Catch Up

           How do you play catch up when you haven't written for weeks! The last couple have been crazy. Thursday I got to enjoy my mother's day present. A day to myself to relax with friends, go out to lunch, and a hour foot massage. Beau really knows how to pamper me. He picked just the right thing. He hung out with the kids all day and was a real trooper.
           We also closed on the house the same day and have been in the process of packing things up and getting ready to move.
           Saturday was spent all day in dress rehersals for Savannah's Dance recital. She is so shy and terrified of being in front of people. We were pretty sure she wouldn't do the recital, but she really wanted to. I was able to actually catch some fun video of her dances and some photo shots of her during the rehersal. It's a good thing too, because as soon as she walked out on stage and saw all of the people, she walked right back off. She's come so far since the first day of class, so we were proud of how much she has grown in having confidence. Hopefully next time she'll go through with it.
           The last couple of days are making arrangements to move, rearranging utilitities, packing, and getting ready to leave town for the next 4 days for a high school graduation and a family reunion.

Craziness

           Well for lack of taking any pictures lately... here's some I've been scanning in of old photos growing up, so another self portrait. Hmm... some of these self portraits are better than the ones now! :)
           Life will be crazy for us the next couple of weeks, hence probably a lack of absence here on the blog. Today was a mother's day present. A day all to myself to relax with two of my friends. Beau kept the kids all day while I got to enjoy going out, shopping (ok more like browsing) and lunch with them. Then later an hour foot massage. My husband is way too good to me. :)
           The middle of my day out was broken up so we could go and close on our new house! Yeah! I was perfectly fine giving up part of my day so that we could get this ball moving. Which means I'll be MIA as we are packing, traveling to reunions and graduations next week, and then moving and cleaning the following week. Trying to get out of here by the 30th. Good luck to us. It will be a crazy couple of weeks, but at least when it's all over we will be in our own place! Yeah!!!!! It's been a blessing, and we've had so many blessings poured out on us all the way around. Life has been good.

Newest Stuff

           Well lately I have just been exhausted and so uncomfortable. I will be so ready for this baby to get out here in a month. So my lack of blogging is basically because of a lack of energy. I've been working on some new baby products for the last couple of weeks and finally got them up at ScrapGirls! Yeah. I was excited because it's something that I can use quite a bit for my own purposes. I always like that!
           We are in the process of buying a tiny house. It's not necessarily any bigger than where we are at right now, but we'll have an extra bedroom for the kids, a garage, and a small yard! Yeah! we hopefully close here the end of next week, and then I will probably be MIA as we are packing, moving and cleaning these last couple of weeks!
           Here some pictures of my latest creations!
           My Newborn Collection.

           Here's a layout of Isaac using it.
           Here's my first attempt at actually doing some illustrations to match a kit. It was pretty fun, and now I've got ideas for other ones as well, which we're in the process of drawing out.

           This is probably my favorite part. The Newborn baby album templates. Savannah is now almost 5, I have three kids and no baby books for them. It just took too long. So now that I'm in love with the 4x6 size, I made some templates for an album that size. It is perfect, I was able to whip all of their albums out no problem, and they now officially have one! Yeah!!!
           Here's some samples showing Isaac's finished album. Just too much fun!

With still a month and a half to go.

           I've seen this photo in various places and my husband rolls his eyes at it every time because he says it's just not possible to actually see the foot like this. He's right, but boy lately (especially today) I sure feel like this photo. My stomach feels like it's in my throat and my growing belly is feeling huge and tight with all this rolling, moving, and pushing. I keep wondering what this kid is doing. I'm sure she's just trying to get comfortable just like me. Especially after all the abuse from her siblings. Isaac climbing and standing on my stomach, everyone sitting on it, pushing on it and climbing on it. I'm sure she's wondering what we are doing!

Being in the pictures too.

