School's Out

What is it about May?  How does it always go by so fast?  School is out now and dance recital is just a couple weeks away.  Athena really had a great year this year.  She was the last 5th grader in the spelling bee, she was a finalist in the Patriotic Speech contest, won 1st place out of 5th grade in the Science Fair and ended the year with straight A's!  There were a lot of fun end of the year activities.  Cake decorating, are you smarter than a 5th grader, sidewalk art walk, and Athena was in 3 numbers for Mock Rock this year.  She did one with her friends, her class and elite choir.  It was fun to see her having so much fun.  Enjoy!

We spent the past weekend at Phoenix Comicon.  It was so much fun!  We really had no idea what to expect but we all really enjoyed ourselves.  And I got my picture with the TARDIS!!  That makes for the whole weekend right there :)  We also got to meet R2D2, he hasn't aged a bit, and was such a polite robot.  Athena is determined to make her own comic book now.

I have also been doing some sewing, but I will save that update for another post.  Hopefully I will get to it before another month has passed.

Hope you all are well and have big plans for a fantastic summer!  I really am going to try and post more often.

Love That Girl

I can't stop thinking about a conversation I had with Athena a few days ago.  We were talking about how she is planning to cut her hair after the dance recital in June and donate it to Locks of Love.

Athena: I like donating and helping people.  My goal is to go to Haiti someday.
Me: Oh yeah?  What will you do in Haiti?
Athena: Oh probably build playgrounds and schools or give medical attention.
Me: So does that mean you want to be a doctor?
Athena: Yeah maybe.
Me: Why Haiti?
Athena: I don't know, it just seems like a place that needs help, because of that earthquake.  Maybe I will go somewhere else.  But don't worry Mom I won't stay there forever.
Me: That's good because I would miss you.

How did she get this way?  We aren't not charitable people, but we are no where near the kind of people that would travel to another country to build playgrounds.  We give to Goodwill, throw our change in the donation jar, I even donated my hair a few years ago but mostly just because I wanted it cut off.  I hope she stays this way because when an 11 year old makes you want to be a better person it is truly a remarkable thing.

Life Right Now

I am in the midst of dance costume season!  We have a competition on May 12th so I have been busy doing alterations and making accessories.  I love doing it but it leaves very little free time.  We have been having lots of fun too.  Athena and I went to a dance convention a few weekends ago where she got to strut her stuff with Twitch.  She had a blast!

We also had a fun picnic with the dance studio a couple of weeks ago complete with 3 legged races.  I thought Athena and her friend Emily did great coming in 4th considering neither of them had ever been in a 3 legged race before.

I have also been working on a few projects, unfortunately I forgot to get pictures of some of them :( But here is a quick phone picture of a dress and headbands I made for our new niece Juniper.  Hopefully it fits her soon.  I also made some more tote bags this time for one of Athena's teachers.  She has new twin baby boys and she wanted bags to carry toys in for them so we used superhero fabric.  I was too excited to get them to her though and never took a picture.  I did remember to get a shot of the bag I made for our niece Lily as her birthday wrapping.

We even managed to fit in the time to take Athena to her first concert!  Florence and the Machine.  It was a great show, one of the rare times that live was actually better.  She had a great time too.  We asked her after what she thought and after a very long moment of complete silence she replied "I just cant put it into words".  It was a really fun family night.

I will leave you with this video of a fun game at the dance studio picnic!

Happy Easter

  Hope you all had a nice weekend full of eggs and chocolate.  Ours was good, if not a bit crazy.  We had the popcorn ceiling removed from the vaulted ceilings in our dining and family rooms on Thursday and Friday and since they said it needs a week to dry before I tape off and paint the walls I decided the day before Easter would be a great day to paint the ugly red drop ceiling in the kitchen.  You know so it could be dry and ready to paint walls at the same time.  But I didn't really decide to do this early in the morning I waited until about 11:00 so we didn't really get started until about 2:00.  Luckily I had our Easter basket hunt all planned out ahead of time.  As most of you know I don't like to just hide the basket I like to make my kids work for it!  Usually with some sort of rhyming clues or pictures when they were younger.  I am pretty much rhymed out though after 21 years of Easter poetry so I had a new idea this year.

