Maya Road and Me

Thank you

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been thinking of my family and praying for my dad as he continues this journey and fight with cancer.  When I think of all the people in the world, I know that we are not the only ones doing this battle. My dad has been in a much better mood the last 2 weeks. He was laughing and joking. During an early December visit, I accompanied him to the doctor and the doctor backed me up and got my dad to agree to take some medication to help him with the dpresssion and to do so for a month. It is truly amazing how much better he is seeing life right now and we are so thankful for it.

My parents also started learning to Skype:

this last week. The lessons have been interesting but they are slowly getting the hang of it. They have been able to skype with some uncles and aunts that live thousands of miles away and it is nice to see them enjoy technology. Thankfully they also don't live so far away so when there are technology issues, we can answer them rather quickly.

It was a crazy week last week - my sister came to visit with her 3 kids and that made a total of 5 kids under the age of 5. Lots of laughter, fights, tears, smiles and even some movie watching. 

The kids had a blast with one another and they all were eager to open presents on Christmas Eve:

Eveyone was happy:

We even did some crafting throughout the week. We made shirts, melted heart crayons and ID badges. The kids had a ball:

And with that we are back to just the four of us again. This week starts the crazy count down week to CHA-W and the big tradeshow. We are working on the catalog now and it is going to be fabulous. I can't wait to share it with you! There are a couple of things you have never (did I say never) seen us do at Maya Road and we know you will flip for it.

And remember this fleece pillow I shared last week?

The tutorial has been featured on the Scrapbook and Cards Today website. If you would like to make one for yourself, check out all the details here.

2011 Crafts

 

So every year I try to do some fun things with the kids' handprints and share them with family (because what grandparents do not like getting sweet grandbaby hands in the mail?).

In 2009 we made some lovely Moose Ornaments:

Last year we made hand coasters (which have been used a lot this year according to the grandparents):

And this year (with a late start), we are making some hand fleece pillows:

I thought these would be lovely on the grandparents' couches. I am going to work on a tutorial this week as I churn out some more pillows. I have a lot of fleece leftover from my son's Angry Birds Party where I sewed up over a dozen and a half of some angry birds so this is a good way to use up some scraps.

Hope you are getting some creative time in before Christmas!

It is 4 am

 

I am awake. It has been a whirlwind of a week here in our household. I was over in Asia for a week just to finish up our final CHA-W products and make sure everything looked to be in order. With the help of technlogy, I was able to keep up with the kiddos:

With the time difference being close to 14 hours, it was hard to catch them but 1x a day. When I got up early in the morning, it was close to dinner time and we could chat for a little bit. They did perfectly fine without me.

I of course brought them home a couple of things. My little girl shares my intense love for Hello Kitty:

So I got her a couple hard to find things.  Noah got a couple of CARS 2 things which you cannot find here.

And quickly a week passed and I was ready to go home for many reasons, my kids, my hubby but most of all things were happening rather quickly with the health of my dad.

So a couple of weeks ago we had headed out to California to spend some time together with my sister and meet her new baby. While we were there, we did manage to get some family photos. This one is one of my favorites:

If you were to take a look at my dad (even with his stage IV lung cancer diagnosis in October 2010) he looks perfectly fine. He hasn't really lost weight. He looks fairly healthy. We are more than thankful that he is almost never in pain.

But during this trip he ended up hospitalized after a fall; he said he had some headaches and wasn't feeling well. They gave him some IVs and antibotics and sent him on his way. He was tired but ok the rest of the trip.

When we got home (and while I was in Asia) the doctor ordered an MRI for his brain, etc. My husband called me one night b/c the doctor moved my dad's appointment up. Now while I am no medical doctor, in my mind I knew they don't move appointments up to tell you good news.

And good news it was not. My dad now has some spots on his brain. His tumor which hasn't increased in size has not shown it is more active - on the hunt for places to go I think. So my dad started this week on radiation for his brain. 15 treatments in all. That should help to control the stuff going on there before they start on chemo again.

