Sacrifices

I'm so bummed to be typing this, but I'm sure you've noticed I haven't blogged in like a month. I was on a 2 week vacation (which was HEAVEN and everything I needed it to be, thank you Mom & Dad & Gabby & Mickiala:), and then when I got back I was waaaay backed up on orders, and now my Munchkins, who have TOTAL immune systems of steel are both sick, and I'm starting my marathon training up again and Firedaughter is insane, and well...I need to give something up to make my life less hectic, and I'm afraid that regular entries in my blog are what it has to be. Between my website, my Etsy shop, and my Facebook (which I CAN'T give up, I am an addict) I'm on the computer way too much and Big Daddy is feeling a little like he's getting the short end of the stick. Alas I am sacrificing my sweet little blog, though I will keep it online and ocassionally when something MAJOR happens or I have a Mommy meltdown and need to vent I'll hop on and type away, and I'll just hope that I'll still have some readers that are interested LOL!! Amy Hodge, Dell, and my other girls who I communicate frequently with on here, look me up on Facebook so we can stay in regular touch, k? That goes for you too Sara Buford!
XOXOXOXOXO,
Samya

The Queen of China

This is Autumn's new thing- she refers to herself as The Queen of China, and she totally plays out the roll all day, um...everyday basically ;) Her job as the Queen of China is to find charms, and if she doesn't find charms the bad people will want to be the Queen of China. Here she is in all of her Queen of China glory!

Not even tempted by Juicy!

Okay so I'm getting ready for a huge vacay extravaganza in about a week and a half, and of course I'm getting all prettied-up and planning my vacay wardrobe, etc. So I was like, I need something crazy fabulous-sexy to wear that I haven't worn before, and I know Shauna won't have time to make me something in the next week, so I thought "hmm...it's been a while since I checked out what's new at Juicy Couture." Actually, it's been since I discovered Poor Pitiful Pearl, I haven't bought any other clothes...but okay so I went and looked at Juicy's new dresses they've come out with...oh poor Juicy, poor people who are buying Juicy dresses...I used to LOVE Juicy, I mean LOVE it, and I do still love their velour for the winter, so comfy and yummy, but their dresses, now that I know PPP- now that I have like 10 custom one-of-a-kind pieces of vintage-y yumminess in the form of Hybrid dresses...I cannot imagine paying THREE TIMES the amount for a Juicy dress that isn't half as pretty, that a zillion other people have the exact same dress...it is SO NICE not to even be tempted to drop 250 bucks! I should also add that this blog post is NOT a backhanded slight to people who might read this blog who love and live in Juicy (you know who you are), I'm just really, really giddily happy that I have PPP in my life to fill the fashion void that was here for so long!!! AND it's not just me- I was at a birthday party in PV today in the front yard of a house and a gorgeous Playboy-meets-athletes-wife type walks by with her nanny and baby, and she actually turned around and came back to ask me about my dress- so of course I told her all about PPP and she ordered two custom Hybrid's and a few off the shoulder tubes this afternoon :) I'm just sayin...that type of thing doesn't happen when you're in cookie-cutter clothes...alright enough rejoicing about how thrilled I am to have PPP in my life, just wanted to share this little victory!

My Girl is 4!!

Okay SERIOUSLY I can't believe that my baby girl is 4! Today was her actual birthday, but with it being Father's Day we had her birthday party yesterday, at Imagination Avenue. We usually have her parties at our house because we are so blessed with such a great house for kids and the hugest yard ever. This year though I just wanted to not have to stress about the house being clean and renting a waterslide bouncey and getting the food, plus cleaning up after, etc., so after talking about it quite a bit with Autumn, she chose Imagination Avenue. We chose the party plan where you have the whole place to yourself, and they take care of everything. Literally the only thing I had to do was wake up and get us all dressed and go! My mother in law made the cakes and brought those, so I didn't even have to worry about that. Now I sometimes wish that I was the kind of mom like my friend Stacy Altiery, who goes all out and thinks of every detail and is very Martha Stewart-ish about her son's parties- you should have seen the pics from his last Thomas party! But alas I am not that kind of mom, and I guess I'm okay with it because my kids seem pretty happy too :) But I'll always dream of being more Stacy-like... :)

