Dear Henry

My dearest Little Bit,

You aren't feeling very well today. You went to bed super early last night and woke me up at 3:30 a.m. ready to get up and play. We snuggled on the couch with a few books and your favorite blankie for a couple of hours before I finally made you lay back down. I don't know if you ever actually went back to sleep or not, you were wide awake when I woke up at eight. I'm sure you'll be ready for a long nap in just a little while - and Mommy is ready for a nap too.

I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of you. You are such a perfect, amazing little boy. God really spent a lot of time making you just right for me. I pray all the time that you will have a wonderful life, full of love and magic and promises that Mommy and Daddy can keep. One day you'll understand why that is so important to me.

You are growing and changing so much every day. You listen so well (well, sometimes) and you are becoming quite the ball of energy. You never stay still! It's exhausting for Mommy to keep up sometime but that's okay, I wouldn't trade chasing you around all day for anything.

Your room is almost finished and it's going to be sooo great! Mommy painted and bought all sorts of fun things to put up there and Mammal bought you a new dresser for Christmas. I'll have to teach you how to open and close the drawers and put all your clothes away. One day you'll sleep upstairs all by yourself but it will probably be awhile from now, I want you to be excited about having your own room first.

In a couple of weeks, you will be 18 months old. That means that you're half way between being one and two. You're growing up so fast!! I can't believe how fast, really. I want you to be my little baby forever, but I know that that is selfish of me. I want you to grow up and experience all the wonderful things the life can offer to you too. It's just hard to let go sometimes.

I just wanted you to know how much I love you, always. Even while you're sitting here rubbing your sticky fingers all over my clean clothes and dumping the box of hotwheels I just picked up all over the floor. (See, you're a handful!) And that will never change, no matter what. I will always love you, butters. Always.

Your Biggest Fan,
Mommy

Its the most wonderful time of the year!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

And also the most busy, it seems.

I've been 'off' lately, not necessarily in a bad way, just different from my usual self. I'm okay with it. I'm actually kind of liking this 'new' self.

I've been much more attentive to detail lately.

I've become anal about picking up the house during the day and before bed. I've found that waking up to a clean house is much nicer than tripping over hotwheels on your way to the bathroom in the morning.

I've been adamant about meal-planning. I usually try to meal-plan at least a little before I go to the grocery, but this week I have meals planned for two weeks out. Sides, drinks, everything. I've even started a list for Christmas dinner... shocking I know!!

I've also been cleaning and organizing like a mad-woman. If I were pregnant, I'd say that baby was due any day now because it's been very similar to how I felt when I was 'nesting'. Let's just say that this spring we are having one hell of a garage sale. I'm so over having so much...stuff.

I've also gotten back into the swing of putting on make-up and doing my hair pretty much every day. I haven't done this in almost two years. TWO YEARS. I think mothering is finally beginning to kick my butt a little less each day.

Mentioning, I've also been eating less. Like...forgetting to eat entire meals until it's time for the NEXT meal. This is totally unlike me. But again...totally not complaining! Haha!

Overall, I've been kicking life's butt. I've gotten things done and I've looked good doing it. It's nice. Hopefully this is a new, permanent change...and not something that's just going to fizzle out.

Peppermints Trees and an Advent Calendar

I LOVE Christmas - especially now that I have a little one to share the magic of Christmas with. I love Christmas crafts too- there are just so many fun possibilities!

So when I saw all the awesome possibilities for advent calendars this year, I just knew I had to make one. I had a whole list of inspiration, but I knew that opening a little door, box or pouch everyday would not be as exciting for Henry this year as it will be in the coming years, so I choose to make a pocket calendar. This way I could fill out things we could do as a family each day of December and it would still be something cute I could hang up year after year, even if I decide to make something a little different in the future.

It barely cost a thing too. I bought scrapbook paper on sale, 5 for $1 and and had half of  a post board laying around from a previous project. Then I bought a sheet of Christmas stickers for a dollar and added a few other little things that I had laying around to make it 'mine'.

I LOVE how it turned out. It's exactly what I was envisioning.

Another craft I tackled in the last few weeks was the peppermint Christmas trees that are floating around everyone on the internet. My friend Jessica and I got together one day last week and made these. They are super easy to make but if you can find mini-mints, I think they would turn out nicer, also - it's really hard to make the mints line up at the top so that they come to a point. BUT, with a little hot glue and a little creativity, we managed to make them look presentable (at least). I have a smaller cone and a larger cone yet to decorate, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. I think I'm going to wrap at least one of them in yarn. We will see!

