I hear that “blagging” is the term for a blog post where you just brag your head off.

Prepare yourself for such a post!

This weekend was the LDS Film Festival (which, celebrated it’s 10th anniversary, way to go Christian!).  Last year my brother Chas’ film “Clean Break” won 3rd prize and an audience choice award.

This year my other brother Ian, I have many and they all do film, wrote and produced a film called, “Kofi” which won 2nd place in the festival and an audience choice award.

Just saying, that is pretty stinking cool.

Also, my dad had a film in the festival called, “The History of Homefront” which is a documentary about the creation of the LDS church’s award winning campaign from the 70’s and 80’s of which my dad was a part of.

So MANY awards, so MANY Mormons, SO LITTLE TIME.

While I was writing this post I got an email from yet another film brother, Cameron, sending me a script for a short film he’s just written. Which is very timely as I think next year he needs to win first place in the festival — no, pressure, Bro – but there is a pattern here which I think we should try to maintain.

On a side note:

This morning Clara was playing with a few barbies and such.

I asked her,

“Would you like a snuggle from your mom?”

She replied, “No.”

So I asked her, “Would you like to poke your mom in the eye?” (I was curious, I have a curious nature, you see.)

At which point Clara’s face LIT UP and she came right over to me and poked me in the eye. TWICE.

Some people get awards for the work they do and some people get poked in the eye.

To each their own!

That is what the girls call it, our “livling room” and I like it. It has a nice ring to it.

I also like decorating. But I work at a snail’s pace. If turtles are destined to be the ultimate winners in the race we call “life” then perhaps, there is hope for a person like me — who AGONIZES over every decision, tries to find a bargain and never can, takes months to hang a picture….etc, etc.

ANYWAY

I feel like our living room (or livling room) has finally reached a state where I can show it to you with the feeling that, although never “finished,” it at least feels complete.

BUT

before I do, will you pretend like you really care and take a walk with me down old memory lane, you know, just to see how far these four walls have come? It might even be fun?

Maybe.

Here is what the room looked like before it even belonged to us. (check out the poster of the monkey downing rum – that is something special!)

I don’t want to slam the other owner’s style. They took beautiful care of the house and they are really great people. But every room in the house was painted a different color (the bathroom was bubble gum pink, the nursery neon yellow, the entry way was black wallpaper…you get the idea)

It was just too much for us.

So when we moved in we painted everything in different shades of taupe (with a little blue green thrown in the mix). Call it boring or call it a reaction to the color overload.

Me, I likes me some flow in a house.

Okay, so here is the living room with our furniture from our Boston dwelling.

Eh.

It is much calmer, but not even CLOSE to being there.  This furniture looked so good in our other place, but here it just looked blah!

So,

fast-forward three and a half years

and

here

it

is

today….

(All the furniture is from Alice Lane – except the coffee table and the ottoman)

Now, if you will indulge me further let me show you some of the “details”.

Pillows: Zebra pillow, fabric from Alice Lane – but made by my sweet mommy)

This I bought from the Pottery Barn clearance section – originally it was white twill fabric. Suzanne at Alice Lane suggested this awesome Annie Selke fabric – and then my mom worked her fingers to the bone to re-cover it.

(My mom ROCKS!)

This tray deal I got at Thomas O’Brien’s shop in Soho. It was one of the only things I could afford.

Putting sconces on either side of the sofa was a genius idea from Suzanne – she showed me some knock out lamps that were $600.00 bucks a pop, but instead I went with these MUCH cheaper Pottery Barn alternatives.

The curtains were a labor of pure love from Liesa Card. Decorator (and wonderful human) extraordinaire. She spent hours with me figuring these suckers out. I love you, Liese! And I love these curtains. (with a shout out to the talented Julie in SLC who made them).

Ah, yes! This is an oldie but such a goody! This is what we lovingly call our “Ming Dynasty Throw”. Mom made this for us 7 years ago and it is still going strong. The girls refer to it as their “fluffy covers” and many a morning is spent snuggling under it while we watch Nick Jr. (so romantic!)

The Art in the room – still working on this, but you know, what we have put together so far makes me pretty happy.

This is a photo copy of a painting by an artist friend of ours named Elise Delong. Jan bought me the original for Valentine’s day a few years ago. But it is really small. It just got lost in the shuffle and so we took it to Staples, enlarged it, made this photo copy of it and framed it in this Pottery Barn frame. I think it looks pretty cool.

Here is the original.

Then, this summer we discovered an artist we just loved named Dave Hall. Who is a fly fisherman and a self taught painter. We just love his stuff so much!

This is the art on the floor. This rug makes my heart sing. And we couldn’t have gotten it save Adam and Jessica’s generosity at Alice Lane. They made practically zero commission off of it, just to take the price down to a more affordable place for us. It is the Thomas O’Brien “Julia” rug.

