Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Party 2009!

Welcome to my second UBP! Last year I was a little late to the party, but this year here I am writing my post 1 whole hour before the Mr. Linky goes live. Woo Hoo! Progress!

So, what's changed in a year? A lot! One year ago, I was living in Orange County, teaching Spanish part-time, and leading a MOPS group, all the while figuring out how to sell hair clips on the side. Now I'm a stay-at-home mom in Corvallis, filling my days with pseudo-homeschooling our preschooler and running my Etsy shop, Ladybug Limited. My blog has had its moments of neglect over the past year, but if you stick around, it seems to be turning into a book review blog -- who knows what I'll be doing with it next year!

With the launch of my shop in December, I've branched out from no-slip hair clips to fabric button clips and ponies, which I love! This January I added my original hand-printed fabric button items, too. My little shop has had some review attention these last couple months, so I decided this would be the perfect time to host a prize on the UBP 2009 Prize Page-- I'm number 16 on the list.
However, I'm guessing that if this year's Ultimate Blog Party at 5 Minutes for Mom is anything like last year's, the competition for all of those great prizes will be fierce! So shall I double your chances for you? Yes, I'm already giving away a $20 gift certificate on the Prize Page, but I'm going to give away one here, too.

So how do you win? Just click on through to my shop (over there in the sidebar) and browse a bit. Tell me how you'd spend your certificate in your comment and that's it!

And now for the details: just one entry please. I'll leave the contest open until the UBP is over and then draw a name and post the winner here. The winner will have 72 hours to claim their prize, so please be sure to leave a way for me to e-mail you. By the way, if you don't want to miss a single shop promotion, you can find my shop blog here.

And if I win anything at this year's Ultimate Blog Party, these would be my top 3 choices:

• The $25 gift certificate to Amazon from Just Say These Words
• The $20 gift certificate to Amazon from Want to Know What I Think?
• The $15 gift certificate to Amazon from tree, root, and twig

Can you tell I love Amazon? My book wishlist from there is pages long-- I'd love to be able to put a dent in it. If my top 3 are chosen, I'd love any of the following: International 1, 3, 21, 22, 28, 33, 35, 36, US/Canada 1, or US only 19, 21, 22, 43, 56, 83, 97, or 99.

Merry Christmas (with a giveaway!)

If you are stopping in from BooMama's Christmas Tour of Homes 2008, thank you, and welcome!

We moved up to Oregon from Southern California this summer, so we took advantage of living in the Pacific Northwest by stopping at a tree farm last week to select our own Christmas tree. So here's the "before" shot next to Mugger and Bug's "perfect" tree. (Thank goodness I talked Bug out of the Charlie Brown tree!)
And here's the "after" shot:
They decorated it themselves (with help from Other Half) as I had been battling some sort of flu bug that left me with pounding headaches. I think they did a fantastic job, don't you?

There isn't much to our interior decorating for Christmas, but we always have these 2 up.
The wooden Christmas tree was cut out by Other Half and painted and decorated by Mugger. They were his Christmas gifts to the family 2 years ago. The nativity is hand-carved out of soapstone, a souvenir from our (before kids) days as missionaries in Panama.

And even though I've just welcomed you in, I have to send you out for a moment to see the view outside, our first snow! Bug doesn't ever remember seeing it before, so to her it's magical!
And finally, I can't let you leave empty-handed. Well, I guess most of you will leave empty handed, but if you'd like to leave a comment (just one, please), I'll pull a name (at 8 am PST on Tuesday) for these, a pair of Ladybug Limited clips (made by me!)
I'll pop them in the mail tomorrow so that you'll have them in time for Christmas. If you'd like to get some Ladybug Limited love for yourself, my Etsy shop is over there in the sidebar or you can head on over to my Ladybug Limited blog for even more options.

Merry Christmas and thanks for stopping by!

Edited to add: I'm going to keep the giveaway open one more day-- BooMama's site wouldn't load for me most of yesterday, so I'm guessing lots of others didn't get to do their rounds either...

GIVEAWAY UPDATE: I wrote all the names out on slips and Bug herself has drawn a name-- Kiy is the winner. I'll contact you now and hopefully have your clips on their way by tomorrow!

Welcome to the Party! (Better Late than Never...)

OK, so the Ultimate Blog Party hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom started last Friday, but I'm just now sitting down to join in the fun. Can you indulge me for a moment to tell you why? Friday I was packing to head out for a weekend women's retreat at Forest Home, which was an awesome experience. Our speaker for the weekend, Jilane Hawkins, had some words of wisdom that I will desperately try to hold onto. As she talked about the difference between being hurried and being busy, I realized it's high time I read John Ortberg's The Life You've Always Wanted for a little help in committing to slowing down and loving my kids!

