Garden Party

Well, a few months ago we had our 2nd annual "girl party" for all the girls in the family.  Not everyone was able to make it, but we had a good time anyway.  Stoyan was awesome enough to help me with the invitation.  I knew what I wanted, but was unable to do what I wanted so I am very grateful to have an artist in the family.  The invites turned out cute, I thought.  This year's theme was a "tea party", but we don't drink tea, so we decided to call it a "garden party" but, my garden is pretty dead and non-existent this year, so it was a "garden party" in the living room.  Maybe next year we can have it in a real garden... maybe.

Some of the girls all dressed up.
(When I throw a party I don't think much about taking pictures, so we didn't get everyone in the picture.)

The tablecloths were my old curtains, the runner was a scrap of cloth that is waiting to be used on a skirt, the vase... a mason jar. Yes, I was pleased to go cheap and still be cute.

More fabric scraps for the table top.  The mismatched tea cups and saucers
are from a thrift store.  Stoyan thinks it's gross to drink out of pre-used cups, but I washed them really well. :)

Too many sweets! But it was tasty!

The girls decorated hats with ribbon and hair clips
(the flower can be removed from the hat and used as a hair clip)

We drank lemonade and flavored it with raspberry or kiwi syrup.

Victoria got cream on her snout

Inspiring people

I've been watching videos on mormon.org/people pretty regularly and I find so many people that are truly inspiring, sometimes it even makes me cry.  It's made me reflect a little on my own life and wonder a little about the kinds of things I inspire in other people.  I'm still wondering.
SO, If you were a fly on my wall, what kinds of thoughts would you have about me and our home? Well, you would probably be relieved to know that I don't own a fly-swatter (incredible! I know! A girl that spent twelve years of her life across the street from a feed-lot full of stinky-fly-attracting cows, you'd think a fly-swatter would always be nearby) but, I do have a husband that knows Taekwondo and is pretty amazing at killing flies with quick precision.  I'd say he has lighting-fast-fly-killing-moves that can't be challenged by anyone within a square mile, maybe even more.  So, IF you WERE a fly on my wall, your relief at knowing I don't own a fly-swatter wouldn't last very long, but during that brief time (while Stoyan was at work and unable to kill flies for me), you might see ... ah, well, I hope you are never a fly on my wall, that would be gross.
Oh, and by-the-way, I am a Mormon. :)
P.S. In case you visit this blog primarily to see photos of my children... 

This isn't one of my children, but it's just too cute not to include.
Leah likes taking care of her daddy.

Playing in the "rocks" daddy made for the Days of 47 float

It's bedtime

Mommy, I need a haircut, AGAIN!

Midnight

And why am I up at midnight, blogging?  That's a very good question, while I don't blog every night at midnight, I often find myself up and wondering why I don't just go to bed.  I am definitely tired, and well, that's why I'm up.  I'm tired! When I'm tired I suddenly find myself side-tracking and avoiding what I know I should be doing -sleeping.  Stoyan doesn't understand; when he is tired, he goes to sleep. Me, well I find myself plucking hair, cutting toenails, surfing the web, wiggling my feet and not going to bed.
So, here I am, at midnight, blogging... and not about Joy, I'm too tired to be joyful.
And here are some photos of... you guessed it, my kids. What else do I have to post about? Certainly not... oh yeah, I do have something to post, but I'll do it another day, when I'm not so tired and lazy (I don't want to go find "the thing" I am going to post about, take a picture, post it, edit...zzzz....huh? What? ) Oh yeah... pictures of my kids:

Victoria has learned the skill of climbing door-frames

No it isn't Halloween, Leah just decided she was too lazy to go find clothes so she put on the closest thing she could find. A girl after my own heart.

Diliana loves her yogurt! That's the Bulgarian in her. She has to lick the bowl clean.

Such a sweet face!  Oh and look! Her eyes haven't turned brown yet.  I never thought I would have any children without brown eyes. And here she is, not-brown-eyed.

The house fairy came... The House ?What? you ask. Well, let me tell you...no, I'm too tired to tell... here's the link

Let's just say, "That house fairy's $0.75 were well spent."

Salt Lake City Temple painting

 

I  LOVE it! I wish he'd painted it for me. :) I will be making prints.

I got depressed...

