Today my parents, Richard and Emily Horowitz, will celebrate their 45th Anniversary. They had yellow roses at their wedding. I gave them yellow roses for their 25th wedding anniversary at my wedding which was only a few days after their anniversary.
Mom and Dad – Happy Anniversary. I love you.
I know that I said that I was going to limit myself to one posting on my blog each day, but today I am going to post twice. I’ve been waiting for Erica to get back from her honeymoon and to give her her gift before I could post this. I am excited and want to share.
After we moved to Colorado, I became interested in scrapbooking. I should say, more accurately, I began scrapbooking because I had been interested in it for several years. I have a number of scrapbooks that I am working on and I have three albums from our trip to Disney with my in-laws a few months before Chris was diagnosed.
Chris has asked me to take lots of pictures. When Chris was a teenager he lost his dad after a freak snowmobile accident on New Year’s Eve. He told me that he wished he had more pictures of his dad and he didn’t want our boys to feel the same way. So, I take lots and lots of pictures. As I have time, I create scrapbook pages.
Due to our small living space, scrapbooking is a challenge. I like to have all of my things spread out around me and I tend to make a huge mess. Chris would say that was an understatement – I take over the entire kitchen table. And when I start to scrapbook, it takes me several days to finish a project. I can’t seem to work on one page at a time, I need to do several. It is a lot of work just to get everything out that I will need and then I have to clean it all up. Someday I will have my own space that I can use for scrapbooking and organize everything so that it will work with my crafting style. Until then, I will have to continue using the kitchen table.
Just over a year ago I was working on a page of Chris’ grandparents and his dad, as a kid. I couldn’t find embellishments that I liked that didn’t cost a fortune and I was SO frustrated. Scrapbooking for me means that I buy stuff on sale and look for cheap materials whenever possible. I have quite a collection of stuff and almost always can make due with something I have, but this time I couldn’t. I ended up purchasing something that was WAY too expensive and still wasn’t exactly what I wanted.
As a result, I started looking into making my own embellishments. I discovered Quilling. Quilling is the art of paper crafting and it has been around for a very long time. It doesn’t take much to get started and is generally inexpensive. It is detailed and can be challenging, but even a beginner can make some beautiful things. As I was Quilling, Michael came to see what I was doing. He LOVED Quilling. In fact, he liked it so much that I bought him his own tool (about $5 at Hobby Lobby) and he began helping me. He also made all of his teachers Christmas gifts (with some help).
Quilling is beautiful when done carefully. I use a quilling tool, toothpicks (to apply glue), tweezers (fine point) and very sharp scissors. I can quill circles for a long time, but working on making them into something is an activity that I can only do for an hour or so before I start getting frustrated and lose my concentration.
While I started quilling to embellish my own scrapbook pages, I have yet to do that. I quilled a design on a plain corkboard for my desk for last year, made a picture for my mom’s friend, did picture frame mats for my parent and my in-laws, helped Michael with his teacher gifts and made Erica’s Wedding present.
Erica’s Wedding present was the result of me having too much time on my hands and not feeling well enough to do anything. I’m not sure if I thought of it when I was fevered. However, it turned out to be beautiful, even if it took much more than I expected. Of course that is the way most of my p
rojects go, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
My idea was to quill the words LIVE, LAUGH and LOVE and mat them in individual frames, then to quill flowers along the mat of another frame and design it with a space for a picture of Erica and Les. It was a great idea, but it ended up driving me nuts. It wasn’t the quilling that was the problem either, it was cutting the mats. First, I hand measured everything to make a template. Then used a craft knife to cut the template to the right size. I had difficulties using the knife and a ruler and cutting straight. Then I had difficulties with the glue and the paper sticking to the weight I used to flatten things out. Finally, I couldn’t cut anything without messing it up. I would attempt to finish one mat a day – and it would take 10+ attempts to get one right. I was beginning to regret this project. Then I got a plastic template for rectangles – it worked somewhat better, but it wasn’t great. Finally, I got the cutting tool that went with the plastic rectangle template and it was AMAZING. Two mats plus inserts in 10 minutes or les
s.
I had given Erica the first frame (LIVE) a few days before the wedding. 
She loved it. I told her that she would have to wait to get the other 3 until she was back from her honeymoon. And they turned out beautifully, if I do say so myself! Saw Erica last night and was able to give her the last 3 frames. She was so excited! She said that she knows where she is going to put them and couldn’t wait to get a picture of her and Les so she could put it in the frame.
Erica and Les – This was truly a gift from my heart. I wish you joy in your marriage. Love you guys!
Saturday was my friend Erica’s wedding to Les. Erica and I worked together during the 2010-2011 school year at Northeast Elementary School in Douglas County, Colorado. We were both Educational Assistants working with Significant Special Needs Kids. At work, Erica was funny and sweet and we hit it off.
Erica has three boys (the younger two are twins) and Les has two boys. All five boys are between the ages of 6-10. While Les’ boys live with the mother out of state, Erica and Les are very used to the chaos of having boys at their house. Erica and Les offered to take my boys in case of an emergency with Chris. What’s more is that they meant it and had me bring the boys by so they could meet Les and Erica’s three boys (who live with them).
Erica has been a true friend to me. She met me when I was upset after being harassed in the Sprouts parking lot (a story for another time and after the court case is settled). She met me to shop when I had nothing to wear for a job interview and had one day to come up with something. She listens when I need someone to talk to and was absolutely there when I was a needy friend (which rarely happens).
