have a thing for singers! 

blog | facebook | twitter 

"My first legitimate crush was, hands down, Jonathan Taylor Thomas.  My dad always thought I was so eager to watch "Home Improvement" with him because I wanted to bond with him over hardware-y stuff but my mom knew the truth ;) I will forever be crushing on my hot husband but right now I'm also hardcore girl-crushing on Kelly Clark.  Homegirl can shred AND loves Jesus."

blog | facebook | instagram

These ladies have some good taste, yeah? JTT?! come on. who didn't love those dimples. <3 

I'm so honored to have these ladies on my sidebar this month. I hope you've enjoyed getting to know them a little better today! I know I have! 

Confessions of a blogger:

I have to admit, that I saw this post when Christina posted it the other day, and she was tagged by Meg.. so I went to read Meg's too, because she's super cute and I like her a ton. It was then that I saw that Meg had tagged ME to do this as well! I can't believe I didn't catch that. Worst friend. Worst blogger. ever. me. But. Here I am, doing it now. Thank you Meg, for tagging me! I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner. You're the best.

So, provided were the following questions, which I'm suppose to answer, and I'll tell you I'm a bit hesitant to even partake in this because I feel like I'm so not the person to be taking blogging "advice" or whatever from. But if nothing else, maybe we can get to know each other a little better from it. So hoorah. Here's to getting to know each other.

circa 2011

1. When did you first start blogging and why?
I GUESS, technically, I first started blogging in High School. It was a LiveJournal, and I didn't really know I was blogging at the time, I just kind of thought I was journaling and all my friends were journalling too, and we could read each others journals? Which is kind of what blogging was, but really- in the early 2000s I didn't have a clue what blogging was.

I started blogging on purpose in 2008. It was a blogspot address. I can't even remember what the name of the blog was (not this one obviously) but I did it because I had just moved back to the states from New Zealand, and my very best friend from NZ had just started blogging (Amanda from Here Comes the Sun blog), and she told me I should too. So I did. She wrote this post back in 2008 and it was about me, and sometimes I go back and re-read it, just because I miss this time in our lives. Special memories. Thank you blogging.

I first started this blog in April 2013.

2. Have you had any past online presence? 
oh not significant "presence", but as I mentioned, I've done it all as far as "blogging" whether I knew it or not. I did Livejournal... several times: a couple were (andantefavori and badbeat_lulu_x) , xanga (Rusted Vintage), tumblr (birds for brains), and several blogspot blogs, such as "Shayla shut your eyes"(which later turned into "birds in her hair"), "Bird Brains"(which later turned into "Sweet Darlin'.") Sweet Darlin' was my blog before this one.

Before you go clicking on any of those links: I must warn you- I was SUUUUUUPER emo. like really.

3. When did you become serious about your blog?
Honestly, I'm still in the transitioning phase of "serious". I would, I suppose, consider myself serious- because I do receive income for blogging. So I have a bit of an obligation to it. So let's just say.. recently.

4. What was your first blog post?
The first blog post was really hard to start. So I just made it an introduction. A little tid-bit about who I was at the time, where I came from, where I was going.. You can read it here if you'd like. I wish I could find the first blog post I made EVER, but all of my previous blogs that I can track down are "friends only".  Now that'd be something to blog about.

5. What have been your biggest challenges blogging? 
Just to keep going. Finding content. Remembering that I started doing this for me, and that I can go back to that any time I want. Sometimes finding time is a challenge.

6. What is the most rewarding thing about blogging? 
I may be echoing Christina here, but she hit the nail on the head. It's the community. The girls I've met through blogging. Man, some of the most encouraging, sweet ladies I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. I never imagined I'd make such connections when I started out. It's been the biggest blessing.

7. What is the most discouraging thing about blogging? 
Sometimes you put a lot of yourself into a post and dont get much of a response from your readers. It's these times I have to go back and remind myself: I started blogging for me. For Fern. So who cares if nobody's really interested in what we did last week- Someday Fern might come back to this and really appreciate it. Also, just like pinterest does to me- comparing myself to other bloggers. I actually spend time thinking about in the future when we get a house of our own how I'll be able to take pictures of it and show you guys a house tour. Or how maybe when Fern gets older she'll cooperate better with the camera and I can show you all of her cute outfits. That's just silly. Blogging is all about sharing who you are where you are. That's important to remember.

8. What is your blogging dirty little secret?
You know how I have this thing for day planners? Well I have one dedicated to my blog. Which would make more sense if I was like... James or something.. but let's get real. Most of the time I just pount out these posts the day before. Still, I try to schedule my sponsor posts and giveaways, because I feel like I owe it to them to be thorough.

9. What is your current goal as a blogger? 
Well, on my 30 before 30 list I have "hit 1000 followers". So I suppose that. I'd love for my blog to be a main source of income, but it's not something I'm actively pursuing at the moment. If it were to ever happen, I'd be just happy as a peach.

10. Have you learned or become passionate about anything through blogging that caught you by surprise? 
Reading. I mean... I guess it started with that 30 before 30 list I mentioned- one of the things on there was "create a list of 30 books and read it".. I hadn't really read much of anything since High School, so it was a big deal to start that. I feel like the blog has kept me accountable to that and has given me this passion for reading that I've never had before. I'm really enjoying it.

circa 2011.. or 12

are we still friends? Are you embarrassed to be in the company of the former "badbeat lulu" or "shipwreck shayla"? eeeek! I AM!

please love me more for overcoming that stage of my life!

oh! I tag Tillie, Melissa, Amanda (Jaynes) and Kenzie! and you! If you do this survey, please comment and let me know! I'd love to read your take on blogging. <3