Easter Eggs 2014

I love eggs. From my head down to my legs.

Actually...I am not a big egg-eating fan. But painting and decorating---I love eggs!!!

Each year I paint an egg for each child, so far based on what the kids are digging at the time. (I have to say up front here, that we are all very much still into last year's theme---My Little Pony. Whew! Just had to make sure you all knew. ;-) )

This year I debated between Pokemon and Minecraft---and Pokemon won! I kind of thought Minecraft would be visually unappealing (go figure) and require too much detail (lots of little tiny pixels) for this to remain enjoyable.

Evander chose Victini:

"Victini is the Pokemon that brings victory, and it's said that the trainer with Victini always wins. It generates an endless supply of energy to share." (taken from the Pokemon Essential Handbook that Evander bought with his own money, and waited so patiently for five days for it to arrive via Amazon's two-day shipping!).

Victini is a psychic and fire type Pokemon, so I painted him half purple for psychic and red for fire.  I had no idea until the kids and I watched a Pokemon movie together a few days ago, that this was Evander's favorite!

Emory chose Skitty:

"Skitty will run in circles chasing its own tail. It will look for any excuse to chase moving objects---or Pokemon."

Skitty is a normal-type Pokemon, so I painted he/she/it? a corresponding gray.

Emory loves cats! If you know him, you might be hearing him in your head saying, "Ummmmmmm Gihhhteee!" His classmates know that he loves cats because he is always drawing them. I love that he is known for that.

Marin chose Pikachu:

"This forest-dwelling Pokemon stores electricity in the pouches of its cheeks. From time to time, it will use an electric-type move to charge up a fellow Pikachu that is injured or weak."

Pikachu is an electric-type Pokemon, so I painted it yellow. I really tried to fight painting a Pikachu, because I wasn't thrilled with the idea of painting yellow on yellow. But, it's what Marin wanted, and I think it turned out fine using a light yellow as the base.

On the bottom of each egg, I painted the symbol for each Pokemon's type. Skitty is a normal type, Pikachu an electric type, and Victini is both a psychic and fire type, so he got a half symbol of each.

This morning we still had snow on the ground, but by afternoon it was sunny and the green grass asked me to come back out and photograph eggs. It really did.

For previous year's eggs, click on the links below:
Easter Eggs 2013
Easter Eggs 2012
Easter Eggs 2011 & 2010

Minecraft Valentines

A certain someone in the house chose a theme for his valentines that wasn't in stores (of couse! :-P)---Minecraft!  I took the easy route and made them on the computer so we could just print, cut, fold and go!

Evander was really sweet not to give the girls the creepy ones, but saved these for his closest friends that are boys:

Eye of Ender, creeper, and zombie

 "I like your brains," says the zombie. Ha!

He gave his teacher the TNT one. <3 Glad she didn't take it any other way than just being a valentine with explosives on it. :-P

Shovel, cobblestone, and TNT

These were his favorites to give the girls:

A tamed wolf, diamond pickaxe, and diamond

We sealed each card with a health meter heart, printed on Avery 22805 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" labels.

On the side he addressed the cards, we added a Minecraft ocelot since the ocelot is kind of his thing. :-)

Happy Valentine's Day!  I've got my (creepy) eye on you!

Valentine's Wall Hanging

When I saw a beautiful heart wall hanging from Alyssa at Pile O' Fabric...I knew I had to make one. Had...to...make...one.  The blocks are made to look like cross-stitch, so really the possibilities of what shape you create with them are endless (Find it here!: Cross-Stitch Block Tutorial).

I love sewing seasonal decorations, but often the season passes before I even get started on anything. :-P Nick made some comment last week (as good husbands do ;-) ) which spurred me to get this one done. It's small (about 21" x 21"), so it was a relatively quick finish!  Finishing a project certainly always feels good.

Of course, Chocolate was on hand to assist in the process:

Look---she sits when I tell her to!!!  But, she certainly doesn't "stay" for long...

I got to use my brand new walking foot for my machine that I got for Christmas. I feel like Super Woman with a walking foot. It allows the fabric to feed from both the top and the bottom of the machine, so there is no more tugging...just power!!!

Seriously, this is how I feel:

Stitch in the ditch and straight line with the walking foot:

Ooooo, I just love looking at this one. I used up the rest of my Amy Butler charm squares that I have had for a while. Perfect project for such yumminess!

Finished just in time for Valentine's Day!

Christmas Ornaments with Children's Drawings

I love Christmas ornaments. After seeing a friend's tree recently, I admitted to her that I have an embarrassingly large amount of them.

I love how each ornament seems to capture a moment in time (hey, blog name!), and memories are strongly attached to them.

I love making ornaments, too!  I think that's my bigger problem (if you can call it a problem!) with ornament quantity...I love to create, create, create!

I saw these recently on Pinterest and totally wanted to make some embroidered ornaments of the kids' drawings:

source

I think I will sooooo do this some day, just not this year as I have been busy working on two big surprise fun projects for people for Christmas. :-)

As time was ticking, I saw these at Jo-Ann's:

You better run to Jo-Ann's and grab some for this project before they are gone!  I think they've been marked down 70% this week. They had these flat circles, globes and light bulb-shaped plastic ornaments. So cute to fill with anything that can fit in there!  But drawings...drawings is what I wanted...

Set your compass to 1 3/8" to draw circles that will fit perfectly inside (1 3/8" is the circle's radius).  Cut out the circles. 

