Fa La La la-la La LAAAAA!

Tuesday my mom and sister, Erin came into town. One would think it would be for Christmas, but it's not. They're here because: 1) Caitlin is due in two days (though, everyone is convinced that the baby will come late) and 2) Erin wanted to show off her BRAND NEW ENGAGEMENT RING!

Oh yeah, my baby sister who is 7.5 years younger than me got engaged last weekend. To a guy that is 9.5 years (to the day) OLDER than her.

Not that I'm upset by that at all...

Actually, I am excited for Erin. Really. But it's just weird. Caitlin and I are going to be her fake bridesmaids because she isn't having any. Yeah, we're going to go get cute outfits and make our own flower arrangements to hold. That's how we roll.

Anyway. Last night Nana flew in to visit as well. (She decided that she wanted to fly and not sit in a car for 8.5 hours. Must be nice. :) ) So we had a little family hang out party at Cait's and played Mario Party.

This is Caitlin's Christmas Tree:

Awesome, right?

Here's a close up of the "tree topper"--it's one of Nick's work hats. :)

This is Caitlin, with her "distinguished/snobby" face on. 3 days shy of her due date. I'm not bias or anything, but I think she's got to be one of the cutest pregnant women. Ever. Just sayin'.

And her "not distinguished" face on. :) She hates the fact that I'm document all of this. Mwuahahahaha!

I love my family. :) And I really hope (though, not as much as Cait) that I get to be an auntie this Christmas!

Rachel's Baby Book :)

I've finally finished another project on my everlasting checklist of projects I need to actually finish. I think I finished this one because I actually had a deadline.

Here is my project:

This is Caitlin's baby scrapbook. For her baby. Which is due Christmas Eve. Yay!

For Caitlin's baby book, I used the same design as Monica's baby book that I made over the summer. Except this time:

1) It was for a girl so that meant lots of ruffles, ribbon, purple, yellow, and pink, and flowers. And glitter! LOTS of Glitter!

2) Cait paid for the book so I got to get more fun stuff for it, including really cute super girly paper! :)

3) I knew what I was doing so I was able to bust the book out a lot faster. Like five weeks instead of eight. :) Caitlin decided she wanted a butterfly theme (which is really cute, and has family significance), so I took that and ran a marathon with it.

All the pages are inked with Tim Holtz's Distress Ink in Dusty Concord. For adhesive, I used my ATG and Photo Splits both by Scotch. Most of the paper is from the DCWV Garden Party Paper Pack, and some is by SEI--Chocolate line. And there was lots of glitter, ruffles, stickers, butterflies, and flowers. :)

Ok, on to photos!

So those are a few of my favorite pages from the book. There were over 75 pages total. Hopefully Caitlin gets a lot of use out of it, and hopefully her little girl will love it when she gets older. :)

The Title Page

So there you have it. That's a bit of Rachel's Baby Book. Hopefully it'll be awhile before I have to make another one. :)

Awesome Quote Project

So awhile back, I happened upon this blog post from one of my favorite blogs. I really like Allison's version, but I didn't have access to barn wood and I wanted different colors, so I adapted it to what I did have on hand: a blank 12"x24" canvas. :)

I used my (Cait's) handy-dandy cricut and laptop to design the look of the canvas using a font I liked. And now I can't remember what it is. Sorry.

I painted the canvas with most of it being yellow and then just the bottom portion where the word "awesome" is in bright green.

I didn't have any vinyl, but I had contact paper and I figured that would probably work just as well, right? Yeah, wrong. I tried using a bit of mod-podge to stick the contact paper down so I could just paint over it with the dark grey (so the wording would be yellow & green). Problem: the mod-podge dried and acted as glue. So then the letters were glued to the canvas. Not the look I was going for.

Fortunately, I only did this for the first two letters on the first word. I was able to get the paper off with a bit of elbow grease, water, and an exacto knife. I learned my lesson and just traced each of the letters. Which made for a lot more work and time.

