A new calling

So a couple of weeks ago I was assigned at church to be the primary chorister (I teach kids how to sing! Finally, my dream calling has come true...). So have I had fun practicing all the songs and learning all the words and using my skills to fulfill a purpose at church? Yes. But what I've also rediscovered is my dormant artistic skills.
A little known fact about Mrs. Ellingson is that she loves to draw. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm not particularly bad at it when I put my mind to it either. I haven't done anything too detailed lately, but this new job has kept me particularly busy. Music time in primary always has fun little games where kids come up and choose a picture (leaves on a tree, petals on a flower, etc...)on the board and read what's on the back to dictate what they will sing. Or have the creatively made pictures to help kids remember what the words are. I don't know who started that tradition back in the eons of time when singing time in primary evolved, but I don't think music time would be music time at church without those games. Anyway, this has been a perfect opportunity to start my music game/words collection. Not only that, but I've been meaning to make some things like this for family night lessons for the kids, but have never gotten around to it. Now I have a reason to do it!
Anyway, so far I've made two games: one is to help review songs (for different songs I'll have to make different dice). The second is another one I'm starting for wiggle songs for the little kids- they are zoo animals- the zoo animals have "been in their cages too long" and kids can come pick an animal that has a particular wiggle song on the back. I'll test it out this Sunday if I can make enough animals.
PS- I have fallen in love with Sarah Jane. When I was in high school, I had two choices for my creative outlets, basically. One was choir/music, the other was art. To begin with, I took an art class and choir classes. Then I had a really bad art teacher, and also figured out that art meant work, and let's be honest. I was a teenager. Choir wasn't as much work. Someday I will go back and take some painting/watercolor classes I think, because I never made it that far in art before I dropped the class. Sarah Jane makes me want to drop everything I'm doing and start drawing for kids' books. Like majorly. I can't look through her stuff too long without feeling like I'm wasting my life not creating something as DARLLINGLY cute as her stuff is.



I borrowed the elephant from Sarah Jane. It's not exactly the same, but it was too cute not to try to imitate!

Mormon Blogging

I've been thinking a lot about blogging lately. I recently read an article a friend of mine posted on facebook (that I later reposted on my own page) about this self-proclaimed feminist atheist woman who was addicted to reading mormon womens' blogs. She loved their sense of thrift, creativity, motherhood, simpleness, etc, but couldn't accurately figure out why because of her own beliefs, which she thought were opposite to theirs. It was a pretty good article if anyone is interested in reading it here.
So, then I started looking at the bloggers of the women she was reading constantly, and then reading the blogs that they followed, and the blogs that they followed and so on. A lot of things sort of rubbed me the wrong way and I had a hard time pinpointing what it was. Some, not all, of the mormon women seemed to, in my opinion, almost pride themselves in the fact that yes, they were mormon, but not a so called "main-stream" mormons. It was their beliefs in things that were different than what every other mormon believed that made them unique, stand out, more intelligent, more independent. One particular woman was in the process of applying to graduate school at BYU and was now questioning whether or not she should delete some of her previous entries for fear that if an administrator read her blog, some of her opinions could disqualify her from acceptance. Her friends than encouraged her to stand by what she wrote and don't be afraid of what anyone else thinks.
I think back on when I was in high school and the word "fake" became very prevelant. "He's so fake, I would never date him." "I can't believe she said that, she's so fake," implying that there are people out there who exist, with morals, standards, likes and dislikes, but who ignore them for the sake of popularity. It was an extension of the insecurity that ALL teenagers have about popularity. No one knows if they are popular or not, not even the popular ones. However, if I can identify others who are doing things just because they want to be popular, than I can separate myself from that and prove that I don't really care about popularity. I certainly wouldn't have said this at the time, but years later while interacting with some teenagers, I heard that same word crop up, fake. And I immediately thought, "Oh, they are just children still, and can't see that putting themselves above others in that way only brings pain."
But don't we still do that a lot? Especially as women, and especially, unfortunately, sometimes as mormon women. I think when it comes to what the world thinks, sometimes we are insecure about looking like the zombie barbie-looking housewife who's greatest concern in life is what kind of Jell-O her husband wants with dinner that night and who loves and thanks every member of the ward at testimony meeting each month and who has no intelligence, integrity, or reality in herself at all. Even to each other we tend to do it. So we dip a little bit into what the world thinks about issues and butter it on our bread a little bit to show everyone that hey, I'm mormon, but I'm real too.
Personally, I realized this is sort of like having a home in Zion and a summer house in Babylon, and it doesn't really work. It caused me to reflect back on the things I do, even in relief society or at church, and try to put myself out there as "different", when I should be putting myself out there as someone who can help and lift and serve and who doesn't care if you eat Jell-O or if you breastfeed your children until they are twenty or if you proclaim yourself and tell everyone that you crochet AND do photography AND blog AND teach music (....ahem....)...
Anyway, point of all this being, I just feel like God made people different. But in faith, we should all be one. We celebrate our differences, not criticize them, but we proclaim the same faith and the same standards and the same God, because we love God, and the only reason we should do anything in life is because we love Him. If we carry His name upon us, and proclaim ourselves as members of his church, than we should represent him in all that we do, be we zombie-house wives or crocheting, blogging, singing, photographers. :-)
And....going on day TWO of sever-weather school cancellation. There's probably a good reason I'm not at home all the time...

What I love about thrift stores...

Two trips to find other things, stumbled on 25 books, including several additions to our Bearenstein Bears, Curious George, Madeline, and some of these luscious titles:




This book received an audible gasp from me when I found it: I had this book when I was a kid and a flood of memories came back when I saw the title- the chocolate ice cream, the tooth necklace, the tooth fairy, everything. Very exciting.

I love Jan Brett- I also got the Gingerbread Baby by her as well while on one of these trips, The Lost Mitten was probably one of my favorite books when I was a kid, but when I came home and opened up the Owl and the Pussycat, I was thrilled to find this:


I just looked on ebay and comparable titles by Jan Brett that were signed were going for $50 a piece. I paid a buck for it.
So, just for fun, I looked up all the titles I bought at the ARC online and got their shelf-price for all of them and came up with a total of about $100 ($150 if you count the signed copy). I then added up what I paid for everything (most of the titles I got were 50% off because I went on a Saturday and today, which was Martin Luther King Day)- $23 all together.
I originally went to get some new clothes for Linus because I've run out of stock from donations I received from moms of older boys at church (I would love to add up what I would have paid for all the clothes I got, but I'll save that for another day...), but every time I go to a thrift store I always have to stop in the childrens book section (Savers in Ft. Collins, which is now sadly closed, used to have a huge wall full of them and they were each 69 cents a piece, ARC isn't quite as good, but better than full price for sure). Our little kids library is full of thrift books, I love it. Craig scoffed at me when he saw me pull the books out of the bag and said "Don't we have enough books?" to which I promptly replied "NO! Not even close." When I was a kid we had a huge shelf full of kids books and each night I could go and pick one out to read before bed, I loved it! I wish I knew what happened to those books, but between all the moves we went through growing up they all disappeared, but I'm well on my way to creating our own collection.
Thank you ARC. You've made my life an affordable place to live.

In need of assistance!

I need help! In an effort to promote both my photography as well as my crocheting, I am in need of some children models for my hats of varying gender, age, and size! So here is the deal: if you are interested in loaning me your child to model, please submit in an email your child’s name, age, gender, and head size (in cm please) including a recent picture to chelseas_attic@yahoo.com. Of the applicants I receive, I will chose 5-10 children to photograph on a specific day in Spring/Summer. What you get in return: you can either have a CD including all the professional shots of your child for that day or you can keep the hat. Either way, you’ll be helping me out and it’d be a great chance to get something free from yours truly. J You do not have to live in the area to apply, but you would need to be available for photos in Colorado this Spring or Summer. I need children of all ages, even newborns, so if ya got one or you will have one soon, send me a note! Applications are due by the end of February. Thanks for your help and hope to hear from you soon!!

