Tornado

Here's Matthew's post-all the pictures and video of the storm.

And the aftermath.

Cross Cultural Coloring

One of my favorite finds ever at Goodwill was two coloring books from South Korea. I've been hoarding them. For what? I have no idea.

There is no English on them anywhere. There is a flag on the back of the first page of one of them, which is how I identified the country.

Anna spotted them today and wanted to color in them. They're pretty neat, they have pictures and things to color and cut out and then paste into the main part of the picture. But...here's the first guy.

And look! Here are his weapons to color and cut and paste! What fun!

More tomorrow...

Craft Room Envy

I know I'm terribly lucky to have this space to call my own and fill up with crafty bits and projects and books and magazines and yarn and fabric...etc.


But I do dream about redoing the whole thing and really getting organized and making it a beautiful AND tidy place to work.

Like this:

Or this:

Or this:

This entire blog is dedicated to craft spaces.

Someday...

This post is dedicated to Megan, with whom I have organized many a craft space, in lots of different locations. Happy Birthday!

Drain Power

I especially liked these testimonials for "Drain Power"

BH&G Nov. 1974

Turtle Re-use

We always give Dad Turtles. For Christmas, Birthdays, Father's Day. Matthew was confused the first time he got a box, and when I bought some for his Dad once in those early years. It's just what we give men. And then we all share them.

Dad's box at Christmas (I got him a box, Susan got him a tin, we need to coordinate, I guess) was too nice to throw away, so it's been sitting in my to-do pile since we finished off the candies in January.

I knew I wanted to recover it to make a reusable gift box, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I looked through a few magazines, but the pages weren't quite big enough. I thought about fabric, but nothing seemed to fit the colors just right.

Then it occurred to me to look into my stash of old wrapping paper to see if there was anything. I can't help but buy old wrapping paper at Goodwill, but often it's too cute to bring myself to use.

The Super Dad paper was perfect!

I decided to cover it with tape to make it more durable, but it also makes it look less nice. I'll have to think about that. Contact paper?

Happy Birthday Super Dad! Want some candy?

Notebooks!

Here are the first two I made.

There are mistakes on each, but I'm still having lots of fun.

On this first one, I put holes on the wrong edge on the back. I didn't t think about how it would be turned around. I just used white paper for the pages.

And on this one, I glued my picture to the wrong side of the plastic I was recovering. Oops. I used an ad I got in the mail today, sturdied up with a plastic license plate I'd been saving for some crafty purpose, and an old paper bag cut up for pages.

And the corner rounder I bought on a whim is not great. Boo Fiskars. I rounded these myself with scissors, but I didn't do a great job.

Loving Care

I've been having fun with all of my old magazines.



This ad made me laugh.



You'll need to click on it to read it.



Better Homes and Gardens November 1974

Bookmarks

I saw this on CRAFT a couple of weeks ago and liked it.


Then, as I was getting some boxes ready to send out to the College Cousins, Matthew pointed out that the bunnies I bought were "Reester Bunnies". Wow. I wish I could take credit for noticing that, but I'm sure glad he did.


5 minutes later...



bookmarks!

Schedule

Pocky

Every week in the grocery store, in the asian aisle I see the bright red boxes of Pocky. Do you love the asian aisle? It's my favorite. I remember once Mom and I had to kill 20 minutes in the Grocery Store for some reason, and I suggested we just go to the asian aisle to look at stuff. She was sceptical, but we had a great time there. It's a nice memory.

Anyway, I always want to get some Pocky, but it's not the sort of thing that's on the list, and so I just look at it, and say that someday, for a treat, I'll try it. Poor Abby, I think she hears that EVERY WEEK.

So she put some in my Easter basket! What a sweet sister.

And--it was exactly what I thought it would be and delicious.

Chocolatey and crunchy and very fun to eat.

Try some!

(Oh my, there are lots of different kinds...)

Bind-It-All

I've been wanting a Bind-It-All for about a year now, and I got one for my Birthday! (Thanks Susan and Matthew!)
(pic from Binditall.com)


With it, I can make little notebooks, or journals, or books, or flashcards, or calendars, or basically anything that's bound.



I have to wait for my o-rings to get here so I can start, and I'm all fizzy with excitement waiting.



Since I can't get started yet, I've been looking at projects and things online. That doesn't help with the over-excited fizziness.



A lot of things are more frilly and scrap-booky than I want to do, but there are so many ideas, just the ideas alone make my heart race...

The Cottages

Last week I got in the mail a postcard addressed to "The parents of Elizabeth Lobmeyer" for student housing in Hattiesburg, at the University of Southern Mississippi.

