Family reunion

Our travels have taken us all over Iowa and the most recent lag of the journey included a family reunion for my husband. We've been able to spend wonderful time with his sister who we met back in March. We're also getting to spend quality time with our new brother-in-law and one of our new nephews. The Quad City Times was so interested in the story that they were front page news today and are getting their 15 minutes of fame here in the QC. You can see the whole story here.

in an Instagram

Lots of pics in the pipeline as we're getting in lots of friend time. Both friends traveling to see us and us on the road to visit old friends. Also getting to meet friends who've only existed out in cyberspace until now. Here's a peek into some of the fun and food we've been having with the promise of more food and fun in the coming days!

Row 1: Almond Chocolate Croissant at Croissant du Jour, tall ship in the Port of Duluth, Beaded Serving Utensil Case made by me using some of my fabric designs
Row 2: tall ship masts, Abby with her eclair at Croissant du Jour, US Flag on the tall ship
Row 3: Beaded Serving Utensil Case made by me using some of my fabric designs, tall ship in the Port of Duluth, fresh and beautiful eggs from Mary Alice's chickens

Palette Pinterest

It's time for another installment of color and the cool via ColorSnap and Pinterest! The inspiration for this week's palette was inspired by a pic I took of my little container herb garden out in our back yard. It's overflowing with parsley, oregano, thyme, basil, chives, and lavender. These fragrant herbs are making their way into almost everything I cook these days (when I can bear to turn on the oven or the stove in this sweltering summer heat!).

Lots of photos of nature appear as I'm pinning away on Pinterest, particularly when the color green is involved. But then a shot of spools of green thread popped up while I was catching up on some of my favorite blogs and that had to be included as an avid stitchtress!

Here are the color formulas for this week:


Center Stage   SW6920   Interior/Exterior
hex code:  a7cc00
RGB:        167/204/0
CMYK:      40/1/100/0


Mindful Gray    SW7016   Interior/Exterior
hex code:  bcb8ad
RGB:        188/184/173
CMYK:      27/23/30/0


Peppercorn     SW7674   Interior/Exterior
hex code:  636363
RGB:         99/99/99
CMYK:       61/52/52/22


I've even completed a couple of projects based on this and the previous palette. I was lucky enough to get to be a part of the wonderful online workshop Soul Restoration. As I was working on finishing up one of the journal assignments I decided to use the blue palette as the basis for the background of one of the pages.

The green palette inspired this linen case to hold sets of the beaded serving utensils I've just learned how to make. I'm giving a couple sets of these as gifts in the very near future and didn't want to just toss them in a gift bag. So I devised my own pattern for a case to hold them when they're not in use. I used a bit of one of my own fabric designs called Set the Table and some vintage linen. I stitched the phrase, "may I serve you," alongside the border for a bit more interest. Now the set can be rolled up and presented a bit more beautifully.

I Spy My Studio

I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Karen Valentine of My Desert Cottage at The Creative Connection Event last year. I'm pretty sure she was actually the very first person I met and was so lovely and friendly and gracious as I was a bit scared and intimidated being at the event all by myself. This year she's hosting the 3rd annual Where Bloggers Create event and I am so excited to participate! So here goes a little sneaky peek into my creative space.

The first thing you see as you enter my space is my name spelled out using my Bunting O' Greetings fabric. I jazzed 'em up with a little bit of bling, too! It's not a large space as my husband and I live in an old rowhouse, but I love the space and I have made the best use of the space that I could to suit all of my varied artistic pursuits and interests.

One of the most used elements of my studio is my sewing machine. I love my Bernina!!! I've been a sewer since I was about 10 and took up quilting when I was in grad school (which is a very strange time to take up a new hobby as you are so busy, but I did). A couple years ago, I discovered Spoonflower and finally started to turn all the the ideas and imaginings I've had for my own fabric designs into reality. Now there are piles of swatches of my over 100 designs in my space of which you can see a couple here. The color charts I spent many hours putting together are the first things I refer to when I'm designing my fabrics. You'll also notice some more of my Bunting O' Greetings and the Spoonflower swatches that come along with every order. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with them all!

I can't get enough ribbon and you'll find some nearly anywhere you turn you'll see some. There's the racks of ribbons on the display I created out of the old frame rescued from a vintage shop. There are my handmade ribbons - dyed strips of wide selvage from my fabric orders and then lettered in calligraphy (something else I've been doing since I was 10 years old). Piled in mason jars are my easter egg dyed seam binding ribbons wrapped around vintage wooden spools. And even more ribbon is draped over the wooden rack on the wall under my mini folded hexi and button quilt.

