kirstencan

Rainbows

My brother got my kids prisms for Christmas.  What an excellent idea!  And bonus, since the boys share a room, I hung one in the dining room window, which means rainbows for me!

Especially nice on a gloomy winter day.  Seriously, I think they've made winter easier for me this year!

It's fun to see what time of day they show up, and where.



It makes school more colorful.

Some of my favorites are the stretched out rainbows.

They make everything a little more magical.

And our chores a little more happy.





Blinging up my fridge:

Our very fave is when a rainbow is on someone's face, unaware to them, like some awesome 80's rock makeup.  Or in Grandma's hair.

But also awesome is when you have a magic math problem answer!

And then snow happened...

... so that was good.

Lately

Painting

Washing

(dishwasher died - but has now been replaced, yay!)  I kept meaning to keep up with the dishes... and not cook as much... and then this would happen:

Eating

Our afternoon/evening schedules are kinda tricky as far as dinner.  I hate that.  But on the 'easy' evenings I make sure to cook something yummy.  This was potato soup (potato cauliflower soup - but the kids didn't know that) in bread bowls.

Also I'm LOVING my new plates.  I had to get a couple more...

Watching / Listening

I was hoping to do something awesome for General Conference (did you see this?)... but didn't.  The boys pulled down a couple boxes of Duplo and Lego and they were good to go, so I didn't need anything fancy.

I was going to buy fun/junky snacks for the occasion, but then thought it would be better to go through our emergency kits (mostly snack food in the kiddos' packs) and just cycle through those... and then found out they were way expired.  Woops.  Time flies.   From now on every conference will mean cycling our emergency kit snacks.

Luckily we did have yummy stuff on hand.  We made our favorite crumb-topped blueberry muffins.  The ones in the jumbo tin always come out best.

Autumn-ing

I refuse to decorate for holidays 5 weeks early.  As fun as it is, I just can't do it.  But I did get out a few fall things, including our awesome flannel quilts and the kiddos' Halloween portraits (they are all between 11 and 16 months here and all have handmade animal costumes - I love them)...

...and the Halloween quilt.  But that's it.  Not even the books are out for another week at least.  In part due to the redhead's anxiety issue, and in part due to my being sick of holiday hype lasting forever.

Reading

An evening to myself, Aaron and the girl were hanging out, the boys were in bed, and I ditched my (awesome) earrings, snuggled up on my quilt for some tv-watching/book reading.


Not too bad, this life of mine.

Good times

Yesterday Aaron 'finished'* the playhouse.  And agreed to a campout in it.

Someone overpacked...

Two slept up in the playhouse, and we slept on the ground on a tarp with the redhead, who is not such a fan of the playhouse.  A little high, and he got a splinter once.

We got the bedrolls set up as the sun went down, then when it was dark came out to snuggle and listen to Aaron read The Lord of the Rings.  And apparently a couple told scary stories after that.

It was Aaron's idea to make chocolate cake for breakfast.

And now he's making homemade ice cream.

So basically, all of their wildest dreams have come true!

We were all singing Dad is great, give us the chocolate cake!

Which we sing often, because he's pretty great (if you don't know that one, watch the whole thing!).

Any dreams coming true for you guys this weekend?

*Still a few finishing touches to finish (flag, curtains, vinyl for winter windows, shingles?  linoleum? finish windows, seal the wood).

Craft Lake City

A few weeks ago we headed out to Craft Lake City - mostly because this awesome guy was playing there.


That's my little brother, Karl over there on the synth.  He is OK IKUMI.  It was cool to see him play, it's been a while.  And my kids thought he was even cooler than they did before.


Anyway, I'd been wanting to hit this craft fair for a couple years, but it hasn't worked out.  I'm glad we made it this year.  It was a great place to share snowcones...



...and try a food truck.  I was ridiculously excited about that, we have some reportedly awesome food trucks in the city.  Unfortunately, Waki Paki was really disapointing.  Still hoping to catch the Chow truck one of these days!


I thought it would be a fun place to go to people watch, eat and hang out (it was).  I was actually ready to drop some money on booths, but it is hard to concentrate on shopping with a certain two little boys hanging out.  And then we found something cooler than shopping anyway.

They had a whole room dedicated to technology.  And for a family of geeks, it was pretty cool.  And air conditioned, so literally cool.

