Kiev, Ukraine Journal - 3-10-1996 and 3-11-1996

*Disclaimer: Please remember that I wrote these when I was 14! I could be a snarky brat! I also am typing these journals exactly as I wrote them, bad spelling and all, except I have abbreviated names to protect the innocent or not-so-innocent.

March 10, 1996

Today is the first Sunday Worship we have gone to. The building was so cold. It was freezing! Everybody had thier coats on all day. We went to KS's english class. He was teaching on obeidience. Except over half of the class was just the introduction. After that we all went home. Michelle and I did homework. In english I got everything done except for the spelling part. I also have gotten all of ch. 13 in science done. That night we had class here. Or the students did. Michelle saw C in a suit. All night she was gushing over how cute he looked. He did look good, but not good enough to gush over all night. Well that's all we did today so I think I'll close now. Bye. :-)

March 11, 1996

Today we went to the C's house. We all watched Little Women. C and J complained all through it. It was the worst time. When we went home and got off the metro we went to the bus stop to wait for a bus. All of the sudden somebody pushed me, almost knocking me over and yelled Americans. Chelle and I both turned around and stared into the face of KS. We both gave him a really awful look. He said "boy if looks could kill I'd be dead right now." Then he started asking me all about Kings Quest all of the except 1st and 2nd. I don't have anything else to write so Bye. Oh wait we did homework the rest of the day. :-)

Kings Quest was a computer game I used to play when I was younger.

Kiev, Ukraine Journal - 3-8-1996 and 3-9-1996

*Disclaimer: Please remember that I wrote these when I was 14! I could be a snarky brat! I also am typing these journals exactly as I wrote them, bad spelling and all, except I have abbreviated names to protect the innocent or not-so-innocent.

March 8, 1996

Today Michelle and I went with C, J and R to a huge hill and went sledding. (Again). The hill was a five minute walk from the metro stop Ocealina. It was huge. When we got there we met C's friend, S. S spoke really good english. He had his friend with him. The first time I went down I crashed and slid on my face half-way down the hill. Then another time I crashed, flew off and hit the sidewalk with my head. I was lying on the sidewalk in a doze. Then I crashed again and hit a huge peice of ice and brusied my back really bad. I now have a huge bruse on my head and back and three or four scratches on my forhead. I ache so bad. My neck hurts really bad too because of whip lash from flying through the air. The one thing I learned today was that I cannot sled. We then ate supper at the C's. D fixed really good spaghetti. After we ate we played fictionary. Then the adults sat around and talked while the kids went to R's room and talked. Then R spend the night here and that was all that happened. :-)

By the way, the smiley's really are at the end of every entry. How cute was I?

March 9, 1996

I woke up today to the sound of R's bags zippers. When I was putting on my makeup I got a phone call. It was S. He's really obnoxious. I don't care for him. He wanted to take me out. I said I had plans. R and C then took me and Michelle to Gedro Park. We got to ride on the cages, bumper cars and a roller coaster. When we were riding the bumper cars we hit head on. The cars are so little that the impact of the hit slammed R and my knees. Her's turned purple and swelled and mine started bleeding. We also played ping-pong for 30 minutes. We could of played for an hour but it was to cold. There has been snow on the ground every day scince we got here to Kiev. At the rate I'm getting hurt I'll spend the rest of my life in the dirt over here! Well that's all for now I. need to go to sleep. :-)

SUYL: Christmas Card

I love, Love, LOVE sending and getting Christmas Cards! It is one of my favorite things about this time of year. This year, I picked the card design before I decided on what we were going to do for our picture. I saw this design back in September and knew it was the one for us. I then crocheted the elf hats in matching colors. It was so fun and I love the result!

Linking up with Kelly's Korner.

Christmas Tour of Our Home

Hi all!

I am still trying to play catch-up. I've been sick again this week so I haven't felt much like blogging. Plus, it's hard to blog when you know you have a million topics to cover and don't really know where to start!

Today, I want to show you all our festive house! We wanted to put lights up outside, but we didn't have enough strands of one particular style so we are waiting until after everything goes on clearance to stock up for next year. I can't wait to get into the Christmas clearance this year! I'm really wanting to get a purple tree for the guest/craft room and a small green tree for the kitchen. Oh how I love Christmas trees!

Anywho, as you come in, this is what is in the entry way. I know the flowers are spring flowers, but I never found something I liked for that vase. I'll find something for next year maybe. Russ wants to start collecting the Christmas villages and I found this one at a junk shop for $4.50 to start him off. It is super cute and I think we'll have a sweet village in no time. I also still love the Charlie Brown tree my Dad and I made together one year!

Above the door is a large picture window. I am in love with this snowman! It is a new piece that Russ bought for me this year.

