Spring overdrive syndrome

Every year, about this same time, I enter into this highly motivated, yet over-achiever kind of mindset that sends me into the same tail-spin every time! It's the same sequence of events, and it starts with that bright sunny February morning when I step outside and the air just feels different. The sky is bluer, the temperatures warmer, and the grass appears just a slight bit more green. 

 The next thing that happens is the glorious burst of blooms on every fruit-bearing tree in all of the orchard filled lands of Northern California. It's spectacular. But it's the cause of mental shift into overdrive.

Suddenly everything needs pruning. Why didn't we do that a month ago, you know before it started to push new growth. There's weeds popping up every where. We should focus on weeding first. And while we're weeding, we might as well clean up all the dead leaves that were left to blanket the plants through winter. The new vegetable & garden seed catalog comes, forget the weeding and pruning, lets get the garden worked up all freshly composted ready for neatly little rows of happy little plants! 

But then the temps always dip down a little, and a little more rain comes...but there's no turning back. Mainly because I'm blessed to have a greenhouse facility in my front yard, so I start working on hanging baskets. All the pretty flats of flowers showing off their beauty, and in my head I'm thinking up a hundred different combination...I can hardly stuff moss fast enough. Except 2 little boys contained in a warm-humid climate with dirt, water and the freshly planted cuttings of their future livelihood...they slow down the stuffing. They prefer to uproot, or quick drench. Then somebody always falls victim to the garden hose. Don't they know there's FLOWERS TO PLANT! 

We take a break, go in the house to have a snack and I notice the sun shining in through the rain splattered windows! I wonder if it's too early to start washing them. Washing windows is always combined with spring cleaning though. I should start spring cleaning. The ants have made it clear there's been neglect in the upkeep while we were out weeding and pruning and mossing and planting.

 I'll let them do the clean-up. And just maybe when it rains again it'll finish washing the windows for me. The garden isn't planted, but really it's just the first of March, whose keeping score. The plants aren't going to harbor bitterness if we prune off a little fresh growth. The weeds will still be there tomorrow, and there's a great way to keep flowers from overgrowing with just a little "pinch-back" love.

What doesn't keep is little boys wanting to play "nurseryman", and cook salads, and speed through mud puddles and help stuff moss. You can't prune the new growth of learned behavior or pinch-back the ugly of short words and actions. It's hard for me to keep perspective when I'm in the tail-spin. I'm learning to shift it back down to controlled forward motion, and just enjoy the warmer days with little to no productivity. Maybe next year I'll be aware of the onset of the symptoms earlier and prevent the overdrive syndrome all together! :) Happy Spring ALL! 

***and just for fun a random photo of a gift left by a sweet, out of state friend who I was honored to host a few weeks back. The beautiful packaging deserved a widely viewed audience!***

celebrating {Love}

The peeps have finally come down off their "chocolate-induced-two-day-sugar-high", and are both napping soundly. It's a little bit my fault, I admit. Okay, it's a lot my fault! First off because I've been known to be stingy with my offerings of sugary treats on an ordinary day, and second off, I agreed to a Valentines party! Talk about sending mixed signals! The sugary-est holiday of the year, except maybe Christmas, I agree to a party! That's what makes holidays special though, when they know they get to look forward to a little something out of the ordinary! 

                   

I've also come to the understanding with preschooler/toddlers, is that if you keep them busy they are less likely to squabble, scribble, scatter or sabotage each other or the objects around them! Preparing for parties are great for creating busy work. Or at least I can disguise the "busy work" as party preparations and the enthusiasm is much higher! 

Another observation is that the definition of "party preparations" is vastly different among the Squabblers. One thinks a table full of card stock, markers, glue, tape, streamers and glitter is a whole morning worth of creating lovely tablescape and sweet worded cards! Actually two of us prefer that method of party planning. The third one just starts grabbing, running wild and pretending like the party has already started! (see previous picture). We put him in charge of morale, because glitter clearly looks like face paint, paper becomes confetti and the streamers his make believe rocket fuel spewing behind his rapid departure!

And this enthusiasm is on steady level blood sugar, friends! Now your not judging me for being stingy, huh! Me and the other Crafty One we're happy to let him blast through the house. Our craft time would otherwise be way too peaceful and uninterrupted. Whats a party without laughter and chaos?!