What crafts have you been up to lately? Do share!

Also, if you want to keep up with me and some of my Christmas goodness - follow me on Instagram: Jenn_Ovey

Thanskgivings

I was tempted this year to follow the Facebook trend of posting daily what I am thankful for but I resisted, I resisted because this time next year I cannot return to a list and see all that I was thankful for the year before like I can if I just post a full list here.  Jeremy and I have sat down in the past and created a 'thankful' list, but considering that both he and Henry are passed out on the couch (I'm assuming it was the homemade pancakes I made for them this morning and the soothing band music from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that did them in) I am taking it upon myself to do it alone. I must say, however, that my list will be lacking. I have so much to be thankful for, so very very much!

I am thankful for God and His guidance in our lives, His mercy, love and for salvation.
I am thankful for Jeremy and his willingness to put up with my moody butt.
I am thankful for Henry and the joy he brings to my life every single day.
I am thankful for two pain-in-the-butt dogs who keep me company and are the best of listeners.
I am thankful that I live in America, where I am free to do and believe what I please without persecution or worry.
I am thankful for American soldiers who serve to keep our country free, especially my brother.
I am thankful for my grandmother, who taught me how to be a respectful human-being.
I am thankful for my dad, for trying his best.
I am thankful for Jeremy's parents for treating me like one of their own (and often taking my side on things).
I am thankful that Jeremy and I both have jobs that pay our bills and allow us to live comfortably.
I am thankful for clean water to drink and fresh food to eat.
I am thankful for a reliable vehicle.
I am thankful for the quiet, easiness of Pleasant Hill, Ohio.
I am thankful for family and friends to share good times and memories with.
I am thankful for a warm house that is my own.
I am thankful for the ability to make weekly trips to Miamisburg.
I am thankful for quiet moments spent between just Jeremy and I.
I am thankful for my little business, even if I've had to push it to the side a bit lately.
I am thankful that Jeremy has only a couple weeks of college left.
I am thankful for holidays and the warm feeling that it brings to be surrounded by your family.

I am thankful that I can be me. I can create, and live and laugh freely without concern and I know that I have an amazing support-system and family that love me regardless.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope it brings you as much joy as it's bringing me!

So What!

I'm not going to lie, I need this SWW this week. I have a lot of things to SW about! So on to it, So What! if this week -
-I was available for an upgrade and instead of moving up to an iPhone 5, I stuck with the 4. It was free and the accessories will be cheaper and I'm okay with being 'behind' in the technology world.
-I put all of my Thanksgiving and fall decorations away on Sunday. I can't wait to decorate for Christmas and although I haven't put a lot of Christmas decorations out yet, there are a few.
-I'm peeved about my schedule on black Friday. I'm working 10 to 7, which is ALL flippin' day. I was okay with coming in at the crack of dawn, I never go out shopping anyway, but coming in AFTER the rush to a dead store for 9 hours just sounds excruciating.
-Mentioning work, we're also having a carry-in on Friday in which I have not the slightest clue what I'm going to make and take. Why couldn't our company just provide a meal? Wouldn't that have been easier? It IS Thanksgiving after all!
-I have been the most unproductive person this week and I feel like it's not my fault. Henry has been especially destructive and into things so cleaning up after him is pointless, the dogs have chewed up several things and left them all over the house for me, my dishwasher leaked all over the floor and when I went to renew my license at the BMV, their computer system was down.
-The only productive thing I've done this week is start making an advent calendar for Christmas. It's going to be amazingly cute too!
-I'm not looking forward to Thanksgiving at all. We could skip it and go straight to Christmas. Everyone is always crammed into my mother-in-law's home like sardine cans and we always end up waiting an hour for my sister-in-law and it just doesn't sound like fun.
-I have no idea what I'm going to get anyone for Christmas. Well, except for Henry.
-Henry's list for Christmas is a mile long. It's going to be pretty hard to narrow it down.
-I haven't cooked an actual meal yet this week. It's been Tuna Helper, grilled cheese and easy stuff all week.
-I'm still upset about my missed date night. It's tradition in my husband's home-town to meet at a club there the night before Thanksgiving, so maybe we'll go out tonight?

Prayer

Do you believe in the power of prayer?

I do.

I have had a migraine for 16 hours straight now and it's the third time in the last week alone that I've been crippled by these horrible headaches. I don't know if it's stress, the weather or something more serious but I'm asking for my blog friends prayers.

