The chiropractor kept treating me for “frozen shoulder,” despite my pleas that my shoulder was not frozen, it was damaged. So I stopped going to him — all he was doing was applying horribly torturous force to make sure my shoulder wasn’t stuck in place. Which it wasn’t.

I did a series of therapeutic massage, but the shoulder didn’t get better. It helped with the whiplash, but my shoulder was still causing me excruciating pain.

It’s at its worst at 3:00 in the morning. I think because I must sleep on it funny, then it hurts so badly I can’t even stand it.

I’ve been doing physical therapy for the last month, and still I’m in excruciating pain. Although, at each session she taped up my shoulder, which felt more supported:

Finally, the PT suggested I get a cortisone shot.

Cortisone is supposed to bathe the angry joint with soothing, cooling liquid to give everything a chance to calm down and heal. So I saw my doctor on Tuesday, and she administered this:

Big scary needle, but it should start making me feel better soon so it’s worth it.

So guess what?

I’m sitting in urgent care right now, because I’m apparently having a reaction to the cortisone. The doctor here calls it “Steroid Flare.” He says, “Unfortunately, the cortisone doesn’t seem to be doing you any good, and instead it’s giving you horrible side effects.”

Well that’s lovely.

I’m so frustrated I want to cry. I haven’t written about this whole saga until now because I haven’t wanted to be Debbie Downer.   I still don’t want to be Debbie Downer, but I have to react to this.

The doctor just told me, “You failed chiropractic, you failed therapeutic massage, you failed physical therapy, and now you’ve failed cortisone. We really need to figure out what’s really going on here.”

I’d like to think all those treatments failed me, not the other way around, but I agree with the assessment that we need to know in what direction to go next.

Until then, I guess I’m stuck with PAIN for a little while longer.

I am kind of into mismatched cloth napkins.  There is something so charming and casual about entertaining with a set of cute and colorful napkins that match, but don’t match.  Everyone gets to use one that is unique, and it just feels special.

Anyway, I ran across a flash sale several months ago and stocked up on a bunch of cloth napkins from one of my favorite napkin sources, World Market.  I was so excited about them, but soon realized I had way too many of them!  I gave some away as gifts, and then thought, well, if they are great for the table, why not make a table runner out of them?

So, I did.  Here is the result:

It is made using a pattern called the disappearing nine-patch.  I love the asymmetrical look of this pattern, and use it a lot for runners I sell in my Etsy shop.  This runner is available in my shop here.

I love finding creative inspiration in unexpected places.

Blessings,

Jeni

For the last six weeks, I have not been able to run because I did a pretty good number on my ankle.  Remarkably, all the other little aches and pains that I’ve grown used to went away –– no hip pain, no visits to the chiropractor.

It got me thinking, and suddenly it hit me. I don’t need to run to lose weight, I need to lose weight in order to run.

Maybe without the extra 20 pounds bouncing about as I run, I wouldn’t be so prone to injury?

I mentioned this to my colleague, and she looked at me quizzically. “Or maybe you should just find some other fitness besides running??”

But I love running, I said. It was so funny to hear her say that – it just never dawned on me that I would quit running. It’s become so important to me. I can’t wait to get back at it.

Running the Shamrock, 5 miles after spraining my ankle. Stop running? Never!

Next week, I’m officially cleared to try running again. I know I can’t keep up with my regular Running Mamas on our early morning runs yet, but I might run a shorter route and meet up with them. I’m itchy to get running again, but I know it’s better to take it slow than to injure myself even worse.

Meanwhile, I’m being super strict on calorie consumption to try to drop a few pounds — it can’t hurt, and it could actually help my running.

Yours in health,
~Krista

How I view my own beauty, health, and body can have a huge effect on how my girls view their own.

I read once when my daughters were small (or maybe saw it on Oprah, not sure) that girls who struggle with their body issues also have mothers who have the same struggles.  So, logically, I figured, the reverse must be true.  I set out to be conscious about how I handle my own “issues” when I am with the girls, which is pretty much all the time- so I needed to really change my attitude.

I decided to keep it simple.  Not make it a big deal.  Live with my imperfections.  Actually be cool with my imperfections.

So here’s my approach.  #1 biggest thing is I try to never make self-destructive comments about my looks, clothes, body, weight.  If/when I feel like I need to lose weight, I don’t make a huge production about it.  I don’t go on about it, looking for attention, or saying things like, “I’m so bad” when I eat some ice cream.  No side comments about how I really need to lose weight or that my jeans are tight.  It is a simple thing, but I think they learn from those kinds of negative comments.

