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Wait, what was this receipt for?
Huh. That's gotta be good, right?
Don't the words 'Superfly' and 'monk' just go together well?
Excellent imagery, I tell you.
(Actually, I had stopped into one of my favorite toy stores on a shopping trip sans kiddos and picked up this for Monkey's birthday. The girl at the counter gave me a demo and shot the monkey across the store. I think some customers were surprised. It was almost as awesome as what this receipt sounds like it's for.)
Alternate title: Guys, I finally sewed something.
When Thomas got baptized we got him his own set of scriptures with his name on them. However, we got him kind of an odd-size set (hardcover, cheap version = less fragile and easier to turn pages for his fine-motor-delayed fingers...we hope) so we couldn't find a case to fit. He's been hefting his heavy scriptures to church, plus a notepad and pen and it's just not working.
When his sister got her scriptures, I got her a 'store-bought' case but personalized it by embroidering her name and adding ribbon to the handles.
This time, I had to start from scratch. But I finally did it!
I picked up a denim remant, but when I got home I realized that it was enough to make the girl a skirt with, so I traded it for a smaller denim remnant I already had.
The inside is lined with the last of my Japanese train fabric that I love.
It's big enough to fit his scriptures (and an Archie comic or notepad), a pencil or pen, and some gum, but no zippers to fiddle with.
Yeah, we totally let him take comics to church. He usually needs to draw or read during class and Primary to help him concentrate.
Trading denims may have been a mistake, as this stuff is stretch denim and was a littel tricky to work with. Hence the big ripple below. It bugs me, but oh well.
I was thinking of adding a strip of the train fabric to the front as an accent, but it may have been too 'babyish' or 'tote-bag-y', so I went subtle. Kinda. Subtle for me, anyway!
I did make the lining stick up on purpose for contrast, and couldn't resist adding a little dotted tag to the side.
Now off to church for it's inaugural run! Thomas loves it, and hopefully it'll work well!
And guess what? I did totally wing this project (as I tend to do) BUT I wrote down all my measurements in case it worked! And it did! So I can try it again when my girl needs a new case or when Monkey gets baptized in a few years.
(Also, is this too many photos for such a simple project? Yes? Sorry!)
Aaron: Do you have any...freaky brown things with weird flower eyes?
Girl: Dad! They're not freaky!
Me: Well, kinda...
Girl: Are you talking about the cute SQUIRREL?
Aaron: I don't know. Doesn't look like a squirrel.
(Me: Monkey! No more jumping on the couch!)
Girl: What number is it?
Aaron: 13.
Girl: It's a SQUIRREL, DAD!
Aaron: Oh. Really?
Girl: UGH! Yes! And I don't have any - go fish.
(Me: Thomas, it's almost your turn - come sit back down!)
Girl: Dad, do you have any mice?
Aaron: Which one is that?
Girl: It's pink, Dad. Number 9.
(Me: Out of the kitchen, buddy!)
Aaron: That's a mouse?!
Girl: YES!
Aaron: I thought it was a radioactive hamster.
(Note: He's so good at this).
Aaron: Okay, here you go.
Girl: Radioactive!?... HMPH.
Monkey: Thomas, do you have any Lego guys? Hee Hee!
(Thomas runs off)
Me: Thomas, come back! Oh, well, ask someone else, Monk.
Thomas comes back, wedges a lego minifig in his card holder.
Thomas: Yes, I do!
Sheesh.
A New Year.
And I forgot to order my photo calendar. Again.
So I used markers for now. Luckily Kirk + Eva gave us their AWESOME calendar for Christmas so we can check it when someone asks "What day does your birthday fall on this year?" which, surprisingly we ask a lot around here.
Oh, and I ordered this calendar a couple of months ago (because I heard it usually sells out - and I guess it did!) and got it out... yesterday. Totally missed a week! But I'm loving it and any excuse to sneak a little extra art in our life is a good thing.