I really can't afford to go to the doctor right now. With a $5,000 deductible per person, we're already drowning in Henry's doctor bills from this year. I really just need for them to go away, or at least be less intense. I couldn't even sleep last night because the pain was so intense and yet being up and moving about just seems to make things worse.

So if you could just whisper a little prayer for me today, I would really appreciate it. I just want this pain to go away.

My Little Rocker

 Between mohawks and drums, I think I may have me a little rocker on my hands!

But I Worked For It!

Okay, I'm going to vent because honestly, I have no one else to vent to and this is my blog so I'm allowed to anyway. I don't see where people get off, or how they live with themselves in some situations.

I have a brother who just drives me completely crazy. Everything he does makes me say 'really?!'. I have tried my best to do everything right in my life. I got good grades in school, I worked, I volunteered, I grew up, started college, got married, continued working, had a child, bought a house...etc, etc. I never asked for help or expected someone just to hand something to me just because I wanted it. I made sacrifices and I worked my butt off to have what I do and yet, I'm treated like I'm stuck-up or snotty just because I wanted to better myself and to rise above the situation that we were always in as children.

My brother however, he thinks that the world owes him something and he has no problem taking everything he can whenever he can get it. He lives with his girlfriend who he claims is his wife but they won't get married because that would take away from their government assistance. She's also on social security and his decent-paying job is under the table so that again, the government can't take away any of their assistance. Their rent is paid for by the government, their bills are paid for by the government, and wouldn't you know - they have ALL kinds of money for all of the things they could ever want. She gets a phone with a certain amount of minutes from the government each month, their groceries are paid for by the government and so is her healthcare. When Jeremy and I found out we were pregnant, her comment to us and to my brother was 'Well that's just stupid, we've been together longer so we should be the ones having a baby. Not you.'

I almost hit her and wouldn't you know, she ended up pregnant not long after.

Yay! More assistance!

So I'm sorry if it ticks me off when you rub it into my face that you have the newest cell phone, the huge tv, the brand new car and all the money in the world to blow on your drugs and fun. I work hard for what I have and I'm proud of that. Yeah, we drive old, used cars and my phone is 'stupid' instead of smart. I cut coupons because otherwise we couldn't afford all of our groceries and our tv isn't very big. And no, my son isn't wearing a $50 outfit, but a $4 one that was bought used from the consignment store. At least I know I worked for it. And at least I value something more than money and toys.

End rant. If you made it all the way thought that, just ignore it all. I just needed to get it all out for once.

In the near future...

You won't believe this, but I have the makings for about 10 different diy and craft tutorials that I just haven't gotten organized enough to post yet. There are two recipes: roasted red potatoes and delicious baked asparagus. These two veggie dishes are like candy in my household. There is a diy on making a kid's apron from a dishtowel and a pot holder and a crochet pattern for a dragon hat. Then there's several Christmas crafts that I have finished and several more that I'm working on. I will get to them. Eventually.

A Plead

My mother-in-law is in the hospital. It doesn't seem to be anything too serious but this is the second night that they are keeping her. As I was coming home from my weekly trip to my grandmother's house, I figured I'd wait the 30 minutes for Jeremy to get off work and we could go see her at the hospital together rather than each going at separate times.

I thought about going to the library to kill some time, but Henry was asleep and I knew that if I woke him up, he was going to be far from pleasant to be around. So I sat in the parking lot for awhile listening to Christmas music (yes, I'm that crazy person) on the radio and just thinking awhile. For once it seemed like I'd thought up everything there was to think about and I literally was trying to think about things to think about just to occupy my time.

For some reason I felt the need to visit the cemetery close by. I don't personally know anyone buried there, but I know of a few people, so I decide to pay their graves a visit. Maybe this was brought on by my finishing 'The Fault in Our Stars' by John Green that is about a group of teenagers (mainly two) with cancer (fictional, young adult, genius author). It has a lot of thoughts about death, especially when it comes to children dying (from cancer in this case) before their parents.

It's hard to think about really and I didn't even realize I was thinking about it until I got there. I drove around for a minute as it's a fairly large cemetery. I have a horrible memory sometimes but I'm great when it comes to directions and I recognized the area where the people that I know of were buried.

I dug in my purse for some change, got out of my car and made my first visitation to one of my husband's best friends in high school. I didn't have anything to say, not because I couldn't say anything but because I don't really believe that the dead can hear us. I didn't stay there long. I didn't know John although at times I feel like I could have, he was killed in a car accident before he or my husband had even graduated high school. I left the change on his tombstone, something that my husband had told me was tradition when visiting him there and walked away.

