My attempts to be crafty with my Cricut

So, I have a Cricut machine. For those of you not in the know, it's a pretty bad-a paper cutting machine that came out a few years ago (although I have the newer, fancier Expressions version) - VERY popular in the scrapbooking world. You plug in a font 'cartridge', type the letters or words you want, select what size of letters you want, stick in the paper, and press 'cut'. It quickly makes the cuts and you have little (or big) paper letter/shapes to adorn whatever project you're working on.

My wonderfully generous parents-in-law bought it for me for Christmas a year and a half ago, and to be perfectly honest it sat unopened for almost a year. My scrapbooking table had turned into my school table and my free time was spent on homework. (This would explain why our family scrapbook records end with Clyde's birth - that's how far behind I am!) Plus I was seriously intimidated by the Cricut - so many exciting buttons and features that I felt sure I would never push the right ones!

Randomly (a few months ago) I mentioned this possession to a couple friends, and they insisted I start using it. So, last December I got it all set up (well, Chuck did) and started to play. I had my sister-in-law Aleesha in Chuck's family's sibling Christmas gift exchange, and I had a most excellent idea - customized picture frames. My side hobby of facebook stalking came in handy as I remembered a really sweet movie quote she wrote to her husband Lee a while back: "Take love, multiply it by infinity and take it to the depths of forever and you still have only a glimpse of how I feel for you."

It took some pretty serious trial and error to figure out how big I wanted the letters, how to space them, and how to attach them to the picture mat (I went with a good ol' glue stick. It was painstakingly slow but worth it).

Here are the 'finished products' ready to wrap. Chuck helped choose the 'squiggle' for the bottom - he was pretty proud of himself :).

And here they are (complete with pictures!) displayed at Lee and Aleesha's vow renewal in January. I was SO thrilled that Aleesha liked them enough to use them at such a special event.

Also for Christmas, I decided to try my hand at a customized frame for Sam and Terri. They had just found out for sure that they were expecting a girl and selected the cutest name: Bailey Hiroko. I went with a very simple look - here's the finished product:

Unfortunately, there's not a cute baby girl picture in the frame yet since Bailey isn't due for a couple of more weeks. We can't wait to see her!

Since then, I've been able to use the Cricut for some random projects:

An alphabet poster for Clyde's preschool group,

'name plates' for each li'l preschooler to practice spelling his/her name,

and posters for Cub Scouts. Please appreciate how not straight all of the letters on these posters are. I could blame my sweet little 8-year-old Wolves, since they did help me lay out all of the letters BUT ultimately I was the gluer. Who was too lazy to use a ruler/pencil combo to get them on there straight. However, I do think it can be used as a lesson in Cub Scouts - the motto is to 'do your best', so I was obviously just trying to show the boys that it's okay not to be perfect. I know, I'm an excellent leader.


I also made some letters to decorate at Terri's recent baby shower:


Finally, I've had this next idea for a while now and figured Easter was a good occasion to finally put them together and give them to the little boys:

The pictures themselves are 5x7 and the frames are 8x10. And the letters are definitely not perfectly straight on these either, but luckily Clyde and Will are both very forgiving of their mom's faults :). Chuck's to-do list for this weekend includes hanging them in the boys' room.

Here they are set out Easter morning. I'm not super into the Easter Bunny (I've had a lifelong fear of rabbits, I kid you not) but luckily the boys were happy with the pictures and sidewalk chalk. And don't worry, Gloria and Heidi put on an EPIC Easter Egg Hunt, so there was plenty of candy as well (more to come on our fun, fun, fun visit with the Smiths!!).

And thus ends the photographic evidence that I take the occasional whack at being crafty. In the meantime, I'll just continue to blog-stalk y'all and be amazed at your sewing/quilting/scrapbooking/decorating/furniture refinishing/hair accessory creating/etc.

A post of random pictures

* This is a cop-out post. I have several 'recap-y' posts waiting to be written, i.e. a zoo trip with Grandpa, an amazing Easter/General Conference Utah trip, my December graduation, my attempts to be crafty with my Cricut, etc, and I didn't know where to start. So I went with random pictures and stories instead; hopefully the other posts will follow soon . . . .

1. Chuck (and Clyde) spent some time a few weeks ago setting up the bike trailer and getting our bikes ready to roll after a long winter break. Yay for bike rides! Also, either my leg muscles have seriously weakened since last fall or my kids have seriously grown because I almost died after our first ride around the neighborhood. Could be a mixture of both.

