Have a wonderful weekend – and if you are celebrating, merry, merry Christmas. I plan on posting a bit next week. For me, the end of the year always brings a lot of "wrap-up" stuff with it. See you then.
enJOY it
an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.
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I raced up north yesterday to help my mom start the holiday baking. We made fudge, peanut butter cookies, chex mix and pecan cookies. Tonight we are going to make chocolate covered pretzels, sugar cookies and our family favorite that I've shared many times before, peppermint cookies.
I should also be sure to get some bread in the oven today too…
*Most of the recipes come from old family cookbooks, but the links I posted are very similar.
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So, December is flying.
I absolutely made the right decision moving before Paul got home. Setting up the new place has felt like doing a headstand. Everything has looked different. Everything has flipped. The blood rushed to my head and the ideas started to flow. During a headstand though, 30 seconds feels like 30 minutes. Moving to a new place made 30 minutes feel like 30 seconds.
Still following?
I played host to six friends this weekend (at all different times). It was fun to give the tour of my new place and my new town. It was awesome to reconnect. I've noticed I have gotten amazingly good at Alone Time on this deployment. Perhaps too good.
But happily the next ten days will involve the opposite. I am headed up to Sacramento to spend Christmas with the family and then will be in San Francisco to ring in 2012.
We are getting through this year. That is so good.
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I am pretty sure most of the cards have made it to their final destinations. So here's our fun holiday card. I used overnightprints.com and was super pleased. They even rounded the corners for me. These fit into an A2 envelope and I had a bunch in holiday colors from Paper Source. That photo was taken at the photobooth at a fun wedding we attended back in May.
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Still chugging away at this album. I am hoping to wrap it up super early in January and then be done. I have really enjoyed this project and I am glad to have the record of 2011. But I am always ready for the next thing. I have a totally new documentation plan I'll be following in 2012 and I will be talking about it more soon. (Spoiler alert : I'll be doing Project Life
& I'm getting so excited!)
Album is the Catalina by Kolo. See January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September & October.
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I mentioned earlier in the month that I have decided to shift some of my focus away from the shop and towards this blog & workshop development in 2012. It is something that I have been thinking about for months. I love this space. I love dreaming up projects, taking photos and writing posts. But for it to make sense, both financially and practically, I am going to once again start hosting blog sponsors. In the interest of transparency, I have published all the information about sponsorships and blog statistics right here. Please take a look if you are interested in sponsoring or just are curious.
As always, I thank you for your reading and for your support. The content of this blog will remain the same (i.e. no giveaways or excessive sponsor fluff posts) but the right sidebar will be getting a new look. 🙂 Comments on this post are closed, but please feel free to email me if you have any questions.
I am so excited for the new year. I am so excited to continue to develop this blog.
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The worst part of deployments isn't actually the big stuff. It's not the holidays you celebrate apart or the weddings and events that only one of you get to attend. It's not the hassle of taking care of the house alone.
Nope.
The hard part catches me at the most random times on the most boring days.
I miss a hundred things. But mostly, I miss having Paul come home after work to give me a hug. I miss the closeness SO MUCH. I have realized on this adventure that it takes thousands of words to barely scratch the surface of a facial expression or a touch. And believe me, words I have. In plenty. But I'd do anything for a real life conversation. I'd go back in time, invest in Skype and tell them to start working on a machine that can teleport people – Star Trek style. And while I was there, I'd ask whomever is in charge of the government if we could just quit with the deployments already.
But anyway.
All of that to say :
I hate that Paul had to spend his birthday in Afghanistan. And I wanted to do something big. But you can't send helium balloons. And burritos & strong beer don't ship well either. And the Navy turned down my offer to buy him a round-trip ticket from Afghanistan to Oxnard. (Also, there's not an airport in Oxnard.) And Paul wants for exactly zero material goods. (Except the Kindle Fire loaded with South Park episodes he's getting for Christmas.)
And so, I emailed everyone in my address book that knows & loves Paul. And asked those people to spread the word to other people that know & love Paul. I requested that folks make or buy cards and ship them to me I could send Paul a big box of encouragement for his birthday.
And our people came through. I forgot to count the cards – but there are enough to keep him busy. Enough to make him blush. Grinning like a maniac, I watched him open the box via video chat. After he thumbed through all the return addresses, his first words were, "I am overwhelmed." He's going to open them all in one sitting on Sunday.
It's such a little thing.
But DUDE, have we not established that the little things are the biggest things?
and p.s. trust me, I know we are so lucky. I know we are blessed to be able to communicate as much as we can on this deployment. I have never-ending respect for the men and women serving our country at home and abroad. I just miss my man. Not too much longer, babe. We got this.
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I feel like "Christmas" is really going to kick into high gear when I drive up to Sacramento next week and spend time with my mom baking and getting Christmas Eve dinner ready. But until then, I have a few festive things happening, so I added them into the book.
I got my Christmas cards mailed out yesterday. I spent them in a mess of different red and green envelopes. It felt fantastic to get them out the door and even better to use up a bunch of my envelope stash. I'll share the cards here next week once I am sure they've been delivered.
That last spread is probably my favorite way to take photos. Hoping to get a bunch of those "hands working" shots next year. I think they tell a good story.
Just a reminder, tomorrow is the last day to use the free shipping code on anything in the shop.
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Lululemon vinyasa scarf, hamburger wrapping paper, lands' end canvas pj pants, west elm striped hand towels, Dogeared karma necklace, baggu leather pouches, Stendig wall calendar.I am basically living in that scarf which is sadly sold out online (same with the calendar, but both are available in store). And those towels are in our bathroom. The rest of the stuff is on my Christmas wishlist. Except that hamburger paper… I am donating to kickstarter, because that needs to become a reality.
enJOY it 