A few yards away is the section of the cemetery dedicated specifically for babies. When I think about visiting these tiny graves, it feels so different to be there, so humbling and heart-wrenching all at once.

Because my baby isn't there but there are so many others - many of which whose tombstones have only one date.

So I walked by each tombstone, reading the date(s), taking note of the hotwheel cars, little dolls and various toys that were left by loved ones and I cried. I cried like I had lost my own child although I had not. I cried because I thought of my mother-in-law and what it must have felt to lay a child here.

And then there was his grave.

Corey Kenneth Ovenshire

And I cried harder because I cannot imagine losing my child, especially in the way that my mother-in-law lost hers. Corey had been strangled to death as he was coming into this world. His umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck so tightly that the very thing that had given him life while growing in the womb had taken it as well.

I thought about never hearing that first cry and seeing this perfectly formed little human for the very first time without life. It would kill me. Knowing that it didn't kill her makes me respect her strength even more.

But I think what made me the saddest, the thing that tore at my heart the most, was the lack of love for this little tombstone. It was dirty, without any toys or decorations. I understand why. My mother-in-law has two perfect children who have a husband and a wife and who have given her three perfect grand-children. She cannot dwell on Corey whose life was clearly not meant for this world. But still it made me sad and I wished at that moment that I had one of Henry's cars to leave for the uncle that he will never know.

When I got back to the car, it was all I could do to compose myself. I found myself pleading with God to never take a child away from me - that I could never do it and that if He had plans to take one of mine, that he just HAD to take me too. I thought about all the parents that have lost a child, the mothers who didn't get to kiss their little faces every night and I hurt for them - really, really hurt for them.

I hope I never have to stand in their shoes, but for a moment, it was almost like I did.

So What!

So What! if...
-I spent half of the day getting ready for a date with my husband (the first we've had since Henry was born) and his mom ended up in the hospital and we didn't get to go. Whatever, I was the hottest thing sitting in the ER last night.
-My weeks have been packed lately. Like...howintheworldamI'mgoingtofindtimetobreathe full.
-This is only the second blog post I've published in a couple of weeks. Like I said: busy.
-I am OVERLY excited for Christmas this year. I somehow convinced BOTH sides of my family that it was a great idea to have Christmas at my house this year and I literally cannot wait. I may already have my Christmas tree up...
-I am ready for snow. Call me crazy but I can't wait to take Henry out and play in it. Not to mention, it made for the cutest pictures last year.
Have some proof:

-I have turned down almost every photo session opportunity lately. I just don't have time right now and while I appreciate the business, I still have sessions sitting on my computer from a month ago that need edited that I did for a good friend so (luckily) I don't have to be in a big rush to get them done.

-Mentioning photo sessions, I told my husband after the last TWO weddings that I did that I didn't want to do weddings anymore, that they were too stressful and that I just didn't see me being able to do them myself.

-I've taken on three weddings already next year. Fail.

-I plan on dressing Henry in the same clothes he wore yesterday. Cause they're cute. And he didn't wear them for long.

-There are only 4 weeks left of Jeremy's schooling and we've hit that point where apparently teachers think that they haven't been giving you enough homework, lessons, tests, papers, etc... and I'm feeling overwhelmed. Last week I wrote a six page essay, a twelve page research paper (and did all the research), took two tests, one quiz and read over 500 pages of material in ADDITION to the normal work I had been doing. Shoot me, please.

-I feel like I could go on and on with this list, but I have another list (the dreaded to-do list) that is a mile long  and it's calling my name.

Happy hump day!

My 15 Month Old

I'm becoming a bit impatient for Henry to talk. In a few weeks he will be 16 months old and I feel like he should be talking more. The last week I've really been trying to work with him, sounding out words and pointing out just about everything during our day together. The most frustrating part is that I know he can talk, I just think he doesn't feel the need to.

We've heard him say mom and dad many times. He says 'I love you', 'get it' and 'thank you' on occasion but not very often. We've heard him say yeah, car, ball, dog, fish, and hello... but only every now and then. We taught him to roar for Halloween and make engine sounds when he's playing with his cars. His newest thing is 'gobble, gobble, gobble' which I think is the cutest thing ever. But again, he only says things when he wants to - he prefers just to point or drag you to what he wants.