Have your kids draw pictures on the circles. You can include two drawings in each ornament. I had to glue the circles together since my kids used markers, and marked really really hard with them, and the markers bled through the paper. Be sure to include your child's name and the year! 

Next, loosely roll your circle paper and shove it down the hole on top of the ornament. Okay...gently shove? Fill with sequins, glitter, and whatever else you might want to use to decorate your ornament on the inside. We also glued and tied a ribbon on the top. :-)

Done!

"A Christmas hydra"

"Christmas trees with their Christmas patterns"

Rudolph!  Of course...a deerie!

These will be so fun to look at year after year.

Is there any coincidence that Emory's is the most shaken up ornament with glitter all over the sides already? No...he already tossed it across the room twice before it made it to the tree! :-P Good thing they are plastic!

Hallow-rain

For the second year in a row, we've had a bummer of a Halloween.

Last year, our inland region experienced Hurricane Sandy's high winds and crazy rains, postponing Halloween to a Saturday afternoon.  Trick-or-treating in the daylight was just not the same.  There weren't as many people handing out candy, either...which really is fine (less sugar consumption), but still a bummer. We didn't light our jack-o-lanterns and milk jugs because they couldn't be seen.

This year...it was raining...and it was windy.  Weather people and moms alike were urging municipalities to postpone Halloween again, but many hard-headed people in charge said no. Safety-wise, it ended up okay (I can say that after the fact, since nothing happened...but something could have happened, you know? Broken tree limbs anyone?).  It poured and it was terribly windy...and I stayed on the porch passing out candy.

Evander went as a Minecraft creeper (painted by me! :-) ), Emory was a Ninja Turtle and Marin was Super Girl (thanks to Cousin Anna's old costume!).

The best pic I managed to get of all three :-/

Evander's costume was ruined by the rain, and only one out of three of our kids made it beyond our little street.  Poor Evander and Marin hit a hot shower as soon as they came in the door. I couldn't keep a match lit to light the jack-o-lanterns or the milk jugs. :-(  How miserable.

Prior to trick-or-treating, our friends invited us over for dinner, to get the kids together, and to just be excited about Halloween together. :-)  Good food, good friends and good fun!

All of the kiddies! 

Two creepers!  SsssssSSSssss

The loot:

Too busy to pose for a picture by his candy. ;-)

Seriously, I checked the weather records and it has never rained on Halloween night like it has for the past two years! >:-/ Here's to next year!!!

Easter Eggs 2013

Each year I paint three eggs for Easter, one for each of my children, and this year's theme was MY LITTLE PONY of course!  Last year, I let each kid decide what they wanted on their egg, but I didn't even ask this year, because I WANTED TO PAINT PONIES!  Ha.

From left to right, your ponies are: Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Princess Cadence.

Don't you just love Spring?  :-)  I actually don't mind the cold and snow. I am very blessed to not have to drive to and from work every day. However, I do get tired of everyone being so grumpy about it. Wait...does that make me grumpy about their grumpiness?

Rainbow Dash was my favorite to paint, and I think the one that turned out the best.  I had this one in mind for Emory, since he is strong and athletic like Rainbow Dash.

Both boys say that Fluttershy is their favorite pony because "she is so cute, and she loves animals."  Both boys want to claim the Fluttershy egg.  I have Evander in mind for this one, though, since he is the nature and animal lover.

Marin wanted her favorite pony, Princess Cadence.  This is also what she wants to be for Halloween this year (the kids talk about their next costume and next birthday party theme all year long!). Good luck to me figuring that costume out!

I <3 painting eggs!

Check out previous year's eggs here:
Eggs 2012
Eggs 2011 & 2010

Adieu, 2012!

Yeah, I know we said goodbye to 2012 a week ago...but I'm slow to the blogging world as of late.

Hello, 2013!

Here is a roundup of things I did in 2012:

I painted rooms:

I painted things:

I painted shirts:

And made some stuff:

I sewed more aprons!

And I sewed lots of other things:

And somehow, I finished three quilts:

It was probably more fun for me than for you to look back on my 2012 creative endeavors. :-P I like seeing it all in one place!  I really consider this my practice time in preparation to sell things in an Etsy store or something.

Maybe 2013 is the year to get that going...

Finally Halloween!

Sooooo...this whole week was really messed up due to Frankenstorm.  Flooded roads, power outages, schools cancelled, postponed Trick-or-Treating...all these things we experienced made our week different, but are piddly compared to the greater devastation that some experienced on the East Coast.

Our Trick-or-Treating was changed to the afternoon today. Afternoon?!?!? It was weird and strange, and not quite the same. There were fewer people passing out candy and fewer Trick-or-Treaters. :-/ But, the kids still enjoyed dressing up and their candy...OBVIOUSLY! :-P

I was very happy to find both Evander and Emory's costumes on eBay for less than $15 each. I got them in July while people weren't thinking about Halloween costumes, so the bidding was stress-free. Thankfully, the boys still wanted to be Optimus Prime and the Red Power Ranger three and a half months later. :-)

Marin wanted to be the purple princess...although, she went back and forth between wanting to be a princess, and Dora. I had to keep reminding her, "Purple princess...purple princess..."

Marin got pulled in her carriage...

...and I guess if you're Nick, you get to ride that way, too. :-P

This dog cracked me up. At first we thought it was dressed up as a cat...but then we saw the acorn!

Funny how much energy they have before we leave...but they tired quickly...I think they just didn't want to carry their candy bags. :-P

The loot!

Now, go brush your teeth!