 I'm not really depressed, but I did take a few weeks off of finding joy every day. :) But hey! Here are some things that make me smile:

I've passed on my love of chocolate!

Who knew a broken shelf would become a favorite place for relaxing?

There are few things I enjoy more than watching my kids laugh and play together!

Oh well for the skipped nap time, at least they were happy.

That deep, horribly planned, cupboard space isn't useless after all! (ignore the disorganized stuff in the cupboard, I'm still getting settled in)

Who doesn't love a picnic in the living room under a tent?

Happy Valentine's Day!

A message for Grandma and Grandpa in Florida and Bulgaria:

Happy Valentine's Day! 

We love you and miss you! 

YOU bring so much joy to our lives!

Mmmm.....Joy!

The candy bar that has the most appropriate name is the delicious, sweet, chocolatey, coconutty, Almond Joy! And I wish the Hershey company would pay me a truck-load of Almond Joys for saying so. But since they probably won't, my goal for the next week is to find a bundle of money so I can buy myself a truckload for myself... hmm... "give a man a fish girl an Almond Joy, feed him her for a day second, teach a man to fish girl to make Almond Joys, feed him her for a lifetime"... maybe I'll buy myself a truckload of coconut, almonds, chocolate, and sugar and start trying all those recipes on the world wide web that claim to be as good as Hershey's Almond Joys instead. I imagine with some good quality chocolate I might make some that are even better. :)  To start off, I think I'll try this one because it looks fairly simple and I must admit I'm all over sweetened condensed milk. (I don't know why, but I like it well enough I risk slicing my tongue on the sharp edges whenever I open a can.) And then, after that, I'll try this recipe because it also sounds good, seriously, it's got coconut, almonds, chocolate, what else matters in an Almond Joy? And then, I might venture a little further and add another favorite of mine, cheesecake, and I'll try this recipe.  But, in the case that I might not find a bundle of money, I'll have to sneakily save a few of the Almond Joys I had leftover from Sunday School and savor them one by one when no little girl eyes, or big husband eyes are watching.  -Yes, I handed out candy during the adult Sunday School class I taught today.  Don't you wish you were there?  :)  The lesson was on 2 Nephi (that's in The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ) chapters 1 and 2.  And with my love of Almond Joy candy I just couldn't resist when I read 2 Nephi 2:25 that says, "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy" the name of the candy tied in perfectly, and also helped with an object lesson on agency. 

Oh joy! 

By the way, I actually got a lot more true joy out of the lesson and studying these chapters than I did from eating candy, I'm always amazed at how happy, excited, bubbly and peaceful I feel all at once when I study thoroughly The Book of Mormon. I can't get enough of the scriptures, but even with my capacity to eat a lot of sugar and still feel fine, too many Almond Joys makes my throat hurt and my stomach feel...blah!

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

Okay, so Happy Happy Joy Joy, isn't something I usually say when I'm actually happy or joyful, but ever since I listened to a lesson on honesty and sarcasm, I've been trying to be less sarcastic and I actually mean it this time. :)
Saturday I was so glad to have a nice patch of sunlight streaming in through my front window, I curled up to take a nice cat nap in the warmth.  It turned into a nice cat slumber and I missed my eye appointment, but boy did I enjoy it! I feel sorry for all those poor unfortunate people who don't have a nice south facing window during the wintertime where you can just curl up in the sunshine. Here is one case where old windows that let the warmth in, is welcome!  And yes, this is a picture of my patch of sunlight, and yes, I vacuumed just that spot to take a picture of it. (I'll finish the vacuuming after my nap:) )

 It's so great that even little things can bring happiness, take for instance our little family "outing" the other day.  We thought we would go to the dollar theater to watch a movie, but when we got there we found that the movies playing weren't what we wanted to see, so Stoyan and I watched the girls take a few rides on the machines they had next to the theater.  I would say how happy it made me to have cheap entertainment, but I was actually a little appalled that they charge $0.75 for one ride! Are you kidding me?! That kind of ride should cost about $0.10 at the most! Who would pay that anyway?... oh yeah I was trying to stop the sarcasm.  Well, the girls liked the rides and we still spent less than we would have going to the movie.  I like to see my kids happy.

 

What's that? The grass is always greener on the other side?

As I try to figure out how in the world to arrange pictures with blogger I am NOT finding joy in the irritating way they keep jumping all over the page.  I guess, I'd better move on to more thoughts of joy before I scream and wake the baby up from her nap.