 We tied a bunch of yarn to each item and had it work back to an empty basket on the table, so they had to fill the basket.  It turned out really fun but took a lot longer to pull off than I thought it would.  At about 11:30 Shawn called it and we ended up putting the candy in the basket and just hid the other items.  We hit the sack exhausted!  When I wake up Easter morning I realize we forgot to hide the eggs!!!  So Shawn stalled Athena in her room while I sneaked out and crawled around under all the yarn to hide them.
  My favorite remark of the day was when she said "this one is still cold".  I mostly relaxed the rest of the day and then finished up my painting on Monday and Tuesday.  Now I'm ready to tackle the walls next week!

Take 2

So I have finally finished up my second of three Harry Potter book purses.  This one turned out so much better than the first one.  I had a brilliant idea to make the lining and sides all one piece so it was a lot easier to glue it all together and it makes for a much nicer looking edge.  Plus I went back to good ole E6000 instead of that crappy fabric hot glue.


So this one was meant for me, but now that it's done I'm not sure what to do with it.  I really like it but it's just not my style of purse.  I like to throw mine down and without a really tight closure on the top things tend to get lost.  Maybe I'll sell it to buy some fabric to make the purse I truly want that is in my head right now :)

I had better get lots of crafting in because next week people are coming to remove the popcorn ceiling in the last 2 rooms of our house that have it, yay!  Then we are going to paint and get a new couch.  So my spare time is going to be taken up with that sort of stuff soon.  But it will be so very nice to finally have it done.

Happy Spring!

Some Things

I have been a busy little crafter these days.  I figured out what to do with the beautiful leftover Tardis fabric from my last bag.  I made an apron!  Now I can enjoy it everyday, while I dream of the Doctor coming to take me away on an exciting adventure.  Did I mention that we are all caught up now and I have to wait until they make more episodes to see new Dr. Who.  Really very sad isn't it?

Then I have been trying to find fun ideas to use the pages from the Harry Potter book I cut up to make this purse a while back.  I saw a fun picture on Pinterest that gave me this idea to make magnets and necklaces.  They used pretty scrapbook paper instead but I thought these turned out pretty fun.  And boy were they simple, just some glass stones and mod podge, then glue either a magnet or jewelry bial on the back.  Anyone could do it really.

I needed to find the perfect gift for a friend that shops a lot and is a little hard to buy for.  On the plus side she loves hand made things :) I found this really great tutorial and knew I had found the thing for her.  She loves doing her own nails so I figured it would be perfect if I could be inspired and find just the right fabric.  I do belive I succeded, she loved it!  The only change I mad was a button closure instead of snaps, because buttons are cool.

I really need to work on my photography of craft items.  I take a ton of pictures and they look great on the little screen but then when I load them onto the computer they are blurry or dark.  Oh well nobody really cares about the pictures do they?

Next up I am working on another Potter book purse.  I am defiantly NOT using that crappy fabric hot glue this time around.  And if there is someone out there in blogland that would like to buy me a little boutique with a comfy little workshop in the back where I can craft all day and sell what I make, I'll split any profits with you ;)

11!!

Athena had a week full of birthday celebrating!  It started with a Monte Cristo dinner complete with candle.  She really is my kid as this is often what I choose for my birthday dinner.  We also went on a very cool field trip to JABiztown, it was such a cool experience.  It's a little town and all the kids have jobs and they get to run the town all day on their own.  There is even a TV station and Athena's friend went on air to sing happy birthday to her and the whole place joined in.  It was so much fun for her.

Then my mom came to visit for a few days and took her shopping for her birthday.  She had fun with that!  We also managed to get in a trip to the Botanical Gardens and Athena had a little party at Jumpstreet with a couple of friends.

We bought Athena a laptop for her birthday and I was reminded of her first laptop and how she always liked to "work" with her daddy.

Then

Now