It takes a village to make a “livling” room, so they say. And I for one would like to thank everyone who has pitched in and made it possible.

And I’m especially grateful to the man of the house who paid for and put up with all of this. He was perfectly content with the original furniture. He is a good egg.

And just so that we keep this post grounded to the planet earth I wanted to show you what my bedroom desk currently looks like.

I bought this desk from a consignment store months ago with the intention of painting it and transforming it. But all I have done to date is buy two cans of little paint samples, and it has become what I call a “crap catcher”. You read enough of those DIY decorating blogs and you start to actually believe you CAN do it yourself.  Shocking, really.

The living room took three plus years so perhaps we should take bets on how long this desk will take me.

At the rate I’m going I am giving myself to 2012…at the very earliest!

P.S. “I am ashamed” you may have noticed that I have succumb to the “Karate-chop”

but only kinda sorta.

I usually love New Year’s resolution time. But not this year. Pregnancy is hard on me and I think it makes me feel detached from myself. Too weird to go into and who really wants to hear me psychoanalyze myself?

Jan showed me this TED talk at the start of January. It made me weep and I knew that if I could work up some kind of drive to actually make a few resolutions that they would have something to do with what I learned from this talk:

So I don’t have my “go-fight-win” special January feeling right now, but I’ll tell you what I would like to see happen in 2011:

1. Sleep. I want to sleep. I want to sleep more than four hours a night.

2. Be happier (I think number 1 will have a big impact on number 2.)

3. Live life more “wholeheartedly” and with more gratitude.

4. Give birth to a healthy baby

5. Too close to my heart to publicize, but Heavenly Father knows what number 5 is.

Good luck to me, and you and anyone who wants to be a better person in the new year!

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I am really sorry to hear that you are sick. I thought of you yesterday morning as my daughters sat nestled together on the sofa doing puzzles – one on the i-Pad the other on an i-phone. As I thought of you, gosh dang it, I got teary! I am sad that you are sick. I really am.

You are a genius person. You have a bazillion dollars. You only wear a black half turtle neck, blue jeans and sneakers (if we were friends and I had guts I might ask you what this is all about), you have come up with some amazing gadgets that have revolutionized the world we live in, you bought Pixar and helped make it what it is.

AND

You are a man. A human being with a soul. In some amazing, miraculous way we belong to each other, because like me, we are both God’s children. I think as I watched my daughters I thought of you as my brother who is sick. And in my heart I wished the following things for you:

that you will get better, that while you are sick someone who really loves you will take good care of you, and that you can be brave and strong.

Love,

Liza

P.S. When you get better and come up with lots of other groovy stuff we promise to buy it and keep on crushing on it. (How about that for an incentive to get well!?)

I leave you with a photo of Millie holding the i-Phone pinata that she and I made for her dad for Father’s day.  As she was coming up with the perfect thing to give her Apple loving dad for father’s day she came up with this…. Totally her idea!

If you get bored in the hospital, let us know and we’ll send you one! Sometimes when it seems as though life is beating you up it can feel good to hit something really hard, repeatedly. Furthermore, it is even better when, after hitting said object, your favorite treats fall out of it. It is genius. And being one yourself, I am sure you can appreciate genius when you encounter it.

My family has been crushing on The Snowman for the last 20 years.

The movie and book are pure magic. I have posted about this before. You have got to see it or read it. If you haven’t yet, I tell you, you are missing out.

This year we had lots of snow in fabulous Provo, UT. And it was PERFECT packing snow. Dreamy snow for making snowmen and the like.

So, Summer decided she was going to re-create our beloved “Snow Man”.

She spent all day working on it. (With a little help from Dad and Eno)

She even made a trip to the DI to find just the right hat and scarf, and she went to a fancy grocery store to get the right kind of licorice buttons.

It reminded me of when we were kids and she would get something into her head and then she would just DO IT with all her heart and soul until the job was done. Even if she had NO IDEA how to do it, she would just go for it. It is one of her best qualities. And in these pictures of her I think I see a glimmer in her expression that is PURE SUMMER. It is that little girl shining through!

Anyway, here is her finished product (at night, because. like I said, it took her all. day. long. to finished it)

Not bad, not bad at all.

Tess and Bette were so smitten the moment it was finished they went outside and gave it a giant HUG!

Hip and groovy.

That is what Warby Parker is.

It is a company that sells boutique-quality, classically crafted eye glasses for 95 bucks! That includes everything, lenses and all!

AND THEY SELL A MONOCLE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

You may think this is silly, I think it is the coolest thing I ever. Full stop.