Some of the pieces that hold my plethora of supplies are also fashioned by me. I'd had these two plain wooden trunks that needed a bit of sprucing up so I padded and covered the lids with pieces of an old and tattered quilt that had seen its better days and then painted the harlequin pattern and inspirational words on the bases. Now they hold bunches of my fabrics. My beads and other teeny tiny ephemera are stored in the drawers I created out of foam core and then embellished to sit inside an old CD organizer that was no longer used for CDs. The little flower piece is my CalEndure project created for my boss at Artella as she prepares to publish a book.

There are lots of other little things I love to use and just gaze upon as I'm creating my art of all kinds. My soul journals from my wonderful and amazing Soul Restoration experience are always on my big table so I can go back and remind myself of the lessons learned and those I'm still learning. All sorts of vintage ephemera can be found here such as these paper bobbins filled with pink and yellow thread that I got for a steal at a local antique store. The jar filled with red buttons is another local antique shop find. The beautiful boxes from gifts received and cute little polka dotted egg cups hold more supplies and just make me happy to look at.

I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into my creative corner of the world up by Lake Superior. Now I'm off to enjoy summer while it lasts around here!

in an Instagram

Not as many pics this week as we've been a little busy with some other life events and busily cleaning and straightening around the house in preparation for friends coming up to visit - yay!!!!! Nevertheless, here's a little glimpse into our life via the Instagram pics of the week.

Row 1: Sweet and sour pork dinner, fused plastic bag art experiment, beaded serving utensils
Row 2: beaded serving utensils, my toes in our backyard, Paella dinner

Palette Pinterest

I keep discovering more fun ways to use my new iPhone and the latest discovery comes from Sherwin Williams in the form of their ColorSnap app. It allows you to take a pic and convert it into a palette of paint colors inspired by the photo. Here's the very first one I tried out inspired by a pic I snapped of one of the lighthouses near our home. 

You select an area of the photo for your main color and then the app chooses a couple of complementary colors to complete your palette. It also allows you to make some adjustments if you're not happy with the initial suggestions.

While this is a wonderful app for home decorating purposes, I saw its great potential for inspiring creativity while honing down my color choices. I also decided to combine these mini palettes with one of my other passions - Pinterest! If you haven't discovered Pinterest yet, you really need to check it out - it's an amazing way to create a digital inspiration file for nearly anything you can imagine. It's beyond simple to use for yourself and it's remarkable to look at what others out there are pinning. 

You can see my first board combining the two here. So each week I'm going to create a digital inspiration board combining these palettes and some of what catches my eye and have pinned to my Pinterest boards and create something based on this little exercise. I'm going to try not to limit myself to only art; perhaps some weeks I'll feel inspired to prepare a meal based on the colors or choose my dress for the day in the same manner. I feel inspired already just thinking about all the possibilities!

Sometimes the projects I create will be digital in nature as I see great potential for this in designing my fabrics and with that in mind, I give you the digital color profiles in addition to the paint colors.

Georgian Bay   SW6509   Interior

hex code: 306182 

RGB:         48/97/130     

CMYK:      86/58/31/10

Camelback       SW6122  Interior/Exterior

hex code:  c2af85  

RGB:          194/175/133  

CMYK:        25/27/52/1

Navajo White   SW6126  Interior/Exterior

hex code:  eadfc9  

RGB:          234/223/201 

CMYK:       8/9/21/0

in an Instagram

Here's a summary of my week in pics from my iPhone. There are many things that I am absolutely enamored with about my new iPhone but I think the ability to take a quick shot with my phone when I see something that inspires me or just catches my eye is my absolute favorite!!!! So here are some of the simple but meaningful highlights of the last week...

Row 1: My toes in the grass in our backyard | Waves rolling in on Park Point Beach | Jesus statue along Maryglade Path

Row 2: My little herb garden | Flowers in Chester Creeek Park | Lupines behind CSS

Row 3: Aerial Lift Bridge | Bucket of fresh strawberries | My feet in the sand at Park Point Beach

Finally summer...

