Meet Josephine...

and help her come home to Texas!

Josephine is a little girl with down syndrome living in an orphanage/asylum in the Ukraine. I have recently become aware of both the mission of Reece's rainbow and the deplorable conditions that special needs orphans live in across the world through my friend Stori, whose put a lot of effort into blogging about these things over on her blog, The Wannderers: Russia Edition. I was definitely moved by what I saw but I guess you could say I hit a tipping point this morning when a co-worker sent out a reminder about his family's quest to adopt Josephine from the Ukraine. She is living in the very same place, or type of place, that Stori has been blogging about, and she has a family who desperately wants to share their life with her and help her grow up as happy and as healthy as can be. I want to help too!

JOSEPHINE for the Cutler Family — Katy, TX

Jay and Caroline have been married for almost 18 years. They married while Jay was in the military [Air Force] and moved around the United States. During that time they were raising their 6 sons and had their first daughter in 2004. Jay retired from the Air Force in 2004 after serving 20 years. In 2006 they were blessed with a second daughter, Gabriella. She was born with Down Syndrome and a complete joy to their whole family. They knew that Gabrielle had Down Syndrome before she was born and felt blessed that God choose them as parents to this wonderful baby girl. Even Grandma came for her birth. Gabrielle has taught her family so much and is such a joy. Jay and Caroline wanted to connect with other families that have a child/children with special needs and found that through facebook. Thats when they were introduced to the special needs orphans on Reeces Rainbow. Adoption is something they have discussed many times and wanted to do but now Reeces Rainbow was the path to that child that God choose for them. They knew it was their time to adopt. Josephine took their heart as soon as they saw her picture. Josephine has struck to the core as being the right child in the most need. She is five years old and will be six years old soon. Josephine is on the verge of being transferred to a mental institution from the baby house. She deserves to be at home with her awaiting family and going to school with her siblings. Jay and Caroline are committed to bringing Josephine home as soon as possible. Please pray for them. Any kind of support, donations and prayers will help bring Josephine home to her forever family.  

The trick to all of these adoptions is that they are very expensive and I can only imagine, quite emotionally draining for the families who wait for their children to come to the US. So I am hoping that we can collectively send messages of support directly to the Cutlers via their blog cutlerfamilyadoption.blogspot.com and raise even just a little bit of money to help them bring sweet Josephine home. 

Today I created a coupon code for my etsy shop zero calorie cookies that will give YOU 10% off your order just by entering JOSEPHINE10 at checkout. And in return I will donate 20% of my sales generated with that code to her reece's rainbow account. (you can also donate directly via the link above her name). What? You didn't know I have an esty shop... well I DO! I make appliqued baby onsies using my cookie cutters as inspiration shapes. Hopefully by next week I will have new valentines, easter and st. patrick's day items added as well! 

Please share with anyone and everyone you can think of, leave me a comment so we can all track the progress. I will try to update the progress in a blog post as well. 

some cookies lately

I have actually made some cookies lately. I've done a lot more sewing than baking lately, but I managed to make several batches of sugar cookies in the last few weeks and months. And since I don't have kids to post pictures of, and the first thing I do when looking for inspiration to decorate is go to google or pinterest I thought I'd post a few pictures here.

I actually made these in July and just never blogged them. They were just because hearts. I wanted to make cookies to send to a friend, who was sick at the time I think but instead of sending a few dozen cookies in one direction, I split them up into four or five small batches and sent them all over the place to just share a little bit of love and joy. They were pretty bright but the luster dust in the first picture makes them look a little more pastel.

For Christmas this year I made a million and 2 cookies... we host a Christmas party at our house for friends and neighbors etc and last year I didn't make any decorated cookies because of a time crunch so this year I did a bunch. I had tons left after the party and was saving them for Christmas with Sean's family. When I started to consolidate them into one tin, I realized I still had boatloads of cookies, and peppermint bark so as much as I could up and took them to the fire station by my house. I felt really good about supporting the fire fighters who work holidays while the general idiot public starts fried turkey fires :)

before the party started, sean kept rearranging these just to annoy me. 

