Projects and crafting this year

With the emotional ups and downs of pregnancy and just life in general being a girl, I'm very glad to say that I've recently identified an outlet I have that I never realized made me feel so good.

CRAFTING!  

It sounds so molly-mormon of me, but I'm deciding to embrace it- I like making things for my home and family, I really do.  But really a MAJOR part of it, the part that helps with my emotional well-being, is the rewarding sense of accomplishment I feel when I complete a project that I'm proud of and has meaning to me or someone I'm giving it to.  It's important to me to have things on our walls that are not just meaningless decorations in with the current style.  I want our home to tell our story and to tell our kids what the important things are to us as a family.  

Projects this year have been painting and sewing projects.  Here are a few of my favorites:

this is an unfinished map of the US, hand sewn (while I had myself a Downton Abbey marathon).  i still need to add Hawaii and Alaska, as they are two states that are actually important to our family.  

we had some very large extra pillows from our couch that we didn't use, so i made these patchwork pillowcases, one for audrey and one for hannah to sit on for this "learning time" we sometimes do.  they love them! they always make me feel so good.

original picture

this painting of hannah has taken a long time and i still don't feel like it's really done yet, but i'm pretty proud of it.  my friend beth helped me do most of it and taught me sooo much about oil paints and techniques.  i'm hoping to get around to doing one of each of the kids...someday someday.

the credit for this one goes to my cousin natalie- all i did was stick the giant sticker on a piece of paper i liked and put it in the frame.  she has made several of these for friends and as gifts and she is very talented at what she does.  i love the way this looks in our living room and what it tells our kids about the temple.

andrew and i did this one together- he built it and i painted it.  it was such a fun project and we love how it turned out. thank you pinterest!  i look at it every day and think of home.

I will continue crafting and sewing and making things for my family and home.  Because it makes me happy!  Now if only I could find the time to do things more often.....I don't know if that's gonna happen any time soon!

These are my greatest projects though!  So I guess it makes sense that they would suck up all my time and energy.  It's okay, I'd rather give it to them than to a project any day of the week.  These crazies.