Okay SO if I were to sum up Autumn's party in one word it would be...PERFECT! All of her little friends came, and they played like there was no tomorrow and ran around shrieking and laughing and all of the parents were able to relax and talk, since IA is the greatest place on earth for moms- the only place you can truly gab with your girlfriends and know your kids are safe and having fun, and you can see them and they can't get into trouble...I adore IA, and on a side note if there are any rich people reading this, if no one buys it by July 22nd it is closing b/c the owner is moving out of state. She said 89,000 and the rent is only 3k a month...so PLEASE I can't bear for this place to be gone, rich bored ladies, c'mon, this is your chance!! Okay back to the party: my daughter could not possibly have had more fun, no one wanted to leave, we could have all stayed all day...it was perfection. I think Autumn will remember it forever- I know I will. And now my baby is 4. FOUR. What is up with that?

What It's All About...

Oh heavens I am SORRY to my friends and family that my blog has been sooo boring the last few weeks- especially this last week. I have been so busy working that I have literally not even had time to have a clever thought or take a cute picture or...well, anything except make some fabulous tees! It was especially nuts this whole past week with all of my orders for Team Daddy, what with Father's Day being today everyone needed them before today- I think I made about 60 of them in 4 days, all different burnout tee and american apparel tank colors and sizes AND ink colors, which is what is the most time consuming. I wouldn't have it any other way though, that's my deal- custom custom. I get bored making the same thing after the same thing. It's my saving grace when I get to change it up and make them all different and yummy :) AND all of those late nights and full days of working were SOOO worth it when people started posting pics of their families in their Team Daddy's on Facebook today! Here are a few pics to share of some of my clients who suprised Daddy this morning! Makes me sooo giddy!!

Cutest Shots

I got the cutest pictures this week of my Munchkins modeling my Team Daddy's, just wanted to share- I think you can totally tell how awesome their relationship is through these pics :)

Brady's Love

My sweet boy, who is SUCH a boy- he's a bit of a brute, tends to barrel his way through all situations- most times I pick him up from the gym he's in a time-out for being rough- he is just who he is, and I LOVE my big tough boy. BUT there is one little girl who has melted his heart and peeled away those rough boy layers to reveal a tender, sweet, nurturing Brady. Her name is Miranda, and she is 5 months old, and OMG all he wants to do is hold her and feed her her bottle and touch her face tenderly and kiss her gently. And he talks about her every single day, and now he is carrying one of Autumn's dolls around all the time, calling her "baby Miranda", and just today he shared his smoothie from the gym with that dolly "Miranda". I cannot even explain how tender he is with all things Miranda...it is so lovely and unexpected and OHHHHHHHH I love my boy.

A Few of the Customs I Made This Week

It has been a CRAZY work week, and going into this next week it is already crazier...this is all good news of course! Here are some pics of some customs I did this week! This week was a nice mix of custom bling and custom screenprint work...when I do one too much I really start to miss the other. I also did a few pairs of flip flops this week (Dell, are you reading this?!!:), something I don't particularly enjoy but I do for just a few friends who help Firedaughter out in huge ways, like Denise from Studio 360 and Stephanie from Power Performance. Flip flops pretty much make me go blind, but I will NEVER forget the people who helped Firedaughter get where it is today, and so for them I will make flip flops until the sun don't shine. Alrighty, off to make some fabulous custom Team Daddy's!

Autumn's New Obsession Part 2

My silly girl Autumn has a friend named Emma who broke her arm and was wearing a sling- well Autumn has empathy pains I guess, and her new "thing" is wearing a sling um...pretty much everywhere we go! We went to the fire station the other day and daddy got her a real sling to use as opposed to the dishtowel sling she had been wearing! So we're out at Target or wherever and people are always like "oh poor little girl has a broken arm...what happened?" And Autumn just smiles and says "tell them Mommy". And I'm like "um...uh...she just likes to wear a sling." Kids are so funny with their "things"!