It struck me that student housing in the south seems very different.

Among the amenities listed are "Front Porch Living" and "Free Tanning"

Read all about it here.

It does look lovely.

Baby fun

I'm really happy with this Baby Shower gift.

I was sitting on the floor going through ideas-I wanted this little blankie to be personal and perfect. Isn't it wonderful when your brain pops up with the perfect idea?

The parents of this long-awaited baby are two people I love love love. They have matching star tattoos. Now baby boy has a blankie that'll fit right in.

It's just a flannel blanket, nice and big and soft.

Here's a close up of one of the stars (I'll admit it, it's the best one)
Matthew thought it should have something on the edges, so I just zigzagged around the whole thing. I tried to zoom way in to show you, but it's still hard to see.

Then, because the baby bag that I had was really too huge for the present, I made a ball out of some old red jeans. It'll match their living room furniture. A little strange? Yes.

I may never...

Button Shirt Dress

I've been wanting to make a dress following this tutorial for years.

Monday we didn't have school, so I had the chance!

I started with this shirt-

And ended up with this dress!

It was fun, but took me kind of a long time. 3 hours probably, which seems like way too long. Hopefully the next one will be quicker. I have an adorable shirt I've been saving. It was hard not to use it first, but I'm glad I used another shirt to learn on.

Anna's got some crazy modeling poses.

Easter

We had a fun Easter weekend with Abby. On Saturday we went to the Eggstravaganza at BCC, where Anna had a great time with cousins.

Then we went back to our house and dyed eggs and baked and decorated cookies.

I took several arty pictures of eggs. It was fun for me.

On Sunday after Church and after finding our baskets at Abby and Poppa's house, we came out to our house for dinner. Easter is my favorite dinner. Delicious!And we used my pretty pink flowered plates, which made me happy.Poppa Ted and Anna read stories, which made both of them happy.

Cute Thank You Girl

Thanks for all of your birthday wishes!

31

For my birthday, Matthew and Anna took me to Traditions for lunch. Anna wore a crown.

Then that afternoon the two of us went to Goodwill and found her a desk! I got tired of waiting for Matthew, so I took it down out of the truck myself. I have no idea how I was able to do that.

These are the flowers from Matthew and the Ornamental Grass from Daniel and Sarah. Aren't they lovely?After church, we had a cookie with Dad and Abby.

We're really spreading it out this year, I get to celebrate at the farm this Sunday, and then with the fam for real when Susan's home the weekend after that.

Yay for Birthday Month!

Circular

Anna's in that question stage you hear so much about. I didn't realize that it would drive me crazy.

Matthew likes it, he says it's kind of like one giant test. ALL the time.

I'm glad she's curious about her world, but sometimes...I get tired. And EVERY question is preceded with "Mama?" and I have to respond before she'll continue. And if she loses her train of thought in the middle of the question, she'll start over with "Mama?" all over again.

Here's one that made me laugh.

Mama?
Yes, Anna?
What's a cyclops?
A monster with one eye.
Mama?
Yes, Anna?
What's a monster with one eye?
A cyclops!
Oh. (That's my favorite response. It means 30 seconds or so before the next question.)

Easter Story

A wonderful gift

Katrina took me to see Fernando Ortega last weekend for my birthday.

I haven't been able to figure out what to say about it.

It was a really wonderful gift.

I got to see him for a minute after the concert. Here's my picture. (We took two because he said he didn't have his good face on in this one, but in the second my eyes are closed. I can't figure out yet how to merge the two. Once I do, I'll come back and fix this. **I did it!**)

Best of all, I got to say thank you. It's just really not very often that you get the opportunity to do that. The most wonderful gift of all.

Birthday Girl

All Moved In...

This is Matthew's new office!

Doesn't it look like a much nicer place to work than his old office?


And now we get to organize! My favorite.

Trim!

The last step was trim.

And finally, in Home Depot, we got a little testy.

See, here's Matthew on the drive home. It wasn't too bad.

We stained and cut and I painted the doors...

Two happy kids, all done. Notice Matthew's sweating and I'm all bundled up.

I feel very proud of us.

Here's Anna spinning with delight!

And here's one of my favorite things-the tools all sorted and ready for the next project!

Carpet

Now that the painting was all done, it was time for carpet!

First we went to pick out a remnant. Anna was very patient.

We were very happy that the room was narrow enough that we didn't need to do any seams.

And that we could just glue down the tack strip and not have to drill into the concrete.

And that we could rent tools.

Carpet was a great step. Lots of worry-not much trouble at all!