But the monocle is just the beginning of what makes this company cool. They sell glasses for men and women (all vintage inspired, because that is the cutting edge of hip and groovy these days…or so I’m told).

The founders of this company figured out a way to get around the few eye-ware giants who have a monopoly on the market and charge fools like me $500.00 for a pair of rummy glasses, by keeping everything on-line.

Well, my dad, Professor “hip and groovy” Kelly was gifted a pair of Warby Parkers for Christmas. This meant an eye-glasses fashion show for all of us to enjoy on Christmas morning. (As it is an on-line company, they send you several pairs to try on at home or you can do a “virtual” try on session on the website).

Or should I say “EYE-CANDY”!?!

You get the idea, the man is hip. groovy. and I will go as far to say, stinking cute!

These were the ones that got the collective “family vote”.

Hip, no?

Groovy, true?

For 95.00 bones we can all afford to be hip and groovy! Groovy-ness for one and all – that should be a Dawsome motto!

AND to top it off,

When you buy a pair the company will send a pair of glasses to a person in a developing country who needs ’em. So not only will you feel hip and groovy sporting your WPs, you will feel a warm glow knowing that your purchase has done a little bit of good in this world.

No need to thank me.

It’s been a pleasure.

These are two of my favorite photos that Jan took of the girls while we were at my parent’s place.

We don’t do extravagant Christmas presents. I think this might be because we always travel at least 3,000 miles from our home every Christmas. So, you learn to pack light, friends!

Clara got maybe four things tops.

Her special present was a little cloth diaper bag with a few diapers, changing pad, wipes and a bottle. All made from fabric. I never want to forget how sweet she was with that doll of hers.

This picture sums it up for me.

Man, was she a dream!

At one point when she was opening a present from her Aunt Tess she declared,

“I be so lucky!”

Then she slipped her little tootsies into these glittery Toms, lovingly gifted from Tess.

I think I felt luckiest of all to be the mommy of such a sweet little sugar plumb of a girl!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

The beautiful Catholic church across the street from our home is still ringing out the Christmas hymns so I guess I can still crank out the Christmas posts, no?

Do you ever wonder, “Golly, it’s 5:30 in the morning! I wonder what the Dawsons are doing right now?”

Sadly, we are usually NOT sleeping. (actually we have recently pushed the girls bed time back to 8:00 so that they will wake up at 6:00…yes, 6:00 is sleeping in around here)

A day before we left for my parent’s this is what we were doing at 5:30 in the morning, you know, in case you were wondering!

Our 2010 Christmas elves (James and Jingle – every year we have different elves) brought the girls a nutcracker, a book with photos from Balanchine’s ballet and the CD of Tchaikovsky’s fine music. We like to call him dear Pyotr, you know, just cuz.

The girls were thrilled!

Off came the pjs and on went Millie’s leotard and practice skirt.

And the party got STARTED!

But we did so much more than dance…

…we realized our clenched teethed, gotee sporting nutcracker was deathly ill (remember we were listening to a Russian composer so we had to have death and sadness thrown into the mix, it can’t all be romantic – that’s not Russian enough!!)

(He was treated with such tenderness – I just don’t know how he got to be so badly off!)

Dr. Dawson bandaged him

Put him to bed

And checked him regularly

And in the end, assured us that all would be well.

I know what you are thinking, Chekhov would have written a different ending, but my guess is that IF he were still alive, he would be fast asleep at 5:30 in the morning.

Poor fellow, clearly he would have missed out!

Was pure and undefiled AWESOME!

(Never mind that as I was putting up the decorations I had to take a break to throw-up, not even that could dampen my spirits, okay, it did dampen them just a little, if I am being really honest).

But seeing as I am so behind in my blogging I am just going to attack this randomly and tell you the story of Christmas 2010 as if I was Charlie Kaufman.

This year was a Kelly year. Remember how I was so diligent in reporting our English escapades in London and Bath last year? That was pretty rad. This year the sickness factor kept me from doing that again. So, now, allow me to tell you a bit about our time in fabulous Provo, UT.

There was SNOW

and LOTS of it!

There were cousins, galore!

Aunts and Uncles by the dozen…

…here you will see the aunts and grandma at our “Auntie’s Tea Party”

Presents!

(we like this picture because LOOK, I managed to buy Ben a practically identical shirt to the one he wore on Christmas day!)

Good eats!

and lots and lots of LOVE!

Sometimes when I am home with my parents and siblings and my very own growing family I feel like a bit of a love glutton. How did I land this gig? How did I get such wonderful parents, such remarkable siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews. H O W?

I just love these people more than I can say.

It always breaks my heart to leave them.

We had some SERIOUSLY good times this year!

(Hopefully I will get up the gumption to report in more detail later…but I am not making any promises)