Friday, January 29, 2010

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Pillows!

I got two made the other day. I wanted to have something to tie in the red in our rug and lamp to the couch. I also made drapes, but not sure how I feel about the drapes in this material yet. I'm also going to make one smaller rectangle pillow and round pillow both in red and will use extra red material to fix what I see wrong with the drapes and see if that works. Sometimes what looks good in my head doesn't always work out that way in real life.
Here's the two pillows...
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Joy

She was taking stray things to the laundry room.


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Monday, January 25, 2010

Spammers Go Away!

All of a sudden I'm getting weirdo comments on my blog, good thing they are all moderated first! It makes me wonder if my blog is showing up on some sort of "spammers board" where they can get links to websites that are fun to spam.  Silly me, I didn't have word verification on.  Guess you have to jump through one more hoop to leave me a comment.  Sorry!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Did you love the strap?

Do you love the strap I made for my camera? Want one, but don't have the time, skill or patience to make your own? You can run over to see Ashley at Make it and Love it! There's a great giveaway for either an SLR strap or a cute little strap for your point and shoot! You can enter 5 times.

If you don't follow my 365

I still wanted to share today's post with you...

Today I ran around to a few thrift stores trying to find old pillows with forms inside that I could remove, wash and put a new fabric on. No luck. So then I ended up at Deal Smart with the thought, "Hey, they have pretty cheap stuff, I bet I could get a halfway decient pillow from them for cheap!" When I got in the store I headed right over to the household department. There were sheets, picture frames, rugs. And lucky me! There was a clearance section at the end of an isle loaded with pillows! I found a beautiful cream one that had a great rectangular shape to it, I thought it could be thicker, but if it's clearanced it will do. I'm thinking to myself, "This was a great idea! I bet this will do great!" Just look at this great pillow, with Joy holding it-




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But then I looked at the price tag. Could this be a typo? Well, if it is, someone kept making it on all the other pillows on the clearance shelves.

Here is a picture of the pillow's price tag:



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I don't think this was a typo because I found several other pillows that also had the same original price marked on them in another area of the store, but they were still at $29.99, and hadn't been marked down to the clearance price of $19.00 yet.



Guess I'm back to searching the isles of thrift stores again.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Joyannaisms

"I think I look better in slow motion."

Monday

Monday we went shopping for new church shoes and were at the mall when an email came through my phone.  I have the settings on my phone to play the Vikings rally song.  The second we entered the shoe store my phone starts playing "Skol Vikings let's win this game! Skol Vikings honor your name!" and Joy starts dancing and waving her hands around in the air singing, "Go get that first down then get a touch down! Rock em! Sock em! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"  Much to the amusement of the employees and other customers.  I love that kid.

Almost made the decision

Thanks to the help of my dad and my friend Michelle I've pretty nearly come to the conclusion of what I am going to do as far as school.  It's not been an easy decision because of a number of reasons.  I'm going to channel my inner Rory Gilmore here and do my pro/con lists.

Pros for going back to college:
Because of Joel's being laid off last year and smaller income this year and government programs I'll be able to qualify for a lot of free money for college.


K-8 Education Licensure
K-8 Education pro list:
*only 3 years to get the degree
*will qualify me to work in schools, summers off, possibly in my own children's school
*98% can be done online
*degree is from a great college- Bemidji State

K-8 Education con list:
*pay would be limited
*limited hands on instruction
*limited interaction with other students
*not a bachelor's degree
*would be limited to being K-8, elementary education teacher


Special Education Bachelor's
*Special Education pro list:
*more hands on instruction
*more interaction with other students
*degree is from a great college- St. Cloud State
*variety of places other than schools that this degree can qualify me to work at including individual and social assistance agencies or residential facilities, or in homebound or hospital environments.
*Pay median is considerably much more than the other degree
*high in demand and future demand looks like there will be an increase which means greater chance for being hired


Special Education con list:
*Have to drive to school a few nights a week
*4 years to obtain degree, which also cuts into Jake's mission (was hoping to be working by then to help pay for his mission)
*Not many classes can be done online
*cost is more
*Because of Joy being in afternoon Kindergarten next year, my irst year's classes will have to be in the afternoon, which means Jake will have to watch kids for me during his Senior year.  Hopefully the kids will not bother him and let him study. He has decided not to wrestle next year so this will be helpful as well.


I've still yet to go over any of this with Joel.  He's been so busy with his new job and still working the other job.  I'm hoping I'll be able to have his attention sometime this weekend. So far I've only gotten out of him, "do whatever".

Jacob was surprisingly very supportive and enthusiastic about what I told him.  I went over this list with him last night and he was overwhelmingly in support of the Special Education Degree, and my heart is so full of love for him at that. My dad was also excited about the information I'd sent him.  I hope I get as enthusiastic of a response from Joel.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

What to do?