2. Our ward's Relief Society birthday dinner was last month and I portrayed Sister Bathsheba W. Smith, the 4th Relief Society General President. Yep, the only one who used to rock a lace shawl on her head. I definitely sacrificed dignity for historical accuracy :). (And much thanks to my mom for providing my ensemble last minute!!)

3. Our great neighbor Val brought home some baby chicks one day and he let us take a peek . . . well, maybe a hands-on peek. Will had no fear and kept snatching them up (I quickly helped him put them back and was grateful no little chick necks were snapped) and Clyde eagerly introduced them to Thomas the Tank Engine.


4. My mom came over one evening to watch the boys while Chuck and I attended a church meeting (the adult session of Stake Conference). Her main assignments were to corral Will and watch Clyde zoom by on his trike.


5. A few weeks ago the little boys and I spent an afternoon at my mom's school so I could help some of her students prepare for History Day. At one point, Will climbed up onto an already occupied chair and began erasing the board. The young student was very good-natured about it all; I think he would have welcomed any distraction from his work.

6. Will loves peek-a-boo; this was on our trip to Utah last month:


7. We had a chance to stop and see my grandpa a couple of weeks ago after running some errands in Boise, and it was such a nice visit. After hearing about Clyde's train obsession, Grandpa started telling us about how his father worked on a railroad and then showed us all a really neat pocket watch with a MOVING train on it. Very cool.


8. During my mom's spring break, we finally had a chance to cash in the gift certificate that Chuck gave us for manicures and pedicures over at the beauty school. The color options were somewhat lacking (they had a lot of neon choices though!) but we had fun nonetheless. Thanks again Chuck!!


9. It's no great secret that I do not have a great passion for cooking, BUT I'm slowly but surely realizing that my husband and children will continue requiring multiple meals a day so I may as well get used to preparing the majority of them. To that end, I have recruited Sam and Terri (okay, mostly Terri) to give me fairly easy recipes to try. When we were visiting in March, I tentatively watched Terri prepare delicious pork fried rice and came home with the assignment to make it in my own kitchen before I returned for our next visit. (This is where Sam came in to the picture; he kept me accountable by promising he would lock me out if I hadn't made it). So I did it! And while Terri's version was most definitely tastier, mine was definitely edible.

And thus ends our random exploration of my recent picture collection; we should do this again sometime!

A lovely weekend with Sam and Terri!

Well, since we're about to embark on another trip to Utah, I figured I should get the last one good and blogged first. Three weeks ago, the little boys and I jetted (in our station wagon, of course) down to visit Sam and Terri. Naturally, we had all sorts of fun.

We arrived Friday evening and promptly allowed Sam and Terri to take us out to eat (a recurring theme all weekend) at a noodle joint. Then we stopped by Costco on the way home to pick up a few things and Sam had one of the most exciting and flattering experiences of his life.

The next morning we made our way over to Magleby's Fresh for a delicious breakfast with Terri's sister and brother-in-law Connie and Brandon. Connie had just finished the Rex Lee Run.
It was very nice to see them (even though my normally entertaining Clyde was a bit out of sorts and just sat somberly eating his pancakes) and Connie and I were able to figure out some of the details for the baby shower that we're having for Terri.

That afternoon we headed to the Bean Museum at BYU (with a stop on the way to pick up Sam and Terri's buddy Wade). I hadn't been there since I was actually a student at BYU, but sure enough, it still kind of creeped me out. The little boys all loved it though!

Will and Clyde looking at some animals (caption by Clyde).

Will touching an animal. Pretty sure you're not supposed to, whoops!

Looking over the banister to see what we can see.

Wade was so cute; as soon as he saw my camera he struck that pose. That's my kind of kid!

Documenting our cute grey-and-white matching outfits - totally unplanned. We're just cool like that.

Some more looking down and around.

Then we sat in on a presentation for a while. Wade bravely petted the lizard thing,

as did Will. Clyde chose to hide behind Terri instead.

The fun continued later that day back at the house when Aunt Terri proposed a little old-fashioned fort building.
Check it out, a sweet roof and lots of cushions to jump on :).

The boys obviously loved it.

Before we left Nampa, Chuck helped Clyde pack up a few of his trains and some track pieces to take with us.

At one point, Will realized that Sam was a potential horse-y ride provider and jumped on board.

Much laughter ensued (a great deal of which was provided by Jana and Terri as we watched!)

We spent some time in the basement letting crazy little boys (Sam included) burn off some energy playing soccer. Uncle Quinn will be so proud!

Clyde took a quick sideline break to hold hands with a cute girl. Clyde would also like to point out that one of his feet is 'standing' on the ball (he's sitting on my lap right now).

This was the morning we left; we made time for some cartoon-watching and relaxing on the couch before our long drive. Thanks so much Sam and Terri for letting us come and party all weekend - sorry again that we finished off the milk, the oatmeal, the peanut butter, and possibly the little boxes of Nerds :). We looooooooove you guys and had so much fun!

Oh, and we managed to fit in a quick side trip on the way home to see Miss Heidi, whose very wonderful dad let her skip yoga for the occasion.

Okay, so don't worry about my necklace being a little 'off' here. We took some more pictures after this, but our photogenic-ness seemed to take a serious nosedive. We'll make up for it this weekend though!!

Happy 2nd birthday to my sweet, accident-prone Will!

Today is Will's second birthday, yay! Will continues to be such a sweet, happy presence in our family and we are all completely smitten with him.

Will loves the alphabet, hence the ABC cupcakes (thanks to Grandma Pam for finishing them for me!!!).

In the few days leading up to his birthday, Will apparently became worried that he hadn't experienced very many childhood rites of passage, so he decided to hit two of them in two days: stitches and a broken bone.

First up: stitches. Wednesday afternoon Clyde and Will were jumping around back and forth between our two couches, a daily (sometimes hourly) activity. Unfortunately this time Will lost his footing and fell behind/in between the couches, where our wooden magazine holder sits.

Initially, I'm not sure who cried more: me or Will. Luckily Chuck was home (jarringly awoken by my screaming!) and kept a level head. We initially took Will to our nearby urgent care clinic, but they were a little intimidated by the depth of the gash (trust me, that picture doesn't do it justice) as well as its placement on a small child's face, and sent us to the ER. They did put some numbing medicine and gauze on it, so that was good.

So we went to the ER, our first time at the hospital here in Nampa. (Quick shout-out: THANK YOU to the Littlewoods, who graciously took Clyde ALL afternoon for us; we owe you!!!) We spent most of our time in the waiting room watching Animal Planet, good times. Then we were taken back for the stitching, which makes it near the top of the list of the worst experiences of my life - and I was sitting off to the side! I can't even comprehend how hard it was for Chuck, who had to help hold Will still, or Will, who was actually being stitched up.

But we all survived and for as miserable as Will was at the hospital, he was a complete doll afterwards. Chuck was already late for a work meeting so Will and I drove into Boise with him and waited, and Will was delightful the whole time.

He loves scrunching up his face and closing his eyes when I go to take a picture of him, goof :).

Thursday started out well; Will's chin didn't seem to be bothering him. During his nap, Clyde helped me decorate so we could celebrate Will's birthday that evening before Chuck went out home-teaching.

Will woke up from his nap happy and started playing with Clyde while I made cupcakes and Chuck worked on some scouting stuff with our friend McKay. THEN we heard a crash from the playroom followed by Will crying. Somehow the chair that Clyde and Will were spinning on toppled over, leaving a very sad little boy. He didn't calm down very quickly, which was odd since he usually shakes things off pretty well, but I chalked it up to his face hurting. We cuddled for twenty minutes or so, and then I went to put him down on the floor. Immediately he crumpled to the ground, unable to stand. AWESOME. After our broken leg experience with Clyde last spring, we know that any time a child refuses to put weight on a leg or foot, it needs to be checked out. Luckily my mom and Cody were already on their way so we left Clyde home with them while we took Will in to the urgent care clinic.

Isn't he such a cute patient?

First Chuck reviewed the x-rays, and then the doctor did :). Sure enough, Will's right foot showed a fracture.

They put a splint on it there, and then Monday we'll see the orthopedist for the hard cast.

He was such a trooper! Doesn't his little foot look so sad? Luckily there was still some fun waiting at home for him. . .

Birthday cupcakes! Will was such a pro at blowing out the candles; we didn't even have to explain what to do, he just went for it :).

W is for Will.

U is for Uncle Cody.

G is for Grandma Pam.

C is for Clyde.

D is for Daddy.

And M is for Mommy!

After that it was time for Will to open up presents, which Clyde only let him do unassisted because he was busy playing with a little airplane glider that Cody put together.

And a quick family shot:

Today has been very mellow, starting with a crawling lesson this morning for Will. We ventured out once for a quick bike ride (complete with helmets, as always) but spent most of the day watching movies, cuddling, and trying to keep Will off both his foot and the furniture. Happy birthday sweet baby Will - I love you more than life itself!