           It seems that most of the time I am the one taking pictures and so it's always fun to run across a picture where I'm actually in one. I ran across this one that I didn't realize I had until right after Savannah was born. I've been having fun and actually getting a lot of layouts done of our family with these 4x6 layouts.
           Sometimes they aren't the most flattering pictures of me, but I'm slowly getting over it as I realize I need to document myself in this life of ours, just as much as I need to document my children's life. I have very few pictures of my mom when we were growing up, and usually she had her hand up saying don't take this picture, or a scowl that she wasn't too happy with her picture taken. I want my kids to see me in pictures as being a part of their lives as well... so even though I don't necessarily love how I look right now I still need to be taking more!
           Which leads me to sharing my latest love.... more of Kal's Tiny art but specifically her pink ladies.


           She started this series when she did a painting for herself sharing her insecurities with her body after having a new baby. And it has evolved into a bunch of tiny art about women and their image of themselves with all their flaws, and not recognizing their real beauty. Too often we are comparing ourselves with earlier, skinnier days, each other or the media's description of what beauty is, when we are really missing it. We have beauty. Each of us. Inner beauty and outer beauty despite the extra curves and pounds that we carry. I love her simple words she describes, her descriptions of how we view ourselves and her honest drawings of what most of us look like. (I know I'm not one that promotes art, images or pictures of half dressed women, but I really love the message she is sharing and the way she is portraying it. Trust me I am the pickiest person when it comes to things like this, but I love them and the message so much I couldn't not share it.)

We're back

           I've been sort of absent for a while... life just catches up with you sometimes. Last week was a busy week of finishing up finals! Helping people, babysitting, dentist appointments, and the flu (me only!) We are enjoying the fact that we can relax and just be a family again. We had a great Saturday! I went to a baby shower, then off to Chuckie Cheese for a fun afternoon birthday party as a family. Afterwards we tackled the house before we went out on a date with friends to an Argentine restaurant. Beau's old mission companion and his wife went with us. They both miss the Argentine food, and so we enjoyed an evening of Milanesa's (I probably have those spelled so wrong! :)
           The best part of my whole weekend? My laundry is all caught up!!! It has been behind for literally months. Our dryer takes 2-3 cycles before it actually dries a load, and it has been impossible and would be impossible for me to ever get it caught up. So we just spent the money, and hauled all of it to the Laundry mat, and got it ALL down in a couple of hours. Loads and loads of it. I won't even tell you how many loads it was! Too embarrassing. But what an amazing feeling of relief it is to walk past the laundry room and have it clean, all it folded and put away, sorted through, and have one small pile to get done today. It was so worth every penny we paid! No more guilt and frustration of being constantly behind. What a productful, relaxing weekend.
           Today... Beau isn't working! I get time to design this morning, then we are off to relax and enjoy the day together as a family. The best part is that it is finally feeling and looking like spring too!

More Playing

           So I've been having too much fun playing and getting way too many ideas of possible projects in my head... but that's a good thing. I need that right now... here' s one of Savannah.

Oh I forgot!

           For those of you sitting and waiting from my last post as to whether on not Beau passed his defense for his masters... he did! Yeah!!!! The last week has been filled up with Final Projects, Finals, and readjusting the printed version of his thesis, but hopefully Tues is THE DAY. The final day, we can resume normal life. When life will slow down just a bit for us and we can take a break, breathe and relax!
           For those wondering - he's getting his masters in Computer Engineering: Robotics. His thesis was Real Time Implementation of Vision Algorithms for Control, Stabilization, and Target Tracking, for a Hovering Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. (You think the title was a mouthful, you should have gone through the editing! I kid him, but he's actually taught me enough and helped me try to understand it that I could actually follow the paper and his defense. I couldn't tell you what an algorithm is for the life of me let alone write one, but I know enough that I get excited about his projects.)