I am sitting on the horns of a delema.
Often through the last few years I've thought I should be going to school, but could never figure out "what for?".  Ever since our church friend passed away last month it has been heavy on my mind.  He was only a year older than Joel.  What if Joel died next year?  What would happen to me? to our kids? Would I be able to afford to live on his Social Security?  What happens to me when the kids are grown and I'm cut off from Social Security?  What will I do then?  What if Joel is injured and becomes unable to care for us or himself and the social security gets eaten up by the care he will require?
I'm finding that I am feeling a strong urge to go back to school and get myself an education that will help me provide for myself and my family. 
My children are getting older, I will need to go back to work at some point, what will I do? I have no real marketable skills besides my photography and sewing. I need to be able to work while my kids are at school, and photography happens during hours families aren't working, which means also hours my kids are home, that has been a hard thing for me to reconcile with. But I'm not ruling it out. Everything I know about photography I have learned on my own.  I'd like to get more education on it and have talked about taking classes.  I don't know if I want to learn commercial photography.  I'm also a little worried with how affordable SLRs are now and the trends in portrait photography that, at least what I've been doing, is not going to be a lucrative enough business for me.
I have been praying and looking online at local colleges and the programs and degrees they offer.  I have found  a couple of programs that interest me, but I am not sure if they would be right for me.
I've been looking at trends and recently popular fields, and it seems that "green jobs" are the wave of the future. Although I'm all for recycling and not being wasteful, I'm by no means a tree hugger or a believer in global warming nor do I wish to support anything that will empower our government anymore in thinking that they should try to regulate American's any more than they already do.
One job that I am sure will never go away is the job of teacher. There will always be a need for teachers.  Maybe I could teach photography in high school, hahaha. 
What do you think I would enjoy/be good at?

Monday, January 11, 2010

For those who don't visit

my 365 blog, I thought I'd share this over here too.  This is a cute purse I just finished making Jaeden today.  She picked out the fabrics for it.  The lady at the store said they were both new. I figured the one was because it's a Valentine's Day print.  She was so happy when she saw it upon arriving home from school today.  I had it hanging from the door knobs on my computer's armoire right by the front door.  She asked if it was done, looked inside to make sure I'd put in the magnetic snaps and then gave it a huge hug! That made me so happy, and then she gave me a hug and thanked me, which made me feel even happier.  She's been wearing it on her head for a lot of the evening, lol!  I finally told her to put some stuff in it and so now she wears it on her shoulder. 
For those wanting the pattern, I found it over at My Spare Time.


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Sunday, January 10, 2010

So Tough

This is what my kid comes back looking like after a day with the scouts. They were playing football. Tackle football. I named this image "bestkid1" because he is the bestest kid I could have asked for. Just look at his shirt. He's not ashamed to wear it. It says, "Born of goodly parents". I miss him so much when he goes to scout camp, I can't imagine how much I'll miss him when he goes off to live at college or serve a two year mission for our church. He's got a nearly six foot 245 pound tough exterior, but he's mush inside :)


Friday, January 8, 2010

Joyannaisms:

I love you more than Christmas!

Me Thinks

I need new decorating for this place, but can't decide what to do.
My calendar is suddenly so full, and not one client on the books for the month.  How did my life get so complicated???
Josh so far is doing great at wrestling, he hasn't gotten hurt yet, thankfully.  He also seems to have a natural ability.  I watched him last night and any time a kid got him down, he would immediately try to be the one on top.  Good job!
Maybe he'll be ok.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

:)

I haven't forgotten about this blog.  I've just been busy.  Also my diary is getting all the good stories lately :)

I'm finally on vacation and have been doing things I've been wanting to do for a awhile.  Not all of them, because well, -0 temps keep me from doing many of them... like sledding with the kids.  Booo.  However, I've been able to organize my computer a bit, started a few blogs that I was meaning to start, tomorrow I'll need to try to get back a book I had to return to the library before I was done with it.

Joshua starts wrestling this week. I am sick, nervous about that.
In November I went to one of Jacob's tournaments.  There were some 8th graders wrestling on the mat in front of me.  I was on the first row.  They were just little boys.  One of the boys got hurt so badly.  It was horrible to watch him sitting on the mat in pain, holding his bent arm, all of these adults around him not knowing what to do for him and him crying from all the pain.  I cried too.  Then grandma came down out of the stands and called his mom and they took him out of the gym.  My heart then was filled with so much fear for my little Joshua who wants so badly to be a wrestler too, just like his big brother Jake.  I asked the coach sitting next to me how often that happens, "More than you think it would", was his response.  My heart sank all the way down into my stomach.
For weeks the check for Josh's wrestling sat in my purse.  Waiting to be mailed.  I couldn't let go of it.  Every time I saw it in my purse and thought of mailing it the vision of that hurt little boy came back hauting me.  I finally let it go in the mailbox.  Tuesday he starts.  I think he needs a Preisthood blessing.