kirstencan

Sicky

Sick this week.  Ugh.

Trying to lay still on the couch.  Drinking giner ale and slathering myself with Vicks Vapo Rub (Ahh).  The kids have been great.  I had great plans for if we got really sick this year - plans for isolating the sick one.  But when the mom gets sick first what are you supposed to do?

I can't be isolated when I need to make sandwiches and be referee.

The boys may have been in the same clothes for several days straight.  They have been really good though - and have been playing ds for entirely too long.  But they also have been playing with this cardboard playmobil pyramid that Aaron made them - cool.

Yesterday was the worst day - and I just kept thinking:  Mom's coming up. Mom's coming up.

My supplies:  kleenex (not shown, kleenex garbage bag), carmex, hand sanitizer, library book, moleskine, pen, juice glass.

Thanks, Mom!  You saved the day (again).  Even though right after you left the boys dragged all the Star Wars toys back up to the living room and pulled all the quilts off of the quilt rack (again!) to make mountains for them - it made me feel a little better to not be living in a total disaster area.

 

My view.

I've read several books this week - can't complain about that.  And I've been reviewing/changing our Christmas lists hidden in my trusty moleskine notebook.  Yikes, I have a lot to do.  We have a slot system for the kids' gifts.  One from Santa, 2 from us, 1 handmade from me, and 1 book.  It's so much easier this way.  But it still feels like a little much this year. On the other hand, we don't buy our kids toys for no reason throughout the year - so this is our chance to get them that little something special.  I've had to juggle a few things around - so that list is getting messy - but I think it'll be good.

Now those mama-made gifts... plus the other handmade holiday projects I'd like to make... add up to one long crafty to-do list.  Yikes. I'd better get moving on that one!  How is it that when you're feeling lousy and can't do anything, that's when the pressure is on to work on your giant to-do list?

How about you?  How are your Christmas gifts coming?  Does your to-do list look like mine?

And now to disinfect the computer and go lie back down...

Letterpress Workshop

This weekend I headed up to the Sycamore Street Press letterpress studio (run by the unstoppable duo that is Kirk and Eva (my little bro and sister-in-law)) for a holiday card workshop.

I've been wanting to see the whole process of letterpress, so that was really fascinating.

 

We got to use the press to print our Christmas cards (Eva's design) and line envelopes with pretty Paper Source papers.

And just look around their studio - which is never boring!

 

And now I have my cards signed, stuffed, and almost all addressed!  Yes!  Feels good.

More pictures in my flickr set (seriously, their studio is so cool).

Here's the Sycamore Street Press website, etsy shop, and blog.  Eva has some beautiful posters and calendars that would make amazing Christmas presents!

(Thanks, Angie, for going with me!)

In which someone turns 7...

Hard to believe.

Thomas' day consisted of Legos, Star Wars, Lego Star Wars, Playmobil, and french fries.  Pretty much all of his favorite things.

It was a family party year (every other year is a 'friend party'), so  his day was pretty laid back, very fun, and just what he wanted.

And he got to spend much of the day at Grandma's house - which I think he'd do every day if he could.

His birthday shirt this year is a stormtrooper stencil (Thanks, Julie for reminding me about these stencils).  I haven't broken out my freezer paper for a while, so that was fun -and while this stencil looked tricky, it was actually really easy.  I added a little '7' at the bottom for tradition.

We took him for dinner at Five Guys - he was SO happy to get to go out to eat, since that doesn't often happen. Hooray for gluten-free fries!

Happy birthday to my beautiful boy! 

Seven seems so big!  But you seem just right.

What's for dinner?

I don't know about you, but deciding what is on the menu is harder than making it.   Why is that?  I seem to get mind-blocks about deciding what's for dinner.  Even though we write out a menu every Saturday (actually we usually lose said menu).

Well, my daughter decided to help me out.  She is all about making lists lately and I found this posted on the fridge:

 

That girl hates chili in a major way. 

Okay, let's see.... cake, cookies, ice cream or take out would be acceptable dinners while... liver, chicken, or any fish is out.  Got it.  For the record, we've never made liver or fish for her, but I think she's just being cautious...

So I'm way glad that we got to make her have a brussel sprout when we had dinner at Kirk and Eva's last weekend!  Ha!

Alright, well, I think tonight we'll have chicken, with salad and green beans.  Done and done and thanks for the help, Princess!

Lego Maniacs

So, I think that Legos are THE coolest toy.  Period. 