This week when I got home and spent some time with my parents, we also found out my dad now has prostate cancer. Something unexpected but after doing some reading and meeting with my dad's doctor, that seems to be a less of a worry in the short term though my dad will need radiation.

So it is going to be a busy time here in Dallas for us between appointments and such. My dad has been a bit blue lately especially after his fall in California but the last couple of days even with all the radiation, he has been feeling pretty good. For that I am thankful. We will continue to help him fight this.

We did notice for some reason he and my baby girl Olivia get along really well (here they are in June):

She seems to bring a big smile to his face when he is feeling so-so. Noah is way to active at times for my dad though he enjoys Noah being around too. Baby girl however is more mellow and they just get along really well. So we are spending as much time with them as possible.

In the greater picture, no matter how this journey turns out, we are thankful that Maya Road allows me and my family the time to spend with my parents. Even with appointment that end up taking 2-3 hours, we can go and make sure everything is going well. Life it too short to sweat the small stuff. I told my dad enjoy your life. Don't worry about the diagnosis. Get your treatment. Learn something new each day. Enjoy your grandkids. I told him no matter what, enjoy your time on this earth. None of us live forever so why waste it asking "why me?" and instead go out and live it. 

And it is nice to see my dad in a better mood these last couple of days.

We are going to enjoy our Christmas time together next week. And we hope you do too.

 

 

 

 

A little project in the making

I have been working on this project the last couple of days:

A little fun album (4" binder) with lots of Maya Road on it:

Can you guess how many different Maya Road products are on here? It is more than one - but less than 12. 

You need to make sure you look through every nook and cranny to find it:

The inside needs a bit of work but all in time.

Hope you are having a great Friday!

 

trees

 

So last year we decided to have fresh tree for Christmas and here is what it looked like:

It was a beautiful tree - smelled so good but the pine needles and constant watering was a pain. 

We don't have a big tree up this year; I haven't decided if we will get one. But I did get my kids each a tree:

They are tiny 1 foot trees but the kids got to pick out some beads and mini ornaments for them and decorate. They loved the trees and are sitting on our mantle.

They each spent about 30 minutes trimming their trees:

We haven't decided on a tree yet. This might be as far as we get on trees for this Holiday Season. The stockings are hung and I have some other things out but we are going simple this year. And spending more time with family b/c that is what is important.

 

10 Minute Ornaments

Would you like to create something special that you can share with your friends this Holiday Season? How about a personalized ornament like this:

I had these photo stickers printed last year for our Christmas Cards and didn't use all of them. I thought they would be cute as an ornament like this:

Ready for the tutorial  - check it out on the DT blog here.

Santa Baby

 

So the other night, Noah and I decided our concrete garden rabbit needed a nice festive hat. So out came the extra fleece from all the angry birds I made for his birthday party and here is what we made:

A little bit of fleect in two colors, a cotton bag and some vintage wooden snowflakes from my stash.

And Noah wanted to try it on for himself:

Little crafts with the kids are fun. I also started my yearly ornament/holiday presents and this year we are doing bottlecap ornaments:

A tutorial and some information will be up on the DT blog this weekend!

Freebies

 

So those that know Deb and I know that we love freebies. So just in time for the Holiday Season, I decided that we needed to do a freebie for our Maya Road friends. We made some cool printable papers that fit into our bottlecaps (click on the links to get the downloadable papers. 

The papers will look something like this (don't print the image below they are not to size ;) ) 

2" Bottlecap Printout (MAB)

3" Bottlecap Printout (MAB1400)

4" Bottlecap Printout (MAB1765)

Fun little printables you can cut out and decorate our bottlecaps like this:

And then you can turn them into fun ornaments and magnets like this:

And this:

So we are putting some finishing touches on the video tutorial featuring these two project before we send it out to all of our customers.  Just something fun to thank everyone for a wonderful 2011 and to remind everyone to stay crafty.

 

ETA: Here is the video. Enjoy!