Hey wait! I'm not too late, right??

A handsome little pea-pod. Hey come on! It's gender neutral! (can you believe how much they look alike??

Madame Josefa.


Sir Allan with the fam...

(I know, I know...also a repeat. I just didn't want to worry about it this year!) Thoroughly Modern Miriam. "If you've got it, you've got it."


And obviously I don't got it.


Caramel apples to her heart's content.

The three boy cousins. (All born within two months). Gabriel (Cory's--who is normally an incredibly happy boy), Merritt and Owen (my bro Merritt's)

Giving it a whirl...

Ok, so when my sister told me that they were having a design contest over at Shabby Apple, I thought it would be fun. And it was! Ever since I was a little girl I've liked to draw pretty girls in pretty dresses. So here's my Dress design for Shabby Apple dresses:
And here are the specs: First of all, I wish I knew what to call the ruffle the comes down either side of the bodice--for lack of better name, I'll call it the PollyAnna ruffle. So anyway, the bodice, PollyAnna ruffle, the waist, the skirt, it's all in a uniform color. Because of the interest up top, I think one color makes it more cohesive. The bodice is drapey like a tucked-in-shirt would be, and the sleeves are half-circle sleeves that give them a lovely flowy look. The PollyAnna ruffle that goes down the front of either side of the bust and then around the back is meant to fall over the sleeves, giving them a tiered look. There's a lace applique (in white or perhaps a lighter hue of the overall color) with buttons, on a circular boatneck. The waist begins slightly higher than the natural waistline, and continues down to the abdomen arc (about 3 inches below the waist). It's subtly ruched (not too much!) and again has a lace applique with buttons on the waist. The buttons look dark in my drawing, but I've been imagining small pearly ones. It would definitely have a side zipper.

As far as colors go, I imagined it in a nice soft buttery yellow because that's one of my favorite colors. The design kind of lends itself to those soft vintage colors, so I think it would be stunning in a pale pink and slate gray. But I also think that bolder colors like blue and purple and even turquoise would make it especially fresh and youthful.

A word on fabric. This dress would be beautiful in silk of course, but a good silk/cotton blend would be lovely, and even a light drapey cotton by itself would be okay I think. but it has to be good and drapey.

My inspiration was PollyAnna herself. Josie has been watching it a lot lately, and the other day I noticed the dress she arrives to Harrington in. Aunt Polly says "WHERE in the WORLD did you get that dress?!" To which PollyAnna innocently replies "It came in the missionary barrels." Aunt Polly does have a point in that it's not especially stunning, BUT I saw the potential in that ruffle! Love it!

So that's it. I would love to make this dress! I haven't seen anything like it, which would make it even funner to wear because it feels special and unique, yet in a flattering classic style.

Finding the Chance

I wanted to give a shout out to my bro Cory, who just wrote a book!!! Woohoo! Isn't that cool?! It's such a sweet and touching story, and I'm super proud of him for making this happen. Check it out here!

Peter's Finally Home!!

Now Adam leaves on the 28th to Rankagua, Chile. Ahh!!

Now when I sit down to sew...

I have a lovely little corner of art to serve as my muse. When I rearranged my living room, I created a little nook for my sewing stuff. I bought a desk, and gathered a few paintings and photos of all things sewing. I also created a few pieces myself! Very tactile. Here are a few of the pictures:

I cut these gems from old vintage patterns, and then modge podged it all on blank canvases.


This is by Edouard Vuillard, and I LOVE the detail in her dress. His mother was a dressmaker (the woman is his mother), and he grew up around his sisters and mother SEWING.


Mary Cassatt. Growing up, we had an art history book that had several of her paintings including this one, and so she's always been a favorite. I love how the little girl is just chilling with the mother. That's just like Josie. Sometimes she just stands behind me on my chair while I sew. She's always near me, whatever she's doing.

I love this painting by Edward Hopper for two reasons: Firstly, the vibrant reddish orange color that makes you feel the warmth of all that light shining the through the window. Secondly, doesn't it look like she was getting dressed, but then she noticed something that needed altering on her dress and so she skipped over to her sewing nook to fix it before her she got dressed? Many a Sunday morning can I be found at the sewing machine fixing something real quick--

PS I'll take a picture of the desk plus art when I finish the desk...

Shake it like a polaroid

My kids are getting huge. This past summer Josie has grown like a weed right out of her pants and shoes (In fact we measured her right at 24 months--kids are supposedly supposed to double their height at two--and according to those calculations she'll be 5'10''). She's grown an inch since then. Merritt has gone from infant to bouncing baby. He cracks us all up with his laugh (see video below), and makes more squeaks and squeals than a rubber ducky. He's diligently trying to roll over, and casually trying to sleep through the night.

Conference this past weekend was brilliant. I ate up every single word with gusto. After it was all over, I just had this warm, happy, buzz and felt so thankful because I knew it was all true, and that felt good. I re-watched Elder Holland's talk today, and yep, it's just as powerful the second time. I loved them all, but especially Elder Bednar's talk, President Monson's, and Elder Cristofferson's. Which were your favorites?


My friend Martha started a new blog on which she talked about Rollip--a website that changes your photos into polaroid-looking pictures. Fabulous!! Here's me going crazy this afternoon...

President Monson

Timpanogos Temple

And here's a gem from the other night. You don't have to watch the whole video, because it's pretty much the same thing for two minutes. But I always say you can never have enough giggling from a 5 month old.

Tri Tri Again...

WOO HOO!!! Yesterday I completed my second triathlon! It was so great. I mean, it was really so great. My first one was right after Josie was born, and Emily and I made up our own course. Fun. This time I did it with Eirene, and we did the Powertri Yuba triathlon out in Levan Utah. We even got a t-shirt! It was so thrilling to race with other athletes, and I loved the spirit of camaraderie between everyone. People would just yell "Good work!! Keep it up!" as they passed you. We definitely felt super amateur compared to all the serious athletes, but we finished, and we had a blast. We did rent wetsuits however, for the open-water swim, so yeah, we were pretty cool for that part. And I was feeling pretty good about myself when I get out of the water 'cause the two dudes that were finishing with me were these super fit looking twenty-five year-olds. Boo yah! The race was a 1/2 miles swim, a 13 mile bike, and a 5k run. We did it in just over two hours. I was surprised to find that running a race is very similar to the feeling I had when giving birth (racing isn't near as intense as birthing), but you feel that high-as-a-kite, on top of the world feeling. Eirene and I were comparing the last few hundred yards of the run with the last few pushes. Eirene was like, "Ok, now the baby is crowning!...now we're just pushing out the placenta!!" TMI? Ok. But really, it's more similar than you'd think. Anyway, so fun. can't wait to do another.

I can't really believe that I'm posting this chin shot, but...enjoy.

I'm in there somewhere.

Me.

Rene.

Eirene doing a victory leap!

Eirene's battle wound. The turnaround point was horrendously dangerous.

Adam came to support us. Allan and Ben and Rene's kids were there too, FYI.

From bad, to worse, to a little better

Some of you will remember that a while back I bought this desk, and painted it. Let's take a moment to wonder WHAT I was thinking.... Anything?? Yeah, no... me neither. No, actually, I had a vision that was really fabulous in my head, but one of those tragic projects that totally did not work out. And actually turned out disasterous. I've hated that desk the moment that I finished it, and my brother-in-law Ben told me it looked like board shorts. I knew in my heart that that's exactly what it looked like, and it was more than I could bear. So when I saw this paint for 50 cents at Restore (one of my favorite and most frequented stores), I decided it was time to change the beach-themed furniture from my living room.
I like it MUCH better now, although it's still not my favorite desk in the world.
(and yes, I am big into grey these days....)

If you were wondering if "Miriam's Trunk" featured on Design*Sponge's Before/After's today is me...

It is!!!

WErhgsadASDLKgha;ilsduopwiehr!!!!! See? I'm so excited that I can't even type coherently! If you read design blogs, than you already know that Design Sponge is the most AMAZING, drool worthy, inspiring design blog out there. And they featured my before and after that's really a DIY project, but they can call it whatever the heck they want, and I'd still be thrilled!! Woohoo!

I'm not dead. I'm watching SYTYCD.

So it's no secret that I don't have quite as much free time as I used to, and because I spend at least three hours a week watching So You Think You Can Dance, I just haven't had time to blog. Not that I've ever been a real consistent blogger anyway.

So life is good. There's a lot of things that I could write about, but since that would take a long time, I'll give you convenient bulleted list. This will be fun, cause you can guess what I would say if I did take the time to ramble about...

-Josie finally actually turned two, which is funny cause she's been two for like six months.

-Having two kids isn't near as bad as I thought it would be.

-Newborns are a delicious breed of human.

-Do you ever feel like your workouts take up your entire day? Not only because IF you don't finish before the kids get up, they really DO take the whole day, but because all day is a recovery of your morning workout, and all day is also just a count down to your next work out. I hate that. I just want to workout and then forget about it.

-I wish I knew how to make Josie feel more secure, because recently (like yesterday and today) she's hit Merritt a couple of times, and it brings out the big bad Mama Bear in me, and I lose it. I really hate it when I lose it.

-Cooking dinner every night is a real beast.

-I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I've been busy with just as many projects as ever. I feel like since I have two kids I shouldn't have time for that kind of stuff, but yet I still find away. Everyone always asks me how I can manage to do everything, and to that I say, I don't. There isn't enough time to do everything, and so when I get a project done, I don't cook dinner or don't clean the house.

-I wish I knew how to balance my life better.

-I'm amazed that nobody ever talks about how poop and potty are such a huge part of motherhood. Who knew? Poop and Potty are significant part of my day. Everyday. It seems like there's always something to wipe, or wash, or change. But at least it's my kids' poop and potty I have to deal with, because that would really be gross if I had to clean up your kid's...

-I really like the library.

-Help! I can't stop reading self-help books!

-I signed up for a triathlon today. WOO WOO!!! (September 12, baby!)

I'm sure there's more I could bullet about, but it's already taken me like a half an hour to come up with that list.

Here are some pictures to accompany my bullets:

Two.

Two's birthday dress. I saw this in a magazine for $98, and recreated it for $4. I actually took pictures to make a tutorial if anyone is actually interested.

Just chillin...

Stealing Grandma's glasses...

Adam left his fake glasses here, and this is Josie right before she broke them. Sorry, Egg.


Josie and Mae enjoying a good read with Grandad.


Family vacay to my parents. They don't live in the cliff dwellings. (and don't judge me on how big my arm looks in this picture).


Mesa Verde. So cool.


What Josie does when we're not in the room.


Some sweet close-ups of my angel.




I bought an old military foot locker at DI for $3, planning to upholster it and make it into a toy chest. But once I started sanding it etc, it was so gross and nasty I decided to just make a new one entirely. So I just went down the Home Depot, bought some plywood, had them cut it to the dimensions I needed (do you know they do that for free?!) and then slapped the puppy together with some wood glue and nails, upholstered it and printed the fabric with a homemade stencil, and BAM. A new toy chest.
Here are the toys within.


I decided I needed a purse to use when I'm without my kids. I know, it doesn't happen often, but when it does, I always feel like I've got these big old mom-bags, and I don't feel cute (especially on date's with Allan). So I designed this little purse to help me feel more hip. Too much?

This doesn't look near as exciting as it is. I bought this curtain hardware at Ikea, and then free-handed some designs onto a big cut of fabric to make this room separator. Our front room is really pretty big, and all my sewing crap is just out in the open of my living room. I have long-loathed our set-up. So this divides the two areas and helps define the living spaces. I rearranged the whole room, and LOVE it. There's NOTHING so refreshing and exciting as rearranging furniture.

And another HUGE project I've been working on is my dang quilt (the one I've been working on for over a year for our king-sized bed). I'm ALMOST done with the top, and then it will probably just sit there for years until I have enough $$$ to actually have it quilted.

I never know how to wrap up huge posts like this, so I'll just say be glad that I used bullets to SUM up all this mumbo jumbo.

XXoxo
Mim