Experimenting

           Ok Mandy... here is your long overdue portrait. But I sort of cheated. I've been playing around with the Painter X demo for the last couple of weeks, and can I tell you how bad I'm dying for this program. To have access to all the art media, without it being strewn about my house by children and no messes to clean up! Combine all my loves of the computer digital world.... and my need to paint and draw again! Perfect combination. I will admit on this one though, that I was playing with the cloning tool, because I just wanted to be able to experiment with brushes, paper overlays and various other effects, but still ended up liking the end result, so I thought I would count it for now, or it might be months before you ever see one. :)
           I really need to get Kal's bulletproof attitude, when it comes to using the computer for art, and realize that hey I don't have to do everything the traditional way, starting from scratch and drawing it all myself from the very beginning. (First off I just don't have time for that lately. It would take me months to complete one piece, and my creativity needs to be fed lately a little more often than that.) Who cares if I did use the clone tool on part of this. Who cares how it was made, it still has bits of me, I still pick and choose how I put things together, what I wanted to pull out etc. What is considered cheating in the art world today anyways? I would say that cheating is one way blatantly stealing someone else's art and claiming it as your own. As long as I'm not doing that (although I did use your photo for this Mandy.) then I'm not cheating right!:) So I still have this huge battle in my head... and just need some bulletproof attitude here. (When are you going to do an online class Kal?)

It's Finally the Day!

           After what seems like months. Today is the day, in two hours I'll be heading up to hear my husband defend his thesis for his Masters. Yeah! We are almost finished! Until we start up the doctorate... but we'll think about that later.

Fun things mother's get to do.

           So who says being a mom has to be boring. I had a great day today and had the chance to get creative and learn something new!

           Today was Mirian's birthday and she was determined she wanted a princess birthday cake. Savannah had a Cinderella one last year, and she wanted an Ariel one. So we found a picture, and I went and actually bought the real cake decorating supplies since I figure with at least 6 birthdays a year and other celebrations over the next 20 years while my kids are home, I'll get my use out of it. Plus it's fun to be creative in a whole new way.
           We had a great day. Decorated cakes, hung up streamers, went shopping, had a party, and wore myself right out.

How old are you Mirian?

           I'm three!
           Happy Birthday Mirian! You were so much fun today and were so excited about everything, the cake, your presents, the balloons... you name it!

Reflections of Christ

           Someone sent me an email letting me know about this exhibition "Reflections of Christ" by photographer Mark Mabry at the Mesa Arizona Temple. It's hit me on so many levels today, that I thought I would share the quick slideshow that they have of the the images from the exhibition. I'm hoping later they'll have it made so that it's possible to actually post it straight into blogs. I love to see artists like this using the gift that they've been given to glorify him. The website is www.reflectionsofchrist.org

Starting off Good

           Being a Monday we are starting off good! We had a great weekend listening the prophet and apostles for general conference. Some great stuff was taught. Two of my personal favorites was one by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's where he taught about one of the misconceptions that the world has that we are not Christians. He explains how we are Christians and explains our belief in continuing living revelation. It was an amazing talk. The other talk by Melvin J. Ballard really hit home to me and every mother of young kids out there should hear it. He gives you simple council on how to be a better mom at this crazy time of life. He gives us credit for all that we do, which is sometimes all we need, a little notice and thanks for the sacrifices and effort we put into our families.
           We were able to relax and enjoy being together. Dad made turnovers for us, and the kids were all over it.
           Today we were up at 5:30, ready to tackle a list of to-do lists. But the best part is that I woke up to the house mostly clean, and not feeling behind for the day! What a great feeling, that way I can focus on the other things that need done.

Little Blessings

           I love those little moments and blessings that just pop into your life totally unexpected where the Lord shows tender mercy to you. The last month and half, I've been giving up my free afternoon where my kids are playing at the neighbors to help a sister and her family who has been on bedrest. It's been my own time to run errands, work on designing, clean the house, rejuvenate, etc. It has been really good for me, but it's also been stressful as I have felt behind not having that time.
           Last night I was trying to determine in my mind where the line is of making sure I'm taking care of our family and our needs by saying no to helping, and when I should be serving and helping others when they so desperately need it like our Savior has taught us that we should do. Last night in thoughts and little prayers, of asking where that line is, what should I do? What would he have me do... I still determined to go and make it work, despite how much I needed a quiet break for myself.
           I was just about head over there for the afternoon when the phone rang. It was this dear sister calling to let me know that her husband came home early to help because they were unable to work in the snow. (We had a freak blizzard this morning. Which I was groaning about because I wanted spring.) Little did I know the blessing of that snow. That phone call made my day and gave me that little warm feeling that the Lord is aware. He's known how hard it has been, he knows I'm trying and he was saying "Here are 3 totally unexpected hours just for you... go refill your empty bucket."

