Three Sundays ago, I had hot tears brimming because I was feeling the weight of a few friendships/things that have been left feeling unresolved for a long time. Joe was a great listener and gave his feedback as we walked around outside. He snapped pictures the whole time we were talking and that’s when all of the pictures in this post were taken. Every time I look through them I remember the relief and hope I felt just be able to let those feelings out into the air for a while. I remember how the sun was beating down and the crazy Oklahoma wind dried my tears almost as soon as they fell. 

It’s one of the hardest things for me to figure out how to deal with. Once I reach the point where there is seemingly nothing else I can do to fix an issue myself, I don’t know how to just let it go. For me, the urge that “the ball is in MY court” never seems to go away. Even when I’ve passed the ball several times, watched the ball drop and roll a mile off court, and ran after it again and again.  I think sometimes though, I need to remember that it isn’t always about me. The emotional distance, the misunderstanding, the problem, the anger, though directed at me at times, isn’t necessarily because of me. Maybe I just happened to be standing in the way at the time.

I truly believe that in order to LOVE someone, you sometimes have to stand in the middle of the swirling chaos of their pain and anger and accept that you’ll get hit and that it will hurt. I live my life this way, sometimes against the advice of others. I can’t help it. I will always give the benefit of the doubt. I will always choose to love someone. But I admit, there is a counterpart I lack, and that is the ability to guard my heart against the jabs that those in pain often inflict on those around them. But I fear that if I become guarded then I will also become hard-hearted and uncompassionate. 

Two Sundays ago, rather than the regular pastor preaching a message, he instead interviewed a young woman in our church about her spiritual journey as she has dealt with a lot of pain and trauma in her life. I cried then too. She gives off such a joyful vibe (we got the opportunity to talk with her for a few minutes later that night at the bowling alley). You wouldn’t know what she has been through based on the way she carries herself. She was a completely open book as she shared her story. The part that really hit me though was when she mentioned how she has always been one to see the positive light in a situation, but she realized that sometimes that can be to her detriment. Right after her mom died, she immediately started telling herself “At least I got this much time with her, some people have less time than that.” and she realized that she wasn’t allowing herself to fully grieve.

I definitely relate with this. It was only within the last 5 years or so that I realized I had stuffed a lot of my pain from damaged relationships with some of my siblings simply because I felt like I’d had it easier than they had growing up. How am I allowed to complain when I haven’t experienced half of what any of them have in their lifetime? When I was finally able to write honest letters to a couple of my siblings, expressing “What you did hurt me deeply.” my honesty was well received and repaired so many years of wounds between us. I still work on being able to realize when I am hurting in the midst of a situation. I want to cling to that silver lining and bright disposition. One of my favorite quotes on this subject comes from this blog post.

“It feels spiritual to minimize our troubles: “It’s not really that bad,” when confronted with financial turbulence; “Cheer up,” when awash in grief; “Keep on the sunny side,” when standing in the rain.

It’s true that there’s plenty in life to mope about, plenty to feed an Eeyore complex. And we know that discouragement is a weight that will sink any ship. But unfounded optimism is as damaging as unfounded pessimism because both are forms of dishonesty.”

Today is Tatiana’s birthday. She’s like…”conqueror pose on roller skates wearing a birthday hat and rockstar shades while carrying a tasty cake you baked from scratch without a recipe” cool. You should check out her blog. The Dubious Hausfrau. 

Also, I’m kind of kicking myself for not creating more birthday comics so far this year. It’s really fun.

Our title panel needed a little updating. Welcome to the cartoon family, Kai!  

This was another item finished around Christmas-time.

Joe really enjoys carving signs, and I so happen to enjoy staining them. I’m surprised we don’t have a carved sign in our own home. I wonder what it would say…

We completed this bouquet for someone around Christmastime. I love the combination of pinks, purples, and reds. It turned out really pretty. I’m on the hunt for a better vase to use in the future…I’m not even sure what I’m looking for exactly. What do you think would compliment (but not distract from) the roses?

 …to receive during a workout.

You may remember a certain puppy mentioned here. 

She has officially joined our family.

She loves the cats.

She comes running when we turn her name into a bird call. (K-Kai! K-Kai! K-k-k-k-KAI-KAI-KAI!!)

Khloe is finally warming up to Kai.

Omnomnom-ing on her leg counts as warming up, right?

Newly and Kai have pretty much hit it off from day one, playing tag and even napping pretty close to each other. However, Newly hasn’t hit it off with my new camera, so there aren’t any pics of him yet. I need to get sneakier with this thing. haha. 

Eeeeeee!! I’m so excited. We’ve been working on these for a while. I’m proud to announce that our shop is now offering proposal/engagement roses!!  More info here.  This was my first time using my new DSLR camera too. It’s a happy day. 

I’m here. 

