Nice People

Aegis Newspaper Photo

I sneaked a look at blog visitors, and was suprised....I have not been a regular poster lately, and still have friends come to look at what we are doing???

Top photo:  flowers from Tiffany, along with a musical note locket to remember Max.
Middle photo:  fruit boquet from Carey remembering Max this summer.
Bottom photo:  Candlelight Vigil.   You can see me behind the lady in red t shirt wearing my florescent green jeans (!), and Sam with head bowed in background.  I've got my arm around Roxie, hugging her closely as she sobbed.  John's head behind mine, looking at slide show of all those who died from drug use in the county.  Last year the vigil was held in the park.  This year it rained, so we were inside the white bubble Zion church tent.

My technical goal today is to try and figure out how to make that cute little PIN button on photos on my blog...Originally trying to figure out how to Instagram something from a Pin and vice versa.

We have a drug-sobriety talk on Thursday at North Harford Middle School.  I have over a 100 t shirts done and ready to give away that night and at next presentation.  Family members that want shirts need to text me orders with sizes.  Guessing is hardwork when I don't see nieces and nephews often enough to see them growing!

They are still free--but we have been blessed with some generous donations to help pay for bleach, vinegar, and thrifted 100% cotton dark shirts (they work best).  At a yard sale Saturday my neighbor gathered up all the shirts that qualified and didn't charge me.  "It's for a good cause," said Dawn Carver.

From the Local Paper

We keep telling the same story.  A little different every time.  This last one, at the middle school where 3 of our children attended, we spoke last Tuesday night.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/harford/abingdon/ph-ag-aberdeen-heroin-forum-1016-20151014-story.html

I made sure all of the students attending left with a Defiance t-shirt.  Gave out the rest of our supply to parents on the way out the door.  And the sheriff's office ordered 16 shirts for their entire task force.  They loved the idea, the image, the word, Defiance, and the meaning we are attaching to it.

And that is the reason I am bleaching more today!  Trying to restock, have enough for next week in the northern part of the county where some of our children attended school before we moved here.

Same message:  be sober.  I always pray like crazy to know what to emphasize, what to say, what to leave out. 

Suicide Prevention Talk

 Wow---back from suicide prevention week on Aberdeen Proving Ground military post.  The first speaker, Tammy Woodard who works at the official suicide office, spoke about the worth of people.  She had a $20.00 brand new bill.  Asked who wanted it?  Then wrinkled, folded, stepped on it, smashed it up, now who wants it?  Still worth $20.00.  Good visual example.  She had a great power point with risks, danger signs to look for, resources (I want to take a photo of that slide on Friday, when she repeats her talk, and we do our 2nd one).  She threw the bill out into the audience, and Amy Landbeck Snyder caught it with her left hand!

John spoke first, then we showed Emma slideshow with Maryland State Boychoir singing, then me.  These are my notes, mostly followed, or paused and came back and read things.  I didn't know how emotional it would be, so I needed complete sentences to read, just in case...

1.  There are a lot of good memories in those photos.  

Thank you for listening so respectfully to my husband. 

I appreciate what Tammy said, grateful to be here today.  Max's youngest sister and brother are here, Roxie Jane & Sam, and his grandparents, John & Sandy Landbeck and one of his aunts, Amy Snyder.  Thank you for being here today, all of you.

2.  Bodies are precious gifts.  After Max was hit by the train they sent his body to Baltimore for autopsy and investigation.  When the funeral home picked him up, washed his hair & beard, let us come see him and say goodbye.  The funeral home pulled out one of his arms so we could hold his hand, hand a towel over the right side of his face and warned us to leave it in place and not move it.  I stroked his cheek, kissed my son, ran my fingers through his hair that was never that soft and full bodied in life. When your baby is born, you count all his toes, and fingers, make sure he is all there.  I touched his feet through the body bag, made sure he was all there by feel.

I gave him life.   We helped create that body, and it hurt me when he abused it, smoking pot, getting high, he picked up cigarette smoking in rehab, tripping out is scary---not just the crazy things he would say and talk about seeing.  

His self-medicating took him away from me.  Drugs hurt you.  They hurt my son.  

Suicide affects the whole family--siblings, cousins, we all miss him.  And we need to keep talking about him. 

Our youngest daughter, Roxie, was able to go to a grief camp with other children who lost a loved one recently.  They had a volcano room, where they could rip apart magazines, pound pool noodles against the wall, scream if they needed to, just to release the angry feelings that come.  Parents talk, but we need to remember the children that are affected by the suicide or death, too.

I have become a SOBRIETY ACTIVIST to try and help other parents know what to do when their children choose to use drugs.

3.  People ask all the time if DEFIANCE really is his middle name--and yes, it is.  Our firstborn son inherited the John Stewart Landbeck IV name of his great grandfather. 

