No, I’m not a chain. I’m not even a store. But I do have some of my pieces in a store, and when I think about that in my head I say “I’m a chain!” like Truvy in Steel Magnolias. I think “I’m a chain!” is just a phrase to use whenever you’re very excited about something you’ve accomplished. “I got that new job I wanted – I’m a chain!” “I earned my masters degree – I’m a chain!” “I made my bed this morning – I’m a chain!”

So yes, my pieces are now available in a store, specifically Lucinda’s in Old Town Square in Wichita, a cute little store that I’ve given a good chunk of my money to over the last few years. I have blocks, plates, canvases, bookplates, and cards there. My Etsy shop is now bereft … Read More »

It’s been a couple of weeks since our first (and so far, only) foster care placement so I thought I’d share some more feelings/observations now that I’m a little removed from that weekend.

Observation #1: Foster care is a lot like you expect it to be. It’s hard, it’s tiring (so tiring), it’s worthwhile. This blogger has recently written about what it’s like when kids leave your home, and she’s right. You (or at least I)  go through a mourning period. It almost felt disrespectful to put the house back together too soon after they’d left, and I just recently put all of the toys back and got the room completely ready again. I think since this was our first time I took their leaving especially hard, and I think next time it won’t be so bad. Of course, I know there … Read More »

My dad asked if I would blog about our first foster care placement, and I said I didn’t know if I would because I didn’t know what to say. Todd said I should blog about it just to tell people we successfully did it. So, people, we successfully did it. We fostered two kids this past weekend, and all four of us lived to tell about it. (I would say all six of us, to include the cats, but they’re a little shell shocked so it may be premature to say they made it through.)

We knew fostering would be tough and sad, but I don’t think anyone knows how tough or sad it is until they actually do it. It’s kind of like “Steel Magnolias.” You know intellectually that it’s a sad movie, but you don’t realize just how sad … Read More »

My mother said when we were sold, we must ask God to make our masters good, and I asked who He was. She told me, He sit up in the sky. When I was sold, I had a severe, hard master, and I was tied up in the barn and whipped. Oh! Till the blood run down the floor and I asked God, ‘why don’t you come and relieve me? — if I was you and you’se tied up so, I’d do it for you.’
-Sojourner Truth, Address to the Friends of Human Progress Meeting, October 1856

January 11 is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. In honor of this day, Love 146 has been posting quotes about slavery, like the one above, to their blog every day this month. You should go to their blog and read all of them, because they’re … Read More »

Todd and I became licensed foster parents today. He stayed home this morning to meet with the person from the KDHE, and when he called me after she’d left our house I expected him to say we hadn’t passed the inspection and we had more work to do. But he didn’t say that, he said that we passed. And that she thought our kids’ room is cute (which it totally is).

I would’ve been pretty upset if we hadn’t passed since we have now closely followed two separate checklists of things to do to our home for it to be considered fit for foster children. But I was also surprised we passed, and had this feeling of “Well, we sure tricked them.”

That feeling of trickery doesn’t come from a place of actual deceit.  We made all the necessary changes to our … Read More »

I don’t really have anything I feel like writing about, but I figured it was time to get the “Merry Christmas” post off the top of my page. So here’s some things you might (but probably won’t) find interesting.

I have some items for sale at The Onion Tree, located at Doulgas & Hillside in Wichita. The shop is closing on January 15 and after that I’ll sell the un-sold items through my Etsy shop. But you need to get over there like, today, to look at all the cute things from the other artists.
Our final foster care home inspection is happening on Monday, January 9. We’ve yet to complete the list of things to do that we received at our last Youthville meeting, but we did successfully* install magnetic cabinet locks the other night. We feel pretty good about that.
Wow, … Read More »

Hello! The ICT Winter Bazaar was this afternoon and I think that it went pretty well for my first foray into retail sales. Some of my very favorite pieces found some very nice homes, and I met some very nice people.

If you’re here after picking up my card at the bazaar, welcome! And congratulations on not losing my card between the bazaar and your home, which is what I would have done.

I’ll be up and running in my Etsy shop in a couple of days, where I’ll sell some remaining pieces such as:

Let me give my husband a few days to recover from the bazaar (and from the Broncos’ shocking defeat to the Patriots), and then please visit me on Etsy! Thanks!

The other day I made a sarcastic comment about our communication with Youthville. I was pretty frustrated when I wrote that post, but as Todd and my mom quickly pointed out, I probably shouldn’t have written what I did. So I would like to apologize to Youthville for airing my grievances with it in an unhelpful way on my blog.

I would also like to say that there are a lot of good people who work at Youthville who do some very tough jobs very well. They do important work that most of us don’t want to do, and they should be shown more appreciation.

I think my frustrations come from the fact that Youthville is a very large organization that is underfunded and understaffed, and as good as its employees are, due to its size and budget some things happen that … Read More »

So my slightly interesting news? I have a booth at the ICT Winter Bazaar on December 18, and I’m going to try to sell stuff. I’ve had the booth reserved for a few weeks now so I’ve been spending most nights at my table, hunched over, cutting out octopus tentacles. It’s really very hard and involves watching lots of Gilmore Girls and the BBC’s Pride & Prejudice while I work. The other night I made the mistake of watching E.T., which is a stupid movie. And yes, I totally cried, but it was because of how bad the movie was, and definitely not because of the love between a boy and an alien.

Anyway, I think I was supposed to be talking about the bazaar. It’s being organized by Bridgit of The Onion Tree, and it’s all local people selling their handmade goods. … Read More »