My Twins :)

My fave thing ever is when I look in my rearview mirror when I'm driving and I see these two pretty much identical faces with identical expressions on them! Autumn and Brady are 22 months apart, but I love how alike they look and how they are each other's best friends (and at times worst enemies!) It was not/has not been easy having two so close together, having them both be so young and demanding at the same time...but I honestly and firmly and with all my heart feel that the best and most rewarding things in life are those that you have to work hard at...and all of this hard work the last two years is paying off in droves, as I have what I always dreamt of now- two children who love to play together, who love each other fiercely, who have each other's backs so to speak. I can't even imagine how cute these two are going to be in high school :)

Running Fool!

SO you know how I ran that marathon the January before last and it wore me out so majorly that I pretty much haven't run on a regular basis since...sure I'd do a 6-miler here and there, but nothing regularly. WELL last week something came over me and I was like Forrest Gump and I just started running...and running...and running...and by the end of the week I had run 42 miles, which is kind of crazy- even when you're way up in your marathon training mileage I don't know if we were running that much in a week- and if we were, we had built up to it, which I did NOT do last week- went from oh, running not at all the week before to 42 miles. Smart Samya! I ended up having to take Saturday and Sunday off of working out I was SUCH a zombie- like pregnancy zombie exhausted, it was actually kinda funny, cause I knew I did it to myself but OKAY there is a point to this story, actually two points! ONE- HOORAY HOORAY for me, I finally lost the last two baby pounds I have been trying to lose for TWO YEARS now, and I am kind of loving having my old body back.

Second and most important point: DANG my body is amazing...not amazing-looking but truly amazing in what it can do. I was born with both shoulders and both hips dislocated AND clubbed feet. My mom's teeny teenage body just didn't have enough room in there for me to grow right, so my torso took up all the room and my poor extremities were sacrificed! Which is not a surprise if you know me, everyone makes fun of (in a loving way) how freaking long my torso is and short my legs are- I am 5'5" and have the same length legs as my friends that are like 5'2". lovely.) So anyways I'm born all deformed and funky and have to undergo many surgeries to "fix" me AND on top of that my nose was BITTEN OFF , yes BITTEN OFF completely by a Doberman Pinscher when I was 1, and of course I had to undergo several plastic surgeries as a baby/toddler to reconstruct it...I have the greatest picture at my moms house of me after a surgery in the hospital wearing nothing but a bandana around my neck and some little underoos panties and my nose is all raw and my arms are bandaged to keep my from touching my nose- when I go home in July I'll have to scan that picture in and post it, it is seriously the cutest thing you've ever seen :) So anyways I was also sick enough as a baby to have my Last Rites read to me by our Priest, and then in high school I had a spontaneous pneumothorax, which means out of nowhere my left lung got a hole in it and collapsed- well it collapsed against my right lung which means I had two collapsed lungs, and I was in the hospital and out of school senior year for about 7 weeks...AND in May of '02 I had a fall hiking on Squaw Peak and fractured my femur and had to get helicoptered off by Phoenix Fire (and it was an A-shift and my husband was working!)...and in between all of those events I smoked and drank and partied and did all of those damaging things to my poor body...AND DESPITE all of this- the things I was born with and the things I did to my own body- it still continues to be STRONG. It will still run 42 miles in one week if I ask it to...even after being cut open twice to have babies pulled out...it heals itself, and allows me to do what I want to...when I want to...how is that possible? How am I so blessed with amazing health as an adult when I was so sick as a baby- how can this be? What a blessing, this STRONG STRONG body is. Thank you Lord, I know I don't deserve the physical strength you've given me, but I am hoping You are proud of the way I am stewarding the body you blessed me with.

TEAM DADDY!

Oh I LOVE this one- inspired of course by Heather of AFDesigns, who had me custom make her some TEAM MOMMY tanks for Mother's Day for her and her daughter...I changed up my design just a bit here to make it more sporty for Daddy, but still soft and sexy (but not sexy- you know that's my whole vibe...sexy but not sexy) for mommy to feel girly and pretty in. And you can choose it all- your tank type (burnout or gauze), your color tank (from turquoise to white to salmon), your ink color (hot pink to purple to peacock blue to white...) AND you can get matching TEAM DADDY shirts for the kids- boys AND girls! Wear your TEAM DADDY all year-long, because you're his biggest fan :)

Sad News for My Mom...