Defiance=openly resist or refuse to obey

-not a sy-fy game, custom bolt rifle company

-The show takes place in the future on a radically transformed Earth containing new species, some having arrived from space,

The story begins in the year 2046. re-built ruins of St. Louis.  ALIENS = VOTANS

-Fort Defiance is a restaurant in Red Hook, Brooklyn,

 -Defiance College, OHIO yellowjacket mascot, -and a town in Missouri, beer company in Hays, Kansas,

We needed a good, strong name for son #2.  Nothing whimpy.  He needed a strong name, with meaning!  We gave him Defiance as a middle name with the prayer that he would defy the bad stuff in the world and that he would stand up for what is real and true.  We wanted him to fight for goodness. 

I don't know everything our son was feeling;  I have read through his journals and papers he kept carefully in a traveling file folder as he went from rehab and place to place.  Some of his struggles included worries about money & jobs, his love life and lack of confidence worrying that he was ugly, questions about God and where he fit into the world.  A lot of things we all have to deal with.

4.  Everyone feels self-doubts and insecurities, or trying to wade through grief or trauma, sadness, disappointments, depression to some degree.  That is normal part of life. 

I absolutely know that if I had talked more, during tough times, I would have been better off emotionally--in high school, struggling with postpartum depression…

FIND someone who will listen to you, and TALK and be a better listener!  A conversation can change your life!  Reach outside of your security zone, help someone, and be better at asking for help. 

5.  T-shirts are kind of a thing in our family.  When Max died he had no $ in bank, he had lost a lot of his possessions, but he still had some really cool t-shirts.  His 5 siblings divided them up, and I made a quilt for each of them, so they could all have a Max hug anytime they needed one.  They still smell like him.  (show quilt)  They opened them up at Christmas, and we had a lot of moments of silence, all wrote letters, what we would say to him and want him to know. 

This is a Defiance t-shirt, homemade!  We make these t-shirts with a stencil in our kitchen, using bleach, and then quickly rinse in vinegar to stop the bleaching process. 

You can show DEFIANCE of the complacency and acceptance of drugs, defy the people who can't remember how many inhibitions they let go of while under the influence.  Rebel against drowning your sorrows, be bold in being sober, challenge the drug humor, revolt against smoking pot.  Confront society's fear of talking about suicide.  THIS is what this t-shirt means to me. 

We have one for each of you today.  Thank you.

Free T-shirts with a Promise & Committment to be Safe & Sober

Best news ever:  One of my daily seminary early morning Bible School students reported seeing someone wearing a Defiance t-shirt at his school, two days after our presentation there!  I asked my student if he talked to him, said anything, or if he would recognize the student again to talk to him about sobriety, and explain he has a matching shirt....?

As part of my grocery budget $ I buy 100% cotton dark t-shirts to bleach through my stencil.  Thanks to my sister Laurajane for cool idea!  Below is a t-shirt gift she made.

Laurajane used nametag sticky rectangles to cut out letters and bleached around.

After spraying bleach--which will continue to bleach and eat away at the fibers, immediately put shirt in sink or bowl with water and a cup of vinegar or lemon juice to stop the bleach chemical reaction.  It will make the t-shirt last longer.  Then wash normally to take away vinegar smell.

When we give the Don't Do Drugs presentation at schools, we have been giving away Defiance t-shirts, either giving them to PTA organizers for door prizes, or my favorite--throwing them out into audience after we speak.

The best source of the t-shirts:  thrift stores.  Goodwill has 1/2 off sales last Saturday of the month, so 6 shirts for $5.00.  My favorite thrift store in Edgewood has 1/2 off certain color tags every day, and I look for solid dark shirts there.  A nice cashier asked what I was doing, so I explained my spiel about Drugs & Defying them, and by the 2nd shopping trip he asked for a finished one and said he would wear it once a week at work to help get the message out, explaining every time someone comments on his shirt what it is all about.  Encouraging sobriety.

Home Decorating note:  Brilliant daughter Roxie positioned this IKEA rug in our hallway lined up with North!  She did get in to the Science & Math Academy, so her dreams of rocket ship building are that much closer. 

Yarn Bombing for Sobriety

Yarn bombing.  Harmless, decorative.  Knitters have decorated bridges, statues...You can google it, a real thing.  My sister told me about the yarn bombing in Pittsburgh on the bridges. 

For me, this is a way to use up the 3 foot high pile of t-shirt scraps leftover after making t-shirt quilts for Christmas.  The shirts came from our son, Maxwell, who passed away this summer.  I couldn't just throw them away.  This has been cathartic, helping me deal with the grief of missing him during the holidays.  I don't want any teenagers to go through what he did.  It started with pot, escalated.  Smoking spice hurt him. 

