Catching Up!!!

So, it's been a long time since I've written anything here and a lot has happened! I've moved home to Santa Rosa, California! Sunny California!! Where I've finally gotten some warmth!! Yay! But now it's December so it's pretty cold again. :( Anyway, since I've been home I've been pretty busy, so I've got a lot of catching up to do! Lets see, after leaving Seattle I got to stay with my good friend Jolene Lemmon for a week! She has 2 adorable little boys, who are little angels, well...at least they look like angels, ;) with white blond hair and big blue eyes! They really were so sweet and I had so much fun pretending to be an aunt! :) It was so great to visit with Jolene, one thing I love about her is that you know you will be laughing most of the time your with her! While I was there we went to the Beach, and it was so beautiful! It was so fun to hold their little hands while they went into the ocean, they loved it and were practically squealing with delight! It made me happy.

So after I came back to Santa Rosa I made some goal:

• Take the GRE, just to keep that option open. Check
  
• Get a job...still in progress. :( It's a lot harder these days, but I'm really working on it!
  
• Apply for Graduate Schools. - which is on hold cause I need money, and I want to make sure I really want to put the time and effort into that!
• Work on an online bookbinding business. Check! It's still in progress, but I opened an etsy store called Book By Design, and I just sold my first book! Super exciting for me!
• Paint Nativity Paintings for my mom. Well, I haven't even started that one, but I will soon!

So I took the GRE! I've been looking for a job, ugh! I went to Disneyland with the family last October, pictures to come soon!!! Yay! :) I put on a ward roadshow, also pictures to come. :)! That was a challenge, and a lot of fun, I got to know people in my ward really fast! I become the FHE chair and got to throw the Thanksgiving dinner at the last second, :) and helped this past week with Decorating for this Nativity Festival my stake puts on every year! Oh and I'm also in the choir for that, and it has been so much fun! I also organized a Service Auction for our ward. In our stake each ward sponsors a family for Christmas so to raise money for them we offered services and goods in a ward auction. We raised just over $1000! Can you believe that! In a singles ward too!! It was pretty amazing! And because we raised so much we're gonna sponsor 2 families! That just made my day, it's pretty wonderful that we're gonna be able to help 2 families have a wonderful Christmas!

So back to my goal of starting up a bookbinding business, well, I had my first official customer in October, some guy found me on linkedin, he wanted me to repair his old scriptures. He was given them when he was baptized, and the text had completely separated from the cover, so I fixed the cover for him and added 2 new ribbon bookmarks, the ones he had were completely frayed and faded. It just so happened that I got his scriptures the day before my family and I were leaving to go to Disneyland, and he was on the way, so I actually personally delivered his scriptures to him! I know, crazy right? But it saved him $11 in shipping, so I thought it was worth it.

So after that I decided to open an etsy store, where I sold my first book yesterday! It was so exciting to see that people are interested in what I can do, and I'm trying to think of different ways to get things going with this business! Well, since this post is getting so long I think I'll end it here, but be assured there is more catching up to do!