July 29, 2014 by Stephanie

Crochet Blanket Stitch

I finished a blanket for George. It’s been a long time since I made something for us, so this one was fun to figure out the pattern and colors that we would want.

When I saw this yarn though, I knew I had to have it for our future baby. Our wedding colors in ombre yarn-ugh yes please!

I bought this probably a year ago keeping it stowed until we were cooking a bun in this oven.

I will say, I will never ever buy this yarn again though. It does not go very far. One of these skeins did only 3-4 rows, which is not very much in the grand scheme of blanket making. I have no idea how many of these I used, but it was a lot, which means a lot of money. Thankfully, my trips to get them were far apart and I only bought a couple at a time, so in my head it didn’t seem as bad.

It sure is pretty though!

Grace was excited to blanket model again. She hopped on it the second I put it down.

And then she wanted me to leave her alone.

As you can see in that close up, the stitches are kind of puffed or bobbled. It is a really easy pattern that I have used before. You can find the pattern here.

This blanket took me a while to do only because I kept it in the car and only did it during our road trips over the past 6 months. This might be the reason it went a little overboard and is a little bigger than a baby needs.

For the edging, I used this website. I used pattern 243. It was pretty similar to the blanket stitch so it fit nicely with the pattern. I used yellow yarn that I already had in my stash.

I know that it doesn’t match his nursery, but especially since it is too large for baby sizing anyway, I didn’t care. This would be a great blanket to do tummy time on and travel with to put on the floor for him.

And I may or may not use it on the couch for my own personal use…

Speaking of the nursery, we have been working hard to put it all together. We will have some updates soon to share!

July 28, 2014 by Stephanie

Finding My Yellow

As I near another anniversary on this blog (2 years this Friday), I started to really think about the direction I wanted to go with this space.

I first started out just wanting to document the months that Tom was away on his first deployment. It was an avenue for me to share my experiences and anxiety that came along with being an Army spouse. I shared some joys too as I took the time to reflect on various things and shared the crafts that kept me preoccupied.

I have spent the last two years tweaking this space as Army Crafter. It has developed into something much more than I ever dreamed of. I remember thinking that I would not continue this blog after that deployment, and we see how well that plan worked out for me.

Things are changing rapidly in our lives. We are growing our family, and our jobs will be changing here in the future along with a move back to our homestate.

Army Crafter just didn’t seem to fit what I wanted my little space in the Blogosphere to be anymore.

We are going to be transitioning out of the military here in the next year. And let’s be honest, I haven’t had a craft in every post for months. So it just isn’t really jiving with the way the blog has taken off for me. I wanted this blog to have a little more sustainability than I felt Army Crafter was allowing me.

I have thought about changing this for months now, and titles have been coming and going as I pondered what I wanted this blog to be.

I read a book a while back that had a saying about a yellow umbrella amongst the gray storms. It was a little more poetic than that, but hopefully you see that it meant that even if our life is chaotic and not how we thought it may be, there is always a positive outlook. Something bright and cheery, like a yellow umbrella in rain.

That yellow imagery really stuck with me. For one it is my favorite color, and two looking for positives in a mess was kind of the story of my life this last year.

With things continuously changing for us, I want to always be looking for positives and be ever thankful. No matter how gray or blah it may be with the storm, there is always a yellow umbrella. (I like this better than the silver lining garb.)

While I wanted a title with yellow umbrella in it initially, my quest for the perfect title came up empty thanks to “How I Met Your Mother.” Also, I didn’t want Rihanna’s voice to appear in your head every time you visited some variation of under my umbrella.

So I settled on “Finding My Yellow” as my new official domain.

This blog is for me to share pieces of my life with the world, but I also want it to be a constant reminder to me to keep searching for my “yellow.”

Army Crafter served me well for the past two years, but I am excited to see what life brings as I find my yellow.

So I hope you continue to follow along on this new journey!

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Now, it is going to take me a few days to change everything over and overhaul some areas of the blog, so just bare with me as I do so. In theory, armycrafter.wordpress.com should just redirect you to my new site, but in case it doesn’t you can start following me for good now on findingmyyellow.com.

July 24, 2014 by Stephanie

Confessions

I feel like all of my posts lately have been baby related, so I figured I would do something a little random and make some confessions to you.

Also I make no promises that a baby won’t be mentioned.

1. I confess that I have been struggling as a dog mom lately. We have been having some chewing issues lately when Tom and I are out. (Clarification: That is Grace and Crosby with the chewing problem, not Tom and I.) And I don’t know what else to do because our go tos are not working. We are on the struggle bus.

