Crazy, Crazy, Crazy

I know I'm getting really bad about posting. Not entirely my fault, as my dh has sort of monopolized the 'puter for the past several weeks, but tonight I'm getting a reprieve. A guy on his Dad's Friday night bowling league/team was unable to bowl tonight, so they asked G to sub. Also, my Mom has offered sort of a reprieve too. She's taking my kids overnight tonight so I can get done with all the Christmas preparations. But they're still here which means I can't start yet and since I can't do anything while they're here, I figured I'd try to do a post.

So, what's been going on? I'm still waiting to hear about the overnight job. I called the lady today and she said she has to wait till the budget frees up a bit, which I guess means the first of the year, but right now waiting for their budget to free up, is causing a definite strain on our budget. Oh well. You know what, I have complete faith that we will get through this, and that everything will be alright, but now we just have to figure out how we're going to get through it. Times like this I could really, really use a hug from my Dad. I can't believe he's been gone nearly 17 years already. He had this amazing way about him. When he hugged you and told you everything was going to be alright, you knew it would be, simply because he said it would. And you know what, it always was. But anyway, I do feel very strongly that this is all temporary and that we'll be fine. Hey, without faith, what's left?

But in spite of all that, I'm getting excited. Today was, of course, the last day of school before Christmas. I made R's teacher's gift, a Harry Potter Themed Altered Clipboard, and it really came out nice. She wrote me a thank you email right away after he gave it to her and she really loved it. I also made one for R and one for his friend, as well. The three of them (his teacher included)are huge Potter fans, and they all really liked the clipboards. They're addicting though, I just did three and I'm already wanting to do more (like I don't have enough to do in the next few days). The pictures are of the one I did for R's teacher and if you click on them, they should enlarge for you The ones for R and V were essentially the same, I just used different paper for the bottom halves of the clipboard on each of theirs. I found all the embellishments on eBay and attached them to an old CD to make the element.

Oh, and guess what! I can now officially say that I have removed a door from its hinges! Princess K went into the bathroom the other day (the other news is that she's finally potty-trained! Yay!) and locked the door. The lock is old and sticks a bit and once she locked it, she couldn't get it open again. I called G and he was about 90 minutes away from home, so he told me to get a flat headed screwdriver and a hammer from his toolbench and told me how to get the hinges to unhitch. It took some work, because once I got it unhitched, I had to sort of pry the door out of the doorframe using a big screwdriver like a crowbar, because there was nowhere to pull it from and she didn't get what I was telling her when I told her to push on it. But anyway, I managed to keep everything under control, even with her in there crying. I got her calmed down and told her to hold on and I would get her out as fast as I could, to which she sort of sniffled and said "Hurry Mama, I'm all alone in here." And then I got her out and got to be the hero for a change (Daddy usually gets that title from all of us). So I was pretty proud of myself. It was really very empowering!

But for now I've gotta run. The clock is ticking and I need to get a move on. Let me know what you think of my clipboard. I'll try to post again before Christmas.