it’s hard to do a month of blog posts about things,people,and ideas i love…without mentioning DOILIES!

i have loved doilies ever since i was a little girl. i remember making valentines for my classmates out of paper doilies.

i have been buying and collecting them for years. i get questions fairly often about where i buy them, how to use them, etc…so i thought i’d do an entire blog post on the topic.

first,here are the doilies i have in my stash right now. under each photo i will share a source.

baking section at the grocery store

 

hobby lobby

 

freckled fawn

 

  dollar spot at michael’s

 

hand dyed doilies from my friend jamie

 

kazu on etsy

 

martha stewart

 

joann

 

michael’s (with the seasonal valentine’s decor)

 

other places to snag doilies:

etsy (there are a zillion types)

dollar general (especially around easter)

junk shops/antique shops/secondhand stores

oriental trading (with valentine’s especially)

don’t judge me, but i take them off of soup plates at restaurants (under the bowl) and stick them in my purse. heheheee! it’s the first thing i do, so i can get them off the plate before they get food on them. jimmy rolls his eyes at me.

 

uses for doilies:

banners:

 

misting (you can either mist the doilies OR use them as a mask):

or you can simply use them as a design element (click on any to see full size):

 

 

you can also dye them (jamie used food coloring&water),

use them when wrapping gifts (kraft wrapping paper+doilies+twine&a shipping tag=my favorite)

fold them into fans or flowers,

cut them, use the borders,etc.

um, that was a lot of words about doiles. HA! hope you enjoyed it!

happy wednesday!

xxo

s

forgive me if this post is a bit all over the place. i didn’t even know where to begin…and i certainly didn’t know where to stop. i just kind of wrote from my heart. hopefully it’s not to scatterbrained. 🙂

i fell in love with a boy from west point when i was 23 years old. i didn’t know much about him. i just new i loved his squinty brown eyes. and his smile. and the cleft in his chin. and the way he made me feel.

 

i certainly didn’t know what our love story would entail. i didn’t know that the road ahead of us would include four little girls, six duty stations, four states, eight moves, eight homes, seven (on the brink of eight) deployments.

 

i didn’t know that we would weather some of the scariest times i could imagine.

 

i didn’t know that i’d have his baby girl without him there.

i didn’t know that there would be months that i thought i might never see him again.

i just knew he made me happy.

it was 2000.

 

there was no war. no september 11. no operation enduring freedom,no operation iraqi freedom. no one even really know what the word “deployed” meant. no imminent danger.

 

just us.

we had a pretty good relationship. a little drama (mostly caused by having a long-distance relationship) but a  lot of love.

but i took him for granted. i took our time together for granted. we fought over the silliest things. i held the stupidest grudges.

i remember taking him to the dallas airport and dropping him off…and crying so hard on the way back to the car. crying so hard i couldn’t see straight.

i thought it was the worst thing ever.

 

i had no idea.

then came september 11. things changed. my safety net ripped. my bubble popped. my safe little world was turned upside down. suddenly this loving a soldier thing? took on a whole new meaning.

 

i was scared.

but oh my goodness did i love him. he loved me…he made me feel like the center of the universe. he made me feel beautiful.i made him laugh. i gave him stability. we fit together.

i didn’t know what was ahead of us, but i wasn’t letting go.

we got engaged, and spent the first part of our engagement apart. he was in ranger school.

i thought it was the hardest thing ever.

 

i had no idea.

 

i planned a beautiful west point wedding. i found the dress,the flowers, the women who would stand by my side.

j made it through ranger school and broke the news that our west point wedding wasn’t going to happen. you see…he wasn’t going to be in the US. he was going to be in afghanistan.

we planned the wedding in a week.

three months later he left for almost a year in afghanistan. no emails, no skype. not many phone calls. just hand written letters. i still have every single one.

how do you love someone who is halfway across the world? you write them letters telling them the mundane. telling them the big things. you write them letters listing all the things you love about them, while fighting back the tears and lying with your pen and saying you are “fine”. truth is i wasn’t fine. i was very naive. i still didn’t know how to have a marriage, let alone how to do it during a deployment.

but we figured it out.

you know what i figured out?

 

it’s not about me. or even about him. it’s about us.

 

it’s about something bigger, more complicated, more selfless. it’s about the choice he has made to do what he does.

love is about sacrifice. i have learned that our love is complicated.

our loves spans miles and years and continents and moments. some moments he is there for, some he is not.

but he is never far from me because he is in my heart. he is just as much a part of me as i am. he is imprinted on my soul.

how do you love someone when you live from moment to moment wondering if they are alive? when you survive from email to email? feeling a sense of relief each time you hear from him but also looking ahead to the next time you hear? how do you love someone who is gone more than he is next to you?

 

you pray.

