She is four

 

 

She's sick on her birthday, but is happy and playing. Our original plan of going to the zoo got cancelled for fever, but that's okay. She's currently trying to convince Rowan that the orange wings are NOT too small for him, and that he needs to be a fairy. Birthday pictures can be found here. 

When did his happen?

My Pixie is going to be 4 this weekend. FOUR! How did this happen?

 

She is a very scary "pampire."

We're not going to have a party this time, because Boo at the Zoo is being held ON her birthday. We love the zoo, so we're going to party with the animals. She will love it.

What else will she love? This:

 

Her own dress, just (close enough) like Sally's dress. I can't wait to give it to her. In fact, I probably won't. She knows that I'm making it because she's had to try it on in process. It's nice and long on her, and I figure the sleeves can end up 3/4 length as she grows. Never fear. There will be pictures.

I also plan to make her a dress up caddy for all of the dress up things she's getting for her birthday. Time is getting away from me, so I'm not sure that I can get it done by her birthday, but it will happen. She's not quite there with understanding the calendar, so I have time. This may be the last year I can get away with it, too.

---

Later:

Yeah. I couldn't wait to give it to her. Who could wait for this?

 

Sudden and loud

The Pixie has decided to be afraid of the hallway. Seriously. The hallway that is 4'9" long. (I just measured it.)
I was fine when she suddenly decided to be afraid of the walk from the front door to the van and screamed the entire way unless carried. I tolerate the sudden and loud fear of the vacuum cleaner. But this has become downright annoying. She can't go to her room or to the bathroom without going down the hallway. Then she has to come back. The level of whining and wailing that occurs before and after any trip down the hall is phenomenal. And no, nothing scary happened in the hallway. Nothing happened with the vacuum or the van either. *sigh*
I think she likes being scared.

I love baseball

I do. It's such a great game. And I really love having a kid who also enjoys it.
There's nothing like a fall evening at the ball field.

 

 

 

Style

She has it.
 

Rowan photo session

Fran wants pictures of Rowan so she can have one painted like she did with Ben's girls. Now that the temperature has dropped and the humidity is below gills-required, I can go outside and try to get one.
You can find the set from today here.

This one is my favorite, simply because of his eyes. He has his daddy's eyes.

First day of school 2012!

Today is the first day of 5th grade for Rowan and the first day of 2nd grade for Niall. Both of them are returning to the same classrooms and teachers they had last year. We really love that part about Montessori schooling.

Here's Rowan and Garfunkel

 

Just take the picture, already.

and Niall with Garfunkel

 

He's feeling sassy.

And both boys

 I just noticed I need to repaint Garfunkel's eyes.

Also the Denise inspired "take a picture in front of the car" shot.

 

This is the last year that Rowan will be able to hold his grade up on one hand!

Eleri and I took them on to school and walked them into their classrooms. We got Niall settled into his room and then went over to see Rowan. They were all ready to get back to it.

Summer is almost over

I haven't blogged much this summer. We've been all over everywhere. I fell off the photo365 wagon, too. Too much to do in too little time.
I just picked Rowan up from camp this morning, and we have one more week before they start back to school.
Crazy.
Here's are some stills  I took off the camp video. I think they say a lot about how Rowan feels about Victory Juction.

Oh how she's grown!

My Pixie is tiny for her age, but she sure has grown since she was a baby!
I knit this little dress for her when she was 9 months old.

 

It now makes a lovely top.

 

It's nice when a knit has longevity. :)

Garden!

The garden is doing really well! I think the raised beds were exactly what we needed to do for our poorly draining soil. I made two of them, and John bought a scoop of this compost mix to put in them. It's done the job well, even with this extreme heat that we've had. And this spot gets full sun for most of the day, too.

 

Bed 1 has the Sun Sweet tomatoes and the cucumbers. I've even ripped some of the cucumbers out. They're insane!

 

Bed 2 has the Cherokee Purple tomatoes and the green beans.

I'm still waiting for ripe tomatoes. I've been eating cucumbers since last week. The beans are still teeny.

 

Baby Cherokee

 

Baby Sun Sweets

Yes, the yard needs mowing. That's a job for John or Rowan!

