Flashbacks

Pretty soon I'll be boarding a plane to visit my stateside family. This makes me more happy than you can imagine. I'm a bit homesick. Not for the places, so much, but for the people. Although I will be totally ruining my diet with some good ole American fare. So anyway, I was looking through some photos of mine to use as a filler for a design and came across this one of my dad and my oldest son.

I just love this photo. It's such a tender moment. I think it even looks better that they aren't looking at the camera or even aware of my presence. It's a papa's sweet kiss on a chubby grandson. Man how I miss those sweet moments. Can't wait to make some more memories soon!

Happy Mother's Day

This past weekend of course was Mother's Day. As always, I had an amazing day. I woke up to freshly brewed coffee (yummy chocolate truffle blend) and the hubby made me my traditional omelet. He's the best! I wish I made omelets as great as he does. I didn't have to cook, clean, or lift a finger all day. Man, I love Mother's Day!

Here's my two sweet boys who made me a mommy. I'm so incredibly blessed! It was also Linky's birthday so we celebrated that as well. I can't believe the little guy is three!

My sweet husband even drove both ways to the museum that we went to. I love not having to drive or lift a finger. He spoils me too much, but don't tell him that. I rather enjoy it. Isn't he handsome?!?

We went to this Egyptian exhibit in the city of Speyer (about an hour away). The city itself is worth going to as it has some fabulous architecture, museums, and a lovely pedestrian friendly zone. You know you're spoiled by amazing European architecture when you don't snap photos of every little building anymore since they're all amazing.

Posing with my babies in the main pedestrian thoroughfare.

The shops along the pedestrian way evoke memories of Venice to me. The colors aren't adjusted at all. This is how they look.

We had a delicious lunch at a sidewalk cafe, followed by some yummy Italian gelato (1 euro per cone!). The boys had chocolate, James had nutella, and I had raspberry.

More sidewalk cafes and beautiful architecture.

We stopped at the park on our way back to the car. Too bad the shadows cast have our eyes heavily shadowed. That and the remains of gelato on the little guys' faces...Not a perfect photo, but definitely a perfect day.

Hope your Mother's Day was just as enjoyable!

Long Time, No Talk

I've been terrible about updating my blog. It's not that I haven't wanted to. It's just that I'm going through a bit of a rough patch. That and the crazy busy schedule that my life is currently subjected to is overwhelming me at the moment. It's not a bad busy, just busy.

My youngest son has been preliminarily diagnosed with dysarthria, a motor speech disorder. I say preliminary because it's not an official diagnosis yet, though the speech therapist is pretty sure that's what we're dealing with. For a long time I didn't think Lincoln looked, acted, or spoke like his age. I hate to be right in this case. As a mother, I want what's best for my children, and I'm constantly berating myself lately. Was that fall down the stairs what caused the problem? Was it because I chose to do my graphics business or dishes instead of sitting on the floor playing with him? Was it something I did during my pregnancy? I hate the what ifs. Right now they're tearing me apart. I could have been a better mother to him, I should have gotten him the help sooner, I shouldn't have taken the doctor's assertions that he was fine at face value. I've got to pull myself together and be better for him. He deserves it.

Peeps Bag Topper - Free Printable

Easter is fast approaching and that means it's time for a freebie! This time it's a baggie topper for treats, specifically Peeps treats. Since I live in Germany and apparently all the Peeps are already sold out, I had to photography my baggie topper with cute chocolate bunnies.

Just purchase some Peeps (easier said than done here in Germany), a ziploc baggie (I used sandwich sides and tucked under the extra to make them shorter), and print out the toppers and affix them with some strategically placed staples. Voila. Instant cute treat!

Here's the non-photographed version:

Just imagine them with some cute bunny Peeps.

You can download the single baggie topper HERE

or the PDF sheet of two toppers tiled HERE

Please feel free to pin, tweet, post about these toppers, but please link back to the original posting (ie: this blog post) so that I may receive credit. Enjoy!

A Few Favorite Fonts

So as a graphic designer, I have an affinity for fonts. I LOVE them. Probably a bit too much. I go into restaurants, read the menu and can tell you what fonts they used. It's that bad. My husband likes to tease me about it. I also get quite a few questions from customers about fonts (everyone loves a good font apparently!). So I thought I'd share a few of my favorites. Here's a few of them, in no particular order.

Adorable can be found HERE

Champagne & Limousines can be found HERE

Contribute can be found HERE

Pea Breathe Easy can be found HERE

Japan can be found HERE

Sketch Block can be found HERE

Anderson Four Feathers Falls can be found HERE

Just Me Again Down Here can be found HERE

Cookies can be found HERE

Circus can be found HERE



Monday Musings

So I've been absolutely terrible about writing on here. Which is sad. I really like opening up and posting designs and "meeting" wonderful people. There's such a wealth of information on the internet and I meet some of the most amazing people through here. At any rate, things here have been hectic. I guess that goes without saying. I've had two sick boys, a sick husband and a sick me to take care of. You can guess which one got put on the back burner.

I know my last message was kind of dark, well, really dark for me, but I guess you could say I had the world's most horrible birthday. It was pretty awful and I guess the real problem is that I had expectations. Whenever you set yourself up like that, you're bound to be disappointed. It wasn't that I wanted anything amazing or outlandish; just to be recognized. Without two sick kiddoes would have been great too. I hate when my babies are sick.

Speaking of sick, we're finally (KNOCK ON WOOD) over everything, I think. Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully. Took Link to the doctor today to check out his rash; in my opinion it should have gone away and not gotten worse over the weekend. They were calling it a medicinal reaction rash, but if that's true and his last dose was Wednesday, why was it so bad on Saturday and Sunday?!

We took him to the doctor today and he's not convinced that it's a medical reaction but he's not convinced otherwise either. Very helpful. (sigh) It's actually looking much better today so we're just keeping tabs on it. The doctor says that it most likely isn't anything else since he just had strep throat and scarlet fever so he shouldn't have any other bug. To me, that's ridiculous logic. I would think that his immune system would be compromised so it's perfectly logical that he could have something else (like fifth's disease). But our doctor is mostly..well, I won't go there because it just makes me upset. Going to go online today and request a new doctor. That should fix atleast some of our problems! Hopefully you all had a much better week of things!

Birthdays

So today's my birthday. I didn't plan on posting anything since the entire household has come down with strep throat and/or scarlet fever and things have been a bit hectic to say the least. That and I don't want to seem like I'm begging for sympathy or just wanting people to say "Happy Birthday." But my husband, who is in Italy for work, was sweet and left me two birthday cards. One was signed by the kids and one was signed by him. The one signed by him read, "You're an awesome mommy and pretty good wife." Am I reading that correctly or am I reading into things? Pretty good? Isn't that like getting a C in a class? You're pretty good, but you're not great. You're not terrible either, just pretty good. I can't say why, but this is just breaking my heart today. Maybe it's everything else compounded on the issue, but the "pretty" is like the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. Or it was the dam holding back the tears. I'm not really good at analogies right now. This is what dictionary.com had to say about the definition of pretty:

pretty: [prit-ee]  -ti·er, -ti·est, noun, plural -ties, adverb, verb, -tied, -ty·ing.

adjective: fairly or moderately: Her work was pretty good.

Is that the way you would read that? Or am I reading into things? I know I'm not the best wife in the world. I wish I was, but I know I'm not. But isn't it pretty crappy to be reminded of how utterly lacking you are in that department on your thirtieth birthday? Someone please tell me I'm crazy and reading into things.