I'll be using these a lot

Last weekend, my 6 year old daughter had an emergency appendectomy.  My husband is a resident, which is not fun in and of itself. Add in the trauma ICU rotation he is on in May and it has been a nightmare! So, of course, come Sunday morning when Jayci woke up in so much pain that she couldn't even sit up, Nate was already at work. I scrambled to find sitters for the three other kids so I could take Jayci to the ER for the 2nd time since midnight. (Long story. They sent her home the first time. Pretty sure they thought she was just being dramatic. Doctors...:) Finding friends on such short notice and before 8 in the morning is not fun. Especially when your normal church time has been moved up 5 hours so that people could go down to Moore to help with the tornadoes. Everyone was already scrambling around trying to make arrangements for their own families! I felt awful throwing more kids into the mix for my friends. It was especially hard because my 18 month old PANICS when I leave her anywhere, so I rarely do. On Sunday, I had two AMAZING dads take my kids while their wives went to help with tornado clean up. Poor Jared ended up having to change a blown out diaper and her clothes, along with juggling his own 5 kids. Both of those men deserve a HUGE Friend of the year award!  Since I had to be back at the hospital by 7 on Monday morning so Jayci wasn't alone for too long after Nate left her for work at 5:30, I again had to drop my 3 kids with friends...on Memorial Day...with no idea when I would be back. I sincerely hate doing that to people, but I appreciate them and am so thankful for good friends who were willing to help me out! So, to show just a little bit of my gratitude, I wanted to give them a big old Symphony Bar and a quick note.  I came up with these Thank You tags that I could print off, write my own note, and attach to the bars. (If you are one of those people, please act surprised when you get yours!)

Nothing fancy, but cuter than plain white paper. Download them HERE and, if ever you need to scramble to find sitters for an indefinite period of time at 6:30 am, please feel free to show your gratitude! Seeing as my oldest son has a tonsillectomy scheduled for this coming Friday, I am sure to be printing off more of these suckers.

Sleep Deprived

Griffin, my 3 year old, is having major issues sleeping.  He has been for about a year and a half. At first, we attributed it to the major eczema problem he was having. He itched all day long and all night long. The Dr. told us to give zyrtec during the day and benadryl at night, which we did. We thought for sure the benadryl would knock him out but nope! He still wandered into our room multiple times a night.  A few months later, we were able to get the eczema under control and we only have a few rare outbreaks. Well, guess what? The horrible sleeping habits persist. Last night, G came into my room 3 times then got up for good (and woke the rest of the house) at 6:00.  Not only am I getting deprived of sleep, but I KNOW Griffin isn't sleeping nearly enough either. Bad situation. I've been wracking my brain for months trying to find something that will work. Threats, treats, whatever! Then I remembered that when he was potty training last year, the thing that worked best was a sticker chart. Go figure! It wasn't the treats or the bribes, but just being able to put a sticker on his chart and feel the immediate gratification and visually see his chart filling up. So, without further ado, his new sticker chart for sleeping in his bed ALL night!

We'll see how this works out for us. Hopefully, it is as easy as potty training him was! When he fills the whole chart up, he gets a prize. Not sure what yet, but that's not really the point anyways.  I made some without his name for ya'll to print out and use. And the great thing about these is that you can laminate them and then use a dry erase marker to make different goals. I am all about multi-use things! Here are the links for the blank Teal and Yellow, Orange and Teal, Pink and Mint, and the Purple and Green.  And just for fun, here is the potty chart I had made Griffey:

There is a download link for this HERE, just in case someone wants it. Again, we laminated it and stuck it on the fridge. He filled it up with angry bird stickers SO fast. Hopefully the sleeping chart works just as quickly! Hey, a mom can dream, right?

The Reason

The second I put that title on this post, the song started playing through my head. Bleh. Not a fan. Anyways, the reason I am making this blog is to keep track of the things I make for fun so that I have them all in one place online, should my computer ever quit on me (or I kill it). This way, friends can have access to anything they want to use as well. Feel free to download anything I put up here for public use and also feel free to make any alterations you can. I have no idea how to save them as a pdf, only as jpgs. I guess you can import it into Photoshop (where I make everything) and make any adjustments that way. But, if anyone has an experience with making a pdf, please enlighten me in the comments! Oh, I am also working on getting my stuff together to open my own Etsy shop The Fickle Giraffe.  Keep your eye out for word. It will be filled with state string art like these ones:

 And some wall art like this:

 Church "stuff" like these:

 

Some cards/invites/announcements like these:

And I'm working on finishing some adorable girls dresses in a smattering of sizes. So, keep tabs on me and I'll let you know when it is up and running!

Oh, and as promised, here are the links for the couple of things I put on 4shared this week. Download at will! Just a quick word about the Summer Fun stuff. It is all my own and what me and my kids are doing. There may be things on there that you don't want to use or you think is weird. Deal with it! You can change it, leave it out, or make fun of me. Whatever you choose. And the binder name is left blank for you to either write it in or figure out how to Photoshop it in. Good luck! Leave a comment with any questions. Summer Fun Folder and Summer Chore Charts
 And for those of you wondering, my kids will be filling out book reports this summer that I found here: