Maya Road and Me

Something To Look Forward To

It is a new week for our household, we just held a memorial service for my dad last weekend in my parents' hometown. I will have to save some thoughts on that for another post later this week. But it did bring us a sense of closure for the passing of my dad. So we now exhale and being a new chapter in all of our lives. 

With that said, I am excited to be headed to Crop and Create Burnaby to teach a class called "The Mini Method". I am so excited to be heading to teach this album:

Lots of fun techniques and ideas for a beautiful mini album. My first love is actually the cover. I think I might have to reproduce it for something to hang on baby girls' wall.

One thing about putting a class together is also planning for the kits. I started a spreadsheet to figure out what I needed and I counted over 40 different items which will be going into this album. The "yikes" part comes when I need to kit it all up. Ah well, everyone will love it though and I am happy to do it!

 

Fun things

Last week I filmed a short video tutorial for our friends at Scrapbook and Cards today sharing how you can make this cute necklace:

A fun little bird you can use also on your pages.

Here are some other variations of our wood birds stamped with our houndstooth stamp:

Here is the video if you would like to make these fun and fast birds for yourself:

 

Enjoy!

Dragonflies

 

Growing up in the South, we were accustomed to seeing a lot of dragonflies. I can still remember the first time I saw one - we had just moved to South Carolina from the North and I was fascinated by them. We didn't see them when we were little growing up!

A couple of weeks ago, I was fiddling around with some of our Maya Road zipper trim leftover bits iI had around the house and using Ronda's zipper trim butterfly tutorial as inspiration, I came up with this:

Something fun you can do in under 10 mins to dress up a card, layout or even mini album.  

We filmed the full video tutorial yesterday. I actually film this at my crafting table where I make all of my projects.  I love how this is such a beautiful embellishment you can make in very little time but people will ask you over and over how you made it and where they can get one of their own. And all you have to do is tell them "here let me show you how it is done" or "give me $5 and this one can be yours" (haha). I hope you enjoy the video!

 

Warrior Dash

It is hard to believe that it has been a month now since my dad passed away. In ways it seems longer and there are moments when it feels like it just has happened.

As we have been settling back into our new normal now, I finally got to run the Warrior Dash I signed up for last weekend.

It was a family and friends thing for us. Here is Noah all dressed up as a Warrior:

My gal wasn't too happy to be there but she was ok if I was holding her:

For those that do not know what the Warrior Dash is, it is your basic 5k mud run. And when they say mud they mean MUD - check out this pile of shoes that were to be donated from the runners the day before:

During the course of the run there is a series of about 12 obstacles for you to get through before you finish the 5k. The obstacles were as simple as running over a big series of man made hills or as difficult as crawling through mud with barbed wire overhead.

So we got ready for the start:

And then we got into the chute to begin:

And well here is what the end looked like:

Yes that is me crawling through a bit of mud:

And yes I was a bit covered in the process:

At the end of the race, I had an amazing time. I finished in the top 10% of my age group for the day and I know my dad is smiling down from Heaven thinking I am crazy to which I can smile and say "hey I get the crazy from you, dad!".\ I know he would be proud of me no matter what. In the past it would have been for academics, etc but now it is for the person I have become - mud and all.

 

Every Day...

It has been close to three weeks since my dad passed away. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has sent us cards, flowers and I have amazing friends who have dropped by to say hello and to bring us dinner. At times I am overwhelmed by what my dad has left behind. He was always so sunny (well 99% of the time) and just full of sprite and spirit that there is well just a bit of a void here since he has gone. There is no way around it since he was just so full of life.

But each day gets better. I know that the hardest part of all for processing all of this is for my mom. They were together many many years. I am sure all the little things remind my mom that my dad isn't here anymore. At the same time as we get all her affairs in order, we can see her thinking about a future without my dad. It is just little whispers at this time of hope but at lesat it is still there. 

My days have been filled since my last post with getting projects and products ready for CHA. Half the time while my dad was sick, I felt like I was just surviving with everything I needed to do. But thankfully, I am surrounded by an amazing team and amazing friends who help me when I need it. I am not good about asking for help but I have at this time. It is hard but I will survive. We all do.

I have filled my time with work and my family and also creating:

We are having a blog swap this week at Maya Road and I wanted to create something that documented my parents with their 5 grandchildren. This will be posted later this week on the DT blog.

And this weekend, I am participating in a mud run called the Warrior Dash. Just something to keep my mind off of things but happy to be joined by friends for this run. A 3.24 mile run with about 14 obstacles to overcome. 

And mostly we are all starting to breathe again and live life. My family has started planting flowers in our yard. My kids are playing outside. My mom is starting to enjoy her time with her grandkids. Just the little things we didn't really have time for while my dad was sick. And when there are times I miss my dad, I remember that he really isn't that far away. I look at my kids and even sometimes at myself and realize that we have some of his crazy genes and joy for life and I smile. And I know my dad is smiling down from Heaven too.