And just this last weekend I made maybe my favorite cookies because they were for my almost nephew Mason's baby shower! My mom kind of twisted my arm into making these, and I really wish I could have made a decent brown icing, but I'm ultimately glad I did make them and I think they turned out cute!

I clearly didn't take this picture, the quality is too good. I think it might be time to invest in a camera!

New Year... New Pantry

Happy New Year! We're only 3 days in* and so far 2012 has been pretty much perfect for me. It helps that it started as a three day weekend and I got quite a bit of stuff... including relaxing done, but I just generally feel very content right now and certainly happy with the way 2012 is shaping up!

Last week sometime, as I was recovering from Christmas... We hosted Sean's family for Christmas at our house in Delaware and it was wonderful, but by the time the dust settled and everyone left I was EXHAUSTED...so I was spending some time totally vegged out on the couch watching a show called The Amandas. Its part awesome home organization and a greater part insane OCD cattiness. At one point the main Amanda (who calls all her assistants the Amandas) broke down crying and telling her team how flawless she was, it was epic. ANYWAY during the show you get to see main Amanda's ridiculously organized house and pantry... the bug was planted and I needed to deal with mine!

You see I have a pretty big pantry, even by Texas standards, and HUGE pantry by Northeast standards... most houses we looked at didn't even have them. But it was a pretty big mess, I suppose having plenty of space allows you to be a little bit  messy.

Yes, I am relatively embarrassed to share these pictures... somehow it looks even worse than it did when I was living with it this way... One of those popcorn boxes up there turns out to have actually been empty. Who knows how long it had been in there like that!

So Saturday night Sean and I went to Lowes and ultimately Bed Bath and Beyond to find some organizational items... Thanks to a Christmas Gift card this project was almost entirely free!! I was a little dissapointed at the selection of items, or lack there of, but I bought a bunch and assumed we'd return stuff etc. For the record Sean lost interest at Lowes and was totally done by the time we got to Bed Bath :)

Sunday morning I slowly cleared out the pantry. I totally covered our dining table, filled the laundry room and spilled over into the office. It was a mess.

Only a few items had expired... one in particular expired in 2007, a full 2 years before we moved to Delaware go figure! I had no less than 3 opened boxes of lasagna noodles... it looks like I made lasagna and needed just 1 extra noodle, 3 times... each box was pretty much full.

Once everything was cleared out... I started by painting the shelves bright white. This was a REALLY frustrating step. The white actually covered really well, but up against almost white walls the new shelves didn't really show up... so I felt like I was painting and painting and not really getting anywhere.

The real satisfaction came when I got to put the wall color up. Which I mixed from paint around the house. I was going for aqua... and started with the ONLY blue I had which is Behr rain water, its really barely there blue. So I added some acrylic blue (not much I ran out) some acrylic green, some acrylic black and some relatively dark latex green. At some point it was a total disaster and I just gave up. I thought it turned out way more gray than aqua and I was ok with that, but when I started putting it on the walls it was actually a perfect aqua...go figure.

this picture was taken at night, it looks a little more blue than it does aqua. 

Then I started putting things back in... I got some small shelves to hold cans which I really like and ended up with lots of brown baskets from TJ Max. I love the finished product. In fact I am finishing up this post a week after I started* writing because I was out of town for a while... I MISSED my pantry while I was gone. So Sad I know.

The peg board was pre-existing I just added more hooks and those baskets. 

I've added more stuff since this picture was taken. Its actually kind of fun to grocery shop and KNOW what I need and that I have space!

I love that wire basket at the top, I wish I had something prettier to put in it, but for now it holds light bulbs and candles. 

 I wish I'd had the energy to paint the door, but I just didn't. Painting all the shelves and trim took much longer than I expected. Maybe someday I'll get rid off the rest of that green!