Final joy thought:

I don't really consider myself very talented.  I can do a lot of things, but nothing really really well.  I was talking to a lady one day about knitting or something like that, and she said, someone said to her, that she would never be really good at knitting because she was too willing to accept less than perfect work. I'm sure I got the wording wrong, but you get the idea. I've thought about this regularly, and I think it describes my problem fairly precisely, I like things to be perfect, but I'm too willing to take less than perfect so I just do things "sort of" but never REALLY WELL. (for example the doll crib I made recently and this blog) But, I do find a lot of joy in others' talents, especially when they do them REALLY WELL :)
I often find myself getting sidetracked on the internet watching videos of people doing amazing things, I usually come away feeling a little awed, and a little excited, and hoping to improve my talents just a little. (Occasionally I come away depressed.:) )  I also really enjoy watching my family in their talents.  One talent that Stoyan has and of which I've been in awe of since I met him, is his drawing/painting ability.  When we first met he couldn't speak English very well so this talent came in very handy.  Whenever he didn't know a word, he just drew a picture.  I could always tell what he was trying to say and it worked out great.  I definitely always want him on my team when playing...what is that game called where you draw a picture and the other people guess the phrase?  Well, whatever, these days his art is still inspiring to me, but we don't usually have to use it to communicate with each other.  One of his paintings he did this summer was one that I picked for him to do from a photograph out of my grandparents' photos.  I really liked the painting and we had it sitting on our shelf when my brother came to visit.  He recognized the building in the painting and said it was the schoolhouse my grandpa attended in Missouri.  I was pretty surprised because I had thought it was just a random old barn.  According to my brother, my grandpa's class was the last class to go to school there.  Now the painting has a little more significance and I'm even more inspired by my hubby's talent.   

So, now I think this post is really too long, but I needed to catch up with my daily joy posts. I hope you can find a little bit of joy in your life every single day!

Posting everyday isn't really realistic

I really didn't think I would think so much about these posts about joy.  I have a really hard time posting something if I don't have a photo to go along with it, but at the same time, sometimes you really don't have a photo to display a feeling of joy, take for instance Friday's joy post, which I just posted, was about getting seeds in the mail for our garden.  Should I really have taken a photo of the seeds? I guess I could have, but the effort just seemed more than I was willing to give at the time.  Does everyone need to see my seeds to know that they brought me a sense of happiness?  (Does "everyone" read this anyway? (Where is that smile image...emoticon...thingy :)?(is it legal to put parenthesis inside of parenthesis inside of parenthesis? (I hope "Everyone" isn't an English major.( LOL! (I'm such a DORK! Although...according to Webster a dork is a nerd, and a nerd is slavishly devoted to intellectual pursuits, which is the opposite of what I'm doing right now...except for the looking up words like "dork" and "nerd" in the dictionary. I'm such a DOPE!(Does that word really mean what I think it means?))))))))) Anyway... Friday I thought I would post about getting the seeds in the mail, but I also had a lot more thoughts of things that bring me joy, so I saved a few for Saturday's post, which I never did. Now, it's Sunday night.  I think getting a lot of sleep would bring me more joy tomorrow than staying up late posting about joy is doing right now, as silly as I am getting... I guess I'll cheat at my own game and save my joys up for Monday, I may need them. :)
And I'll leave it at that! Good Night!

Spring is coming...sometime!

Yes, it's a little too early to be getting cabin fever, but today I received an order of seeds for the garden we will be planting this year and I'm way excited! I love getting packages in the mail! Happy Day!

Joy: from Webster: A feeling of happiness that comes from success, good fortune, or a sense of well-being.

Just watch them learn!

I've been thinking a lot about our relationship to our Heavenly Father.  The more I learn about being a parent the more I realize how my relationship with my Heavenly Father is.  For instance, as a parent I see my children learn something new, like taking their first step, and I really rejoice with them, and for them.  I am so happy for their tiny new baby step, and that's how the Lord sees us, isn't it? He rejoices in our tiniest triumphs, and our littlest steps to becoming what he knows we can become. As a parent, I am not disappointed that my child doesn't know how to read now, (she's five and hasn't been to any formal schooling) I'm not even a bit down about it, and I don't expect it of her now, but I do find joy in every new word she learns, and I'm super excited when she tries really hard without me having to ask/tell her to, and I have every reason to believe she'll be reading before long.  I think the Lord sees us that way, he's never disappointed at what we aren't yet, but rejoices in our efforts and each new little step we take, no matter how tiny. Of course the Lord is a perfect parent, and I am far from it, but I feel like being a parent gives me new insight to his parenting.