Being sober needs to be a choice.  A decision.  A want these yarn bombing trees to spread all over the city, and maybe it will help somebody else know that being sober matters.  Drugs hurt you.  Be safe.

 "Yarn Bomb a Tree in Support of Sobriety this Holiday Season!"
First tree, with brightest of Max's t-shirts.

More of his t-shirts:  black, white, & gray version, with Christmas white lights.

I took fliers over to the middle school craft fair and talked it up. 

And two families from the fair stopped to help.

The added blue yarn is scrap yarn.  They took pictures of their teenagers committing to be sober over the holidays.  I gave them each a big ball of Max t-shirt yarn to go home and bomb their trees.

Got permission from neighbor across the street to bomb her tree!

A view of both the trees in our yard.

Quick tutorial for cutting t-shirts into "yarn" here:

It is easy to cut off the bottom hem, and use the main body of t-shirt, but you can cut spirals from the sleeves, every part of the t-shirt.  Cut about 1.5 inch strips.

Tie a square knot to attach one strip to another.  Roll into a ball inside to make easier to pass around the trunk and branches outside in the cold!

Message in my email

 Posted this CTR t-shirt alter on Instagram.  I love this long-sleeve t-shirt, even the crazy Gothic graphics, but felt it was time to cover up the ornate cross... (notice the AMAZING metal sign  behind me that Sam made us!)

 I don't read email every day, but I try.  Awhile ago I signed up for a daily message, and here was yesterday's.   It seems that whatever the message, it fits nicely into my day, and I am thankful for the thoughts.

Posted: 22 Nov 2014 09:00 AM PST

"Your testimony may begin from acknowledgment that the teachings of the Lord seem reasonable. But it must grow from practicing those laws. Then your own experience will attest to their validity and yield the results promised. That confirmation will not all come at once. A strong testimony comes line upon line, precept upon precept. It requires faith, time, consistent obedience, and a willingness to sacrifice."

—Richard G. Scott, "The Power of a Strong Testimony"

This is a Good Place

Thanks to a friend at John's work, we stayed in a sweet little condo in Dewey.  Deserted off-season beach, beautiful full moon over the calm water, sunrise from a warm upstairs room looking out at the ocean.  Very relaxing and nice to get a weekend date, just us.  Cream of crab soup, crabs, lots of cheese.  Crayon drawing on the table waiting for crabs.  And 3 different thrift store shopping for sister missionary clothes for Suzanna!  (Wearing my altered tiger-t-shirt cut in half and sewn onto a sweat shirt front=easy project.)

Another place to add to the Max's ashes memorial.  Good place to remember him, honor him, tell him how we are feeling, how much we miss him.

Projects & Portraits

#recycled_tshirt project:  cut an animal t-shirt in half, sew to front of hoodie or jacket.  Because of stretch and not enough pins, (PIN MORE THAN I DO IF YOU CARE) his nose is slightly UN-aligned.  But I love colors: brown jacket someone gave me that had some stains on front & clearance t-shirt I never would have worn.  This I will wear.

 More recycled t-shirt projects:  simple circle necklaces, hand sewn, using neck ribbing or bottom hem, or sometimes sleeve hem as ribbons to tie around neck.  They help make shirts modest without wearing another layer underneath.

Sam before his first group date!  He turned 16 this summer, and he and Alan from seminary class went bowling with 2 girls from stake!

Graffiti T-shirts

Supplies:  x-acto carved stencils, tulip spray fabric paint ($5.95 @ Michael's.)

Sprayed on solid t-shirts.

On a baseball t-shirt.

On a printed t-shirt.

With some lace used as an additional stencil.  (Suzu, do you want this one? or black/white baseball one?)

T-shirt Dress Debut

Our church building water/septic system was compromised, so only one short meeting Sunday.  Knowing it wouldn't be the usual 3 hours, I wore my color-blocked t-shirt dress. Ridiculously comfortable.  Bright.   Fits me better than when I made it at the beginning of the summer.  John has lost 20 lbs since we started serious no-carb diet, me half that and working hard for it.  We want to be healthier, in-shape, better able to serve, go on a mission together.  That's one of our goals. 

Permanent Sharpie Tie Dye, No tying

Last night my niece came over and we did some projects!  Try this Sharpie pen on t-shirt coloring, then drop rubbing alcohol to make colors spread wonderfully!  Less mess than Rit Dyes...super fun.  This is Roxie's shirt!

This is the back side of mine, where it bled through to the back (I colored on the front)

Button, Button...Necklaces

Enough buttons to color block long necklaces, my cheap jewels, crafted diy.

Button vs. bead:  flat, one "sided vs. in the round, but still beautiful colors!  Thanks to a sister at Church whose mom was an avid sewer, I have a collection of vintage buttons to share.  I pre-stung them on crochet cotton to make hostess gifts as we head west & take advantage of family hospitality.