When I said I drag out the disguise of busy-work, I meant two w-h-o-l-e days. Day one was crafty paper and streamer mayhem, day two was baking, cooking and overall kitchen upheaval. This is precisely when the sugar intake began. Who wants to wait until the cupcakes are done to have a taste? There's beater blades to lick, and chocolate crumbs to scarf up! Streamer Boy is a little more apt to stick around for this kind of party prep. And as a quick FYI, go ahead and try the fabulous recipe we made! Simply put: wine + chocolate = yum-deli-icious!

Hubby and I sat at our cheery decorated, chocolate covered dinner table and smiled at the picture of ourselves right then. Our Valentines has vastly changed over the last few years. It's a day to celebrate the ones you love, and oddly it would seem strange to not let the peeps participate. We still love an occasional romantic, quiet dinner out...but a live party for four, with chatty excited participants is what we've been blessed with right now!

They bring a different level of love to our Valentines. They ARE because we ARE. They LOVE only if we LOVE. Sometimes our love isn't enough. God's love IS always enough.
HIS love fills in, where OUR love falls short.
HIS love heals, when OUR love falls apart.
HIS love carries, when OUR love runs out.
Find yourself in HIS LOVE today!

product review + gallery wall

I had a little heart to heart with Ms.Cannon this morning, she still refuses to cooperate with me. After her fateful mishap in Hawaii, I thought we had this worked out last week when she finally came around to me working with her in manual mode. This morning during a little shoot session, I was proven wrong...

Anyway, here is a couple pictures taken pre-wave catastrophe of a fantastic product I want to share with you all! I purchased a beautiful antique picture frame at the Alameda Antique Fair last summer and got it for a great price...but it did need some TLC. 

At the time of purchase, I wasn't exactly sure what kind of TLC treatment it was going to receive, but I knew for the price, I'd figure something out. And then it got stuck in The Lab for a couple of weeks, until I just happened upon this fabulous find at Hobby Lobby. I loved the gold frame, contrasting with the linen matte, so I was able to restore the color and still keep the antique patina! Super fun stuff to work with! 

And then a whole gallery wall was dreamed up using old frames I already had!! That's how my projects usually go. I get so excited about the product, next thing you know I'm using it on everything! Remember the Burlap? or Chalk paint? Okay, who am I kidding, you all know me well enough by now I don't even have to tell you I get a little carried away! 

So here's the start of this mornings little chat session with my camera. We couldn't agree on shutter speed, and when I'd get it set, she'd change on me mid-shot! And then don't get me started on her clarity. I've decided she needs to go see someone professional to work out her issues. Maybe do some soul searching, get a good cleaning, and clear the salt water out of her brain. Needless to say, this is what we come up with to share with you the gallery wall that received the "gold" treatment!

 Some of the frames were already gold, or had a little accent that I just embellished a bit more. Some of them were not gold at all, and received the full treatment! I felt like a fairy with pixie dust, doing my magic with the wand of my new found love..RUB'N'BUFF!!

If only you could see the magic clearly, and not through the haze of salt water! I have to confess I did not put this wall together in the proper manner that is so cleverly demonstrated on Pinterest. You know the one, with the cut pieces of paper that represent each frame going on the wall and where? It's really a brilliant idea if you have all the pieces to your gallery all at one time. I'd get a couple hung, and then find another one laying around that fell victim to the Rub'n Buff, and I'd rearrange again. Hubby would be horrified at the number of nail holes behind all them gold beauties! :)

The marvel of it all.

 I sit down here for the third attempt today to post a long over due catch up. I'm sipping the remains of my half cold, second cup of coffee. The vacuum is sprawled among the crumbs of our last 2 days of meals, and the there's a whole sink full of brownie battered bowls and utensils waiting to be washed. Going through the last 2 months of pictures, I'm wondering...where do I start? How does time speed by so fast?

Unfortunately when I don't regularly post, the days blur into months and even with the catalog of pictures I've taken, the moments become a haze and I forget lot of details. This is precisely why I blog, because of my poor memory, I need to physically journal "these days of our lives" or they will be jumbled in an embarrassingly short amount of time! So, I will break into the most recent happenings, and record the freshest of memories! :) Enter my two little hula boys...

Earlier this week we returned from a much anticipated trip across the pacific to the warmer climate of the Aloha state! For weeks we talked about the sun, the beach, the turtles and geckos, and most exciting...grandpa & grandma from OH we're coming too! Pretty much all the highlights in one spot, in their world!(and mine! :) All we had to do was get through the 5 hour flight that preceded all the fun...

