Yesterday we went on a little adventure to Fish Creek Canyon.

It was beautiful!  There were only a few pools of water, and I loved the reflection of the red canyon walls in this one.  I was surprised to see that even this late in the season the leaves hadn’t changed yet.

Negotiating 2 little kids into and out of the canyon was a bit tricky, but they loved hopping from river rock to river rock within the creek bed.  Only in a few spots did they need some assistance.

I think the kids favorite part was throwing rocks into the pools of water.  Thankfully no one got wet, as it was probably 68 degrees down there.

If you are looking for a day trip from the PHX area, this is a great place.   You might even continue on past the canyon to Roosevelt Dam (we thought about it, and decided to wait for another day).  Be sure you stop in Tortilla Flats for a snack, and leave a dollar behind for your next visit!

Last night I got an email from a friend of mine, it was full of pictures…of me…from behind.  Do you remember back in august there was a balloon launch for the Nielson’s at the Mesa Temple grounds?  Well, I went and dragged my 3 year old with me.

See, here I am, front and center with my white shirt and little daughter at my leg.  Looks almost like I am posing, but I promise if I knew there was a camera pointed at me I would have picked up my daughter and hid behind her.  See the woman behind me with a cute aqua bag?-that’s Jaimee Rose.

Let me say, I don’t know who took these pics- as my girlfriend assembled them and sent them to me, if they are yours and you want credit for the images- email me and I will gladly give you credit!

Next shot, look for the orange-y arrow.

I like this one, it is a bit more of a close-up.  I guess my jeans don’t “hug” me as tight as I thought they did.  Is this a good thing?

Here is the last one, I think this is when my daughter started to cry about having to let the balloons go.  She was very upset and wanted to keep them.  I had to remind her that there was a pink balloon waiting for her in the car.

Oh- the jeans are “Long & Lean” by the Gap.  I think it is funny that my bum (we are a G-rated web blog) was posted all over the web!  Thanks Jaylee- for watching my back (side) on the Internet!

Weekending was nice, I spent most of my Sunday in the kitchen.  Fresh Blueberry muffins, spiral ham, homemade rolls, and Spice Cake.

Had a brief but good chat with my sister.  Got off the phone feeling grateful for my life and excited to meet my sisters new man.

in between running errands we went home for lunch:

at our house, it is not lunch unless you have reading material.  Bagel, cream cheese, turkey and advacado sandwhich-yum!

My shcedule is still busy with work related stuff, but I am trying to balance it all better.  Tomorrow I’m planning on spending the morning in the kitchen atempting Lemon Poppy Seed bread for the first time!  I hope your weekend entices with fun activities too!

into my sewing room.

I’ve started working on things for this years Crafetria at Frances in PHX.  I must be in a retro-kitchen phase because a lot of things I’m working on for the show are aprons, pot holders, towels etc.  This little number is my favorite though!

There are lots of reasons to vote today, and here is one more:

May your sweet tooth be satisfied with all sorts of nougety goodness.

{p.s. mama broke down and bought a costume, the boys is hand made though}

Yesterday I took a breather.  I spent an hour at the park with my daughter.   She played and I read “Deception’s Daughter” as the warm breeze (it was 95 yesterday) gently rustled the leaves in the trees.  Very relaxing.  Then we journeyed into downtown Mesa to drop off Decembers class samples (here and here).  As it was near lunch time I decided we should stroll the downtown area and get a bite to eat at Mango’s.  Really yummy mexican food, not the nicest cashier today; c’est la vie!

I spent the afternoon working on a Christmas Garland, and catching up on season 3 of Ghost Wisperer.  I was so inspired by Amy’s halloween garland I just had to make my own!

Helping with homework was a breeze, no complaining!  And then…my husband came home and surprised me with these! (and yes Jaylee {and Clint}, they came from Albertson’s, but I don’t care!)

A yummy dinner of Porcupine Meatballs completed the evening of my very nice relaxing day!  Breather days are nice… the rarer they are the more I appreciate them!

First let’s get the business side out of the way;

Patchwork Pillowcase goes to:

rachel crisman says:
October 17th, 2008 at 8:27 am e

Mine.

Rachel, check your email and send me your snail mail address!  Thank you to everyone who entered and linked here-you guys are great!

This was one of the many things on my agenda for today.  I spent some time at my son’s school discussing Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Sunflowers with the first graders.  They are going to be replicating these peices for an Art Fundraiser, I really wanted the kids to be creative in their own version, so I brought along a sample.  It’s ok to laugh, I know it looks lame, and I am sure Van Gogh’s ghost is cringing in shame too.  The kids were so cute and they are all so excited to be artists (except for one boy, who told me he is already and artist, because his Grandma taught him!).

I had a very nice talk with my mom yesterday about the stresses of life (my mom is the queen on stress, seriously).  We talked about mommy guilt, she told me it NEVER goes away, sigh.  I’ve been extremely busy in the ‘professional” aspect of my life lately and I felt like the balance was shifted too far away from my family.  We talked about balance and how to achieve it, I talked to her about how I really think I need to let go of somethings (but what?  I LOVE all the things I have my hands in).  She told me that she deals with stress the same way, when everything piles up at once (which it usually doesn’t) she gets overwhelmed and thinks she needs to cut back, but once she gets everything done she looks back and thinks, “that wasn’t so bad, I can handle that.”.  She advised me to hang on, prioritize all that I do and then plug through it.  I’m confident in 2 weeks this will all be a blur, that I will look back and think that it wasn’t too bad.

What about you?  I know that many of my readers are women that stretch themselves as well.  How do you deal with it all when everything hits at once?  How do you find that balance, how to you gauge when the balance is no longer even?

While I was here (so beautiful, really, really it was, all silly blogging emoticons and hearts aside, it was a beautiful tribute to two strong, loving families.  And, call me a joiner if you will, but I bought a CD, I really like Mindy’s music!) my children and husband attended our church fall/halloween festival.

I volunteered to bring cupcakes.  I know they should have been halloween like, but who can resist pink cupcakes?  I made them (frosting too) from scratch and they were SO good (i may have eaten 1 or 2 before they left…).

My husband was asked to create a bean bag toss game, creativity not being his strong suit he asked me to help.  After a few (lots) of doses of gold spray paint (wal mart was all sold out of the pumpkin color), I created some bats.  I loved it for its homemade elegance.

It made me think of simple neighborhood holiday gatherings.  Nothing store bought (I used some halloween print fabric I had to make the bean bags), just made from home with love.  My husband tells me it was a hit, there was always a line (might have been the good candy he was doling out).

Anyhoo, the patchwork pillow winner will be announced monday!