As a family, we eat healthy food, learn about what is good for you and not so good, and seek a healthy, balanced approach.  We enjoy the occasional In-N-Out, and that is a fine thing.  Yes, we grow vegetables, but we are not self-righteous about it.  It’s fun, and yummy, and also not a big deal.

Fashion magazines or images of thin beautiful people are avoided at our house, and my daughters don’t even miss it.  I think for me it is not healthy.  I want my girls to see beauty in real women, with real bodies.  When they do see these unrealistic images, which is inevitable, we talk about them compared to the normal, healthy woman, and that it is not something to strive towards and become a focus.

I don’t love to exercise, but I do it.  I’ve tried to approach it in a balanced way.  I don’t do it to look perfect, which is impossible, and therefore discouraging for me, but to feel healthy, and I try to model that for my daughters.  I want to feel strong, and remain active.  The rest is just a side bonus.  I’m probably never going to run any half marathons- and that is OK too.

We talk a lot about how to dress with style without “showing too much skin”.  Living in Southern CA, there are a lot of opportunities for short shorts and tight tanks, and we just don’t go there.  No bikinis for us.  I want them to know that dressing more modestly with cute style actually shows more confidence- and LOOKS way better.

The society we live in is very self-focused, and if I model self-focused, body obsessed behavior for my daughters, they get to learn it before they even leave the home.  SO, this means for me, that I have learned to be OK with my curly hair and glasses, come to terms with my narrow shoulders that don’t look good in tanks, and through it all, have learned that I actually like how I look.

The first thing our daughters know as beautiful is the love in their mothers’ faces- and if we know this beauty too, they will always see it as MOST beautiful.

-Jeni

But lately, I’ve been drawn to yellow.  My slow warm up to this sunniest of colors may have started with the birth of my daughter, who, surprisingly, looks most beautiful in the color yellow.  Or maybe it was the Coldplay song…

Whatever the cause, yellow has been showing up in a lot of my creative endeavors, and you know- I really like it.

Here are a few of my yellow inspired projects.

Paper Flower Wreath

My (Prize Winning!) Meyer Lemon Marmalade

Sungold Tomatoes- our favorite to grow.

Bright Lights Chard. Aren’t the yellow stems pretty?

Yellow and Aqua- I love this combination.

Cute yellow floral skirt.

New Fabric!  I guess I’m ready for new yellow inspiration…

“Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and all the things you do.  Yeah, they were all yellow.”- Chris Martin

- Jeni

So I took a cue from Mary and tried my own food dyes.

I have a really great juicer, but my juicer happens to be in the trunk of the car that Brian took to work today. I think juicing the fruits and vegetables would have produced a much stronger color, but I was reduced to boiling for this experiment.

I had eggs from my parents’ chickens, which are mostly brown, some speckled, and a few Araucana greens. The green eggs we just left as-is, as boiling kale did NOT produce green water. Spinach might have worked, but I didn’t have spinach on hand, so there you have it. Work with what you’ve got, right?

I baked the eggs in the oven, a trick I learned from Pepper. Just place your eggs in a muffin tin (the mini muffin tin seemed to work best for me), and bake at 325 F for 30 minutes. I put all the smallest eggs in one tray, and the larger eggs in a separate tray, then pulled the smaller eggs out of the oven a few minutes before the larger eggs. Here’s another tutorial on baking eggs.

Once out of the oven, immerse the eggs in an ice bath to stop the cooking process. This method takes longer than boiling, but it removed all the guesswork from the process, and I worked on making the dyes while the eggs were in the oven. Easy peasy.

Once the eggs are cooled, I immersed them in the different color dye baths, and put in the refrigerator for about a half-hour.

RED/PINK DYE
• 1 beet, cut into pieces
• 3 cups of water, boiling
• 2 tablespoons of vinegar
Boil for about 10 minutes, then let steep until cool

YELLOW DYE
• 3 cups of water, boiling
• 2 teaspoons of turmeric powder
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
Boil for about 10 minutes, then let steep until cool

BLUE/PURPLE DYE
• 3 cups of water, boiling
• 1/2 pint of blueberries
Boil for about 10 minutes, then let steep until cool

Over-all, these dyes are pretty, but on brown eggs and with boiled instead of juiced dyes, the eggs all turned out looking like rocks. This made the egg-hunt in our front yard more challenging, which I guess is a good thing.

I plan to try this again next year, and this time I’ll make sure the juicer is in the kitchen where it belongs!