We got to hang out with robots, control robotic arms, play original NES projected on a giant screen...

...mess around with LED hula hoops...

...go check out the view from the balcony, listen to the bucket drummers and score free cotton candy...

...work on an electricity experiment with someone from the Leonardo who was willing to work with Monkey as long as he wanted to experiment.  Awesome.

We also chatted with a dude playing an electric cello (he wanted the girl to try playing it, but her fingers were sticky from the cotton candy - next time!)  and watched several 3D printers...

And the coolest thing ever:  Spy Hop Productions was there helping kids make their own stop motion animations.  For free.   !!!!  You have no idea how cool the red head thought this was.  He LOVES looking at the Lego stop motion films on youtube.  So the fact that this guy from Spy Hop was willing to spend about 1/2 hour with him working on this... dude.  You can always win me over by spending time with my kiddos.  He got to work on the script/narrate it to be recorded, pick the backdrop setting and puppets.  Then they got to work taking the photos.

And here is the end result.



 
So, no, didn't buy anything cool, but it was a fun family outing!  Also much more diverse than our little suburb, which was a good thing.

We'll  definitely be back, especially if they have that tech room!

Backyard - Monday

On a day when we had several friends over playing in our backyard.

So shady and green!  I'm really really glad I got the camera out on this day.

My mom calls my kids 'nerdy' and other random stuff

*That's right.  Their own grandma.  We've talked about this before, but she was just laughing because the boys ran out to get the mail yesterday and we could hear the redhead yell 'YES!  National Geographic!'

*I love the violins the boys drew recently.

*We tried another Russian recipe last night.  This time it turned out Russian, not Indian.

*Time for the garden to wake up.  We're trying to get the kids out there helping more this year. 

*Aw, cute fabric.  There are few things better to get in the mail.

*I found this book on sale at Evan-Moor and it has some fun thinking activity ideas.  We've done a few and the boys like them.  In this one, the eggs are filled with different things and they had to shake them and match which ones had the same item inside.

It was harder than you'd think...

*Bless the girl who wrote this post about bad baby names.  I've been wanting to write one myself and even have a page in my notebook dedicated to them.  But she did it for me.  And the names are horrific.  What are people thinking these days?

*This is what some of the boxes + makedo turned into yesterday:  An awesome cardboard fort.

In the living room.

Complete with turret, flaps for sticking out nerf guns, a door that closes...

And stocked with essential supplies, like a notebook and socker boppers.

And WHERE do we put this?  Because I'm kinda dying to vaccuum at this point...

*Oh, and Apple just sent me an email that my new ipad shipped.  I'm trying not to freak out and obsessively track it...

Pinterest Etiquette

How do you feel about all the Pinterest etiquette/drama/how-to's lately?

I read a good one the other day, I can't remember the site because it's not one I usually read.  It was well-done, but I didn't agree with all of it. I don't feel like Pinterest will be the next google-image search, and I don't do it to get lots of followers, promote anything, or come up with inspiring design boards.  I use it for me.  As a visual bookmarking tool.  For stuff I will actually do or refer to.  I don't feel that I need to ad 'tags' to all of my pins to help the good of Pinterest.  But I do try to pin responsibly.   Here are some things I do that are general good Pinterest etiquette:

1.  pin from the original source

        So, if you see something awesome on Apartment Therapy, or any of the other countless design magazine-type blogs, take a second to click to the source, THEN pin it.  It's fun to see what people are pinning from this blog, but I know that there are probably a few of 'my' pins that are pinned from Apartment Therapy and other people who have featured me.  It would be fun to track that down, but I can't. (BTW, I added a new Pinterest button on my sidebar if you want to see what people are pinning from here).

2.  pin from the actual post, not the site

    This is easy to forget if you're scrolling through someone's blog, but it's frustrating to see an awesome pin, and click through to the site and not be able to find the actual post.  If I really want to repin something and this is the situation, I'll take a minute to find the actual post, and correct it in my pin.

3.  click through to the posts!

    There's a couple of reasons for this: 

        1.  it gives the person who came up with the idea/photo/whatever a little more  traffic.  If you keep up with your blog stats/traffic, this means a lot.   It's a little pat on the back.   Also, they might be awesome and you might find a cool new blog or friend even!

