I Made Pintrest’s Top Pins for 2013!!!!

Ahhhhh!!  Want to read that title again?  Yes!!  Because I completely made Pintrest’s Top Pins for 2013!  Okay so this year Pintrest highlighted all of their top pins in different categories like home decor, recipes, fashion and this little photo made the Tattoos Top Pins!

I’m still in shock.  I was making breakfast for the kids while sifting through my email and just so happened to click over and stumbled upon it by chance.  Crazy right???

The photo links back to my 1st Blog Anniversary celebration but that wasn’t the first time I shared it with you guys!  It started with me rounding up a couple of my favorite tattoo ideas.  Then after settling on the perfect design and finding a talented tattoo artist, I finally got my awesome tattoo that was eight years in the making.  After sharing my story with you I could have never imagined all of the love and support I found from so many of you.  I had a handful of other moms, just like me, who just wanted to share the love they have for their children as well contact me asking for help to design a unique tattoo for them as well.  It wasn’t long after that I decided to share my love for graphic design  by offering custom infinity designs in my Etsy Shop!  Since then I’ve been blessed to design many tattoos for not only other moms celebrating their children like me, but for couples celebrating their love and several others who were celebrating the life of a loved one who they had lost.  I’ve had the privilege to create a design for an amazing woman who wanted to honor her husband who had recently passed away from cancer and their four children they had together.  I’ve shared with a strong mother who wanted to celebrate her son’s life that was lost before she even had the chance to watch him grow up.  I’ve been blessed to celebrate with so many different people and I could have never imagined sharing my journey would have allowed me this opportunity to learn so many other people’s journeys!  So from the bottom of heart I want to thank each and every one of you who have helped me share my journey and meet so many other amazing people along the way!

I love my tattoo and would never change one thing about it.  It still reminds me everyday that I am so lucky to be a mom to these two amazing kids and that is why I do what I do every day!

   

I’m Part of the Craftaholics Anonymous® 2013 Creative Team!!

I am so excited to finally be able to share with you all some pretty crazy awesome news!  Thank goodness for this mornings announcement on Craftaholics Anonymous® because I couldn’t keep quiet much longer!

I have been chosen as part of the

Craftaholics Anonymous 2013 Creative Team!

For those of you who are visiting today from Craftaholics Anonymous® I just want to say welcome and I am so glad you stopped by!  Please feel free to stay awhile and look around at some of my favorite posts from the past. For all of my lovely readers I would love for you to hop over to Craftaholics Anonymous® and read all about the rest of the team!

Painted Kitchen Rug – Fall Wreath – Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes – Chalkboard Accent Wall – Custom Painted French Provencal Dresser

Emma Grace’s Photo Project

Custom Infinity Tattoo Design

Hyperemesis Gravidarum – When is it more than just morning sickness?

I can not wait to share all sorts of awesome projects with you every month.  I already have a pretty cool refab-furniture project all lined up! (Pssst…Want a hint?  Check out my old Inspiration Wednesday posts and see if you can figure out what we have been up to!)

Because I Will Love You Forever :: Inspiration Wednesday

**Update:  Due to popular demand I am now taking orders to make you a custom infinity tattoo!  Come check out all of the details in my Etsy Shop!**

A couple of weeks back I did an Inspiration Wednesday post all about the inspiration behind a tattoo design that was eight years in the making.  You can check out the original post here.  Well since then I have done dozens of sketches and dozens of revisions to bring my vision to reality.  I scouted out some of the best artists in town and checked out their portfolios.  I went back and forth on more variations of my original design and then this past weekend I finally came up with the perfect design.  At first I thought I would let the artist do the final artwork because lets face it, I’m a perfectionist and I had convinvced myself that I would never be 100% happy with something I designed.  I would always find something I wanted to change about it, but then at the last minute it hit me.  I knew what would make the design perfect, me!  Haha okay but really if you remember back, my original plan was to have both of the kiddos names incoporated into an infinity symbol.  I had been using some random font on my computer that I liked but then I realized…why don’t I have their names in my handwritting?  It was perfect!  So I wrote out both of their names on a piece of paper, scanned it into the computer and then did a little magic in Photoshop.  The result….