Christmas and so on...

So this hopefully won't be too long of a post, but I feel like I have a lot to cover! First and foremost: Christmas! It was fun. Short week and a half, but fun. I don't think I did diddly squat the whole time. The only thing Craig and I really had on our agenda was to have fun on Christmas, take the kids to the pool at the Fun Plex sometime, and see Tron, and we conquered all three. I would have loved to take my camera to the Fun Plex, they have a pretty awesome splashy-watery-playground there, but there was no way I was going to risk damaging my camera for that, so I left it at home. Note to self: next Christmas I want a cheapo waterproof camera. The kids had a blast on Christmas, had a blast at the pool, and were sleeping when we went to see Tron. :-) Although I did go and see Tangled with Chloe and my two sisters-in-law: loved it. It was totally not what I was expecting and I laughed outloud through a lot of it. :-)
Anyway, here are a few shots. I had a lot more, but I don't want to waste my entire night waiting for pictures to load on blogger, so I'll just get the important ones.

I love Odell's eyes in this shot. She gives this look a lot nowadays when a toy is presented in front of her because she's finally figuring out how to get it in her hands and then in turn, in her mouth.
Remember when I said we splurged and got the kids something big this Christmas? Well here they are unwrapping it. I only had my 50 mm lens on, so I couldn't get a lot of it in the shot, but it took up like the whole living room when Santa left it by the tree...

What is it??Pow-pow-POWER WHEELS! When I was a kid, only the rich kids had power wheels. Well, we're not rich, but we just couldn't resist. :-) They love it! Unfortunately it's snowed a bunch the last couple of weeks and so we haven't been able to take it out much, but here you can see Chloe enjoying it. Linus just crashes it into everything, but he sure has fun doing it.

Yes, that is my husband barbequeing in the snow. Why wait until summer to enjoy all the good food? That was the Ellingson philosophy on this particular snowy night. Not rain nor snow nor storm will keep us from our ribs...Well, it's getting late, so I'll just post one more update: Odell's four month checkup (at five months). She weighs 13 lbs. 2 oz....oh poop, and I forgot how long she is and how big her head is. The sheet is in the car and I'm too lazy and cold to go out in the garage and get it. I do remember, however, that her percentages have gone way down since her last visit (except for her head size, that's still at a whopping 99%). I definitely noticed that she's not as big as my other two were at the same age, but she doesn't look gaunt or anything. She was at 66% for weight and 80% for height and dropped down to 18% for weight and 23% for height. Her doctor things she's just gearing up for a growth spurt, but we'll check again in another 6 weeks just to make sure. In the meantime, her large noggin is preventing her from having a very enjoyable tummy time because she's got a lot of head to hold up, which means we just need to do it more so she can build her neck muscles. I'm not too worried about anything, she eats well, has lots of rolls on her legs and arms, and is a happy baby.
As you can see here.

Merry Christmas

I'm going to try really hard to get more pictures this Christmas. In years past I just get too caught up in the moment and only snap a few photos, then come "slideshow" time for the kids' birthday, I don't have much to chose from. Plus it's nice to have the memories. So far I've documented a full out session of dress up this morning (including "cowboys and indians" and "Cinderella") and a bit of an awesome battle of Axis and Allies where the opponents were 600 miles apart (they played on skype- that's just about as nerdy as you can get I'm pretty sure)This Christmas is going to be BIG for our kids. I got some extra photo shoots than I normally have this season and so we splurged and bought something for the kids that's one of those things that you always wanted as a kid, but your parents would never get. I told Craig no at first, but then later succumbed when I saw how excited he was getting about it...anyway, Santa is going all out this year. That's all I have to say about that.
Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and remember our Savior and his humble birth this Christmas season. The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of Christ.

The Highland Lady

Is a new blog. For my crocheting. Check it out! :-)
http://thehighlandlady.blogspot.com/
...and if you want to laugh (or cry, like I felt like doing), read my last blog post about Chloe this evening that will now be shadowed by this one.
Lubs