This is the living room. Um, ignore the wadded up blanket on the couch. It's cold here!

I usually have our stockings on different shelves, but I am loving them all on one shelf this year so the Joy decoration can have it own shelf. I was so excited to have a mantle to hang our stockings on this year and then I ended up not liking them there. HA! Isn't that how it always works?!

This is the mantle. I really like where the TV goes except for when I want to decorate the mantle, knowwaddaImean? I've also been looking for a nice swag to go in the empty space above the TV nook. Just haven't found something I like yet.

This is a hope chest that became a sofa table with the 2 frames I made/redid this year. Love the pictures!

This is a shelf in our hallway. I'm hoping it will evolve to look a little better. On the shelf are basically all the things I had left over after decorating everything else. The quilt is a new piece acquired this year from my Granny.

This is the normal display that is on the linen cabinet. I think I might change this up next year.

Moving on to the kitchen, this is a shelf that is in the eating area. Dora, our Elf on the Shelf, sits on the middle shelf when she isn't occupied.

Another shelf in our kitchen. I love getting Christmas cards!

Our table and table runner. Chloe Jo and I made the tree centerpiece together a few weeks ago.

I was able to decorate a little bit in the main bathroom this year. I've never done that before and I was excited to have enough stuff! I bought these pieces on after-Christmas clearance last year. I love opening our Christmas boxes every year to find stuff you forgot you bought the year before!

I love the pink and silver. It's messy, but it's so pretty when it sparkles!

Chloe Jo loved the decorations in her bathroom, too.

This is Chloe Jo's tree. She chose a pink tree last year and it is a cupcake/candy theme. I found a really cute cupcake tree skirt at Kohl's a week or so ago so that has changed this year.

Close-up of some of her ornaments. I love theme trees!

This is Russ and I's tree. It is snowman themed. This is another one of those after-Christmas clearance items from last year. The tree cost me $5! I love the blue and gold!

Close-up of our snowman ornaments.

And lastly, here are the ornaments we picked out this year (one of our family traditions is going to choose an ornament apiece the day we put up our Christmas tree).

Russ chose this snowman ornament.

I chose this bird in a top hat that Russ says is ridiculous. I think he is so cute!

And Chloe Jo went with Cinderella.

And that is all!

I've been enjoying seeing others' homes and getting ideas for next year!

Elf on the Shelf: Days 5-10

Elf on the Shelf has been going swimmingly. Chloe Jo thinks it is fabulous. She loves finding Dora and seeing what she has been up to in the mornings. I have been having so much fun creating different scenes. CJ doesn't understand some of it quite yet ("Mommy, why is Barbie doing that to Dora?"). I am looking forward to the next few years when she can understand some more of what is going on. :)

Day 5: Ziplining

Day 6: Sleeping on the Job

Day 7: Jenga Jail

Day 8: Dora wrote CJ's name in Cheerios (CJ thought this one was fantastic!)

Day 9: Marshmallow Bath (another one CJ thought was fantastic...she even snacked on the marshmallows in the morning...ew.)

Day 10: Rocking out on the iPod

I would like to thank Pinterest for all of the great ideas!

Kiev, Ukraine Journal - 3-6-1996 and 3-7-1996

*Disclaimer: Please remember that I wrote these when I was 14! I could be a snarky brat! I also am typing these journals exactly as I wrote them, bad spelling and all, except I have abbreviated names to protect the innocent or not-so-innocent.

March 6, 1996

This was our first full day at Kiev. We woke up at 7:00 A.M. We had a breakfast of oatmeal and chocolate milk. It tasted really good after that awful plane food. After breakfast Mom, Michelle, and I left because Dad had a class to teach there. We then met R at the metro and went to thier house. C, J, R, Michelle, and me talked and, watched video's all that visit. After we left thier house we stopped at the S's place to give K2 a fax. We saw C, the new baby. She is really cut. We went to the Centre Church that night and heard KS preach. Artiome transulated everything he said into Russian so the Russians would be able to understand. He talked about Family. After that we walked home, had a quick snack, and went to sleep. :-)

March 7, 1996

Today we woke up a 7:00 A.M. again. We had the same breakfast we had had yesterday. N, a Canadian that was over hear on mission work, asked us to go to a concert with him. Mom of course said yes. I really didn't want to go so I envited R to come along. The concert was Russian folk singers. It consisted of soprano and Alto voices only. It sounded really neat with only those two pitches. It was real neat for a one time thing. R hated it because they yelled instead of sang she said. After that I went sledding with R. The C's have 5 fold up sleds. We walked about five minutes to a sort-of big hill off of the highway. We met to highschool age Ukrainians there. Thier names were Andrea and Artiome. They wanted to learn English so they had us teach them a few words. We were glad to. :-)

Homemade Christmas

Hi Ya'll!