Once I saw it with my handwriting I knew it was perfect.  So this past Monday night my best friend and I had a date with an awesome guy named Ernie to finally get my tattoo.  It didn’t take long and he did the most amazing job.  It turned out absolutely perfect and exactly how I wanted it.  I couldn’t be happier with it!  So far it is healing up nicely!

So I know there are probably plenty of you out there that are saying to yourself “Why in the world would you get a tattoo?”  Well let me just start with saying I know there are a lot of people that think I’m crazy for it but hear me out.  Growing up I was a crazy child, I was difficult and stubborn and through my teenage years I was a living nightmare to my parents.  I will not even go into the hell I put them through.  By the time I was 16 I was heading down a really rough road that was leading me in the direction that no parent ever wants to see their child go.  Then I met the most amazing man and he changed my life.  He showed me how to be happy,  how to love and he helped me get my life going in the right direction, but then a positive line on a pregnancy test changed all of that.  At 17 years old the love of my life and I were going to have a baby.  That last year of high school was so hard but I was able to get through it with the help of my family.  Jake was born only a couple days after I walked across the stage and received my high school diploma.  A couple of weeks later I started college and Jeremy and I got married three days after Jake turned a year old.  Through those four years of college I worked my butt off and Jake was there with me the entire time.  Whether it was in a sling at night study sessions or chowing down on Goldfish and juices boxes that my favorite professor brought for him at an exam review I couldn’t miss.  I read to him out of my marketing and physics books rather than Goodnight Moon and he didn’t care.  He snuggled with me while I crammed for tests and he always wanted to help me sew when it came time for final projects.  My senior project was to create a fashion line of original designs.  Guess who walked down that catwalk like a pro for his Mommy?  Yes, my baby boy did and he was there to hug me when I graduated from college with a Bachelors Degree in only four years with a degree that usualy takes most students much longer.

Flash forward a couple more years and I was excited beyond belief that Jeremy and I had decided to have another baby.  I had been trying to convince him for years but we always kept coming back to the fact that we didn’t feel like it was the right time.  So when I finally saw a plus sign this time around I was so thrilled at the chance of having a normal pregnancy.  The chance to be happy.  All of that changed when I was diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravadarium (check out that whole story here).  I fought like crazy through my entire pregnancy to keep Emma Grace healthy.  This time around I felt defeated not only emotionally like last time but physically too.  By the time she was born Emma Grace and I had formed a bond words can never describe.  This past year has been amazing being able to stay at home with her and experience everything I was never able to with Jake.

Although I have been through so much with my two babies I am the luckiest mom in the world to be able to have the two of them.  I thank God every single day for blessing me with these two amazing children.  I cherrish every hug and kiss and watching them grow up in front of me.  But lets be honest not every day is perfect, some days are just harder than others and that’s life.  Like I said before, I am a firm believer that God will never give you anything that you can’t handle.  He only gives you challenges and tasks to make you a better person.  To make you stronger.  The more challenges you conquer the stronger you become.  Although sometimes it is harder to get through the day and I just have to remind myself that everything I do…I do it for my family.  I do it for my kids.  I do it so that one day when they grow up they can be the best they can be.  So yes I got my tattoo to celebrate my two amazing kids and everything that the three of us have been through together.  No one will ever be able to understand the special bond that I have with each of them, because of what we have each been through together.  So on those hard days I now have a little reminder that I can look at and remember why I do what I do.  Like I said I know there are plenty of people out there that are not going to understand and that is is okay with me.  Just remember I’m the same person today that I was yesterday.  I’m no different.  I’m not trying to make a statement to the world.  It’s for me.  To remind me of how far I have come and how lucky I am to be a mom.