Oh my gosh pictures.

I didn't post last week because it was Mother's Day, so I decided to give myself a break. :) I took a lot of pictures the last two weeks, so get ready for picture overload.

Okay. So. The Friday and Saturday before Mother's day was the LDStorymakers writers' conference. To prep for that, I made another keychain that I traded for a Childlike-Empress (from Neverending Story) headdress/crown/thingy. Totally worth it. I do not have picture of those. I also made bookmarks, mostly because I was able to pitch my Alice in Wonderland YA sci-fi novel to a major NY agent and I wanted to give her something so she would remember me. I do have pictures of those.

The concept sketches:

Retraced onto the pages of an old book and colored with my prismacolor markers:

The finished product laminated:

I also took Ceciy and Mira to gymnastics/tumbling where they both had a parent showcase at the exact same time. I luckily was able to see most of the important stuff for each of them, and also, Cecily didn't really care much if I watched, so that helped.

second from right

last on left

I also went crazy and decided I could cut Emilia's hair into a stacked cut just by watching a few YouTube videos. By the end, I was almost in tears, afraid I had totally messed it up. The only thing that kept me from crying was that Emilia went and looked in the mirror and came hopping back saying, "It looks great! Don't I look pretty?" I couldn't very well burst into tears and say, "I don't know!" I ended up taking her to a neighbor who cuts hair and asked her to make sure I didn't totally botch it. She said that this cut is super complicated and she was very impressed at how well I'd done. She really only made a handful of cuts and declared it good. Phew. I was just glad we didn't have to give her a pixie cut she didn't want because I'd messed it up so bad. I will be paying a professional to cut her hair in the future. Sheesh.

These are the before pictures. I actually haven't taken any after pictures. I'll rectify that this week and post them next week.

I also had my hair trimmed and highlighted again. I know! I'm sure my hairdresser thinks I'm a picky monster, but in my defense, she kept saying, "I'll just do it a little bit and then if you want more, you can come back." She doesn't like big changes like I do. :)

At first, I still wasn't sure. This is how I wore it on Mother's Day. Perhaps not the best choice. But it looked prettier from the front.

I also wore it freestyle back at the conference one day. Some pictures showed it looking pretty good (see further down), and then there was this one. Ulgh.

Last Monday, it looked like this and I wasn't happy.

But this week, I feel like I kind of got a handle on how to style it, and I really like the lighter color with the new highlights. There were a number of days this week that I actually felt pretty. So yay! I'm finally coming around to feeling like it was a good decision.

The conference itself was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. I got a request to send my full manuscript to the agent. And a panel of agents liked my first page. And I got some feedback on my picture book that I'm excited about. It was just what I needed to really make it shine. I also got some pretty biting feedback on my first chapter, missed the session where the agents looked at my first page, and forgot about the meeting where the editor was going to give me feedback. But, with the good stuff, and lots of great classes that made me think differently about writing and taught me new stuff, it was definitely an overall success. Plus I got to catch up with lots of friends I don't see often.

Mother's day was the next day. It was a good mother's day--probably the best I've had since becoming a mother. Steve got up and made me eggs and toast and oranges for breakfast. My kids made me a bouquet of paper flowers (with Nana's help) with notes to me on them. I had a relaxing morning before church and delicious gluten-free pizza for dinner and games with friends afterward.

Mira got ahold of my phone after church and began taking a bunch of photos. I was really impressed with her shots! They were well-composed and had interesting subject-matter.

She also took the one of me outside the car, this one of Steve and the two below of Cecily. I especially like the two of Cecily because they highlight the two sides of her quirky little personality. :)

This week was a huge mishmash of things.

We went to a book launch party for a mostly-facebook writer friend of mine because I thought it sounded like fun. She said it was going to be carnival style with hotdogs and a dance-off at the end for $100 prize. Why not, right? Well, it ended up being about as chaotic as a real carnival (and Steve was cranky about it the whole time), but I still had fun. One of the things we were supposed to do is do a chalk-drawing on black paper that had a picture of a tree or the word "Shatter" on it because that was the name of her book and trees were an integral part of it. All of us girls made one (Steve helped Cecily) and I'm impressed with all of them. I love the saying that Emilia chose to put on hers. She impresses me all the time.