I have been so sick this week and have been laid up in bed for the last 3 days. I don't want to give Russ or Chloe Jo my germs so I've been staying in my room for the most part. I was sick last week for a couple of days with a cold, was well Sunday and Monday and then my cold came back with a vengeance on Tuesday. Wednesday night I didn't get hardly any sleep for coughing and my throat felt like it was on fire. I thought I would have to go to the doctor, but my throat felt better Thursday. I'm hoping to be better tomorrow because we have plans for a holiday get together. I have had to skip Wednesday evening Bible study, then a holiday light tour we had planned with some friends on Thursday evening and going to a class with Chloe Jo that we have been doing on Friday mornings. Plus, tomorrow is our church's food pantry, I had planned to take CJ to a friends to decorate cookies and then the get together in the evening. I'm definitely skipping food pantry. We will just have to see about the other two. I would hate to get anyone else sick so we may just have to sit those out as well. Sigh.

Anyway, this post was not really supposed to be about Miss Sickie Pants! It is actually about all the fun Christmas decorations I have made this year! Apparently I am very into the holiday spirit because I have made way more than I thought I would.

First up, my sister and I got together a few weeks ago to make frames. I love the way mine came out (sorry about the glare on the picture) and I am loving seeing it on my hope chest every time I walk by.

I also spray painted this frame red. My Granny had given it to me along with several other fun things. It was originally gold (which was fine, but not really my style). I am loving all the bright colored, old fashioned frames I've been seeing around and I saw the potential for this one to be a fun Christmas frame. I love the way it turned out! It really looks fantastic!

I have pinned many Christmas things and have actually done several. I pinned something similar to this and then put my own twist on it. I love how it turned out. My point and shoot camera doesn't capture how pretty this actually is. The ornament is very glittery and the letters and base all have a gloss top coat so it sparkles so nicely in the light from the Christmas tree.

 I know I already did a post about this window I redid but I had to include it in this post because it is something I made this year. Ditto on the point and shoot camera not capturing how beautiful this piece really is.

At the beginning of the season, I bought 3 yards of different Christmas themed fabric and 3 yards of plain white. I had bought another yardish piece last year on clearance after the holidays. I planned to make new stockings, a tree skirt and a table runner out of it. I am thrilled with how all of them came out!

For the stockings, we each picked our favorite fabric from what I bought and I made the stockings out of those.

Russ liked the green houndstooth.

My favorite was the piece I picked up on clearance last year. This piece was the one everything else was matched to. At first it bothered me that the background of the fabric is a cream and not white, but I think everything tied together beautifully in the end.

Chloe Jo loved the whimsical polka dots for her stocking. I had a small scrap of the red with tiny white dots so I used that for the initials.

Here is the tree skirt I made. I had the hardest time finding enough double fold bias tape for the skirt edges, skirt ties and table runner edges. I ended up using 4 packages of it for everything.

I am so happy with the tree skirt. The tree skirt is something I always struggle with. I find ones I love in stores, but I never want to pay the price for the nicer ones. $50.00 for a tree skirt just seems excessive to me and our personal budget. I had one the first few years we were married that was made out of the same stuff traditional stockings are made out of. Fuzzy red material with a band of fuzzy white around the edges. Then I bought one that was a little more toned down (which is not me at all) that was red with a plaid band around the outside edge. Both were fine. Just fine. This year, I made one that is very me and very fun and I am thrilled with it!

It is right at home under our fun, traditional but whimsical tree!

And here is the table runner. Yes, I have a white tablecloth on my table. No worries. Oxyclean is the best!

Directions to make your own:

Elf stockings

Christmas tree skirt - here and here

Table runner

Chop!

I have been letting my hair grow for a couple of years. I've had a trimmed a couple of times, but for the most part I was just letting it grow. The past few months it has been getting hard to handle. Brushing it was a chore and I had to use a ton of shampoo to get a good lather.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I took a shower and it took me about 15 minutes to get my mop of hair brushed out. I was so irritated that I decided to do something about it!

I loaded Chloe Jo into the car, went to the salon and had them chop 10 inches off of my hair. I then sent my hair to Locks of Love. Hey, if you are going to do something drastic, might as well help others!

Before: A stringy, difficult mess

 After: Not near as short as I thought it was going to be (and a bit of an unflattering picture)

Chloe Jo thought she needed to be in on the picture-taking action. I was happy to comply. :)

You know that fun almost nervous feeling you get before you debut a new hairdo or a new outfit. You anticipate what others are going to say. Well, I went to Wednesday evening services that evening and only 1 person said anything. 10 inches and only 1 person noticed. Sigh. That was a major let down. But, they redeemed themselves on Sunday because several people said something then. HA!