Project Central

I LOVE being a mom. Cohen is seriously the cutest kid ever and I have so much fun with him every day. The first three months or so were pretty rough for us...he wasn't the easiest baby, but even then I couldn't imagine not being able to be home with him every day. He laughs and plays and reaches and grabs and gets excited and talks a ton. He rolled over once but I missed it and I haven't gotten him to do it again. He is almost sitting up on his own and he eats rice cereal like a pro. His hair gets more and more red every day and it has actually grown on me a lot. I think it's cute. He has a giant swirly cowlick in the middle of his forehead that I'm sure he is going to hate one day but I think it is adorable. His little personality is emerging and we are having so much fun with it.

However, going from being a full-time career woman for the last ten years to being a stay at home mom has been a bit of an adjustment for me. I know, and strongly believe, that being a mom is the most important job in the world and every little mundane task you do every day is important and shows how much you love your baby. But sometimes, day after day of doing nothing but feeding, changing, burping, rocking, bathing and getting spit up/thrown up/peed on can sometimes make you feel like your contribution to society is somewhat minimal and you've sort of lost your identity a little. Well, maybe others don't feel that way, but I have.

My solution to this problem...I desperately need a hobby. The problem is, I have no idea what I would do for a hobby that is both affordable and something I can do with a baby right next to me. I've thought about learning to knit or crochet. I see all the cute little hats and scarves and flowers that other people make and I love them, but for some reason I just don't get that excited about making them myself. So then I thought about learning to sew. Slightly more interesting to me, but still not very exciting. Maybe if learned to do something cool I would find it enjoyable. Who knows. But I don't have a sewing maching, nor the money to buy one at the moment, so I guess that option has to be on hold for now. Unless someone out there has an old one they are wanting to get rid of?? I have started to enjoy cooking more but it's kind of hard to make great meals with such a young baby who needs constant attention. I know every other woman on the planet is capable of doing it but I haven't quite figured it out yet. I've still been trying, but I don't think it is going to become an art form anytime soon. Something I actually do get excited about is refinishing old furniture and turning old stuff into nice, new-looking stuff. Unfortunately, being outside in the garage in the middle of winter working with power tools, turpentine, and paint isn't really the best atmosphere for a four-month old. Guess that one is going to have to wait awhile too. So the only thing left that I could think of is getting crafty in my home decor. I'm not a real crafty person but I do love decorating so it's a good compromise. I'm terrible at being creative enough to come up with stuff on my own but I'm decent at taking inspiration from other people's ideas and making them my own.

So I decided I really need a project to work on and with Christmas around the corner I decided that decorating my house for Christmas would be the perfect place to start. I wanted to put up some different decorations than usual and use different colors than the typical red and green. I received most of my inspiration from a really cute blog that my friend Michele told me about, http://houseofsmiths.blogspot.com. I did my kitchen in silver, white, and different shades of blue. I did my living room in silver, pearl, and different shades of sage green. Here is the inspiration picture on the houseofsmiths blog:


Mine doesn't look nearly as cool but here is what I ended up with:

This is made out of 4 paper napkins, believe it or not. Probably one of the cheapest crafts you can make.

This is a magnet board I bought on sale at Roberts, as well as a pack of wooden letters, a pack of small magnets, and a wooden tree for like $0.79. I like this because I can change it up for different holidays or occasions and put whatever I want on it.

You probably can't read it because I didn't buy big enough letters, and I should have used all blue ornaments, but this spells out Merry and is hung right above the Christmas sign.

This picture is blurry but it's just a vase from my wedding with silver tinsel, blue tissue paper, and a string of silver beads.

This is the centerpiece for my table. nothing super fancy but it works.

The letters are still small but I learned my lesson about using all blue ornaments so you can read it better.

These next few are just old vases filled with branches from our yard that I spray painted white, and covered with green beads and silver ornaments from the dollar store. Then I took some silver picture frames, also from the dollar store, and printed out pictures of Cohen from our computer and hung them on as well. Sorry for the bad lighting in these pictures.

My $30 garage sale village. I made the little pond out of aluminum foil. I know, very innovative. I'm a genious.

Not a very good picture but I used champagne type glasses and put tea lights in them to make candles and then just put some greenery and some silver ornaments to give it some color. Again, nothing fancy. I'm thinking about getting some silver colored candlesticks and doing then napkin snowball flower things like I did in the kitchen.

And our tree that contains some unique ornaments we got from Salzburg, Prague, Venice, and Switzerland. Preston mostly loves playing with the train. Same with Tank.

So, that's basically it. Nothing big but it gave me something to do and helped me feel at least somewhat accomplished for the time being. Anyone have any suggestions for other good hobbies to take up??