Camping Adventure

We went camping last week. For me, it was the first time going camping since having children. For the Pixie, it was the first time going camping EVER. We had a blast.
The campground was this little place called Lake Powhatan, right outside of Asheville. A little over 4 hours of driving for us, and about 6 hours of driving for our friend Anne and her family. Another friend, Ellie, was supposed to come as well, but her van broke down - fortunately BEFORE she left town - and she wasn't able to come.
How was the first camping adventure with the kids? It was awesome.
We had campfires

We made s'mores every night.

We played with glow sticks

and rocks

We made ice cream 

And the kids got dirtier than I knew was possible.

It was a blast.

We also learned quite a bit. We learned the value of melatonin after a couple of nights of the Pixie being far too excited about sleeping in a tent to actually go to sleep. We found that silicone hot pads are better over a fire than cotton ones, and that fireplace tools would have been excellent to have around. We learned that Niall would rather run barefoot on gravel than wear shoes, and that Anne can climb a tree in a skirt and flip flops. Anne and I figured out how to hang a huge tarp over most of our site when a sudden rain storm drenched us on our last night there, and we made food with fire all week. 

Another big thing we learned is that our tent is not quite adequate for 5 people, even if one of those people is very small. lol We fit, barely, but the sleeping arrangements were comical.

The brown outline represents the edge of the tent. The boys' mats didn't go all the way to the bottom, so that's where the random flotsam (shoes, clothing, flashlights, glowsticks, etc) accumulated. 

John was on the far left. Eleri insisted on sleeping (when she did sleep) perpendicular to him with her feet in his face. Niall was on the next mat over, with Rowan on the far right. I curled up in the space that was left. I woke up with Niall's booty in my face too many times to count, and got kicked by all three kids often. Once I woke up to find Rowan ON TOP of Niall and had to shove him off. It doesn't really look all that cramped when you look at that drawing, but stick figures are misleading. We take up a little more space than they do.

We all agree that camping was awesome and we are going to go again. Camping with Anne and family needs to be at least an annual event. But we also all agree that before we go again, we're gonna need a bigger boat. I mean, tent.

I took a bunch of pictures not seen here. If you'd like to see the whole set, just go here. 

Stay put tablecloth!

I've had this idea kicking around in my head for at least 6 months now.  It just took me until today to try it out.
I got a cheap PEVA (vinyl like) table cloth from Walmart last week. I like these table cloths. They wipe up easily, and you can get kooky prints for whatever holiday. But I also knew that in my house, a table cloth would get yanked on and anything sitting on the table would go flying.
Enter scissors and elastic.

I put the table cloth on the table, and trimmed it a bit at the corners so there wasn't a great bunch hanging down. I then zigzag stitched over the edges that I trimmed so they wouldn't get weird and make the table cloth fall apart.

Then, the big idea. I tacked down some elastic, and stretched it as I sewed it down. I used a narrow zigzag set to a long stitch length - I think on my machine I had it set to a width of 2 and a length of 4. The elastic I used was 3.8" wide. I didn't take any pictures of the process because I didn't think of it, and had no idea if it would actually work anyway. But here is what the elastic looks like once it's sewed on.

 

 If you've never sewed elastic before, it's pretty easy. You just have to stretch it as you go, and use a zigzag stitch so it can spring back tight again. I have no idea how much elastic I used, either.  I had some leftover from another project, and used the rest of that, and then opened the new package and used some of that. I'd be a better tutorial person if I kept track of things like that. But in my experience, you can't ever have too much elastic laying around, so over estimate what you need.

Once you're done, whack it on your table. It looks like this underneath.

 

FANCY!

And it looks like this from above.

I'm pretty excited about how well it worked and now easy it was to do. I now have plans to collect all sorts of different prints and change them out for seasons and holidays. Why didn't I try this sooner?

The Doggy Dentist

Rowan got his braces off last week, and when the orthodontist took them off he mentioned that he was extra careful not to pull out any of Rowan's loose teeth. Apparently, he has quite a few in there!

 

Look, Mom! No braces!

Rowan mentioned that his molar was pretty loose this morning. It was, but it seemed like it would be a while yet. Not so! He wiggled it all day, and by this evening he had it loose enough to do something he's been wanting to try for a while - the doggy dentist.

See, we've joked in the past about how we should tie a thread to a loose tooth and tie the other end to one of the dogs, and then tell the dog there was a squirrel or bunny so they would run off, and pull out the tooth in the process.