I loved playing with Legos growing up (my brothers'), and it's fun now that all of my kids play with Lego bricks as well.  We have boxes of them - regular and Duplo, and they all get used often.

Lately, though, Thomas has been even more into them (which is saying a lot, quite frankly) it's turning into a kind of fixation -  kind of the way he used to be fixated on Thomas trains.  The new train table has been in constant Lego use.  Constant.  And the Lego catalogs and magazines are all over the house.

He has always taken his Lego models apart.  And I have no problem with that. He makes his own things up and they're cool.  That's what Legos are for.  After painstakingly putting together a helicopter, he immediately took some pieces off, and customized it - including adding wheels.  See, that's cool.

It is annoying when asked to help put one back together, and then he immediately takes it apart, but whatever.

 

But suddenly, he's leaving his models together.  It started with this police car he bought with his own money.  It's still together, a month later.

So Aaron thought it would be fun to put all of his Lego models back together before his birthday on Friday (7!).  So we've been spending hours sorting through the bricks, finding the ones that go to specific Star Wars ships, etc.  The kid is SO happy as he's seeing them come back together.  We're about half way there, I think.

 

I am not made for this type of meticulous work, though, I tell ya.  It's driving me crazy digging through the boxes for the tiniest of pieces.  But Aaron's right, it's the perfect thing to do for Thomas' birthday (well, besides another Lego Star Wars ship!).

One evening we were both sitting sorting through the Lego boxes and I chuckled and thought "Ten years ago we wouldn't have thought we'd be spending a Friday night doing this!" 

Except, yeah, we probably could have called it.  Heh - geeks.

....

*Oh, and thanks for the nice comments about my playroom!  Also thanks to Ohdeedoh for giving my playroom a shout out last week!

Playroom update

A big deal in our house recently:

We finally got around to doing a project we've wanted to do since we moved in (isn't that a great feeling?): We replaced the ugly mauve* carpet in the playroom!

Goodbye and good riddance...

By the end of the first night we had a bare concrete floor.  Even concrete looked better than mauve*.

Thomas thought he was in charge.

 

Soon we were seeing progress:

And after 3 trips (and approximately $57 million spent - just kidding) at Ikea, several trips to Lowes, 1 tetanus shot, 1 kid's sleeping arrangements temporarily changed, discovering that Princess had a ton of books stashed under her bed, 5 rugs bought, and 1 loft bed built eventually everything was moved back in:

And I'm loving it!

The mobile was pulled down and tangled ... but I still have it and will fix it one of these days!

I like our playroom and had such fun decorating it - but that old carpet was holding it back, y'know?  And the kids are loving the new red shag rug - a great rug to read on.

Ahh, much better!

Our collection of Star Wars ships... which you know will be growing at Christmas.

*Well, most people would call the old carpet 'mauve', but Aaron declared it 'The color of a sick rat's eye'.

Yep, it was  lovely.

Thanks, Aaron for working so hard last weekend!

(Before photos here).

Little Halloween Party

Invitations:

I only had to make four of them.

Graphics from the My Paper Crane free Halloween printable - which I'm not able to find now for some reason...

I finally got to hang up some decorations:  bats, tissue paper bat garland and spooky garland from here.  We made paper bag owls when we studied owls earlier this month.

Bunting + two Cinderella Pumpkins from our garden (we're cooking them tonight). Photos of the kids in Halloween costumes when they were toddlers (one photo is on a table). The book basket in the living room holds fall and Halloween books.

Donuts on a string was a huge hit - and hilarious.

Coloring pages from here.

Foam stickers galore.

Little treat bags - my favorite part was the little mini-coloring book (folded from one sheet of paper from here (definitely my new fave site for printables).

Not shown:  Halloween memory (from last year), pumpkin bread, popcorn, candy corn, nine costumed guests and their moms, and a showing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! which I think most kids don't watch as much as mine do, so they were surprisingly into it.  Also generally running around and playing. 

Also not shown is the super cool pumpkin bean bag toss I was going to make... yeah, that's not shown because it didn't happen.  And that's okay.

It was short, pretty low key, and just what I was going for. I had to keep the guest list super small for a couple of reasons:  space, fear of overwhelming Thomas, and my sanity (but there were a few of you out there that I really wanted to invite, too!).  Just a little Halloween themed playdate, really, for my kids - since they don't get a class party.  Hmm, I guess I'm room mom every year!

