Stephanie Howell

lovely things- things i love:chic tags

February 15, 2012

i have long been a fan of chic tags (formerly shabby chic tags) and veronica (the owner).

i used them for the first time on on of my PL spreads and it made the process so much easier!

all tags here (minus the plain black twogirlzstuff label) are by chic tags.

i also used the clementine core kit, some dear lizzy, some american crafts garden cafe,and one of my beloved martha stewart doilies.

veronica's tags are also lots of fun to use on layouts like this one:

and this one:

thanks for letting me design with your tags this month,veronica. i had a blast!

to shop chic tags go here.

and their blog always has great ideas.

happy wednesday!

xoxo

lovely things- a father’s love

February 14, 2012

source

He loves them with all of his heart. He tells them often how proud of them he is.Hearing that your daddy is proud of you…that is a wonderful feeling (whether you are 3 or 34).

He isn’t afraid for them to see him make mistakes. And when he does he says “i’m sorry”. He doesn’t hide his flaws from them.

He has a lot on his mind, but when he is here he is PRESENT.

He hugs them,kisses them,cuddles them. He expects a lot from them and is firm with them when he needs to be.

source

Every day he tells them their “specials” at bed time. These are things that make them special. His favorite things about them. And when he is not here, he texts them to me.

He leaves them notes, sends them emails and messages. He calls them on the phone if he can’t tell him he loves them in person.\

Every single day he is showing them (by example) the man they should aspire to find one day.

Kind,strong,brave,steady,selfless,true. He has never called me an ugly name. He has never spoken unkindly to me in front of the girls. He treats me,and makes me feel, like a gift. A rare jewel.

He is showing them that they deserve the best. That they should expect NO less.

He is teaching them self-confidence,grace,self-respect.

He rough houses with them, giggles with them, teaches them to play football,paints their toenails.

He is a superhero.

His love for them gives them courage and wings.

His love for them is like our father’s love for us. Pure.

It’s a beautiful thing to witness.

lovely things – elise blaha guest post – love+deployments

February 13, 2012

i have known elise for a long time. i am so proud of how she has handled paul’s first deployment…with grace,honesty,and strength. i know you will all fall in love with her just like i have. i can’t wait for the day i see elise+paul reunited. they are both very blessed to have each other.

happy monday-

xoxo

♥♥♥♥♥♥

I am so excited to be joining in on Stephanie’s LOVEly things month. I have read this blog for ages and have always admired Stephanie’s strength and positive attitude as she dealt with Jimmy’s deployments. I didn’t realize those early days that I’d eventually end up married to a deployed military man and going through some of the same things. Life is funny like that.

Stephanie asked me to write today about how I have shared love with my husband, Paul, over the past six and a half months while he’s been deployed to Afghanistan.

The first thing that I have to say and perhaps my favorite part about love is that every relationship is different.

What works for some couples doesn’t work for others. And that’s awesome. That’s what makes us unique as people and what makes some couples really click. Paul and I are a very “clicked” pair.

We are on the same wavelength and have been for years. No one gets me quite like Paul and because of that, I was so nervous about the time we’d spend apart. And then I became more scared when I started getting advice from all angles about how to make it work.

It was impossible to prepare for that first deployment when I didn’t know what to expect. So I sort of blocked out all the incoming information and reminded myself that it was about just the two of us.

And then Paul left.

I remember so clearly standing in that airport. I expected to break down. That’s a lie. I expected a full panic attack shut down. And then something crazy happened. Paul lost it. My Paul, my rock, lost it. That snapped me back pretty quick (have you ever noticed that only one partner can panic at any given time? The other always shifts into “comfort-mode.”) and I knew Paul needed me as much as I needed him.

I also realized right there, in the international terminal of LAX, that this was going to be 100 times harder for Paul then me. He was going out into a scary place where he knew no one. He was going to be responsible for the health of 700 service men and women. He was going to face extreme weather and homesickness. He was stepping off into the real unknown. That was an important perspective shift.

I made it my mission to show Paul love and support. Since he has been gone, I have mailed him over 120 cards.

I scoured etsy for cards that would make him smile. I found funny cards, supportive cards and a few R-rated cards. I sent a card almost every day, with long letters scrawled into each. I always ended with a variation of : “You’re awesome. I love you. I miss you. Be safe.”

We have also exchanged thousands of emails. I email him links to funny news stories. I email him hilarious tweets from famous people. I email him photos of the random stuff I see while I am walking around. I do my best to share the daily stuff.

I know that it’s the mundane details that he misses the most.

And sometimes I just type my daydreams. Plans for the future. Plans for next summer. We have been making arrangements for a road trip as soon as he’s home. Talking about that stuff gives us something to look forward to and is a reminder that we’re not stuck apart forever.

Paul celebrated his 29th birthday while deployed. And I wanted to do something that would make him feel like he wasn’t alone.

I kept thinking about how people would see on facebook that it was his birthday and they’d write on his wall. I liked the concept of people showing love, but I wanted it to mean more than just a line in his email inbox.