Mira also had her last day of Kindergarten.

I dug a hole in our mountainous yard to transplant a bush that wasn't doing well where it was. Have I mentioned I hate digging holes here?

I made pancakes because quick dinners were necessary much of the week.

I switched at the winter clothes for the summer clothes for the girls (which is such a production--you wouldn't believe it!).

I went to the temple again. I love the Provo Temple. So many people think it's the ugliest temple, but it's beautiful to me.

And we celebrated Cecily's birthday since her birthday's on Tuesday and Daddy wouldn't have alot of time to be with her that day.

And a few more random, but cute pictures of Cecily:

This one's a selfie.

Life

My pictures did not load in any sort of order, so I'm just going to describe them as they came up.

I needed some crafty stuff to do to distract me from my writing for a while. This bunny was for my friend, Tia's first baby who's name is Marty and my kids have now decided to call it Marty. :) I was proud of how it turned out. I made up the clothing mostly from my head.

I made another doll because my kids liked Marty so much. I didn't put ears on this one. I think I'm going to attempt hair because there are so many cute doll hair tutorials on pinterest. The hat was another present for Marty (the baby). I saw the pattern for the baby "turban" and I couldn't resist. So adorable!

I made another turban and four of these headbands -- two for Marty and two for another baby shower I was invited to in our ward. I enjoyed learning to make the flowers. They were both super easy once I figured them out. The yellow one took three attempts because the instructions for the pattern on that one were written, not just in another language, but in the Cyrillic alphabet, so I had to follow just the little line drawing and pictures and it was confusing.

Here is another picture of my hair. I wasn't loving it, like I said. It wasn't terrible, but I didn't feel pretty in it. So on Thursday I got it cut again and colored. You can see the new cut in the picture from our date below. I'm probably going to get it lightened even more, but I'm much more happy with it.

On Monday morning, I got up at 6am and went to the Provo temple. It was a beautiful morning and I got some great shots of the sun rising behind the temple before and after I did a session.

I picked up some flowers from the dollar store and made flower bows out of them to go with the headbands and to have for my girls. I think they turned out pretty.

My neighbor's birthday was on Friday. She's a new mom and her husband was going to be gone overnight for work, so I bought some Costco flowers and arranged them and brought them to her. I remember being a new mom and being so disappointed in how mundane birthdays were, so I try to do something special for new moms if I know it's their birthday.

Steve and I went on a date Friday night to a place called Taste. They make their own chocolate, so we got a tour of their facility and tasted 9 gourmet chocolates, 5 gourmet vinegars and 2 gourmet olive oils. I was surprised at how much I liked the vinegars. I tried taking apple cider vinager in the mornings a while back because I've heard so much about the health benefits. I lasted one day because I almost threw it up on my first sip. But these tasted more like syrup with a zing. I'd put them on ice cream or marinate meat in them any day.

It was a beautiful night, so we walked a few blocks after the tasting to Steve's favorite game store. While there, I found this poster for USAvengers and almost laughed out loud at how much this guy looks like a younger version of my dad if he were a superhero. Even the red is rather appropriate. :)

Saturday we worked in the yard a bit, but Steve and I weren't feeling well, so not nearly as much as we would have liked. We think Steve had a reaction to the vinegars and I've been fighting a cold. In the afternoon, we drove up to Salt Lake to look at some couches. Our current one has been through the ringer and was a cheapo couch to begin with. Then we went out for dinner and then went to Ikea to get some bookshelves to organize the kids' play room. Everyone was super tired by the end of the night. Cecily fell asleep like this:

This coming Friday I get to go to a writing conference with Steve and I'm excited. Conferences are a fun change of pace if nothing else, and this one I have a lot of friends going to, so it should be a great weekend.