David and Michael were very excited when they found out that we were all invited to Erica
and Les’ wedding. They didn’t complain when they needed to try on all their dress clothes so we could see what we needed to get before the wedding. They wore their dress clothes without complaint. We left to drive to Buckley Air Force Base an hour and a half before the ceremony because Erica was afraid that security was going to be crazy (it wasn’t). 
There was not a single complaint from the boys because we had to wait over an hour at the chapel. They both looked handsome and behaved like gentlemen. They shook hands with people they were introduced to and they gave Erica’s boys hugs and pats on the back. They were amazingly grown-up and I was so proud of them.
We are not church-goers. So I spoke with my boys about what was expected of them when we were at the church. Both of them were attentive (as expected at their ages). Honestly, I was surprised at the amount of attention they gave the Chaplain.
David during the ceremony.
Neither one of them really remembers ever being at a wedding (the last wedding they attended was when David was 5 and Michael was 3 – they are now almost 13 and 10).
Michael during the ceremony.
Michael told me in the car, after the ceremony, “That wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t too religious.”
Erica and Les had an informal reception in their back yard. It was a lot of fun and neither one of the boys wanted to leave. Erica and Les’ friends were great. The boys were helpful (they were some of the oldest kids there and there were a lot of little ones). I caught Michael helping a toddler off the edge of the patio when he thought that no one was looking, and then making sure that the little guy was steady before going off to do his own thing. David gathered garbage and was a good sport when the little girls were climbing all over him.
Several people came to find me to tell me how wonderful my boys were. I cannot tell you how proud of the boys I was! I know that they are great kids but to have strangers come to tell me how terrific they are was amazing.
Erica and Les leave for Ireland tomorrow. They will be gone for 10 days and return home just in time for Erica’s boys to start school and for her to start working at her new school. I am certain that life will be crazy for their family! But, I know that Erica will call or text me after she gets back and settled. I know this because she is a true friend.
Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Thompson!
When I decided to start blogging, I thought how difficult could it be? I mean idiots blog all the time. I consider myself to be a fairly decent writer (thanks NIU – B.A. in English) and a compassionate, intelligent person. However, I’m finding that there is much more to blogging than I originally thought.
First, David has asked me not to blog about him. This removes about 1/4 of my material from my daily life. That is, if I respect his wishes. And he asked so nicely, how can I do otherwise? I believe that I am a fair parent and I wouldn’t want to antagonize my own son. However, we have agreed that there are some things relating to him that I can blog about (such as a story I am working on about me being a cool and awesome mom that relates to him). But honoring his wishes complicates matters.
Next, I can’t write about my former employer (I am officially unemployed) as my future employers could read my blog and decide not to hire me based upon what I have written. Also, I am still applying for positions with my former employer. Furthermore, I can’t write about my some of my opinions on current events, for the same reasons I can’t write about my former employer.
I also can’t write some things about my spouse, parents, in-laws and friends because it may result in them divorcing me or disowning me. And truly the web isn’t the place to air dirty laundry. On the other hand, some dirty laundry can be aired on the web, but I really need to be careful.
The issue that I’m having difficulty not writing about today is my friend’s wedding present. My friend, Erica, is getting married in a week and I am making part of her wedding present. I would love to blog about it, but if I do, it won’t be a surprise to her. Now, I can blog about it and then post it after her wedding, but it isn’t the same. And her wedding present it taking up the majority of my free time because I didn’t get started on it when I should have because I’ve been sick. But, I’m sitting here blogging about things I shouldn’t blog about instead of working on her gift, so I guess I can’t complain about not having enough time. I did really need a break as it is labor intensive – but more about that after the wedding.
Speaking of weddings, I was reading about etiquette regarding weddings in Colorado. Apparently, Colorado is considered to be a laid back state as far as weddings go. The one wedding that I’ve been to in Colorado was a formal affair so I wouldn’t know about that. Although, Erica’s wedding reception will be somewhat casual as it is a second wedding for her and her husband-to-be. Back to etiquette regarding weddings – did you know that the one biggest complaint that brides have about wedding guests is that they are Tweeting, posting on Facebook and texting about the event without permission. And the posting of pictures of the wedding on Facebook is, I guess, a major issue. As one who got married when there weren’t computers in every household and video games were a splurge, I wouldn’t know about Tweeting and posting on Facebook during a wedding (or reception). I guess I am wondering, is it ok to post pictures of yourself at an event, if you don’t post pictures of the bride and groom?
The second biggest complaint, according to the article I was reading, of brides is that guests are taking stuff that they have no business taking – like table decorations that have been rented. Is it that guests feel entitled to “stuff” after buying a gift, getting dressed up and attending the wedding? These days many guests don’t bother to attend the wedding and just appear at the reception. I wonder what their reasoning is for walking off with stuff.
And why is it that many guests don’t feel that they need to attend the ceremony? Is it because many people aren’t religious and don’t feel the need to attend a religious ceremony? I’m not a church going person (WAIT – stop the presses!!! – Religion should have been included in What Not to Blog About)
SIDE NOTE – Please stop reading if you are going to be offended or if you are a future employer who may hold my religious beliefs against me. If you are going to give me points for my religious beliefs, please keep reading.
As I said, I’m not a church going person and my actual religious beliefs are irrelevant to this blog. However, while I would rather not spend an hour or so in a church participating in rituals that don’t have meaning for me, they generally mean something to the bride and groom. As such, I am honored to witness a ceremony that holds meaning to them and make a point of getting myself to the church. If I can manage it, as a non-church going person, those who do hold religious beliefs that result in them going to church should get their bottoms in a pew. But, maybe this isn’t something I should blog about.
landamongthestars 