 

you pray and hold on tight. and you tell him you love him. you hold tight to him when he is here. you tell him you are proud of him.

when he comes home you hold him so tight he can’t breathe. you breathe him in to try to memorize it for next time he is gone.

we have had six deployments and four children since that first deployment. i have learned so much. i know my husband like i’ve never known anyone. i can read my husband in a look. i love him in a way that is both terrifying and exhilarating.

we have had some beautiful moments. conversly we have had some excruciatingly terrifying moments. some of those moments felt like the worst thing ever.

but truth be told?

i’ve never experienced the worst thing ever.

 

and every day we are apart i pray that i will never have to know that pain.

 

loving jimmy is like being in a constant free fall. nothing is guaranteed. we only have the time we have together now.

we love with all of our hearts. argue with all of our hearts. trust with all of our hearts.

we build memories. we make babies. we make promises. these are the things that bind us when he is away.

 
i don’t take our time together for granted anymore. i relish it. savor it. see it for what it is, even when we are driving each other nuts. it’s a gift.

 

how do you love a soldier?

 

with everything you have. you love him knowing that loving him is the only thing you can EVER be certain of in the life you lead.

you love him knowing that sometimes it will be all you have to cling to.

you love him because he is your heart.

 

source unknown

 

 

i wanted to quickly share my valentine's mantel!!

a valentine's garland

glittered heart (from joAnn), a target dollar soit vase holding a dried peony

a metal doily plate and a little heart tree,heart photo holders (sans photos right now), the glittered/feathered arrangements on each end (still up from christmas- i might keep them there all year), and of course my H,6,and clock collection that is always there.

nothing fancy, keeping it simple. 🙂

i won't be posting lovely things on the weekends, but i might have scrappy sundays sprinkled here and there.

hope you have a beautiful and blessed weekend!

xxo

s

photo of cupcakes from back in the day bakery- these have nothing to do with the post but i do NOT like photo-less posts. haha!

i'm curious. i'm curious who reads this blog. what type of person.

are you a paper crafter? do you craft at all? are you a mom? are you a woman? where do you live? why do you read this blog?

i'm very curious.

oh, i know…i know…we blog for US and no one else.

well goodness,that's true in some ways i suppose…but why would i have a public blog if that was 110% true?

i also enjoy the community and quite frankly (when j is gone as much as he is) companionship this blog creates.

i notice that on the giveaways lots of you come out.

i notice that now and then i'll get a comment from someone saying they've read for years but never comment.

there are many of you (jennifer,tara,shannon) that always comment.♡

lots of times i hear that you want to comment but feel like i'd never read it. i have read every single comment on every single post over the years. and responded to any question. of course i read them. why have comments if i don't read them?:) 🙂

sometimes posts on layouts (those posts take forever to write but i love sharing layouts and think that you probably like to see links for the products) but get the fewest comments.

and before i get a snarky comment…i don't base my self worth on comments or praise. but i think about all of you when i blog.

back when i first started blogging i was very different. i look back and gosh, i complained a lot more. gosh, i was more dependant on comments than i should have been. ew. old blog me kind of annoys me. but it's a learning curve i think…wouldn't you say?

it's funny. i see lots of message board posts saying that blogs should be for scrapbook layouts and that people want more layouts. but i swear those posts are the ones i don't think anyone is interested in on my blog!

why am i asking this? why do i care?

well, first of all, i'm curious. and second, i'm working on some fun posts for february…and i'm debating what i should include.

the emotional posts are worth the work b/c they are my therapy.HA!

but i'm not sure about the craft posts. i think this blog a personal blog,mom blog,army wife blog,home decor blog,but is it a craft blog anymore? hmm. deeeeeeeeeeep thoughts. HA!

so i'm asking.

who are you? why do you read? what makes you tick?

and also i want to say thank you. thank you for reading. thank you for being so encouraging. and thank you for being you!

i hope you all have a beautiful and blessed tuesday!

xoxo

 

as this week began,we said goodbye to j, he had a short business trip to make.

it never ceases to amaze me that whether he’s gone a year or a week, the girls miss him so much.

saying goodbye (she asked him if he was going to afghanistan with this look on her face…it broke my heart):

and it never ceases to amaze me how much j loves his girls. here’s a text he sent for bedtime:

 

and most of all, it never ceases to amaze me how EXCITED the girls get to welcome him home. they had MAJOR ants in their pants at the airport:

we haven’t gotten to spend much time together lately at all…and we are starting to feel the effects. so friday afternoon we met up at forsyth park for some quality time.

and if you’ve ever wondered how to spot us as a family, just look for this (note the humor and slight?? panic on my face):

or this:

or look for sadie, who is just a little bit crazy:

and look for jimmy rolling his eyes as harper,sadie, and i do things like this:

can you tell we are all REALLY good at amusing ourselves???

all lucy wanted to do was swing…

you know what i love about my family? how much we laugh and how much fun we have together. we aren’t perfect, but we laugh a LOT and really HARD. it’s the best.

and one more shot i caught…if you ever happen to see this parade of girls with a handsome man caught in the middle(and loving every moment of it)? yep.

that’s my family.

happy, happy monday.

hope it’s beautiful and blessed.

xxo

s