Colorful Stress Relief

I'm not an artist but I do like to paint...it's a great way to relief stress!  My paintings are, well...weird.  They always seem bright and happy but there is always a undertone of darkness (usually portrayed by death or dying).  The brightness in the pictures I always think of as my happiness and the darkness is the stress that I'm feeling at the time.  Look at my paintings below and see if you can find the "darkness".  Some are more obvious than the others.

This is my first painting ever.  I painted it two years ago.  Because of taking a picture of a picture, it's flipped backwards (like the ones below) but you still get the idea.

He isn't really proportioned right at all, but it doesn't matter, it was fun!

This one is kind of hard to see, but I'll give you a hint...her roots on the left side are turning brown.  The picture of the picture makes it hard to see that.  She is a pretty big painting, so I made a practice picture with a smaller canvas just using a pencil.

Pretty difficult to see, but you get the idea.  I just used acrylic paints and I always draw it out with a pencil first.  I'm sure that isn't proper technique, but like I said before...it doesn't really matter!  It was fun and relieved my stress!

Throwing Away Negativity

Everybody has bad days, but I try to give the girls other options besides staying angry or negative.  There are a few different ways I've managed to do this.

1. Throw your negativity away!

One of the girls (her identity will remain anonymous) came home in a very bad mood and snapped at me.  I could've gotten angry at her, but that would've just fueled the anger.  So I told her to go to the front door and throw all of her negativity away, because whatever had happened, happened somewhere else and not at our house so she needed to throw it back where it came from.  Her first reaction, "Are you kidding me?" 

When she realized I wasn't kidding, she thought it was funny, did what I told her too, and then she was back to her normal self.

2. Name 3 positive things

When the girls get into an extremely negative mood and everything that comes out of their mouth is negative, (i.e. "I hate spaghetti" "I hate rice")  I say, name three positive things about (it).  At first they would try to disguise a negative comment for a positive, but if they do that I add 3 more positive things to think of (6 total) which they don't like.  It's been quite a while since I've had to pull this one out, but the point isn't to completely annoy them (even though I know it does) it's just a nice way to make them more self-aware of how negative they're being.  One of the funniest ones I've heard said...when I said, "Say 3 positive things about your sister",I was told, ""at least she's not a twin.  :-)

3. Go throw a fit where I can't see you, then come back and be normal again.

Same kind of situation, just them fighting with one another or being angry.  I will tell them (individually)  "go to the basement away from everyone else...stomp your feet, yell, scream, say what you're feeling, take a pillow (not one of the good ones) with you if you want something to hit.  Do this for 10 minutes.  I will knock on the door and let you know when your time is up".  

I know what you're thinking...how will they hear the knock when the 10 minutes are up.  That's the funny part.  After the first couple of minutes they say everything they wanted to say, yell as much as they wanted to yell, and their words and yells become more sporadic.  You can tell they are just trying to think of something else to say.  When time is up they are always happier.  I haven't used this one very much but every time I have, it works like a charm. 

Project 1: Tear Drop Trailer-Day 2!

 While I was dress shopping, Dustin and his dad, Steve, braved the snow and the demolition portion of Project 1 continues.

I think they should have just waited for tornado season only about a month away.  Would've achieved the same effect.

I'm going to sleep in this?

To This

From This

Progress As Promised!

Hanes-Meet Ann Taylor!

Dear Hanes,

I'm not Large, I think I'm more like a medium or an average!  Why did you need to put the L by the number on my new panties?  Isn't the number enough to let me know which ones to get?  I don't like being called large.  I would also like to know exactly how far these letters go, because if I'm an L on the A-Z scale then I think that's about right.

Sincerely,

Jennifer B (Jenafile)


P.S. You could learn a thing or two from Ann Taylor.



We women love Ann Taylor, don't we?  We know that we are a size 8 or 10 but Ann Taylor (Loft) tells us that we are a size 6 or 8, and we love that.  After the holidays when we've put on a few extra pounds, Ann Taylor says, "That's okay, honey, you haven't gone up a whole pant size.  Go ahead and eat that other piece of cheesecake"..."Thank you, Ann.  I think I'll eat that other cookie, too!"

Objective: Locate a Court Warming Dress/ Results: We did it!

What can be worse than formal shopping with your 14 year old daughter? Oh yes, formal shopping the day of Court Warming!  Aubree thought on Sunday night that she might go to Court Warming but she would have to see who else was going first.  So on Monday night as the snow is blowing and starting to come down she decided she was definitely going.  Between work and the 15 inches of snow we weren't able to go until today.  We went to three different stores and she tried on at least 30 dresses!

Too Scratchy!

Okay but a little plain.

The dress twisted out of alignment while she walked.

She liked this dress and it made it into the top three.  Felicity was tired of being a spectator and decided to join in the "fun".

I'll be so glad when mismatched socks are no longer in style!

 Back

Front-She loved this dress.  Made it into the top two.  She wants to wear this dress in the Summer with a big black hat to a picnic or the horse races...because "it just looks like that kind of dress".  No, we've never been to the horse races, but if we bought this dress we would probably have to go.

Just not a good look.

Felicity getting comfortable...this is taking forever!

Just "okay"

Made it into the top six.  This is Kayla behind Aubree.  She and her mom, Christie are also shopping last minute for her dress!  

We have a winner!  For both girls!  This is the dress Aubree chose (with help) and this is the dress Kayla chose!  Very pretty and both moms were very happy that their search was over!

Beautiful!

Aubree & Sadie

Project 2: Doll House

So Sadie and I decided that her Daddy would be spending a lot of time on his new project, so we needed a project too.

We are going to build a doll house.  Aubree, Hailee, and Felicity are very excited about our new project! My four darling daughters are always up for gluing and painting!

Aubree, Hailee and Felicity were gone last weekend so Sadie and I got the doll house project up and running.

Here we are ready to start our project.  Me in my Royals shirt, of course, but this time we're painting.

Sadie kept switching paint brushes with me..."my turn" "mommy's turn"  and then she somehow managed to end up with both brushes.

Sadie had so much fun.  She kept getting right up in my face saying, "Painting" "Windows"

Now we are gluing the window panes onto the window frames.  Had to wait for the paint to dry and had to go get clear glue.  (Do you notice the paint rollers?  They're for another project...bean bag toss for the school carnival.  Pictures for that are forthcoming!)


We will keep you posted on our progress!

Project 1: Tear Drop Trailer

Dustin  has been talking about making a teardrop trailer now for the past year. I didn't realize he was actually going to do it until about a week ago...

Dustin:  I'm going to go look at a camper tonight which I think will work for the frame for our teardrop trailer, do you want to go with me?
Me:       You're serious?  You're really going to build this thing?
Dustin:  You didn't think I was serious? Yeah, Dad and I are going to build it together.
Me:       Where are you planning on doing this?
Dustin:  Mom & Dad's house...hopefully they are good with that.
Me:        Wow...okay.

So, the project begins:

Here it is...in all its glory.

Canvas is now removed

And there's the canvas

The top is now gone

We love the retro cook top! Definitely saving that for the new trailer! 

And the retro sink!

All in a days work!