Make more of these.

Moments.
           I read Mandy's post on being a mother and it has got me thinking. The times I'm the happiest, when life is going smoothest, is when I stop making everything else so important and just enjoy being a mom. Spending my creative juices and talents doing something with my kids, teaching them a new skill, seeing them grow and develop. Or when I put it to use to make my home feel more like a home, new creative dinners, better organization in the house, sewing something to decorate, or just spending that time and energy doing things that actually bless my family and make our home more enjoyable to be there. So if that's what makes me the happiest, why do I give so much importance to other things, or want to express creativity in other ways. There has to be a better balance to it all. But I'm determined to start trying harder to spend most of my time using that creative energy doing SOMETHING that will truly benefit my family (and not in the means of finances.)           I worked on this quick layout last night showing one of those moments when I let things go, we went to Walmart for some errands, picked up some lunchables for snack, and went to the park to play and have a picnic. The kids thought they were in heaven and it was one of those good happy days. We need to make more of these moments.
           This also hit home last weekend. After weeks of stress and exhaustion, my kids would probably not have put me up for happy mother of the year award. I was rather grouchy, they were driving me nuts, and I was burned out. Beau was leaving for a two day hike with the scouts to southern Utah, which I wasn't excited about, because I was wanting a break too.           So on Saturday while he was gone, I left the house a disaster and picked up some food to go. We drove to thanksgiving point and went to the dinosaur museum together. We had so much fun. It was such a great break for all of us. They were soo good, happy and obedient, and we had such a great time together, the first it seemed for quite a while. They were so excited to tell their dad about it the next morning when they saw him. We need more of these. I need more of this. Time just being a mom, enjoying my kids and having a good time together, instead of letting the stress and pressure of life take over.

Just For You...

           Mandy.
           Yep I've been absent for a while and my friend Mandy has noticed and has been concerned. Funny how it also goes her direction as well. She's been going through and feeling a lot lately, and I've been thinking constantly about her hoping that things are going better. :)
           So for those of you that were wanting to get caught up on where I've been, we'll just say I've been exhausted, running low on oil, burned out, emotional, and this blog has been the last thing from my mind. My pregnancy and the stress of the last month have hit hard the last couple of weeks. Thank goodness for this week! It's been amazing considering the past couple. It's been going good...but you'll have to get more later... this post is mainly for you Mandy. Even though we're miles apart, and states away, I just wanted to give you a little hope that if your friend has finally posted on her blog maybe things are starting to look up... and since I can't take you out for some... here's my own special ice cream concoction. Smoothy Peanut Butter on the bottom, vanilla with peanut butter cups in the middle, and peanut butter chunky on top... just for you.
           Too bad I'm not there to eat it with you and have a good talk. But if I was here this is a little bit of what I'd say. I think you'll recognize them. :)

Cards

           Sometimes I browse when I'm so exhausted I should just go to bed, but am waiting for my husband to shut down his computer. The problem is we both enjoy computers, creativity and technology too much. Which leads to us being up for another hour browsing Adobe's site for their new products for web and design, and drooling over the new Master Collection which combines both of our loves for software - me the illustrator and photoshop, him the video, flash, web, and sound part of it. I really need to just learn to turn it off and go to bed, and he'd follow. We get sucked in way too easily.

More of the Boy

           My kids have been sick all week, and so nothing has gotten done. It's been rather frustrating really. Stressful as well since we're still in the process of crunch time on this thesis. I can't wait till it's over. We all need a break, we need real family time, and me and hubby are going to leave the kids with grandma while we celebrate our anniversary doing whatever we feel like for a few days. (It'll be 3 months early, but we thought we would enjoy no kids, rather than a newborn tagging along!)