I know that I'm probably overreacting and being impatient with him, but he's excelled so well up to this point and continues to excel in other areas that I feel like he should excel with this as well. He's such a good little boy, he cleans up after himself and understands and reacts to everything we say to him these days. When we come in from outside, he sits down, takes his shoes off and puts them into the bucket by the door. When he's done playing with his cars all I have to say is 'put your cars away' and he puts them, one by one, back into his box. He undresses himself and attempts to dress himself and if you mention a specific toy, he will go looking for it until he finds it. (We learned our lesson with that. If the toy is in the toy-box, he WILL dump the entire thing to attempt to find it.) He has learned to walk up and down steps if he is given a hand or a railing to hold on to. He doesn't fight his bedtime or nap time and he's really a very independent boy.

We are fighting with him about certain things though. He climbs everything and by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. He will pull himself up onto the counter-tops if you're not watching him - and same for the kitchen table. He can be up a flight of stairs in two-second flat and if you don't get up right as he wakes up in the morning, he can climb right out of his crib. He refuses to drink from a sippy cup and while he will still use cups with straws, he would really prefer a regular cup which usually results in a mess. But so do the cups with straws as his new favorite thing to do is to suck milk into his mouth and then spit it out. The dogs just love that. We've done all the child-proofing that is humanly possible and he still manages to get into stuff. Today he managed to bypass the safety-lock on one of my kitchen drawers and he dumped an entire bag of brown sugar all over the floor. That was fun.

Still, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love his kisses which have went from open-mouthed to puckered lips. And when you pick him up, he has taken to squeezing you around the neck for a gentle hug. It's just about the sweetest thing ever. Sadly, he doesn't like sitting on our laps anymore though. He would rather sit next to you, but he still leans close against you so that you can cuddle him close. In the car we have long conversations of jibber jabbers that I just don't understand at all, but it makes me smile.

Overall, I think I have a perfect little thing and I hope that he will just continue to grow and learn and play just like he is now.

Crazy

I think I could sum up the last couple weeks of my life in one word.

Crazy.

Plain crazy, every bit of it.

There's a Mouse in the House!

Sunday morning was quite an eventful one.

I live in Ohio, out in the boondocks, where harvest time equals mice. Luckily for us we live a bit of a ways from a field and don't get the hoards of mice that someone living right next to a field might, but that doesn't change the fact that our entire town is surrounded by fields. So when I saw those little black turds on my counter, I knew we had a mouse, and I knew we had to kill him.

So I did what any person would do; I bought some traps Saturday, baited them with some peanut butter and waited. As long as I didn't see this said mouse, I was in no real hurry but knowing it was out there, somewhere, gave me the heebee-jeebees.

I was the first up on Sunday morning. I walked into the kitchen all sleepy-eyed, stretching and trying to get over how light it was outside for 7:00 a.m. and appreciating that extra hour of sleep when I noticed that one of my traps was gone. I was dumb-founded for a minute, because if it had moved, it meant that something big enough to move it was on my counter over night and THAT is a freaky thought.

So I looked around a bit and noticed that it had somehow gotten back behind my coffee pot that sits at an angle in the corner of the counter. So I moved it out a bit and immediately jumped, screamed and started acting like a two year old, something I never expected from myself.

"Jeremy! Jeremy! Mouse! There's a mouse!"

I'm standing in the kitchen yelling and alternating between jumping up and down and what I'm now calling the 'disgusted jig'. For future reference: I cannot dance, no matter what the circumstance.  I run into the bedroom where my husband has gotten out of bed and is standing right inside of the door. I swing it open, almost hitting him, but I don't care there's something more important to be taken care of right now.

"Jeremy! Mouse! There's a mouse! There's a mouse and, and, IT'S ALIVE!"

And it was. When I moved the coffee pot, what did I see? A cute little mouse, perched on top of my trap, just twitching it's little nose and whiskers at me. Now what was I going to do? I didn't want to touch the thing and I didn't want to kill it - that was the traps job. But I couldn't just let it go so that it could wander my counters late at night, leaving nothing but little trails of poop to remind me that he was still around.

So I did what any crazy, desperate person would do. I got the vacuum cleaner and made my husband attempt to suck him up, where he would have a nice, safe home until we could dump him into the garbage can outside, preferably dead over alive.

But it didn't work because, ah-ha!, we had caught that mouse, it just wasn't caught very well. His little hand had been caught by the trap and he was stuck. I kinda felt bad at that point for trying to suck him up into the vacuum cleaner (and a little stupid for not realizing why he hadn't run off during all this commotion) but we were still stuck with a live mouse, on our counter and I still had no idea what to do about it.

