Anxious and Overwhelmed {The Cure}

Lately I have been overwhelmed and anxious…like the kind that makes you think you may be a little on the crazy side.  I have to literally say to myself, “Breathe Laura, breathe.”  And then Harper will catch me and say, “Mom who are you talking to?”…Adding just a bit to the craziness already…I really hope she won’t inherit my crazy.

I feel like I have 50 orders started and not one completed…I know customers are waiting, waiting and waiting.  I promise with everything, that I do my absolute best to keep orders organized, accommodate for date requirements and that I work the hardest I can.  That is a huge promise, but with all that I am a wife and mom first and then add life in general to that  and things can get really overwhelming sometimes…this is the #1 reason I close orders once I reach a certain order amount.

This morning I really, really needed to get a completed order under my belt and my kiddos do play pretty well together and were in an intense pretend game of “mom, dad and baby”.  Harper can seriously get the boys to play just about anything.  Right when I started to try and knock out this one piece…once and for all…finally get that feeling of “Ahhh, I just accomplished something”…Harper came to me and asked, “Can we pleeeaaase do some Halloween crafting?”  Honestly, it was the last thing I wanted to do at that moment, but my head has been so off kilter from anxiety and this feeling of drowning, that I thought to myself, “This is what I need.”

I can’t say I have learned a ton of real coping skills in my life, sad, but true.  But one thing I have learned over time, and in that time being a consistent anxious, overwhelmed, say “yes” way too much, don’t say “I can’t” enough, over achiever, is that in that moment when I feel that literally my head is going to explode and the world is going to end if I don’t get that one last thing marked off my “to-do” list, that if I do something for someone else…yes, give my time to someone else…things get better.  One thing I do believe with all my heart, is to Love God and Love Others more than anything and stepping outside my own “to-do” list and giving to someone else makes the world right again.

So we set to work.  For those of you who don’t know, I use to be a kindergarten teacher and I did love it.  We’re talking about getting to my classroom way before school started and coming home way to late in the evening.  I had no kids at that point and was not a paid artist, so teaching was not only my job, but my hobby and I didn’t just want to be good at it, I wanted to be fantastic and ridiculously great and amazing at it…I do realize I have a problem 🙂  Acknowledgement is the first step right?  So every now and then some of my kindergarten projects find their way back into our house…but with a Kelley kid touch added.

When Harper asked me to Halloween craft with her, I had nothing planned, nothing waiting for us to do.  So the first thing I thought about was a little art project I would do with my students that simply showed the difference in a pumpkin and a jack-o-lantern.  I have no idea where I go this idea.  I haven’t taught in over 4 years and at that point I had countless hours available to search the internet for all kinds of ideas, so if this your idea, then kudos to you…I promise I’m not trying to steal your idea.

First I gathered our supplies…things just laying around your house…no special trip to a craft store is needed for this.

I let each kiddo decide how they wanted to make their pumpkin orange…hence, the crayons, markers, orange paint and orange dot painter.  They all decided to paint their pumpkin, so we didn’t even need those other supplies.

Then once our pumpkins were dry, they got their cut on.

I had to lend Sol a hand with his cutting 🙂  I love the look on his face in that picture.

Then they cut our their stems.

They then glued down their pumpkin and stem to a piece of paper.  I let them pick our their own paper from my scrapbook paper stash.

Then I stapled a piece of wax paper to the top of their paper, so that it lays over the pumpkin and let them each draw a jack-o-lantern face on the wax paper with a sharpie marker.  And there you have it.

Pumpkins…

And then jack-o-lanterns…

Harper took care of everyone’s names and I added the date.

And now they are displayed and I have some very proud kiddos.

This was just a taste for Harper.  She is unfortunately a craft addict, like her mother.  So she begged and pleaded for one more project.  I recently saw a cute little Halloween paper bunting on Pinterest.

If you haven’t ventured out and joined Pinterest yet…I totally recommend that you do.  It is amazing and a great waste of time 🙂

If you need an invite, just let me know.

You can check out all my boards HERE.

The original of this adorable Halloween bunting belongs to Organize & Decorate Everything.  I loved the idea, the fact that it was all out of paper and that it was easy and quick…no special trip to Hobby Lobby.

So Harper and I took another bit of time to make some paper bunting for our family to enjoy.  The boys were done crafting, so this was mainly Harper’s doing, with my assistance.  Needless to say, when we were done, she was thrilled with her handy work.

Everything was made out of paper and then we just used a piece of ribbon and some small clips to hang each flag up.

Harper had a lot of her own ideas for each little flag, so we added our own Kelley touches here and there.

And when all Halloween crafting was said and done, there was nothing better I could have done with my time this morning.  And I felt better, like I had really actually accomplished something…finally.  And the kids and I were all in great moods and ready to tackle the rest of the day.  So maybe my one little coping skill really does work 🙂

Happy Wednesday!