So that was last weekend-- what happened to Monday you say? A little side trip to Tijuana before coming back to MOPS meant not much time for blogging, much less family, on Monday.

And as for my family, they're wonderful! To put up with having Mama gone for essentially 4 days is just one more thing I love about them. To read a little bit about Other Half and our kids, Mugger and Bug, scroll on down to my "Let Me Introduce Myself" post or just click here. (By the way, I never use my family's real names in my posts to protect their privacy, so if you know them outside the blogging world, please don't either-- thanks!) And if you're curious about the blog title, keep scrolling on down to my very first post or take the shortcut here.

Take a look around if you'd like. I haven't been at this blogging thing very long, so I'm pretty sure you could read my entire blog in nothing flat! I stay busy as a part-time Spanish teacher, MOPS coordinator, wife and Mama, but for some reason I've decided to launch a little home business, too. (Like they say, if you want something done, just ask the busiest person you know...) Anyways, I've started making hairclips for my Bug and have decided to share-- if you'd like to win a pair, pop on over to Ladybug Limited and check out the scrolling photo album. To be eligible to win a pair of hairclips of your choosing, all you have to do is...

• Comment on this post
• Tell me which style you'd like to win
• Leave me a way to get in contact with you (e-mail address or your blogging profile)

I'll accept entries until the end of the Ultimate Blog Party and will draw a winner on Saturday. If I don't hear back from the winner in 3 days, I'll draw another one.

Thanks for stopping by-- and good luck!

And if I'm lucky enough to win over at the Ultimate Blog Party, my top 3 picks (in order) would be:

• The fused glass pendant from Lucky Girl Trading Co. (#90)
• The gift certificate to Mikarose from Liza's Eyeview (#54)
• The 2 Wrap-N-Mats and Chico bag from Nature Moms (#18)

If those 3 are already gone, I'd love any of the following (listed in order of preference): 7, 59, 60, 129, 140, 117, 67, 45, 123, or 24. Of course, anything I could use as a door prize at my MOPS group would be great!

Let Me Introduce Myself...

OK, so here I am rambling on when I haven't even introduced myself. I tried to sum it all up in my profile, but here's the more elaborate version in case you're curious:

• full-time mom: to Mugger and Bug, 2 of the cutest kiddos you could ever hope to meet. Yeah, I know I'm their Mama and I'm supposed to think they're adorable, but they really are-- just ask their grandparents! By the way, I don't want them to die of embarrassment when some date or prospective employer googles them 15 years down the road, so if you know them, please don't use their names in any comments here.
• full-time pastor's wife: my husband (who shall from here on out be known as Other Half) and I have been married almost 13 years-- hard to believe since one or the other of us is always being told we don't look a day over 30. He happens to be a Lutheran pastor but is also a fantastic father, a great cook, a frequent mechanic (since he drives a '62 Willys wagon), and a not-as-often-as-he-would-like mountain biker. (That wagon keeps eating up his spare time.)
• part-time Spanish teacher: I teach 7th and 8th grade Spanish 2 afternoons a week, using the Teaching Proficiency through Reading & Storytelling (TPRS) method. Finding this method 8 years ago has convinced me there is a future for foreign language education.
• part-time MOPS leader: a year ago, I got the crazy idea that I should start a MOPS group at my church, even though at that point I had 16 months of MOPS experience under my belt. I knew I couldn't do it alone, so I told God and everyone I knew that I couldn't do it without a team. Within a month, 9 of us were meeting to launch an evening MOPS group of more than 50 moms.
• creator of Ladybug Limited hairclips: yeah, so, I didn't have enough to fill up my dreary days, so I decided to start a little home-based business venture which will be launching soon. For news on that, click on over here.
  

So there you go: me, fleshed out from my profile. As for my other interests, I love kids books (and for some reason have more than 1000 of them...), walking, camping, and traveling. I used to love running, but I haven't done so much of that since Bug came along. More recent interests for me have been trying to live a greener life and looking for that crafty mama that must be somewhere inside of me!

So Why the Second Blog?

In case you're a family member who has found this blog after reading my other one, you may be wondering why I need two, especially since I started this one over a month ago and haven't posted since! Well, that blog is more my digital scrapbook and journal where I get to record all the cute things the kiddos say and do for posterity.

This blog isn't for them, it's for me! It's where I'll be recording all those non-scrapbook moments! Stay tuned as I figure out exactly what that means...

So Why the Title?

"Holes in My Shiny Veneer" comes from a Sara Groves song called "Just Showed Up for My Own Life" (from her Add to the Beauty album.) The line I've borrowed for my blog title says, "Spending my time at the surface repairing the holes in the shiny veneer." I find her whole album totally inspiring, but that particular song really gets at the idea of being real and letting people see what's behind the mask we put on every day. In this blog, no mask! Anyone who cares to read this will get the me with the holes, not some Supermom. Enjoy!