My husband, who I'm fairly certain was beyond me jumping up and down and screaming in his ear at this point, reached over, picked him up by the tail, released the trap and put him in a plastic, zip-lock bag and then attempted to hand it to me, saying 'Here'. I, of course, refused the bag and made my husband get rid of it. I told him I didn't want to know what he did, or how he did it, just that as long as it was out of sight and I didn't have to deal with it, anything was fine.

Of course, my husband being the softy that he is was all like, "Well I'm not going to be the one that kills him!". I think the poor guy literally just got put into the garbage can in his little plastic bag and if he didn't suffocate, he will probably be back. Hopefully the trap will get him this time so that we don't have to.

The worst part of it all is that I literally acted like I was two, woke everyone up in the house, got the dogs running and barking, and every time I would scream or get too excited, I would scare Henry and he would start to scream too.

If only the neighbors could have seen. They'd boot us into the crazy part of the neighborhood for sure.

Old & New

Horrible Paint art, I know.

My little peach tree lost all of it's leaves in the winds from Hurricane Sandy earlier this week and it kind of made me sad. I enjoyed looking out my front window and seeing all those leaves. Then I thought about this verse and how we are transformed from the 'old' to the 'new' and it made me realize that my tree is just symbolic of th

at nature. And then I thought, how could anyone ignore God's existence when everything around them screams with His Word, His Promises and His Presence? My little tree just HAD to shed it's leaves and when I think of it that way, it's hard to be sad!

I love when I hear whispers like this from the Father. It makes my soul rest in a way that's hard to describe. Like - even the little things are important to Him and He won't forget anything, no matter how small the details.

Bargain Buys with a side of Crafty Goodness

I really need to start learning to just take a photo and write a quick blog when I buy something that is a real 'bargain' instead of waiting for weeks on end. I rarely buy anything unless it's cheap. This includes clothes. I really can't get over the price of clothes. I mean - as a girl, I want a fairly large mixture of clothing and paying $100.00 for a pair of jeans just seems ridiculous to me. It'd cost a fortune to stay fashionable!

So I buy things on clearance and with coupons and I ask for lower prices and I haggle and do anything I have to to get that price down.

I've bought 2 pieces of clothing in the last few weeks.

This cute little sleeveless dress that I had planned on wearing to our pumpkin patch wedding (it was canceled due to weather).

Original Price - $54.99

What I Paid - $8.00

It will make a cute summer dress next year. I still need to do a few alterations though. It was on clearance (as in, here-take-it-we'll-pretty-much-give-it-to-you clearance).

Then I bought a pair of jeans from Maurices. I love that store, it makes us heavier girls feel like we're normal but the prices reflect the effort, I assure you.

So I went in expecting to walk out empty handed because even their clearance stuff is usually too expensive for me. These had a price tag, (already marked down a couple of times, mind you) of $89.99 . Yeah, um...no thank you.

But upon looking a bit closer, they were on the 75% off CLEARANCE PRICE rack. Now that I can do!

Original Price - $120.00

What I Paid - $22.50

The catch here was that they were literally six inches too long. Plus they were hugely bell-bottom, which worried me, but I took them anyway because HELLO! Did you see that savings?

So this morning I attempted the 'hem your jeans while keeping the original hem' thing. Guess what? It worked! I LOVE my jeans that are finally JUST THE RIGHT length!

This is my half, I pinned it and then sewed right along the outside of the hem.

The best thing? It's really simple to do.

1. - You pin your jeans where you want them hemmed just like you would for any other type of hemming.

2. - Measure how much you need to take off and divide that in half, but don't include the hem. Then pin the half in place instead of the full amount.

The finished product! It's not completely straight (I'm still a beginner here!) but you'd never be able to tell unless you were really looking at them. And look at that wonderful frayed hem that was part of the jeans all along!

3. - Sew right along the outside of the hem on the inside of the pant. If you have crazy bell-bottoms or flared jeans like I did, make sure your side seams line up!

4. - You can either cut off the excess or just iron it in place (good idea for the kiddos) from there. I cut mine off. Then iron the front side of your jeans so that the jean lays right again.

My directions are never the best, so go check out this tutorial for a more detailed look into the process. Pretty awesome, right!

Jenn's Jams - Brandon Heath - Love Will Be Enough For Us

Brandon Heath - Love Will Be Enough For Us

I'm totally crushing on this song right now, like... can't get enough of it. After listening to the new Blue Mountain album, it's probably my favorite. Of course, I'm a total sucker for cute love songs like this.

Listen. Enjoy.

(P.S. - Dave Barnes has done this song too, and it's AWESOME. I can't pick a favorite, I love them both.)