At the start of the year I got super excited about diving back into blogging. I even had our side business purchase the remaining Xanga credits I needed to change my blog name and buy premium for a year.  Then I organized ALL of my pictures (over 10,000) into more manageable folders. I spent HOURS working on it. I got a storage device to back them all up on because lately I’ve been having recurring dreams of losing all of my computer files. I tried to back everything up, and the device I got wasn’t registering with the computer. Joe tried to help me, but we ran out of time. Sure enough, the very next day, the computer had this huge error message that we can’t seem to get around. The computer isn’t fried, so there is comfort in knowing all of my pictures are IN THERE somewhere, we just can’t access them right now.  Joe has a plan to get them off of there and backed up somewhere safe, so I’m not really worried about it….BUT it put a huge damper in my organized blogging plans. I like pictures. I like sharing pictures and words together. Not having access to any pictures has made me super unmotivated to blog. Yet, I feel the urge to write. write write. sometimes, and I really should just follow that feeling.

I feel like I keep having technical difficulties like this.  We have two computers. One is the clunky old school dinosaur computer that Joe has pieced together over the years. It’s missing pieces, its really loud, and extremely temperamental   It will work fine for months and then just kind of “give up” and get put in the closet until Joe fixes it up again.  Our second computer is a laptop we purchased 6 years ago.  It works pretty well, but it has zero battery life and a dying power cord, so if I even nudge it an inch, the whole thing shuts down.  So, we just keep switching from one half functioning computer to the other.  It has worked this way for as long as I can remember.  Yet, now that I do the whole “Stay home and run an Etsy shop” thing, I spend SO much time on the computer, so it is more evident.  We’ll just keep saving our pennies for a Mac (wouldn’t that be amazing? haha that’s a lot of pennies). 

Also my digital camera gets a lot of use for the Etsy business and it has been falling apart little by little. A broken battery compartment that I have to hold closed, a ring missing from the zoom lens that causes the camera to randomly turn off, etc. We recently combined some Amazon gift cards with Joe’s Christmas bonus and some $$ from the business to buy our very first DSLR camera. It’s an old version, but it will be the fanciest one we’ve ever owned! It is due on my doorstep any day now and I’m obsessively listening for the doorbell and checking my doorstep. I am SO excited about it. Joe’s going to build me a lightbox/backdrop so our Etsy listings will be WAY better quality. 

Speaking of Etsy (have I talked about anything else yet?) Joe and I have had some great talks lately about what we LOVE and what we could do without in this whole process of running a small business.  We have SO much fun working together side by side in the shop with music going and random dancing, haha. Sometimes though, the deadlines and stress of trying to fit things in around Joe working full time AND going to class is a lot to handle. We strive to have orders completed and out the door within 10 business days.  But in all reality, that usually only gives two evenings and a Saturday to work on orders. That’s fine if we’re having a slow week, but sometimes we’ll get orders in clumps, and that’s when things feel rushed and tense.  We don’t want to completely give up on offering custom orders because it really is fun to make someone’s cool idea come to life.  But we’re going to try gearing the shop to sell more items we’ve made ahead of time (rather than everything being made to order).  Joe has also been getting the itch to make some stand alone one of a kind art pieces. He wants to be able to work on things for a few months and then sell them when he’s happy with them.  Anyway, we know what works and what doesn’t, and we’re making changes every day to find a balance between meeting feasible deadlines while still having fun. YAY.

We’ve set some goals to get much more involved with social media. We are having a lot of fun with Instagram lately (#pioneerartisanworks) and have even had some customers comment on pictures of their order in progress. It is very interactive which is awesome. Anyway, that’s a start I guess.

Seems my mind is kind of caught up in Etsy/business things lately. I am learning a whole new level of busy. Mostly I’m learning that sometimes you just have to S T O P and leave the to do list for another day. It’s good to celebrate what you’ve accomplished so far, rather than beating yourself up for what hasn’t been completed yet. I could tell I am growing in the whole “trust God for the future” thing when Joe called in sick for work this morning and my first thought was “Aw man, he must feel awful.”  My first thought used to be “Okay, how much $$ will be missing from his paycheck and which bills are due next?”  I didn’t like that about myself, because it was super revealing of my insecurity and inability to believe that things really will be okay.  The fact that I thought of Joe’s feelings first made me really proud of myself. I’ve come a long way. Today I’m going to celebrate that I’ve come this far and leave the “but look how far I still have to go” for another day. Maybe never. I started training for my 2nd 5k (Color Me Rad again!) and this time Joe is training with me. Running is way more mentally challenging than physically challenging for me. That’s saying a lot because its very physically challenging, haha. But learning to push myself past that mental block is really changing the way I think and react to other things in my life.  One mile never seemed very long until I tried to run one. Now I can look and say “I ran a FREAKING MILE. That’s worth celebrating!”  It would be ridiculous to be depressed over all the miles I haven’t run yet. That’s my life right now. Running on pavement. Running an Etsy shop. Running errands. Running the dishwasher. Running the pets out of energy. It’s all worth celebrating. It’s worth getting up and seeing if I can run a little farther the next day.