About Success

A while back I wrote a blog about failure. I was so overwhelmed with life and even more so about what I wasn't doing to improve life for my family that I just felt like a terrible failure. It was a horrible feeling and not in the motivating I want to do better way, but in the I don't know how to fix this way. Well months later I am please to report that with the help of the Lord, I'm fixing it.

My world at home has changed and my attitude for the way I live has too and it feels SO GOOD. I want to give a shout out to my dear friend Becca S. Without you this never would have happened!

Becca allowed me to invite myself to come to her house every morning and workout with her.

I stink at motivating myself and Becca has been a most excellent workout buddy. We started at the beginning of winter. We've tried to be as consistent as possible but there were mornings skipped, even a couple of weeks during Christmas. The important part though is we've always picked it up again when life has slowed down.

I never in my wildest dreams expected this, but daily exercise has turned out FAR more blessings than just making my body look/feel healthier. It's like a little seed was planted that isn't growing into just a tree, but a FRUIT tree! And let me just say - I LOVE fruit.

I always thought that reading scriptures and praying daily is key to change.

I still believe this but my experience with it has not been as simple as that. I do not like to read and have struggled with consistent scripture study my whole life. I have often prayed for the desire to read because I had none and couldn't seem to get myself to do it. I feel like that's been one of those prayers that has just hung out there in limbo and for a long time, years even, I have not been blessed with that desire. I've still tried, sometimes harder than others, but for the most part I have just kind of waited for the blessing. This no doubt has stunted my growth, but I can only move forward at this point.

Over this past winter, the more active I got with working out the better I felt. I have noticed changes in my body that have encouraged me to keep doing what I was doing. Soon enough I found myself doing things that I hadn't done in a long time... like washing the dishes every morning and keeping up on laundry WILLINGLY and not just because it needed to be done. I've even started to clean the bathroom regularly! My whole perspective has changed!

From a clean kitchen (and the food storage we bought) stemmed the ability to make dinner for my family. This I think is probably the second biggest change that's taken place. Almost 3 years into marriage and I still wasn't consistently and certainly NOT willingly taking care of dinners. Now I WANT to and I'm not scared that I won't follow through!! Before I knew it I was consistently doing all the things, I thought would be hard for me, easily. AND from that I've learned a little about myself.

Last summer was not a good summer for me. It wasn't terrible, I was happy enough but I couldn't seem to muster up the energy or desire to do anything beyond sitting outside and chatting with the other mom's on the playground. Lucky for our family Nate was home all summer and picked up A LOT of my slack. The part that made summer not good was: because I was slacking I had guilt and I felt like a lazy person to the extent that I surrendered myself to thinking that's who I am.

So one day, a couple of weeks ago, while mopping my floor (I do it on a regular basis now!) I was comparing this time last year to right now and thinking about how much has changed. This is what my life looked like a year ago: I was nursing and caring for a 3 month old baby, I had 60-80 documents a day (about 6-8 hours work), I was working on a wedding dress, and my husband was in classes all day and, working till 2:30 am on average every night. This is a typical day today: Get up at about 7:30, Nate gets up with Bud and they have daddy son time, exercise at 8:00, do morning chores after exercise, SHOWER (I did not feel I had time for that last year and therefore did not shower often so~ it's a BIG deal) I have only about 5-15 docs a day (1-2 hours work) spend the rest of the day working on a project with a break to make dinner, Nate goes to school for either classes or homework Mon - Fri and comes home to spend the evening with us. WOW!!! What a world of difference.

Considering these things it finally dawned on me. I had a mild case of postpartum last summer and can anyone wonder why?! I was SERIOUSLY over worked. I wanted to be super mom. I wanted to be able to do it all, but as soon as Nate quit his job and I no longer had obligations to others outside my home I almost completely SHUT DOWN. Then I felt guilt for not working or wanting to work and I thought that must mean I'm a lazy person. I was wrong all along! I may have been lazy, but I am NOT a lazy person. I was doing some serious decompressing. I'm using the word serious a lot I'm aware.... but SERIOUSLY (it really has been a refreshing revelation)!

Exercising has given me the recharge I needed. I enjoy it so much now, and it's become such a clutch that I'm to the point that I even work out alone if I can't get together with Becca! I see now that I am capable. My house is consistently clean (enough) dinner is on the table, I have time to do the things I enjoy, and to take Bud out to do things he enjoys. And I haven't even gotten to the BEST part....

After all these years my prayers have been answered. I have the DESIRE to read the scriptures. It feels so backwards that exercise would lead to house cleaning and scripture study rather than scripture study leading to house cleaning and exercise, but it is how it is and I am so grateful. We have been taught many times that our bodies are temples and we need to take care of them and I truly have a testimony of that. When we do a little "house cleaning" our spirits are refreshed and the Lord has greater opportunity to bless us and answer our prayers.