When I was all done tracing, I started the most time consuming part. I painted the cobblestone grey color around each letter. The grey was not as opaque as I would have liked and so it took at least 3 coats to get the solid look I wanted.

And then it was done:

It's now hanging in our hallway so you see when everytime you come out of the bathroom. And it makes me happy. :)

Santa Steve

Can I just say that I love my brother, Steven!?! He is so cute and sweet. :)

This is a prime example of the above.

This morning he played Santa for Lincoln First Ward's Christmas Party Breakfast (which was delicious, by the way). The last few years he's played Santa for Loomis First Ward (our family ward), which has been really cute. The first year, he knew a bunch of the kids and so he was able to "prove" that Santa was real because none of them knew it was Steven.

As an aside that year, one kid, Ethan, was convinced that Santa wasn't real but then he talked to Santa Steve and by the end as he walked away, he said so happily that only an 8 year old can be, "Santa IS real!" That warms my heart!

So this year the tradition continued, but for Lincoln where no one knew him. We have some friends in this ward (hello Fluckigers & Duffs/Hansons!). Michelle was supposed to be helping with the Christmas story portion of the program and so I went to cheer her on and hang with her kids. Michelle was called into work, but my friend Fallon stepped right in and did a fabulous job. The kids were so adorable as she read the story. :)

Then Santa came to town. The kids were enchanted by him. :) The first picture is if Einstein and Santa had a baby :) :

The ward also gave out little mangers with straw. Starting December 1st, for every good deed you do, you put a piece of straw in the manger and try to fill it up so that when baby Jesus comes on Christmas, the manger is full for him. Cute, right? I thought it was really sweet.

It was a fun party and it was especially fun because I got to hang out with my kids and the Duffs. :)

My Life Really Isn't So Bad....

I have a lot to be grateful for. I know that. I recognize that fact quite often in my life. But lately, I've been a bit dragged down with a few difficulties that popped up at the same time. It has been a yucky week.

One of them being...we need a new roommate badly. We've been looking for a couple of months now, and we've even had a few potentials, but nothing has panned out. Now we're looking at moving out. My roommate would have to move home--which she really doesn't want to do. And I don't know where I would go. I don't have anywhere to go.

And that scares me...a lot. Like panic inducing.

The last few years have been filled with me searching for roommates. Not fun. Seriously. It's really, really frustrating. I've always been able to find one, or find some place new to live, but it's never been this close to actually not happening. Basically I have 30 days to find someone new. We're even putting in notice that we're moving.

My roommate and I went over the lease the other night and realized how much we're going to have to do to move out. Our prior roommates had done a lot of painting and so we're going to have to do a lot of un-painting. Yucky. And we have to deep clean 5 years of dirt, grime, and dust. No bueno.

I'm feeling really overwhelmed.

I'm tired of being the one that gets stuck behind. Stuck with cleaning and emptying the house/apartment. Stuck with scrambling to deal with what to do with my stuff.

Now would be a great time for Heavenly Father to answer my desperate prayers for a roommate so I don't have to be homeless.

This isn't a very fun time of year to be stressed out either.

But then I get phone calls from my clients who have no income and families to feed and provide shelter. It puts things into a bit of perspective. And then I learned that a friend of mine's husband has cancer. They found out 3 weeks after they got married. Yeah...

I have a lot to be grateful for. I'm healthy. My family is healthy. My sister is having a baby in a week (or so) and she has had an easy pregnancy. I have a job. And I can cover my bills (as long as I find a roommate).

I don't mean to be a big complainer, but this is what has been going on this week. I'm keepin' it real. I literally have been taking it one day at a time. It's a really good thing that the christmas presents are done because I am not motivated to work on any projects.

Last night I went to the temple, hoping to feel better and maybe have a solution magically pop into my head.

