I mentioned in my last post that my word for the year is Beauty.

I’m starting with my home. I’ve never really been into decorating, and honesty, I have no style and everything I do is probably going to be “borrowed”. I couldn’t come up with an original idea on my own when it comes to decorating and fashion if you had a gun pointed to my head. Jon hates colored walls, he’s content with plain white, and so as a compromise I’m keeping the walls white, and adding color here and there. My furniture is black, and so I’m going to add color by getting blue curtains? And my dishes are Fiesta ware and are lovely. I’m really working at more of my work printed and displayed.

I found this on A Beautiful Mess (again, geez just skip my blog totally and go to hers because she is so freaking awesome!), and loved the idea.

Isn’t that cute? LOVE it. I’m actually a few pictures short and I am going to be ordering 12 more to create 2 more rows at the bottom. A total of thirty six 4×4 Instagram prints. (then I’ll readjust my kids initials so it’s balanced) I ordered my prints at Postal Pix. PP is a free iPhone  app (I’m not sure if it’s in the android market, but I don’t think so), and all ordering is done from the app itself. It was a piece of cake! *

I ordered them on Saturday and they arrived today (Thursday)! As you can see I was pretty stoked to get to this project, so the prints arrived, I finished my day job and immediately started on this :)

1. I cut 10 strips of painting tape (this was actually not a great idea because I had Selah helping me and she kept getting them stuck together and they were getting ruined and I fired her which resulted in tears (I hired her back, don’t worry!).

2. I started building the grid line by line. Make sure your lines are straight (I used the iHandy Level app on my iPhone)

3. and kept going, and checking with the iHandy Level to make sure everything was straight.

4. Then I pulled all the tape off :)

I’m so pleased with the final look, and it only took about 45 minutes :) I have forty three 5×5 prints coming from the printing lab that I use for my business, and I can’t wait to come up with something to do with them!

Later,

Jaymi :)

Our campus pastor made a joke this morning that it’s been a week now, so everyone can go back to eating normal, as their big plans for fitness and health have all faded and all New Year’s resolutions have been abandoned already. Haha! So true. I’ve never made a New Year’s resolution, ever. I think it’s a wonderful thing if people strive to better themselves, I do, but how about NOT just once a year and then those dreams fade in a week? My very good friend Michelle chooses a word to live by every year instead of a resolution. LOVE this idea. LOVE IT!

Michelle, you’re just too smart for your own good :)

So, I’m going to follow suit.

I choose BEAUTY.

B E A U T Y

I want to surround myself in it, bathe in it, soak in it. The beauty of the world, in people, in things…

I’m starting with my immediate surrounding. I have so many wonderful pictures just sitting on my laptops. Ugh! This year (and I’ve already started!) I’m going to print more photos, and hang them. I have so many ideas on how to wake this old apartment up and bring some life into it with all of my photographs! I’ll be blogging everything as I go :)

I also want to strive to bring beauty within myself by spending more QUALITY time with the Lord. Today’s sermon was about spending 10 minutes in silence everyday just listening, turning off all electronics and any other distractions and just sit and listen. I really feel like this is going to bring beauty into myself. (For someone who’s not a big advacote of church, I sure did get a lot out of today, lol! More about THAT another time)

I want to love people better, and help people more, and I have so many ideas rolling around in my brain that lately I feel like I could just burst.

I want to buy more fair trade, go thrifting more, create more, learn/play my Ukulele, cook/bake more, help more, serve more, etc…

What is your word?

I can hear him reading from the other room, and I know he hates it. I know this because I hate it too. haha! I mean, I love reading, I do, but I hate reading children’s books to the kids. HATE it. But we do it, because we are their parents, and they love it, and we like to do things that they love. Even though we HATE it…did I mention that we hate it? ;)

But I love hearing him read to them, because he’s near, and not long ago he wasn’t so near. The details aren’t for sharing, but know that this is a good place that we’re in.

When he’s done reading to them, they tear into the living room like little bats out of heezie, and climb into the box that Selah was stuck in just a couple hours ago and have been told to stay out of. And then she picks up a flashlight and blinds me saying “Mama, I can see your shadow! Can you see MY shadow?” And they jump on the couch even though they KNOW they aren’t supposed to.

I tell her to “get off the couch like that, you know you aren’t supposed to do that” as she walks across the back, and he asks for food for the umpteenth time.

It’s late, passed their bedtime, but there’s no school tomorrow so I don’t care.

What are you all doing this evening?

Cheers!

Jaymi :)

I blogged religiously for four years as the Flipflop Mamma, and had a pretty good run. I had my little corner of the web and I was happy and cozy there for a while, but as I do with most things in life, I became burned out. I just wasn’t into it anymore and so I slowly tapered off. A couple years have gone by and I strayed so very far away from myself that I almost didn’t know who I was looking at some days. And because of the straying, I had to delete my flipflopmamma email, which deleted my entire old blog (but you can still find the cached version).
These days? I’m finally feeling like ME again. ME feels good. Wanting to cook dinner, wanting to clean (for the most part, I mean, who really wants to clean??), wanting to do fun stuff with my family, etc. I think that naturally, as everything comes back, blogging just falls into a little place in my life.
I have some BIG plans for this blog, and I hope that people will enjoy stopping by here and seeing what’s up :) (like really, do you have better things to do??) ;) I plan on visiting some folks too, so if I haven’t been to your blog in a while, or ever, let me know and I’ll stop by for a short visit.
I’ll be sharing a lot of life on here, some recipes, some DIY’s, and maybe some (un-sponsored)giveaways. I told you I had big plans!!!
Today I’m going to share a fun and simple (because really, if it takes too long I’m just not into it, I’m all about instant gratification, and also, I’m all about really bad run on sentences) DIY project :)

How To Make A Canvas Print, At HOME!

How fun!

I originally found this on A Beautiful Mess (LOVE that blog!), and thought that I’d give it a try. I love canvas prints. You can click on the link above to see print and get more clarification if you feel you need it.

The picture I used was a little light to start with, so next time I’m going to use a high contrast black and white.

1. I used and 8×10 picture (laser print) on an 8×10 canvas.

2. Spread a thick layer of a gel medium over the entire canvas, and then place the picture (picture side down) onto the canvas. Your print will be backwards when finished so don’t use a picture with words.

3. Let the gel dry overnight.

4. Spray the picture with water and slowly start rubbing the paper away, be very careful not to rub away the actual pictre (and ouch, I got a blister!). Once I removed most of the paper, I used my fingernail and scratched lightly.

5. Once all the paper is removed, coat the entire canvas print with gel again. (Since I forgot to take a before picture, I took a picture of it next to a similar colored picture)

6. Voila!

Have fun, and thanks for stopping by!

Jaymi :)