twenty twelve

Hey, everyone.

If there's anyone still there, that is. Y'all have been more than patient with my scarce posts during the last twelve months. Thank you for checking back in with us!

I feel like I could write a million different things tonight, but because there are so many thoughts running around in my little head, I'm not sure what to actually pick and choose. So, I'll just go to my photos and be random :)

I got an iPhone for Christmas. I seriously had no idea what I had been missing.

I cleaned the children's bathroom the other day, and there was my iPhone - and Instagram. This is how visual people clean a bathroom. They make photo collages and post them for their friends on Facebook.



Do you like my nifty 5 sign? Etsy. When the Christmas decorations start coming down, I get in a funk. Every. stinkin. year. January and February are hard months here in Ohio. We only get snow a few times. The rest of the time it's cold, wet, gray, and muddy. Bleh! So, Sam let me go a little wild on Etsy after New Year's. This five is one of the first things to arrive on the doorstep. Just a little red. A little cheerfulness. Makes me smile everytime I pass the bathroom :) Good buy.



I'm doing this photo project I decided to call "Catch 36". I turned 36 back in November and the idea is basically just to try to photograph the moments that make up each week until I turn 37. My whole 36th year in photos. Not one each day, but enough to get the feel for a week or to atleast have a 2 page layout for each week. There isn't really a formula for each layout, though. I'm kind of making things up as I go along. Adapting as needed. This week, for example, I decided I wanted portraits of the kiddos. So, I took posed shots. Different than the candids and still lifes I've focused on in previous weeks. But, the portraits give a great opportunity to get each child's face - close up - all in one week's time. So far so good.



I love this one.

Baby's doing great :) Four and a half months already! She's such a love. Such a blessing.



Did I ever tell you all that we got a new camera? Yes, again. Now we're shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II. I'm learning. It would be nice if cameras all pretty much worked the same way, but they don't. Not even within Canon. So, I'm trying to get the hang of all the little buttons and options and modes and whatnot. I'm shooting in manual, which I feel good about, but I definitely still feel like I want to keep improving.

Some of the shots I'm sharing tonight are iPhone pics. I think it's pretty obvious which ones just from the quality of the photos. Some are square, like this...



... which I can. not. believe. I'm. showing. you.

This is, of course, Spare Oom. The holidays were hard on Spare Oom. In all the busyness, stuff just kept getting tossed back there. A mess, people. Seriously. But, I have it almost all cleared out now. Anyway, these square photos are Instagram pics. They're edited that way, so I can't post them in the format I usually use. I like the squares, though. I think they look cheery.



I've been here a lot. Like, a whole lot. I'm on a mission to get rid of the stuff we don't use... want... need. We're not rolling around in lots of extra space here, and there's just no sense in keeping stuff just so it can clutter up life. No sense, I tell you.

Let's see. What else is house related?



Sam is still chipping away at Bedroom 4. SweetP and Shug will be in there. Baby doesn't have a nursery, yet, because they're sleeping in the room that will, eventually, be hers (Bedroom 2). She's happy as a clam sleeping in a bassinet in our room, though. I like having the babies close by when they're little anyway.



I've been a crafty little thing all weekend. It started Thursday night. Once it gets cold, I'm not really much for going out for my regular "Mama Nights". So, I stayed in and decided to just hole up in (newly semi-orderly) Spare Oom.



Printed some pictures and gathered some bits and pieces.



And made a collage wall near the sewing machine table I have set up in there.



Very therapeutic. Helped chase away some of that post-holiday bleh.

Sam found some questions online - some blog he was reading - designed to help husbands and wives talk together about the past year and the new year coming up. Each question is meant to be thought through in several different areas of life... spiritual, physical, etc. One of the questions was along the lines of this: "If you could sum up your hopes for the coming year in one word, what would that word be?" Since we're still deep in the throes of improving this house and since this is where I'm documenting that process, I thought this question might be interesting applied to our 2012 goals for the house. I came up with a phrase instead of a word.

Baby Steps.

Baby Steps because, first and foremost, Baby won't be a baby forever. The house isn't going anywhere, but her babyhood is. And the childhood of all of our children. These are days I'm never going to see more than once. The house has to take a backseat. But, also, Baby Steps because I think we can still make progress, but it's going to be incremental. I know, it's always been incremental, but the increments just got much, much smaller. Still. A little something here and a little something there add up to a bigger something eventually.

I haven't bought much to decorate the house, yet. The house budget is always going to things like new doors, paint, or supplies. That's changing this year. I may not be able to take hours out of an afternoon to paint trim, but I can order fun new pillow covers from Etsy (which I did), or finally get something on the walls. If I just keep adding one more pretty thing - consistently - throughout the year, we'll have a much more welcoming home by the time the world ends.

I mean, by the end of twenty twelve ;)

But, it would be nice if Baby got her own room before preschool. Or sooner.