I did feel a little better, but no solution. I read my scriptures while I was there, flipping through them. Oddly each of the verses that I was able to actually absorb were talking about the people that fight against Zion will fail. I mean, I read that verse in the every page I flipped to in my scriptures. Weird, right? Yeah...that doesn't have much to do with the roommate situation. Though, interestingly, it did make me feel better about another issue I have to deal with soon.

I think the take away lesson from my visit to the Temple was the feeling that somehow things will work out they way they are supposed to. But I don't know what way that is, and I don't know if I'll like it when I do find out.

But I do know that it will work out. Some how.

Relief Society Lesson/Handout

Last Sunday I gave a lesson in Relief Society out of the Gospel Principles manual. The lesson? The Final Judgment. It was such a fun topic to teach about and discuss.

So a quick recap of the lesson. I started out by summarizing the Plan of Salvation and then went into the lesson and we talked about Judgment and why it's necessary and when it's good and when it's not.

Then we talked about the three Kingdoms of Heaven, based on the verses in Doctrine & Covenants Section 76. We split into groups and discussed each one and then talked about the Celestial Kingdom together as a class. Because, really, that's where we all want to be. :)

So the fun, cheesy part was at the end when I concluded and told a story about a lesson I learned when I was in Seminary.

My teacher, Sister Grim, taught a lesson similar to this one and at the end she told us that we were all celestial material and because of the Atonement, she said that we all had the ability to live in the celestial kingdom. Then she gave us a scrap of fabric that has suns and moons and stars to remind us that we were celestial material. (Get it?!) So cute.

This was the first time that it even occurred to me that I had that potential. I figured that I never would be able to because I was a mean, angry child and teenager and didn't think that would even be an option. Becuase you have to be perfect to be there. Well no one is, and that is why we have the Atonement. :)

So I wanted to share that beautiful message with our Relief Society and so I found "celestial material" at the store and made a cute handout for everyone. I put gold star garland wrapped around the top so that I could attach the "You are Celestial Material" tag (font is called "Inspiration") I had printed to the fabric. My roommate suggested that it be an ornament so I added hooks to it. :) Thanks to my sister for helping me make them, I think that they turned out pretty cute.

So just remember that you, too, are celestial material. :)

Pictures from This Weekend

So here are some random pictures from this weekend.

There's this house in Lincoln (3rd Street by the railroad tracks) that times the lights to music. So cool!! I snapped a picture, but I wish I had video. :)

Saturday I was working on my handout for my lesson (I'll share that later) that I taught yesterday in Relief Society and I needed pinking shears, so I ran over to Michelle's borrow her's. Kevin was home and so he INSISTED that I post a picture of him and Tucker on my blog. So here you go, baby boy. Here is the picture that you DESPERATELY WANTED on the internet. :) Love you! (He's so cute!)

Here is Michelle's photo wall all done up for Christmas. It looks sooooo good!

And she was finally able to hang up her teacup collection with the words I made for her last Christmas. :) Looks awesome, right?

After I was done at Michelle's I went over to Cait's to have her help me with putting my handout together. It wasn't hard, but I did want it to get done faster. Thanks, sis!

Steven showed up after we were done and we hung out for a couple of hours.

I convinced Cait to let me take a picture of her at nine months.  Isn't she so cute!?! I love her baby belly. She only has 2 weeks left!! Steven also decided to make his presence known. :)

Nick decided that he wanted pomagranate salad and Cait made him put on an apron. He was so cute, I couldn't resist snapping a few pics. But he realized what I was doing, so I got several pictures of his backside. Definately not what I was aiming for. Eventually I got this shot. Adorable, right? I thought so. :)

So then today was interesting. I found out, thankfully, I don't have to give a talk next Sunday, like I was asked to. So that was nice. And I think that my lesson went pretty well. I just got some 2 bits of uncomfortable news and I'm still trying to digest. And I'm not real happy about it.

But thankfully, It will be okay and I'm not dealing with it alone, so that is always good. :) Good thing I know Heavenly Father loves me. :)