We counted ourselves blessed when we walked down the jet steps into the tropical open air, and relieved that the flight went so smoothly! They each had a backpack full of things to keep them occupied, but we didn't want to set our hopes too high! Even I get antsy sitting for that long! We didn't waste anytime making our way down the the beach, as it provided the perfect place to run off the excess energy from the flight! 

All was good on the island when Day 1 ended, except for one fateful mishap that involved my camera and a unforeseen wave that claimed its victim. She did survive, but not without injury...as the only mode she seemed to operate on was "auto"! Fine, take all my fun away...but at least I still could take pictures! 

 Vacation would be all too perfect if the sun always shined, the ocean always blue, and each morning we woke well rested! We'd probably just take it all for granted, but that wasn't the case when the smallest of the smalls woke up our second morning there sounding like a seal that was very angry! Croup boy was not amused with the noise coming from his throat either. At home, I usually bundle them up and take them out into the cold, moist winter air when they make the first bark of the dreadful sound. The air in Hawaii at 4:00 a.m. was neither moist nor cold, which is usually a wonderful thing! :) I was so torn between enjoying the wonderful warm breeze coming off the ocean or tending to the angry seal screaming in my arms! Eventually he calmed down enough to enjoy the early morning sounds of the ocean, and we were able to get his barking under control.

That wasn't the end of it though. His daddy stuck close to the condo with him the next couple of days while he weathered a fever and waited for the cough to break up. He was much happier enjoying the simplicity of the beach fun and getting the rest he needed, than with the rest of us driving all over the island on our sight seeing adventures!

Big brother on the other hand was on cloud nine! His latest fascination is volcanoes and he got to witness with his own eyes the wonder of the massive crater of lava! The steam coming out of the vent was cause for excitement too, as long as we didn't get too close! He surely didn't want to get burnt by the "hot lava". Even better than volcanoes is caves...but the adventure was a much better idea looking down through the Lava Tube, rather than walking through it! He begged to turn around, but as soon as we resurfaced through the short distance to the other side...he exclaimed "HOW COOL, lets go through again!"

 The sun did shine beautifully everyday, the ocean was brilliant blue each morning, we saw the display of magnificent waves crash in a continual motion upon the coastline, we tasted too many different kinds of delicious locally grown coffee, we felt the warm surf wash up over and slowly return back again with our feet, we witnessed the wonders of creation displayed by volcano, rain forest, and sea life...and we marveled that we serve the ONE who created it ALL!

But even in sickness and restless nights...or cloud filled skies or desolate lands, this ONE who creates is worthy of glory, and reason to marvel! As constant as the continual break of one wave followed by another, the same can be expected of HIS love for us! Now that is reason to marvel!

a touch of rustic Christmas

I must start this post out with a soul bearing, deep digging confession.... I love Pinterest. 

There, it's out there and I'm feeling a little vulnerable. Oh for the day that my mind was not bombarded with so much craftiness, creativity and clever DIYer's. But there's no turning back now folks. The local craft stores must know me by first name now, and surely their investors should too! My new laundry/craft room is happy though, for her essence is always brimming of flying scraps of fabric, the hum of my sewing machine or the smell of the ole' hot glue gun burning long into the night.

I joke with hubby about it being my lab. More times than not the project at hand is most always an "experiment" and if it actually turns out to be of something cute or useful...watch out Pinterest! That's where the confession comes into play. I see a pin, become intrigued, and set my mind to figuring out how to make it or alter it in some way. Every fiber of my brain is sizzling and I can't stop it until there are scissors or a glue gun in hand. Maybe they have a "Pinterest support group" for people like me!

Now let me justify myself a little. ( or present to you my excuses). In all my pinteresty inspired lab projects I've discovered something about myself, that has come as a bit of a revelation. I've maybe always known I was a bit of an artsy kind of person, but more than that, "creating" something with my hands is an outlet of "who I am" that clears my mind, relaxes me and is rewarding by way of sense of accomplishment. Being a stay-at-home mother is satisfying and a blessing in so many ways, but I've discovered finding an"outlet" for tapping into what God wove into my being by way of talent or even personality makes me a better mother and wife. Finding a little time in the day when the boys are napping, or even having them along side me snipping, stamping, or gluing gets me through my day with just a little more joy!