My girls have really been learning so much, so fast, lately.  Diliana is walking all over the place, and seeing her waddle down the hallway makes my heart giggle.  Leah is learning all sorts of acrobatics and practices constantly.  She makes me feel like dancing when I watch her spinning and twirling and jumping on one foot and then the other.  Victoria is taking off in her reading and numbers and has really taken a liking to abstract video filming. She definitely is one to notice details, and her ability to learn things by watching others is amazing to me. I wish I could have figured out how to upload a few of the better videos she's taken, some of which have definitely made me "laugh out loud," but this will have to do.  Here is "Diliana Playing With Toys," with commentary. :)

 

    Seeing my children learn new skills brings me joy, and a little sadness, because they are growing so fast.

A little more JOY

Remember my post about joy? Well, I originally wrote it with a thought in mind that I would find something everyday that brings me joy, and blog about it. As we all know, I am not very good at posting regularly, and daily seems almost impossible, but I have thought about it so many times since then, I am going to give it a shot.

So...hmmm... I guess I should have thought more about this today. The first thing that pops into my head that brings me joy is having kids, they are so amazing, loving, quick to forgive, happy and delightful, and yet, they can drive me SOOO CRAZY! I must admit, the moment I know they are all asleep (hopefully for the night), is a moment of sweet joy.

Sometimes putting the kids to bed feels nothing short of ...uh, what I imagine hell to be like... dragging on forever in frustration and chaos, wanting to go to bed myself, but unable to. Just when I think I've got everything under control and we are smooth sailing to slumber, they go into hyper-drive and I've missed that perfect moment, you know, the moment when they are just tired enough to fall asleep easily but not overly tired. Hyper-drive is like someone gave them an injection of caffeine and spun them around until they don't know which way is up and let go.  They run around squealing, climbing walls, beds, counters, me, and anything else climbable, giggling all the while like a pack of hyenas.  This behavior is usually only stopped by some sudden unpleasantness (such as plowing into each other, or falling onto a hard object, or mom putting her foot down) and ends in crying and/or tantrums.  After the tears have subsided, and all children are in their beds, there is usually a chorus of  "Mom, can I have...? Mom, will you tell us a story? Mom, will you sing us a song? Will you sing another song? Mom! Mom! Mom! MOM!" At this point... I feel insane, and I let them sing their choruses along with the radio while I do dishes.
 
Thankfully tonight wasn't that bad, we hit that perfect moment almost on the nose, and while there were a few requests, they were not in abundance nor were they irritating in any way. What a relief! These are the most joyous of bedtimes, and I have to say, when they are asleep, they are SOOO CUTE! Who doesn't think a kid in quiet slumber is cute? It is so fun to watch their peaceful faces and my heart just warms inside to almost bursting.  Just seeing them in this state makes me ready for another day of motherhood, and gives me the determination to be a better mom tomorrow than I was today. 

And another thing to be grateful for... they didn't even move a muscle when I took these pictures with the flash on. :)

A New Doll Crib

 I love this website and have a mile-long-list of projects I want to make. But for some reason, I either don't have the materials to get started, or I just never get around to getting started. Then one day I got a little saw for Christmas, from Stoyan, and the previous owner of this house left behind a 1x12 in our basement and we had 1x2's lying around from some other project gone wrong, so I had no excuses and got started on something.  I must admit, I am really lazy when it comes to sanding, and the 1x12 board turned out to be very NOT flat, hence I sanded and sanded to make the boards fit together just right, but didn't sand and sand to make the finished project look as nice as it could have, but at that point, I was done. I spray painted the thing and then brought it into the house too soon, because the spray paint smell keeps finding my nose every once in a while. Oh well, it was good to have at least started and completed a project, and the girls seem to like it well enough to fight over it, even though it is "Diliana's birthday present."  Here is Didi baby with her new doll crib, a runny nose, and hair in her eyes.  (Boy, you would think I would at least do her hair before posting her picture on the web!) :)