Random, Random

WARNING: You are about to witness a random bombardment of pictures from our life. If your eyes are light sensitive, or if you suffer from motion sickness, or are easily nauseated by the prospect of being forced to view a lot of pictures of someone else's goofy family life, then you might want to refrain from reading this post.

As you might have noticed, these pictures are from Christmas. I'm a bit behind (just 3 months or so) on posting on the "Life" portion of my blog. This is my desperate attempt to play catch up. I realized, though, that the amount of pictures I was originally attempting to post was bordering on ridiculous, so in order to preserve your eyesight, time, interest, etc., I will post a second edition of a random collection of pictures that make me smile and feel so blessed to be a part of the unique cast of characters that is my family.

xo

nessa dee

Holidaze

I can't believe we're at the end of 2014 already. This year went by in a blink. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are gearing up for the new year. I'm ready to take 2015 by force. You should see the giant lists I wrote on our three hour drive back home from visiting family.

The holidays were a bit hectic for us, as I'm sure they are for most, but this December was exceptionally busy. I went on five different trips, over the course of three weeks mostly to visit family. It was exhausting, but worth it. Four of our trips took us to different parts of the Lone Star State, but the fifth was a last minute trek to New York City. Jonathan had to be there for work, so in a hasty decision, we flew up early together to spend a weekend in the Big Apple to see it adorned for the holidays. It was a whirlwind of a weekend with a big surprise, which I'll tell you more about in a future post.  For now, though, I hope you have a safe and happy new year!

Happy 2015!

xo

nessa dee

Christmas Pictures 2014

Cloudy with heavy drizzle and fog....not the ideal weather conditions for an out door photo shoot. I have a knack for scheduling my photo shoots on the most inopportune days. In this case, though, I actually checked the weather [I usually don't] mainly because Monday's blustery cold front caught me off-guard. Thursday, though partly cloudy, would be pleasantly warm compared to the other days, and I was relying on that weather report [as much as you can rely on a weather report] to hold true. But, as fate would have it, the heavens opened up and saturated my plans. I called my mom to get the weather report in her area [the location of the shoot], and it hadn't yet started to drizzle. A ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy forecast. Instead of taking a much needed shower, I herded my children into the car and sped to Taylor to beat the rain [within the speed limit, of course].

I still had to get my children ready.

When they were dressed to perfection, we jumped in the car to head to the downtown area, and we were met with, not the expected drizzle and gloom, but bright, smile inducing sunshine. I'm pretty sure I heard a chorus of angels singing at that moment.

I've written many times about the challenges of trying to get good pictures of three children together whose age differences mean drastic differences in height as well as the ability to cooperate. Getting all three to look at the camera and smile at the same time is near impossible, especially when you have one who loves to talk, another who likes to make silly faces, and a third who just wants to pick up rocks, or run away, or start an impromptu game of tag in an alleyway. But what I find when I scroll through the hundreds of pictures I've snapped is that the ones I favor most are not the ones that are perfectly posed. I love the candid shots that capture what happened in between the times of trying to get that "perfect shot." Hidden among the "in between shots" are the twinkling smiles, the familiar expressions, and the wonderful moments that, if you just keep clicking, you might be lucky enough to catch. 

xo

nessa dee

Christmas Achieved

What do you get when you have six Christmas celebrations at four different houses over the span of seven days with one camera in hand? 

2,000 Lego pieces, 747 pictures to process, and adult onset diabetes.

We celebrated with my family the weekend before Christmas. My brother flew in and surprised my mom, something he's done at least four times. My mom has cried every time, though this time was especially sweet. This was our first Christmas without my grandmother, her mother, and her absence was felt immensely, but having my brother here, and our family together helped to ease that pang in our hearts.

My brother flew out on Monday, and we made our way down to Houston to spend the rest of the week with my in-laws. This was our first stay in their new house on the farm. My in-laws have had a long, hard year after selling their house in January. They downsized to a small kitchenette/office area in the back of a barn that they outfitted with bedrooms and a bathroom, and lived there for almost a year while they built two grain bins from the ground up, grew and harvested milo and grass, and eventually built a house that they were able to move into just after Thanksgiving. 

One of the biggest benefits to living on a grass farm is that this is your backyard:

We had a wonderful time, shared Christmas with a lot of family, ate way too many sweets, and stayed up way too late every night. If I ever come off of my sugar high, I'm going to take a nap, and then share the rest of my pictures with you. [Only 738 more!]

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! 

xo

nessa dee

Crafty Friday: Yarnaments

What better way to spend a cold, blustery day than in the studio, crafting, [and wrangling a busy baby]!

 Today's Crafty Friday project is a simple, cute, yarnament [yarn ornament]. The idea started with these:

If you have a little one, you might recognize these as lids to baby food pouches such as these:

I've always liked the bright colors and interesting design of these lids, and thought they would be great for future craft projects, so I saved them...all of them. 

[Hello, my name is Vanessa, and I'm a craft supply hoarder.]

For today's craft, though, the color and design don't really matter. But, I'm upcycling, which is always a good thing. 

I've been wanting to create yarn covered ball ornaments for a while now, but Styrofoam balls are expensive, and I'm cheap, and I have about 75 of these plastic lids, so I decided to use them as the base. 

To start, I threaded the yarn through the opening and tied a knot, making sure I left a few inches of yarn at the end, like so:

Next, I started wrapping the lid with the yarn, leaving the extra string exposed:

 Because these are plastic, the thread tends to slide off easily unless I held it down with my thumb as I wrapped. You can also secure it with a bit of glue periodically. I kept wrapping until the lid was completely covered. Just a note, I used the same color lid as the yarn I was wrapping it with, so if there were gaps, they were less noticeable. Once the lid was completely covered, I knotted the end with the excess yarn from the beginning knot:

 Then, I made a loop, secured it with another knot, and cut off any excess strings:

Finally, I glued a button to the center of the ornament: 

I continued with the steps above and made a variety of ornaments:

Once the tree was decorated, I showed my sweet Gus, who absolutely loved...

                                                                      his dresser knobs.

Oh well, I like the yarnaments.

Happy crafting!

xo

nessa dee