Z is for Zoey

We had a shower at my house for the mama and papa to be. It was such a beautiful day spent with wonderful people to celebrate a little girl that I love so much already!

Isn't she the cutest little pregnant lady you have ever seen!

FAD

Hello, my name is Lindsay and I am addicted to facebook.  Although there is not a lot of research on facebook addiction yet, according to an article on socialtimes.com, an American psycologist states that "FAD", or Facebook Addiction Disorder, is a condition that is defined by hours spent on Facebook, so much time in fact that the healthy balance of the individual’s life is affected. It has been said that approximately 350 million people are suffering from the disorder."
 I wouldn't say that the healthy balance of my life was completly affected but I did have a few emotional encounters that caused me to abandon facebook for two weeks (oh my, two weeks!  How did you survive?) and only return with a few rules. 

1. No Facebook on my phone.  The constant buzz on my phone was begining to be too much.  Do I really need to take a break from playing with my kids to check a message.  No!

2. No Facebook everyday.  We are voyuers by nature, but why must I keep updated on the goings on of people lives that I have not seen in years.  I don't!

3. No Facebook stalking.  Okay, so I am not that bad but I have been known to track down some info on facebook.  It all started when I accidentlly caught someone in a lie on facebook.  They told me one thing and then facebook confirmed the contrary.  Ever since then, I have been known to check up on people every now and then.  Am I really admitting this?  I am not sick, I promise.

Well there it is.  My new rules.  If I feel it getting out of control again, I might have to permanatly leave and replace the addiction with another, like Pinterest or something.  Yeah, that sounds healthy :)

Not as easy as it looks- DIY Fabric Letter

I have read countless tutorials about how to make fabulous DIY things for the home.  The creator explains the steps which are accompanied by pictures.  They usually make it sound so simple and cost efficient.  Well this is not one of those posts.  First of all, I do not have the "complete a step and then take a picture of it" mind set yet, and two, this was not easy.  I messed up... a lot.  At one point I threw it across the room.  It took me four tries to get it right.  Now when I say right, I mean you can look at it from far away and it looks pretty good.  So here it goes.

Attempt 1:  The first mistake I made was ignoring all of the tutorials I read.  I thought that I had the fool proof easiest plan in my mind so I started with a wooden letter "Z,"  some fabric that I ordered from babybedding.com, some batting, and a staple gun.  All I would have to do is wrap the fabric around the letter and staple, right?  Wrong!  the staples wouldn't go into the letter, the fabric was a mess, it took me all of two minutes to realize this was not going to work.

Attempt 2: So I decided to take a different approach.  I bought glue.  I went to the glue isle and bought the first glue that said wood and fabric on the back :) I traced the Z on the batting, cut it out and glued that to the top of the Z.

 I then traced the Z on to the back side of the fabric and cut it out about an inch outside of the line i drew.  Unfortunately, the "Z" that I cut out of the fabric was facing the wrong way.  The chevron pattern was on the back of the fabric when it was covering the Z.  UGHHHHH.  Fail 2.

Attempt 3:  Ok, i can do this.  I cut the fabric correctly this time.  Then I started to wrap the fabric over the edge.  I used a foam brush to apply the glue to the wood and then folded the edge of the fabric up.  Most of this was easy except for the curves on the inside of the "Z."  Not fun.  I cut small"v" shapes out of the fabric at the curves to help the fabric to fold up.  The only downfall with that is that the fabric did not cover all of the wood underneath.  Glue, fold, glue, fold.  Eventually I was done...... and it looked like crap! (this is when I threw it)

Attempt 4:  Repeat all of the steps above, a little more carefully.  I then glued some ribbon around the edge to hide some of the icky spots.

 And there you have it.  It took a little longer than the 20 minutes the tutorial boasted about, but I think it will look cute hanging in my niece's nursery.

He loves it.  Can't you tell :)

Unemployment

I am unemployed for the first time since I was 16 and it feels so weird.  I have always worked a job, sometimes two jobs, and for 3 crazy months in college 3 jobs at the same time.  I have always been a worker and it has always been part of my personality to work very hard at whatever job that I had and to try to prove my self as a wonderful employee.  For the past 7 years I have been a teacher and this past school year I took a chance and moved from my secure tenured job in one district to a job much closer to home.  With two little munchkins, I just needed to be closer to them.  I knew that it was a risk because it this day of budget cuts no job is secure, and unfortunately, at this moment, it seems as though that risk did not pay off.  I was laid off, and I can't help but take it so personally.  At my old job I was respected.  I was part of a place that valued me, and I worked so hard at my job everyday.  When I moved to this new school, I immediately felt that need to prove myself again.  To show them that I love what I do and that I am good at what I do.  The fact that I was laid off is not because of my performance at my job.  It has to do with numbers.   I teach in a time where our country, our state, our school districts maintain that education is important and that the students are our first priority, but they spend money on more tests and experts to tell us what we are doing wrong, but cut school days and cut teachers.  Squeeze as many kids into a room as possible in order to save a dollar.  I know that.  But at the same time, I can not help but feel that I did not do enough.  That I was not good enough.  That I did something to make this happen.  I have friends tell me "Enjoy it.  Now you can stay home with your boys."  I smile and say "yeah" even though I want to say "Are you going to pay my mortgage?"  But the fact that I am unemployed is not upsetting because of the financial aspect, it upsets me because I am a good teacher and I was just thrown away.  I can't help but feel that way, and it leaves me in a really emotional place.

Happy, Happy 4th

Sun, swimming, family, friends, food, and fireworks.  This was Christopher's 3rd 4th of July but his first one awake to actually see the fireworks, so we decided to do it twice.  Fireworks on the 3rd in Moorpark, and fireworks on the 4th in Camarillo.  He loved it!