***

Oh, and one more Halloween themed project - one day I had the kids go 'Ghost Hunting" - I gave them a seemingly blank sheet of white paper and their watercolor paints and told them to paint.  They didn't know that I'd drawn ghosts on the paper already with white crayons, so as they painted they found some cute happy ghosties. 

They LOVED it.  Monkey even wanted me to make him another sheet to do later.

Easy, very little prep, and materials on hand - and what a fun thing to put in their school boxes this week!  Found the idea on The Crafty Crow (scroll down).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Pumpkin Pillow

Something that's been in my sketchbook for a while:

 

A little holiday pillow.  Just a little textured black sale fabric, some orange flannel, and bits of a felted green sweater.

With a touch of embroidery - some of which isn't too visible here (it snowed all day, so the lighting hasn't been great) but I did some loopy green vines and pumpkin lines.

 

But, Oh, no!  Did we lose some features?

 

Never fear, little pumpkin!  We have a lovely assortment of eyes, noses, and mouths for you to choose from.

See, we keep them here - in an easy to access pocket.

Monkey will hook you up right.

Hmm...
 

Not your favorite face?  Don't worry, it'll be changed shortly, I'm sure!

Holiday decor + holiday activity rolled into one!  Woo!

....

So, yeah, this was my little crafting therapy this week.  It didn't take long to whip up at all.  The embroidery was done while waiting at dance.  Pillow covers go together fast.  I used velcro (scratchy side) on the pumpkin, but none on the felt - they didn't need it.  I was hoping to avoid velcro altogether, but it holds the felt pieces on better.  Also black velcro would have been better, but I used what I had on hand.

...

Oh, and thanks to Rachel of One Pretty Thing for featuring my book mobile as well!

Halloween Costumes - Harry Potter Style

Well, here are the kiddos 2009 costumes! We had to get all dressed up for the annual carnival at church on Saturday.

Here's Hermione:

Her fave accessory was her time-turner (although I think she liked having her hair crimped, too). It is pretty darn cool, I admit.  It's this that I ordered from Half.com to put away for Christmas - and when it arrived in a completely smashed box, I got refunded but got to keep it.  Which worked out pretty great for Halloween.

Ron -  he's even got the red hair for it.  He has Scabbers the rat (an IKEA toy we already had) sewn to the shoulder of his robe. Although we should probably have used the brown rat instead?

 

And a little blonde Harry, whose bangs usually cover up his lightning-bolt scar.  He kept being goofy and waving when I was trying to get a shot of him, so I ended up with one shot of him exactly blocking his face.

So here's the deal - after much deliberating they all chose these costumes independently!  I was pretty excited, because I loved the Star Wars theme year (and you know I was excited for a possible Lord of the Rings theme - but they nixed that eventually).  My mom made the Hogwarts robes - she made them up based on an angel costume pattern.  Yep, she amazes me, too, with her mad sewing skillz.  She bought the fabric with her Joann's coupon so they didn't cost much.  I think they turned out AWESOME.

I ironed on the Hogwarts logos and sewed the button + loop fasteners. I also made the scarves from fleece - which took no time at all.  We bought the ties and Harry's glasses (ironically the one kid who doesn't wear glasses needed them and the other two took their glasses off) - everything else we had around (white shirts, pants/skirts, sticks for wands - which we didn't bring to the carnival).

We even had Hedwig!  I found an official Hedwig owl at a yard sale this summer (it was free even!) and put it away for Halloween because I knew they were all considering Harry Potter characters.  We forgot to bring Crookshanks, but we had that planned, too

Thomas was less than excited about putting on a shirt and tie for the carnival.  Until he saw how awesome his sibs looked - then he didn't complain at all - and asked to put it all back on the next day!  I'd forgotten that 'church clothes' are not his fave and might cause a problem.The coolest part was just that we had all three characters, I think.  And the kids have new awesome dressups to add to their collection - and to wear whenever they watch a Harry Potter movie or read the books - so I think they'll be in use a lot!

2008 Costumes

2007 Costumes

(I got no good photos of them together in 2006!  But here's 1, 2, and 3)

I'm on Ohdeedoh today!

Hi to anyone coming over from Ohdeedoh today - they featured my vintage storybook mobile from the playroom.

If you would like to see the playroom that that mobile is in, check out this and this.  I also made a similar mobile recently for a swap.

And by the way, we just redid some of that room, so updates coming soon!

Thanks for stopping by!