I talked to my mom last night, she was so sad- she's flying out to Chicago today because they're taking her brother Eddie off of life support. This will be the third sibling my mom has lost. Her brother Joe died when he was 16 of Leukemia, and about 13 or 14 years ago her brother Jerry was murdered. Now Eddie's liver cancer is taking his life, though it could be argued Eddie has been slowly taking his own life the past 35 years or so...I don't say that to be callous or insensitive- I probably shouldn't say it at all but...I have such a hard time making heads or tails of my mom's family in Chicago, it's weird, I guess they're technically my family too, but the last time I saw any of them aside from my Grandma Bea who has since passed away was in the 8th grade, at Christmastime.

My mom is so amazing. She was 15 when she got pregnant with me, and 16 when she had me, and at that young age she knew that if her baby girl was going to turn out right, she had to get me out of there...and she did. With nothing- NO money, NOTHING, she got me out of there- away from the severe alcoholism and physical abuse and neglect that her and her siblings were subject to every single day...away from LITERALLY no shoes in Chicago in the winter and watching her mother getting beaten and having to ask neighbors for food...circumstances I cannot think about without sobbing for her and getting angry all over again at the people who put her in that situation...my mother has long since forgiven her father and late mother and late stepmother for all of that she was put through, but I can't...when she talks about her family I instantly feel a guard go up around me, like I have to protect her or myself from even caring about any of them...and for me the ill feelings extend even to her siblings, which is stupid because they too, were victims, but unlike my mother they are continuing the cycle of alcoholism and drug abuse and physical abuse...jail...they have almost all been in jail on a pretty regular basis, and it's normal to them- and I know that the life they live is common- poverty breeds ignorance breeds poverty breeds ignorance- vicious cycle. And I KNOW as my mom often points out that I'm a Scottsdale snob, and I KNOW that I'm only where I am because of the choices my mom made as a teenager...I could be there- in Chicago, getting beaten by my husband, sleeping on floors...dying of liver cancer. But I'm not, because of my mom. Who is so smart and so funny and so giving and so amazing and so STRONG. HOW DID SHE DO IT? I have a hard time getting my kid to swim lessons on time- and at 16 my mom took me across the country to Washington BY HERSELF and from scratch built a life for us. With an 8th grade education she got a job working for King County in the Involuntary Treatment Mental Health department- where she met my dad :) Technically my stepdad, but sooooo my Dad. And then my sisters, the loves of my life...I have a glorious, beautiful life, and who would have thunk it to see where my mom came from. And that she loves her family fiercely, despite what she went through...I know this blog is all over the place, but it is very cathartic for me. I have a hard time dealing when my mom is in Chicago...I worry about her the whole time she's gone..but I'm glad she could be with her brother as he passes to the other side, where hopefully his soul will finally be able to rest and his pain will be eased...I'm so sorry Mom, that you have to lose another sibling, I love you so much and I wish I could ease your pain...

A Few of the Customs I Made This Week

I LOVE MY JOB! This was a super busy custom week, I think I had about 9 or 10 custom tees this week, all of them so fun and different- being able to do my own screenprinting from home is SO FREEING for me- if I want to work at 3 am, I can work- I can work on projects in pieces...just so so so great for Firedaughter that I now have this capability. Here is a pic I snapped this morning of some customs I'm sending out tomorrow- I LOVE the one that says Team Maleah- there are two sisters, Maleah and Miranda, and Miranda is super girly and Maleah is more of a sporty girl, so their mom (who is FABULOUS and whom I LOVE) gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted for them- so of course Miranda got the whole Swarovski treatment, in my fave funky color mixture- fuschia, hyacinth, and citrine Swarovski are my absolute fave to mix! And then for Maleah's I went for straight sporty tomboy by doing Team Maleah in a fun sporty design BUT using SPARKLY bronze screenprinting ink to girly it up just a bit! I thought about adding a little bling but after experimenting with it, I decided it was perfect just how it was, and it will match EVERYTHING. There are also two tanks I made this week for a stylish little lady in Cali who is going to Disneyland next week and needed some FABULOUSNESS to wear!! Have so much fun Leila, and say hi to Tinkerbell for me!!

The Sistas

Finally, together! These two shirts belong together... sometimes they can be kind of snarky to each other, and deep down they're just a bit jealous of one another, each thinking the other is prettier, smarter, funnier...but their bond can never be broken, they are SISTAS.