        2.  You know what you're pinning.  I think often people just start repinning and don't  ever click through - it's happened several times recently where I've looked at a pin from someone I follow and click through the link to find.... it's just a photo!  Not a recipe at all!  Or that cool 'diy silkscreen' pin... it's an advert for a class, it's not a tutorial.  Did the person who pinned this ever check?  Probably not. Or it's from stupid tumblr.  Which brings me to #4:

4. Don't pin/repin from Tumblr or google images.

    Now I'm sure there are exceptions, but nearly everything I see pinned from tumblr is kinda anonymous - it's nearly impossible to find it's original source.  That's lame.  There are some really popular pins out there with fab ideas and the right people aren't getting credit for that.  I've found a few prints I've wanted to buy actually, and can't find where to buy them!

    A similar situation, but I also don't subscribe/read blogs that are 'rebloggers'.  There are so many blogs that just repost things that other people did.  I'm not talking of one photo and a link to the actual post, or a guest feature or anything, I'm talking they post ALL of the photos from someone's blog post with their own words.  Even if you link to the original site, this is LAME.  It doesn't give readers a reason to click on over to the actual site.

5. Comment sometimes!

    You know, when you click through.  Say thanks!  Or say hi.  Say something.

6. Don't copy/paste from the blog into the description.

    Instead of copying a whole recipe into the description, just type in 'yummy cake recipe'.  You can click on over to ge the recipe.  Typing the whole thing in gives pinners no reason to click over to the actual site.  Same goes with DIY projects - don't type in the instructions.  There's no need.  Again, if I find something that I want to pin (say a recipe) and it has the recipe typed in the description, I change that before I pin it.

6. Instead of saying in a post 'I got the idea from Pinterest', say 'I got the idea from this cool blog (name)'. 

    See how that makes a difference?  Pinterest didn't think of anything.

(edited to add)

7. Pin more than you repin

    You don't have to only pin things that are already on pinterest.  Pin what you really want on your boards, however you use them, not just what everyone else is pinning!

--

What else?  Did I cover everything?  Do you think even this is overkill?

Okay, I'm going to add a little graphic here - so if you feel like pinning this post you can, and maybe we can have some better pinning going on out there!

This is more like two quick tweets

1 - The turn signal in my husband's car blinks to the beat of Coldplay's 'Yellow'.  I learned this today when it was on the radio.  There have been many times that I THOUGHT the blinkers were in time to a song, but then they weren't.  Today they were. 

 

2 - You know when you pause a show and sometimes you catch the actors in a seriously funny or awkward moment?  I love a good pause.  Got a great one a bit ago when I went to brush my teeth:

The show may kinda suck now, but Rainn Wilson is still awesome.  Apparently.

Have a good weekend!

The End.

Random

I laughed when I saw in Sarah's post she said: I got nothin'.

Because that's what I've felt blog-wise this week.

I'm not making anything awesome at the moment, but I'm pretty feeling pretty successful with the whole kids-dressed-fed-educated thing.  That does keep me pretty busy.

I have been brainstorming for the girl's spring birthday party (can you believe it will have been two years since her 80's one?) and I'll need to pare down my ideas for sure.  At least a little. 

Did you see the Target weekly ad this week?  To that I say: REALLY, Target?  REALLY? 

Downton Abbey is still amusing, but way more soap-opera-y this season, don't you think? Last year's was better.  Plus there is no sense of passage of time.  It's been six years?!

Speaking of TV, I have a few newer shows that I don't love, but are amusing enough to watch while excercising or folding laundry.  For example:  Alcatraz, Suburgatory, Parenthood.  Sadly, Castle just got bumped to that list, too.  Do you have shows like that?

We did School At The Library yesterday.  For some reason Monkey really wanted to spend the whole morning at the library (actually, that's not surprising - what he asked for for his last birthday was his own library card) so we took our backpacks loaded with what school is portable and headed off.  I'm not doing that again.  It was too warm for me, and smelled funny.  Also, it was a good reminder as to why Thomas isn't in school.  That kid could NOT concentrate at the library.  Oh well, we tried.  Back to our quicker weekly library trips instead.

And OK GO?  You always amuse me (and the kiddos love you).  Just showed them your newest video (wow!) and we had to watch it twice in a row.  You can't watch it just once.