2. I confess that I am also tired of cleaning up Grace puke, which has been an all too common occurrence because she eats too fast and chokes herself.

3. I confess that Crosby has stolen my heart with how he follows me everywhere. He could be sound asleep on the couch but if I get up to do anything he jumps to be my sidekick and protector. I think he knows the baby is coming. (Maybe that’s why they have been nutso…)

4. I confess that I get sucked into TV shows (especially those that I binge watch) and sometimes forget that it is not real life. When I watched The West Wing, I was really confused that it wasn’t real news. Right now, I seriously think that the characters of Bones are my real life friends. I am totally a scientist…

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5. I confess that stores bringing “back to school” items on the shelves makes me want to buy lots of pretty notebooks and planners.

6. I confess that it does not fully feel like summer to me because I have yet to be in a floating device in a lazy river (real river or swimming pool river). I have been to both a river and a swimming pool, but the floating device is clutch in my summeriness.

7. I confess that I have to set the alarm to account for a cushion because I will hit the snooze button. There have been periods of my life where I had to set it at least an hour ahead because I would hit it that many times…now it is just one. That’s what I call progress.

8. I confess that sometimes I forget what I write in the blog. Then when I am having face to face conversations and people reference something I said, I will think “How in the world did they know that about me??!?!? CREEPER!” Then I remember I am a blogger and am grateful that people actually read what I write.

9. I confess when someone says, “Smile” for pictures, even if I am not in it, I will smile for the camera that I am not in front of. I find myself cheesing up even when the staging is occurring on TV or I am behind a mask.

10. I confess that my favorite part of our prenatal class is making mental bets on which person wont make it to the break to use the bathroom.

11. I confess that this morning I put my contacts in the wrong eyes, so my eyes were attacking the contacts all the way to work this morning until I realized what I did and switched them. The prescription is drastically different in both eyes, so it is amazing that I made it to work alive on that blurry vision. You know it’s going to be a good day…

Can you relate to any of these? Any confessions you want to make?

July 22, 2014 by Stephanie

Read All About Baby Shower #2

Other than the popcorn bar that I had for shower #1, the only other theme I wanted for a shower was books.

I love books, and I hope that George has a tenacity for diving into stories as well.

So I gave my sister-in-law the task of doing a simple book theme for our shower in Tom’s hometown, and I adored what she came up with.

My sister-in-law, Emily, and my niece

All the centerpieces were piles of books.

Again, I didn’t want typical “measure the tummy” kind of activities. Emily brought plain white onsies and iron on art. Very practical!

There were all kinds of sizes of onsies and designs the guests could choose from.

These homemade ones are some of my favorite onsies! So much fun!

All the decorations had book pages on them. So simple but perfectly sweet.

Everything was so cute.

Those cupcakes were delicious.

The spread.

The layout. It was fun to have the baby shower in the church where we got married.

Ava was my little helper with the gifts. She is very invested in her cousin.

Tom’s grandma made this quilt. It is beautiful and wonderful. The colors are so perfect, even more so with the elephants.

She adores her Nuncle Tom.

Oh goodness, we are going to be parents.

We loved both of our showers. We were so thankful for those who were there in person and in spirit!

July 21, 2014 by Stephanie

That Time I Clapped at My Husband

Pregnancy hormones are a trip.

This weekend I was finishing up some laundry upstairs, and it was close to dinner time.

I hollered down the stairs to see if Tom was up for grilled cheese for dinner.

My husband makes the best grilled cheese, hands down. So naturally, what 7ish months pregnant woman wouldn’t want them?

He replied with a “Sure.” (In my head, that meant, Tom was getting up to make them right that minute.)

I put away the remaining laundry, and then made my way downstairs. I would say at least 5 minutes (maybe 10) had passed at this point.

Tom was still sitting on the couch, so I reminded him with a, “Grilled Cheese?”

He nodded and then started talking about something online that he was reading.

A couple more minutes passed. I replied with another, “Grilled Cheese?” (Is he going to get the point that I need food like yesterday?)

He kept yammering on about who knows what.

I am not really sure what came over me, but then I started clapping at him and emphatically said, “I need some grilled cheese now.”

For the most part, I am not this demanding. (At least, I would like to think I am not.) However, I am to the point where if I have food set in my mind it needs to happen within the next five minutes.

Or apparently a clapping diva comes out.

Tom has been very patient with me and my random hormonal moments. He has been good at giving me back and foot rubs and getting me more water when I am out or anything else that I ask. He has been very attentive to my pregnancy woes.

We had a good laugh about this for the rest of the evening after enjoying grilled cheese.

Maybe now he will get the point though on the first try…

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