I can't believe I've been away from here for so long! Actually, I can as there's been a lot to deal with surrounding all the fertility stuff which absolutely wreaks havoc on me and as much as I would like to be able to not pay attention to it, I have to as anyone who's been through this knows since there are different points in your cycle that are constant reminders of what you're going through. Taking temperatures, OPK tests, labwork, pills to take - all these things that have to happen within very specific windows of time each month. So on the days when I know I don't have to pay quite as much attention to what my body is doing, I try to not think about it all, which is not always possible, but I'm trying really hard to do that this summer.

Our first big (or not so big) summer outing was a little trip down to the cities to finally see our first Twins game at the new Target Field which is beautiful! We got to hang out on the Budweiser Roof Deck and watch the Twins win their game. It was a gorgeous summer day, and we've been waiting a long time for summer to finally arrive here in the north land! Really, we were waiting a looooooong time for spring to arrive, which never really happened. We just sort of skipped right over spring and went straight from winter to summer.

But before we went to the game, we were off to mecca (otherwise known as the Apple Store) to get my very first iPhone - so exciting!!!! I got the lovely new white model and outfitted it with a case of my own design which I ordered about a week before I got the phone so I would have it all ready when I got my new phone! My favorite feature is definitely the camera - now I can always snap pictures and don't have to always bring along my big Nikon. And the best app ever is the Instagram app! LOVE IT! It's so much fun to snap pics and add all sorts of effects with just the touch of my finger and post 'em to Facebook or Twitter instantly.

So hopefully having this fun new iPhone will mean I'll be better about posting regularly on here even if it's just while I'm out enjoying my chai and magazines!

Here's the story...

of an innocent little email that brought about some very exciting results! For about a month and a half my husband and I have been sitting on some exciting information and are so happy that we can finally share the news - just yesterday we finally got to meet my husband's half-sister from his father's first marriage!

This little adventure really had its start when I was back in grad school and had to put together a family history project for my family counseling class and a part of the project included a family tree. I've pulled this family history project out from time to time over the years to look it over and review the stories that my family shared with me - some made it in the final project and others didn't. Then I got married and the family tree grew a bit so I pulled it out again. As I've had questions and wonderings about my own history over the years, the tree comes out and I try to see if there are answers I can find that hadn't appeared to me before.

A few weeks ago, I was watching the program, "Who Do You Think You Are?" and found myself needing to take another look at my genealogy files once again. I started doing a bit of searching on the internet to see if there were any answers about my history out there in cyberspace. While I was at it, I worked on making sure my husband's branch of the tree was all up to date at ancestry.com. As I added more bits of information, there popped up some other family trees that matched up with ours. One in particular caught my eye as I knew that my husband's father had been married prior to marrying his mother. My husband thought that there were a couple of children from that prior marriage as well and those little bits seemed to match up with our tree.

My husband had long thought about trying to find these other family members out there so I sent an email to the creator of the intriguing tree asking if her father might be my husband's father as well. I thought maybe some months or possibly years down the road, if ever, I might get a response back and that I probably wasn't even correct in my guess. And with that, I did a little more investigative work on my own branch of the tree and finally decided to call it quits for the night.

The next morning, I had been busily working away on various projects for a couple of hours when I clicked over to check out my email. I was stunned for a moment when I saw that I had received a response to the prior evening's message. As I opened the email, I marveled as I read that I had guessed correctly and I was in contact with my husband's sister. She gave a little background information and I quickly sent off a reply letting her know that I would be filling in my husband on this exciting news. My husband was so excited and couldn't wait to find out more about this new sister and brother.

Over the next few days and weeks we excitedly emailed back and forth, learning and sharing little bits and pieces of our lives. As we did, we were amazed to find some pretty remarkable similarities and instances where our lives may very well have crossed paths. None of us wanted to let too much time pass before meeting as so many years had already passed without being in each others' lives. Plans were made and we were finally able to meet face to face this last weekend.

It was an amazing day - we shared lunch at Tobie's which stretched into a five-hour long conversation about all sorts of topics, but mostly family.  I was thrilled as I witnessed my husband making this long-sought connection with this wonderful, warm and caring woman who he now can call sister and friend. Plans are already in place for more visits down the road including a stay to include our participation in the BIX 7 race, which my husband and her husband have participated in for years and we discovered may very well have ended up in medical tent together during one particularly brutal race day.

We both feel very blessed to have happened upon her and the miracle of timing and good fortune that brought us together. I have cried so many tears of joy at the happiness my husband feels to have his sister that he's bonded and connected with in such an amazing way and I am just happy to have witnessed all of it happening!