The kids didn’t seem to mind the weirdly-colored eggs at all.

The green eggs are just the Araucana eggs, baked hard but not dyed.

Anna made a helpful treasure map for where we should hide the eggs, and then handed it to the neighbors to use to find them! So creative.

Eggs in a nest at the top of our Fairy Hut

I just love Eric’s expression in the picture

There is no way around it.  The first quilt I ever made was really, really, ugly.  I had just graduated from college and had asked for a sewing machine for my graduation gift.  I guess after spending years as a vocal performance major, singing two to four hours a day, I was ready to try for a more tangible (and quiet) creative outlet.

My boyfriend (now husband) and I were talking one day and wondered if it would be fun to try making a quilt.  I thought, why not!  I took home economics in middle school.  I could do this!  So, we went to Chaucer’s Bookstore in Santa Barbara, bought the easiest looking quilt book we could find, and set out to make a twin sized quilt.  Yes, ambitious for a first quilt, I know now…

I hadn’t been to a fabric store since I had gone with my mom during middle school, (probably to pick out fabric for my home economics sweatpants project).  I went armed with my new “Quilt in a Day” book and chose the first light, medium, and dark fabrics that I thought looked sort of good together.  I also purchased a rotary cutter, acrylic ruler, and small mat, and set to work.

So much for quilt in a day.  Weeks and weeks (and weeks) later, between job interviews and resume revisions, I finally wrestled together possibly the ugliest quilt ever.  I think I took apart every piece at least once.  I sewed things backwards, cried over wrinkly borders, and did the most minimal amount of quilting ever, but somewhere in the middle of the project, fell in love with quilting.

That was it.  Despite that first quilt being a total disaster, I had found what my itchy fingers had been wanting and waiting for.  I had tried, but never really liked, cross-stitching, knitting, crochet, painting, drawing, anything.

Quilting, I loved.

I’ve been making quilts ever since.

Jeni

Strawberry Field Quilts on Etsy

But that means I was eating exactly enough calories to balance the exercise I was doing.

Here’s the disturbing part: now that I’m not running, I had better drastically cut my caloric intake or I will definitely be gaining weight.

Drat.

Time to dust off MyFitnessPal to log my intake, and re-acquaint myself with the anti-inflammation diet. I might even need to join Weight Watchers for the time being to make sure I don’t gain weight.  IDK. I’m for sure logging my food on the Mamavation forums, because it’s a great, supportive community.

On the bright side, I think it’s good to refocus my energy on my food. We eat pretty cleanly already – meaning we eat real, whole foods, as organic as possible, with minimal processing. But we can always do better, and I know we rely on some empty-calorie standbys like pasta and bread.

And… the anti-inflammation diet will also help my ankle heal. Maybe it will even help with the constant colds the four of us have been battling on and off since New Year’s Day. It can’t hurt!

For exercise, I’ve been using my Hoopnotica hula hoop that I got at Fitcation. It is so much fun, it hardly feels like exercise at all, but I can feel it in my abs later – that’s for sure!

Send me healing thoughts, please!

~Krista

If you’d like more information about Mamavation, you can ask me, or head there to check it out.

Here are some photos of the room we stayed in at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort (all photos ©Disney):

   The bathroom sold me on the Deluxe resort. It really marks the difference between the different levels of resorts!

For a short time, you can procure some amazing discounts for travel to Walt Disney World from now through mid-June:

Save up to 30% at Select Disney Deluxe Resorts!

Valid for stays most nights April 2 through June 14, 2013.

• Save 30% on stays most nights at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort, Disney’s Beach Club Resort, Disney’s BoardWalk Inn and Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge—standard view rooms.
• Save 20% on stays most nights at Disney’s Polynesian Resort*, Disney’s Contemporary Resort*, Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa*, and Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.

*Excludes Club Level rooms

Plus, add minimum 4-Day Magic Your Way Tickets to your room to make it a package—and enjoy discounts on both your room AND tickets!

Book by March 31, 2013 for travel most nights April 2 through June 14, 2013.

Sample Pricing:
For example, book a 5-night, 6-day Magic Your Way Package, including Theme Park tickets, at Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort and save $250, with a total package price of $1,593 for a family of four (for stays most nights April 7 – May 23, 2013). That’s like paying $67 per person, per day.  Booking Window: Jan. 3 – March 31, 2013 for travel April 2 – June 14, 2013
{information provided by Destinations in Florida travel}

Happy travels!

~Krista