laeroport

their first museum pieces

My talented children. They created some artwork for an exhibit called "The Tallgrass Prairie And Me" at the Beach Museum.  We went by and saw their work on display yesterday.

Aidin had her first foray into watercolors.

They burn the prairie every spring, so her painting shows the scorched prairie after it has burned with new shoots of green grass coming up and billowing black smoke in the background.

Eliot had two pieces in the show; a poem

and a drawing.

I loved the way he drew the wind - that certainly is a factor out there on the prairie with very few trees to stop it.

I may wait my whole life and never have a piece of my work in a museum show.  I'm so proud of them and they are awfully proud of themselves.

sketchy

From Farmers Market on Saturday.

Hers:

 

and mine:

 

It was a great (BUSY!) weekend.  More later.....

Happy Monday!

Micky Mouse Birthday Bash - family and friend editions

It's kind of a bummer having a birthday near Christmas.  Mom completely neglects blogging about it.  So here are some pictures from Eliot's family party, back in mid-December.  Due to illness and weather and driving distances, it ended up being a small party, but we had fun.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the day.

The cake was supposed to look like Toodles, the gadget that brings Mickey and co. tools on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

My mom embroidered Eliot a shirt that was sooooooo appropriate. 

And Grandma Becky got him all tricked out in cowboy duds.

  

 

We waited until Christmas break and had Eliot's kid party at the local indoor pool.

 

One of his friends went to Disney World over Christmas and brought Eliot back a Mickey Mouse Jedi.  Oh.my.gosh.  Perfect. (That faint blue blur is a light saber.)

  

I made freezer paper stencil t-shirts to put in all the goodie bags, using a Mickey Mouse ears punch I found at Michaels.  I would have liked it a little bigger, but for the time-savings, I was over the moon!

I made Aidin and I each a shirt, too.  I should have made Tim one, but I didn't have an extra t-shirt in his size on hand, and he already has 105 t-shirts stacked in his closet, so I thought he probably didn't need one.

And just for Eliot, not one, not two, but FIVE Mickey Mouse heads.

 

It is good to be five.

Art opening

My talented daughter had a piece selected for the local elementary art show at the Public Library.

 

We went to check out the exhibit.

  

There were some cool works by some very talented children.  

  

We finally found her painting.

  

She was very proud, and so was her mama.  She was one of only 4 children in the show from her school and the only one from her grade.  Way to go, my artist daughter!  May you always have an outlet for your inner artist! 

A good weekend always goes too fast

Friday night:

• Girl at a campout.
• Boy at grandma's.
• Fresh peaches, apricots and cherries at a Friday evening farmer's market.
• Dinner al fresco, a stroll, and a Border's browse with Michelle.
• New music.

• Irreverent theater.  And laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

 

Saturday:

• Pick-up the girl.
• Lawrence Farmer's Market in the rain, listening to Tim's band play, squashed under the tent to avoid the raindrops.

 

• Cinnamon rolls.
• Drive to Topeka.
• Score at the thrift store (sheets! pillow cases! books) and the used book store.
• The best cheese and potato soup (with bacon!) I've ever had.
• Cutting and pinning and fitting and pattern-making and sewing with my mom.

• Laughing (me and my parents) and sulking (Aidin).
• Pork chops on the patio.
• Needing a sweater on a July evening in Kansas.
• Homemade ice cream and warm brownies with the inlaws.
• Cousins playing.
• Stories being told.
• A 55 minute fireworks display thanks to the church behind Tim's brother & sister-in-law's house.
• Fighting sleep while looking at I Spy and reading a new book.
• More sewing.
• Sleeping on my parents' couch for the first time in many years.

Sunday:

• Waking up to the sound of my mom's sewing machine - and all the memories that evoked.
• More sewing.
• Driving back to Lawrence.
• Dropping off the kids and brushing my teeth.
• Middle eastern dance rehearsal.  Disaster with my stick dance.  Hoping that I don't whack someone come performance time.
• Tears of frustration.
• Costume consultation. 
• Family trip to see Wall-E and dinner out.
• Bath, brush, bed, books and the anticipation of the whole cycle starting again in the morning.
• Laundry.
• A few evening moments to myself.

How was your weekend? 

We've done it three years, it must be a tradition

This was the third year that Aidin made her dad a t-shirt for Father's Day.  You may remember last year's robot shirt.

I don't know why she thought he needed a dragon shirt, but I think it turned out fantastic.  She made a drawing, I cut the stencil and she painted it very carefully according to her drawing.  Awesome.

Eliot wanted to make one too, so with a little (lot) of help, he painted this shirt for Daddy, featuring Lolo, the upright bass.

Tim and Lolo will be busy this weekend, playing at the String Band Rendezvous on Friday night and at a wedding on Saturday.  

I'm totally sucked into the comment-fest that is 7 days over on flickr.  Just so you know where I am.  Happy Wednesday, everyone!