I'm not big on resolutions. I did set a few goals for myself, my home, and my hobbies.
One of them I've made progress on already. Make the bread dough sometimes. Aaron always makes the dough and I just bake it. Maybe it's this cool Polish dough stirrer thing that Aaron got for Christmas, I don't know, but I've done it twice now! And only messed it up a little bit.
Also, I totally photoshopped out a piece of shredded cheese sitting on my counter in the above photo. And I do realize that telling you about it defeats the purpose of hiding it, and I'd rather keep it real but it was BUGGING me.
I want to stretch my photography wings a little this year. I did (and ALMOST finished) the 365 project a couple years ago, and it was fun but it's easy to burn out on it. I might try to have a weekly photo instead. We'll see.
I am going to try and take a family photo of us every month (idea from Tara Whitney). I'm not in enough of our photos. And I should be, whether I like how I look now or not. SO glad I bought that remote for my camera a while back.
Here's an outtake from our January shot - trying to get everyone to stand still in front of our house.
Also speaking of cameras, I got a new lens in the mail today. I LOVE my camera, and the lenses it came with are nice ones, but to buy extra lenses (I really wanted a 50mm) is WAY too much. And you can't use old optical lenses ("legacy glass") like you can on some other brands without a converter. So instead of a new digital lens, I got a converter and an old school manual 50mm from eBay. Tried it out right away.
And started freaking out for a minute until I got the hang of it.
Kinda got the hang of it.
Below was the only shot I liked today. But practice I will.
So yeah, new year, new goals, but really it's back to routine for us. Same old. Can't complain.
Except I might complain about getting my butt kicked regularly at this game (which is awesome).
More for me to practice, I guess.
I was browsing etsy one day (you do that, too, right?) and stumbled on these really cute doll headband blanks. I thought it would be fun to make flower headbands for a few of the girl's friends for their little Christmas gift.
I thought I'd be able to do this WITH the girl. Eh, not so much. One, because she was busy with super secret sewing plans of her own on the day I made time for this, and two, because... ouch. Yeah, melting the flowers + a hot glue gun is a recipe for painful fingers. Also wrapping the headbands with ribbon was a lot harder than I thought it would be.
Anyway, we kept a couple for her dolls (in their stockings - that girl).
Here's Emily (with headgear - we're hoping both girls are done with that very soon!) modeling one of them:
Here's the bunch. I used grey floral ribbon, only because that was the only grey I liked. Probably should have picked a different color and gone with better quality ribbon, but oh well.
And here she is modeling the purple I made to match her Christmas dress.
Yeah, harder than it looked, but I think they turned out cute! They'd be way cute as favors for some kind of doll-themed party. We wrapped ours in white tissue paper tied with pink yarn, but cello bags would be cute, too.
I think I'll be picking up some more of those headbands one of these days!
On Christmas Eve we did several projects I hadn't been able to get to earlier in the month. We made cookies, decorated our gingerbread train, and finally broke out our 'melty beads'.
I spent some time online mapping out some characters (that graph white board was handy for that!)
The first one we did was NES Firepower Luigi. We left a space to tie some yarn through to make it an ornament, wrapped it up and gave it to the boys' friend before I remembered to take a photo of it. But it looked like this.
Then we did a few more.
Monkey actually asked me to blog about his project, so there, you go, buddy!
Thomas was a little frustrated by the project, and switched to playfoam, but still hung out with us. We'll try again another time.
I'm trying to talk Monkey into making Link a fridge magnet so he doesn't get broken. The girl went into a doll's stocking (yeah), and the heart and tree were strung with ribbon and turned into ornaments for my sisters. They made cute present toppers, as did this one, made by me for my brother:
It's a Legend of Zelda master key keychain! I kinda love it.
We didn't even make a dent in our jar of beads, so we'll definitely be making more with these soon - and there are tons of perler bead project ideas online.
I'm kinda surprised how much I enjoyed this project...