Rowan wanted to try it out for real.

So, we did! I got a long piece of thread and tied it around Rowan's loose tooth. We put the harness on Bosco, and went outside to tie the other end of the thread to the loops where the leash clips on. Then John held Bosco so I could snap a picture of the setup. I mean, we needed evidence of this.

 

All hooked up and ready to go.

We started telling Bosco there were squirrels and bunnies, but he wasn't quite buying it. And then, a REAL bunny came out of nowhere and went hopping across the neighbor's yard. That was all it took. Bosco was after it and the tooth was out of there! It was hilarious.

 

Rowan has quite a few loose teeth. We might let Loki do the next one.

Home improvement

The deck has never been a grand place to sit in the afternoon and evening, because it gets blasted by sun. It's much too hot out there for most of the summer, and very uncomfortable for people who refuse to wear shoes.
This week, they had offset umbrellas at Aldi. SCORE.
However, it came with a large X base, which wanted to be weighted with at least 150lbs. It was a big footprint for our little deck, but we came up with a solution for that.

 

Bolt it down and add braces. Problem solved.

I'm looking forward to enjoying it out there this summer. We may even eat out there some evening. Crazy!

May 365

I finished putting up the pictures for May's 365. I missed a few days - got hit with a migraine, had to attend a birth, and then those random forgotten days. Still, I got most of them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45427621@N00/sets/72157629950234011/detail/

Enjoy!

The new TV cabinet

It's not all the way done, but it's mostly there. I still have to finish a shelf inside, and pretty up the outside a bit, but it's done enough to use and not sit in the kitchen, so yay!
This was what it looked like when we picked it up.

 

It was brown and brass, and smelled like old. But it was a good size and $80 and made out of wood instead of pressboard, so it was good.

I learned a lot doing this project. I learned all about different grits of sandpaper, and how to strip off varnish. I also learned about polyurethane and sanding between coats and how you really should let it cure etc etc. It takes a lot of work to strip an old cabinet down and stain it to look like something new! I learned how to install a drawer, and how you have to be exact in your measuring so it will work. I also learned about wood glue, shims, and using a 1" spade bit on the drill. All sorts of learning going on over here!

John did most of the chemical stripping. I did most of the sanding (Rowan helped a tiny bit) and I did all of the staining. I'm still considering what to do to the outside to pretty it up. It came out a darker green than I originally thought it would, but I think it looks awesome. So here it is - the outside of it anyway, with the new TV on top.

 

I moved the handles so they are in a more normal place for doors that swing out, and used new hardware for that. I also spray painted the brass trim on the bottom black, to match the new handles. It's hard to see on film against the dark green. You'll have to trust me on that.

Here's the whole TV corner

 

No, we still don't have baseboards. Yes, that floor project was a long time ago. We're managing just fine without them so far. 

The DVD player is shallow, but wide. Too wide to fit in the cabinet. But I had those black shelves that we got from Ikea last summer when I was doing the bathroom. They said brown/black in the store, and looked brown there, but looked black once I got them home. So I stuck them in the closet until now. I planned on using one for the Antenna anyway, so using one for the DVD player went well. I will probably paint or sharpie or whatever the supports so they're black, too.

I think it came out pretty nice! And it doesn't smell like old anymore. The new green stain took care of that. I still love the little legs, and that it's a pretty solid piece of furniture. Yay! And I'm so glad it's over.

The big one, video

The big present

My friend, Jamie, was selling her ipod touch, so Rowan got a really good big present for turning ten.
I thought it would be more fun to draw out the suspense and wrapped it in a series of boxes. I had to stop at five because I ran out of birthday paper and had to use Christmas paper for the last one.
His reaction was awesome.

 

Don't worry, we took video, too. But it takes a while to upload to youtube. I also took the camera to his birthday party at the bowling alley, but left the memory card in the computer! But Jenn had her small camera with her, so I got to take pictures anyway. You'll just have to wait until Monday afternoon for those. Once I have them all up, I'll post a link so you can see all his birthday pictures in one spot.

10

Can you believe it? I can't.

Refinishing project

I forgot to take a picture before I got started, so I yanked this one off the craigslist ad.
No idea what the end product will be like, but I'm sanding. It all starts with sanding anyway.
I smell like old furniture now.