           So since nothing has gotten done, I thought I'd just post a few more layouts from my new love of 4x6 layouts! :) Hope your week is going better.

Tiny Part of Our Story

           Today I was featured in the ScrapGirls Newsletter, and thought it might be fun to share it with those of you that don't get it. It's a little bit of our story.

A Designer's Life: Shalae Tippetts

Worth the Wait

           When I graduated from high school, I knew I would go to college. But in my mind, it was not necessarily to get a college degree so that I could get my dream job. Nope. What I wanted to be most in life was a mom and to do that, I needed a husband. I decided I would pursue art in the meantime, hoping to find the man of my dreams.

Life does not always happen the way you want it to. I graduated five years later. I found a job, but soon realized that there was no one to date, let alone that perfect someone. So I went and stayed with my parents for the summer between jobs.

At the end of the summer, I was working a food booth at our county fair and saw a young man. He had been a good friend of my younger sister and was there taking tickets at the concert. My thoughts were, “He’s really good looking, too bad he’s younger than me and I’m heading to Vegas.” That was it. I packed up and moved to Vegas.

I was in Vegas for about a year. It was the most incredible year of my life for my own personal growth. By the end of the year, despite the hundreds of singles that were around, I realized Mr. Wonderful wasn’t there either. I knew exactly what I wanted and he wasn’t there. But, for once in my life, I was okay with that. I was okay with whatever the Lord had in store for me. I was very happy and at peace with where I was in life and life was very good.

           One evening, there was a Singles' activity at church. I was really fed up with the whole dating game and had decided that there was no way I was going to go. Forget it. The Lord didn’t think so... I kept feeling this strong urge that I needed to go. I kept fighting it in my head. “No! I don’t want to go!”

           “You need to go.”

           “No! They’re just playing this stupid matching game.”

           “Go!”

           So, with tears in my eyes, frustrated and in a terrible mood, I went.

           I walked in and sat down, oblivious to anyone around me. Suddenly, someone behind me called out my name. Turning, I found myself looking at the same young man I had seen a year ago at the county fair. What? What in the world was he doing in Vegas, let alone sitting here at the same Single Adult activity? This city is huge. Then came my next impression... he is really good looking and wow, look at those forearms. (He had his arm stretched out across the back of some chairs and they definitely showed that he grew up in a small town moving pipe and had learned to work.)

           We spent the next couple of hours talking. Nothing ever felt so good in my life. I knew from that first night that he was the one that had everything I wanted. From there, it was history. We hung out every second, just talking and having fun. Finally, one night two weeks later, he found out that another guy was chasing me. Hmmm... he realized he had to act and asked if he could date me seriously. Finally!

           Two days later, I found him asking me the question, “Have you ever wondered how things are going to work at the end of the summer when I head back to Utah and you stay here?”

           Had I thought about it? Of course, I had. I had since I first saw him, but I wasn’t going to be the first to mention marriage here. I threw the question back at him.

           “Well, we could do it long distance.”

           “Nope.”

           “I could move here.”

           “Nope.” He was supposed to be at BYU.

           “We could get married?” It sounded like that was the only answer to me.

           That was it. That was the right and only answer and our lives have never been the same since.

           He was everything that I had wanted and, at the same time, everything I thought I didn’t want. The Lord likes to throw those in sometimes. You see, I didn’t want to marry anyone younger than me. (He’s three years younger.) I didn’t want to marry someone that was from my home town. (He lived ten minutes from where I grew up and he was my sister’s good friend.) I didn’t want to marry someone that was going through school. (I had already gone through five years myself and had been working for two years. We have now gone through six more years together and still have two more to go.) I never wanted to live in Utah. (Six years later, we are still here.) But, despite my list of things that I didn’t want (they really were unimportant), I got everything I wanted and more. He was well worth the wait and I have never been happier.

- Shalae
           This is my husband's favorite collection that I've created.