So I emailed our friends and all of our extended families and had them send birthday cards for him to me. Then I gathered all the cards and stuck them in a box that said “Don’t open until December 15th.”

We were able to video chat as he opened the box filled with an outpouring of love and support and birthday wishes. He was surprised and overwhelmed, like I hoped he would be.
He opened the cards over a period of about a week and told me again and again how much it meant to him.

Spending any amount of time apart from the person you love is hard. Spending months away is that much harder. But there isn’t another choice.

I love Paul.

And Paul is who he is because he signed up to be a doctor with the US Navy. I have not been perfect in dealing with this. I have broken down over the phone or email a few times and I know that has made Paul’s time away more difficult. But most days, I have stayed upbeat because it is so much better for us both.

I love Paul more today than I did on August 5th in the LAX terminal. I am so proud of him. I am SO excited to throw my arms around him and welcome him back.

He works so hard for our family, our future and for our country. I know a bunch of cards can’t make up for that. But I also know that he knows I love him and am rooting for him, praying for him and supporting him everyday. And I think that helps.

Elise Blaha Cripe is a crafter and blogger who lives in Southern California. She has been in love with Paul for almost six years and married for almost two. She is anxiously waiting for his return and in the meantime has been turning her house into a craft museum. You can connect with her on her blog,twitter or pinterest.

lovely things – loving a soldier.

February 9, 2012

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

lovely things-jessica turner&5 fast memory keeping ideas she loves

February 8, 2012

hey guys and happy wednesday!

i have four guest authors stopping by this month to do posts on things or people they love. i left the theme open to them and told them to interpret it however they wished!

my first guest is jessica turner of the mom creative.

i've known jessica for years (through the crafting and blogging community) and always enjoy what she has to say. i thought you might too!

have a great day and enjoy! xo

♡♡♡♡♡♡

My name is Jessica Turner, and I write the blog The Mom Creative. I am a a busy mom who works full-time, loves my hubby, wrangles two kiddos (a 3-year-old named Elias and a 7-month-old named Adeline), AND tries to fit in some memory keeping in my (little) spare time. Today I am going to share five FAST memory keeping ideas that I love.

1. Project Life: This is my fourth year doing Project Life and I can honestly say it is the best thing I do with my pictures.

The kit makes it easy to print your photos, journal some thoughts and be on your way. I love that it is still paper scrapbooking and a tactile process, but also the freedom it gives me to not feel guilty because I am doing SOMETHING with my photos.

The kit also allows me to fit scrapbooking in my busy life. This year I am going a step fiurther with my Project Life album and adding more "bits of life" like receipts, artwork and mail.

To download my free list of 100 bits of life you can add to Project Life, click here. Each week I invite Project Lifers from around the world to link up on my Project Life Tuesday carnival. It is so fun to see so many different approaches to this project.

2. Journals for your kids: I created these simple photo journals on Paper Coterie. Every once in awhile I will write a memory, thought, milestone, etc. to my son, Elias, and daughter, Adeline.

I also love that these journals contain my handwriting, which I know will be something that will make these books even more special to my kids someday.

I should point out that I am NOT a journaler and sometimes go several weeks in between writing in these. I am okay with that because I know it is about what I DO do, not what I don't.

Each time I write in the journals I think, why don't I do this more? It doesn't take much time and I know what a special keepsake the journals will be to my kids someday.

3. Journal MY story: I received the book, Reflections of a Mother's Heart and love the simple way it encourages me to write down my own story.

The book is divided in to 12 months, with 12 questions a month. You certainly do not have to start it in January though! Every page has a question on it.

Sometimes I do it before bed, sometimes while sitting in the bathroom while Elias is in the bathtub. It doesn't take long to answer a question (probably about five minutes), but I know that the book when I have finished it will be a beautiful keepsake of stories I otherwise wouldn't have recorded.

As memory keepers, I think that when it comes to our own childhood and early adulthood we often don't record much of our own memories. Instead, we start in the place where we are. My story is important and this simple tool is helping me to record pieces of it.

4. Videos: I know it might not seem like memory keeping, but making videos definitely is a form of documenting your story! My phone has a video camera on it and I will often just pull it out and record a short video of my son or daughter.

It isn't fancy, but I know these clips will be treasured when they are older. Check out this list of video ideas you can make with your kids. (Stephanie is AWESOME at this!)

5. Photo Books– Since having kids, I have found it easier and less time-consuming to create photo books for large batches of photos than to make mini scrapbooks or lots of scrapbook pages from one single event.

Typically I use the 8×8 format. It is a very manageable project-size and not too time consuming to complete a book. (I can often get a book designed in one sitting).

Some photo book ideas include: vacations, birthdays, holidays and photo shoots. My favorite photo book companies are Picaboo, Shutterfly and Paper Coterie.

Thanks again to Steph for letting me post today. I hope these ideas help spark some new and quick way for you to memory keep in your own life.

For more memory keeping ideas, check out the series I did in October called 31 Days of Memory Keeping. Also, I hope you will take a minute to check out my blog and/or like it on Facebook. In addition to memory keeping, I write a lot about motherhood, frugal living and faith. I hope to get to know many of you!

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