In honor of Earth Day

I share with you the efforts of my weekend:

It was time for the semi-annual rotation of the closets around here.  Eliot is the lucky recipient of the hand-me-downs of my nephews AND our young friend, Matthew.  Aidin gets some sweet stylish duds from our friend, Mackenzie.  This weekend was time to pull out the tubs of things previously too big and add them to the drawers while removing the borderline too small and winter items.

The end result?  I still have a 40 gallon rubber-maid tub FULL of stuff for Eliot that is either wrong season or currently too big.  Aidin has her own big tub, half full of clothes for next winter.

And the things that came out of the drawers (and most of Aidin's baby/toddler/pre-school clothes that I had been hanging onto) were packed up to hand down to my sister-in-law, who now has one of each.  That made six shopping bags and a box that once held diapers.  Now I just have to store them until I see her in May.  The trunk of my car is also full of other things to go to Goodwill.

As for my closet, I've been invited to a spring clothing swap.  Isn't that a great idea?  I'm ready to take a whole bunch of stuff and not bring back anything.  Whatever is left goes to Goodwill.

So those are hand-me-down onesies with strategically placed freezer paper stencils to cover up some of the stains. I'm putting them in the mail today, because Arya will outgrow them before she gets them if I don't.

We also rotated the books.  We love books.  And we probably have too many books.  So we rotate them by season.  But when we got out the winter books we didn't take time to put the fall books away, and now we're 6 weeks into spring... it was a book explosion.  So now we have four bags of books in the closet (summer, fall, winter & Christmas) and a much more manageable selection on the shelf.  And while arranging the shelf I discovered a few duplicates.  Hmmm...  I guess when I really like a book, I want to make sure we have a copy. 

One of the duplicates was Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume.  Did you read this book when you were a kid?  I remember my teacher reading it to us in elementary school.  Or attempting to read it to us.  She couldn't read because she was laughing so hard at the antics of Peter and Fudgie that she was crying.  And we were in agony, shouting "What?  What?  What is so funny?"  Granted, I haven't read it in years, so you might want to read it yourself before you start in reading it to your kids.  Just sayin.

So if anyone wants my extra copy, leave me a comment to say how you're celebrating Earth Day.  I'll draw a winner on Friday and include a few other fun recycled things.

Cheers!

The weekend that was

• Dinner at my parents
• My grandma's buttermilk brownies for dessert - I swear it has been 10 years since I've eaten them.  So good.  Thanks, Mom!
• Early morning soccer game.
• Bloody nose thanks to direct hit with soccer ball.
• Second half goalie duty.

 

• Munchkins after the soccer game made it all better.
• Trip to the library - new books, CDs & music.
• Short pre-lunch nap with small boy on couch.
• Afternoon craft/play date with the Junkies.
• Evening movie night with popcorn.
• Sunday afternoon trip to the circus with Grandma & Grandpa.
• Free afternoon for us - we saw a movie on our own.
• Take-out dinner, baths, books and early bed.
• The conclusion of Mr. Darcy.
• A bit of Oscar fashion.
• New fashion for Tim - his belated valentine.

Happy Monday!

TD & WIP

To all my Girl Guide and Girl Scout friends around the world, Happy Thinking Day! I am, indeed, thinking of you!  And for being an Honorary Associate of WAGGGS I'm dreadfully ill-informed.  Does anyone know what happened to the old Thinking Day Logo?  I loved that logo.

I'm going into the weekend with several projects I hope to complete.  I've got a lot of baby sewing going on, including this bib for my soon-to-arrive niece.

It would go a lot faster if I could find the four inch embroidery hoop.  I think I'll just stop on my way home and buy a new one.  It will be easier than finding the old one.

And I've been embellishing just about every t-shirt I can get my hands on, either with fabric and floss:

or freezer paper and paint:

Whether you're a Girl Guide/Girl Scout or not, I hope today you will take a minute to think about the friendships we've make throughout this blogisphere and reflect on one of my favorite quotes:

"Peace is achieved one person at a time, through a series of friendships." -- Fatma Reda

Thanks for being my friend.  Happy Weekend! ~L

Paint & string

My dear friend Keela had a birthday a week ago.  I finally finished her presents.  She already had a tote bag and pencil roll, so I had to wrack my brain a little to think of what to make.  And I don't think in any way, shape or form it is enough to express my love for her and my gratitude for her friendship, but it is what I am capable of at the moment, so it will have to do.

I bought a fleece vest and embroidered a chevron stitch over the serged seams.  And added a little flower at the neck.  She loves embroidery and I had visions of something like this, but the fleece didn't really lend itself to satin stitch.  That didn't seem like enough, so I added a freezer paper stenciled t-shirt.  The stencil came from stencilry.org.

I really love freezer paper stencils.  I need to do more.

Of course I love embroidery, too.  The sit-in-the-rocking-chair-watch-TV-and-sew factor is a winner there.

Enjoy your weekend!  We'll be spackling and painting the bathroom, when I'm not sitting in the rocking chair doing embroidery.  Cheers!