The tree doesn't stop growing there. When we learn how to be a blessing to our family opportunities are more easily and often seen for how we can be of service to others. I'm grateful for this experience and how it has helped to change me, though I know that I did not make these changes on my own. Everything that has changed, besides making the choice to exercise, has come from the blessing of DESIRE, and that was a gift from my Savior. I know he lives. I know he loves us. And I know that if we pray for the blessings that will help us to make righteous choices our prayers will be answered. I know that our Savior knows us each by name and he cares, and if we let him he will guide us safely through this life to the next.

About Disaster

I first want to say - I don't know how long it's been since my apt has been such a DISASTER! We have been fairly good at keeping it clean on a regular basis and even close to spotless the week leading up to this unfortunate event.

Here is how this happened. Friday we started out cleaning the house. Vacuumed, did dishes, laundry, cleaned Bud's room. It was beautiful! Friday night I had to make dinner for 2 families + our own. We were rushed for time as we had to leave at 5:30 to clean the SL temple, so I didn't really have time to clean up the dinner mess. We were there till 10:00, we watched the last Conan (I'm team CoCo!) when we got home, then went to bed.


Saturday we woke up early to cleaned our chapel, left to get Bud in Saratoga Springs (about an hour away) went to the case lot sale at Harmon's in Midvale, went home took naps, went to dinner, went to Home Depot, Harmon's in Brickyard to get some stuff Midvale didn't have, went to Wal-mart, went home, unloaded, put Bud to bed, and I worked a bit and went to bed.

Sunday was well.... Sunday, and Monday I seriously just needed a break and besides a quick trip to Walmart and Lowes, and Golden Coral for dinner we did nothing. That's right NOTHING!

In the meantime for the past 2-3 days Bud's been doing some arranging of the food storage. I have no explanation for anything that wasn't food storage, except the laundry in our living room was just washed today and, like everything else, just needs to be put away.


I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all but I have done SOME dishes now. I think I'll finish those before I start on the family room.

Now for your viewing pleasure -

Sweet Bud falling asleep while eating lunch early last week. Funny kid:)

About My Christmas Craft

So over Christmas a friend posted this picture on FB asking for someone who knew how to sew to make her one of these for her son.

I thought it was really cute, and I've seen them before at church only without the pad of paper. The paper, I feel, makes it that much more functional. Christina and I decided it would be a fun gift to do for the nieces and nephews.

It's been so handy to have at church and it's too fun that I really want to share it. I modified it a little so I wouldn't have to worry about getting perfect finished edges because I didn't have much time to do them. Here's how we did it...

Supplies and Tools:

• Crayons (set of eight was perfect like in the picture above)
• Small pad of paper (mine was 3" x 5 1/2")
• 13" x 13" square of cute fabric
• 6 1/2 x 13" rectangle of cute contrasting fabric
• 6 1/2 x 13" rectangle of heavy cotton
• 24" of ribbon (or more)
• Pinking sheers
• Sewing machine
• Matching or Contrasting thread (matching thread will hide any little mistakes better but contrasting is really fun)

~The Process~

Step 1: When all your fabric pieces are all cut out, fold the the big square in half - press it - then fold one of those halves in half - press it.

Step 2: Lay the heavy cotton on the wrong side of fabric. Fold up the bottom quarter of the square.

Step 3: Lay contrasting fabric on heavy cotton right side up. Fold up second quarter of square. Total dimensions should now be 13" x 6 1/2".

Step 4: Pin stitch lines starting 1/2" from left and 1" apart making eight sections. Mark end of paper pocket 1/2" from right. (paper pocket should measure 4").

Step 5: Starting from left, stitch crayon pockets through all layers from bottom to top of folded/main fabric. You can also stitch the line on right side of paper pocket, I chose to save this for later.

Step 6: Fold contrasting fabric down, exposing heavy cotton, and pin.
Turn piece over and pin ribbon into place so the bottom of the ribbon sits just above the end of the stitch lines made to create the crayon pockets.The ribbon center should line up with center of crayon pockets (four pockets on each side of the ribbon center)
Step 7: Stitch top and bottom of ribbon starting and ending your stitch lines where the stitch lines for your crayon pockets start and end. (click on pictures for more detailed image)

Step 9: Fold contrasting fabric up and stitch around top and sides. Be sure to back stitch far enough back so you don't cut off the back stitching while trimming.

Step 10: Using your pinking sheers to trim (this could be done with regular scissors if you don't have pinking sheers. The pinking sheers just give it a fun edge and keep it from fraying so much.)

Final Steps: Stick the Crayons and paper into pockets, roll it up and tie it.


It's great for traveling or any place where your kids have to sit for a long time!

FYI when you are buying your fabric have the cutter at the store cut at least 1" more fabric than you need, then you can square it up properly. You can make 3 of these out of 45" wide fabric, so they are great to make with friends if you only want one for yourself or if you are doing them for lots of kids you can plan accordingly.