Finished up some t-shirt rose necklaces for a sister missionary's wardrobe going to Brazil.  These help with modesty, a way to cover that too low neckline.  Trying on chain new idea from sister missionary serving here from Pleasant Grove, UT!  This is how she makes them, instead of recycling the t-shirt hem..

 

Red, White, & Blue SUPER Dress!

It started with me looking on-line for "cowl neck dress patterns free" and I found the "Eva" dress which I thought looked easy to sew, beautiful lines...Then I signed up for the "Your Style Rocks" site to get access to the pattern, and looked at The Opulent Poppy blog to see the Eva who designed the dress--she made a super modest one out of vintage yellow cotton.  (Hurrah for MODEST WOMEN!)

Printed out all 54 or so pages of the pattern in my size.  Carefully taped them together, cut them out, and started looking for stretchy fabric in my fabric storage.  Nothing in yardage, and being thrifty makes you more creative/desperate...

I had recently gone through all the boy's t-shirts with Stewart as we looked for post-mission clothes for him.  Superman was in a Sam-doesn't-want pile and too big for Stewart (he likes to wear correct size, slim & trim and not baggy) and the Nebraska map fabric was a too-small-but-Roxie-didn't-want pile.  Instead of using top of pattern I used a tissue-weight t-shirt that was way too low on it's own. 

When Suzanna saw the skirt portion she was immediately complimentary and interested so I made it to fit her.  She wore it to Church Sunday with a red belt that cinched in the middle more on her hourglass figure and she got many, many compliments.  The Young Women's president couldn't believe I made it and wanted the YW to learn, use their old YW camp t-shirts.  Actually her parting quote was "You should PIN it!"

The front portion of skirt is one t-shirt--one without side seams so I cut the pattern as it fit under the left arm-pit and wrapped around the right side onto the back of the t-shirt.

Mixing & matching other cast-off t-shirts and stretchy fabric tops I made 2 other dresses, a turquoise & bright neon yellow one I love and a modern polka-dotted yellow & gray & black & white.  They went together quickly because I was using a t-shirt or stretchy top that is finished and using the t-shirt hems for the hem of the dress.  It is a color-blocked look, very comfortable, totally me. 

So where is the picture?  I need to be a little braver to wear it, because it is so wild, new, artsy.  I say it is totally me and then I get nervous, embarassed a little, not wanting the attention I know I will get.  I need some confidence-boosting cheerleaders.  John loves it, it is modest, maybe a little sexy because I look like a woman in it, with girl parts, instead of hiding.

I altered this top after Cardigan Empire's suggestion that cowl necks are perfect for my Delicious Apple Middle body shape, and felt pretty on our date to Star Trek movies (Saturday matinee with all the kids in tow, so it was more a family outing than a date-date).

(Dirty mirror needs to be cleaned.)  Did not want to wear a tank top or another t-shirt underneath so sewed in another fuschia modesty bib layer (another t-shirt) just under the cowl to bring the neckline up higher.

Save those t-shirts, even with holes!  The Superman dress has two hearts appliqued on random cities to patch over two tiny holes.  If you don't think you will make anything with those t-shirts, donate them to me, and I will hand-craft one for you (or me!).

Happy Birthday to My Missionary Mom

We drove up to visit sister Luanna & family for the holiday! One of my favorite things is the cousin-face time. I pray these children remain friends their whole lives.

Thrift shopping near Pittsburgh: mother & child t-shirt, which immediately made me think of a central quilt motif. I am not sure how much of this I will get done for tonight's Relief Society meeting, the 12 Ways of Christmas. I will let you know tomorrow!

Creative Juices

I love our public library! I love finding new books and flipping through the ideas. It sparkles my imagination and one idea leads to another...

Here is a shout-out for a great book I found at library--how to decorate, alter t-shirts. I have a bunch of ideas cut out and ready to sew, but couldn't find my ball needles. Projects to show soon!

Take a T-shirt

I taught Hannah how to take a t-shirt that she and her sisters weren't going to wear, sew up the bottom hem and cut off the sleeves and cut out the neck to make a great bag...

Or APRON!  Work pocket apron for berries, or tools, you could add pockets (this is what comes from brainstorming with a creative niece!  We had fun!)  Or a super-hero cape!

A princess hair veil, wrist bracelet out of a sleeve...pony tail holder!

Or head kerchief tied under your chin or tied behind your neck it is a snood to put all your hair in like a hair net!  Versatile!

The love bags I brought with me to share contained this ruffle-petticoat tiered skirt, that Roxie has outgrown but wore when she got baptized two years ago, before I added the netting ruffles.  There were 4 ruffled skirts in the bags.  Which surprised me.  I seem to go through creation phases, try something several ways, work out the kinks.