And then the holidays made their entrance. Oh glorious Pin happy, gift wrapping, day in and day out of crafting & decorating. It sure takes the gloom off those foggy cold days, when everyone is sniffing and coughing and feeling cooped up! I like to take the elements of nature and throw in a little sparkle for a cheap easy theme! It's fun for the kids to go outside and find things for our project too.

So tell me, what keeps you sane or brings a bit more joy to your crazy, hectic holiday schedules?....

the scheduled sleep

AFTERNOON NAPS: MANDATORY

LOCATION OF ACTIVITY: OPTIONAL

Actually, the truth is I'm a proponent of routine schedule for healthy development, but the longer I'm a mother, the more I laugh at the word schedule! The idea behind them is to keep things operating in a smooth manner, where child & mother know what to expect from each other at the same times every day.

We we're clickin along pretty good in our routines until sweet peep # 2 came on the scene. Nobody knows what to expect out of anybody at anytime. Somebodies always a day late or a dollar short, and if it ain't his idea, it ain't happenin'. The act of falling asleep has taken on a "routine" of it's own, and some may argue that it could fall into the category of a form of art. Let me break it down, just to humor you...

It usually starts with a full on game of wrestle just to get him into bed, then there's the bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, with a toss and a turn, maybe a roll...followed by the arm flapping and maybe a little leg twitching..throw in a little more flopping, change directions on the bed, start in with some talking, which turns into humming...and then more talking, while still twitching his leg, change back directions....the eyes close for just a minute.....

{hold your breath}

...and then start the above routine all over again. If you haven't lost your patience by now, just about the time your left thinking your evening quiet-time is never gonna happen....he's asleep. yup, just like that! I've never seen anything like it.

All that to say, Mr. Sleep-striker can preform his "art" when it's time for his routine, regularly schedule nap or bedtime...but come Tuesday morning, say at 10:36, or some other random time...it's as if he was overcome by a force and was left slumbering soundly in the strangest locations. {see above}

It's been good for me. I'll admit I'm not ready to throw out the schedules completely. But if you wanna take a snooze on the hardwood floor, don't bother even taking your boots off. Snooze away. So maybe it's only 10:36, and your "scheduled" nap isn't until 1, but I can roll with that!

Thankful for the ordinary.

25 days of silence from the frantz nest, now that is a serious blog coma! It's not because there has actually been silence IN the nest, but rather the opposite. After getting home from our big trip, we kind of slid into a curious mode of the daily grind. That is best described as a mixture of the normal day to day living and a few out of the ordinaries. I guess really, thats just normal living...if there is such a thing!

As always there has been the meals to provide, laundry to be done, and general maintenance of survival in the nest...then blonde chief here woke up with an abnormally puffy and pinkish colored eye one morning that started the fun week of conquering the contagious infestation! Trying to keep the hands of a 2 and 4 year old washed is like pulling teeth (or just simply brushing them, if your 2). The eye drops we're an even more dreaded task...but then that's where things really take a turn in complete utter surprise. As if it were a walk in the park, brave blue eyes would lay himself down and take them with hardly a blink...and I was left in utter shock 3x a day at his performance. Life is full of surprises! ;)

Confined to the house, in our attempt to prevent further spread of the pink eye, we kept ourselves sane by reading our books from the library on the First Thanksgiving and making fun crafts off Pinterest! People are so crafty...seriously, who comes up with mini pilgrim hats made out of two of my favorite sweets...Keebler cookies and Reece's cups! More than one hat got squished in the making, and therefore needed to be consumed by the individual at the end of the production line, who also happen to be in charge of "quality" control! 

When all parties were well again, we resurfaced and hit the ground running. Thanksgiving was at our house this year, and mama had to learn how to roast up a turkey! I loaded up my two sous chefs and we hunted down a small turkey, kitchen twine, baster, and other necessities for our trial run! Besides wrestling around for a good 15 minutes, trying to "truss" the bird, the whole experience went relatively smooth! Yet another pleasant surprise!

Ordinary life or little surprises along the way...the beauty of this season is finding Thankfulness in every situation. Sometimes it takes me a lot longer to find gratitude in things like pink eye, but there really is a silver lining behind every cloud. Even if there wasn't, the GRACE alone that has been extended to us by our Savior is reason enough to wake up grateful every. single. day.

And if your wondering what the silver lining is...on those days you can't seem to get your head above the clouds...make mini pilgrim hats! But make sure your the guy at the end of the assembly line! :)