An adventure I'd rather not be going through

The last week has been a rough one for me and for my wonderfully supportive husband. We've been trying to conceive for quite a long time and within the last three months have finally begun seeking some help from the medical community. This has proven to be more frustrating to us than the months and years of trying on our own with no success.

I mistakenly thought that having some assistance from medical professionals would get things moving along and provide some answers and solutions. Instead, I have found myself at least weekly (if not more frequently) reduced to sobs and tears, sometimes very angry, frequently disheartened and discouraged, invaded, violated and deceived. I have truly felt like this process of investigating fertility issues is just a very complex and time-consuming process meant only to actually dissuade couples from trying to conceive. That may sound overly dramatic but our recent experience is all I have to go on at this point.

I'm trying to be open-minded and not lump all doctors in this area together but our assistance has been far less than helpful. The most recent and unacceptable event followed the procedure where dye is run through your fallopian tubes (I know I should know the name of the procedure but so many procedural names have been thrown around and I am suffering from overload). During this procedure, a spot was noticed that the CNP said would need to be looked at with an ultrasound but wasn't anything that she thought that would be preventing becoming pregnant and that she would call the following week to set up the appointment.

Fast forward to nearly three weeks later and no phone call. By this point in time I've determined that we definitely need to seek other assistance as we are clearly not going to get the help and attention we need from our current provider. I've gathered a couple dozen recommendations for providers in our area and am picking up the phone to set up an appointment with a new doctor when the phone rings and our current specialist in on the other end.

I am not happy and let her know it. I tell her that this has been extremely stressful and she basically says we got lost in the shuffle and pushed to the bottom of the pile and she's sorry and says it's entirely her fault and now says that the spot that was seen may very well be preventing pregnancy. This is small consolation to me and my husband. We now have our next appointment set up with one of the doctors recommended to us and we'll see how it goes as I have no confidence in her predecessor's professionalism and expertise. If we're feeling that this doctor isn't on board with helping us and can't seem to pay attention to us and loses us in the shuffle, I've got the next choices lined up.

Maybe I was naive to think that doctors who go into the fertility field would actually be more invested in helping their patients through this process. I certainly didn't expect this whole process to be a cake walk or anything but I thought the doctors would be more helpful than they have been to this point and not get the feeling that they're doing as little as possible and searching for problems without ever addressing solutions and ways to actually feel like there are steps that you can take to help improve the situation.

I'm tired of being poked and prodded constantly and having what amounts to basically a pap every month, something that I've dreaded my whole life and has never made me feel very good. But now taking a couple of days each time I'm examined to recover and feel a little bit back to normal, the last thing I want to do is have sex and that's all I'm supposed to do. At least men get to have a little bit of pleasure for their part in analyzing the situation but as a woman I just keep feeling violated and invaded and hurt.

I feel trapped in this whole system and completely at its mercy. If you're unhappy with your current level of care and seek out someone who's been highly recommended, you're likely to be stuck waiting for an even longer amount of time as the chances of getting in to see them in the near future is not very likely. And then if you dane to see a physician outside of your current health care system it's even more nightmarish as the competing systems in our area can't seem to play nice with one another as I've experienced.

I am learning that I need to be very direct in stating my needs with our next physician if I have any hope of feeling hopeful about this process again. I won't let another doctor forget about me and put me at the bottom of her pile. I also need for these doctors to see me as a person, not a nameless, faceless number on a file. I've had enough of that through this process and the whole gallbladder surgery experience.

Through all of this I am very blessed to have my sister as a great support and listener. I also have a couple of very dear friends of many years who've shared similar struggles and can empathize with our situation and I even have some dear friends whom I've never met in person but thanks to the wonder of the internet have been friends of spirit though we're hundreds and thousands of miles apart. I choose to focus on those wonderful, beautiful people and not on those who I thought would be there for me and be sympathetic and love me the most but have been absent from me emotionally through this whole ordeal.

I was also blessed to find a fellow blogger through my twitter account who is just beginning to share her struggles with this journey as well. All I had done was post "based on my experience I truly believe the whole fertility investigation process is only designed 2 discourage U from trying 2 conceive" and she became one of my twitter followers and then I discovered her blog and our shared experience. Reading about her experiences is like holding up a mirror to my life, particularly the insensitive comments that come pouring out of others.

This is certainly not my normal fare for my lowly little blog, but it is an adventure and one that I wish I was not having to deal with. I had to write about it as catharsis for me and so that I am able to refocus on other areas of my life and be able to get through the days without all of these thoughts trapped in my head spinning around endlessly.