happy halloween

our halloween festivities started with a package from my mother-in-law earlier this week. she loves halloween and sent a great assortment of fun halloween stuff: a t-shirt for madeleine, some halloween pencils, pumpkin die cuts, a peanuts halloween coloring book, some pumpkin straws, and cards for the girls. all fun, and no ghoulish stuff. 

madeleine thought she had died and gone to heaven. i did not stage this picture. she immediately insisted that i put on the t-shirt, get her a drink so she could use the straw, and then spread out the art supplies and went to work. it was perfect for her. i should have taken a picture of diane chewing on her straw and the card. she loved the package too.

       

i tried to take a halloween picture of the girls with the pumpkin that madeleine picked out earlier this month. all attempts had goofy looks from one or both girls. these were the best. i just have to resign myself to the fact that we are in that stage of photos. probably for the next ten years.

at least this one of just diane came out well.

as madeleine's halloween costume, we decided to go with a soccer player using items we had from around the house. not because she's remotely interested in soccer, but because we had the stuff for it and i couldn't think of anything else off the top of my head. plus, she didn't beg for anything else and was quite happy to go as this. the ball is her cousin's, the socks were randy's brilliant idea: painter's tape for stripes (not a great picture of them). she had diane's leg warmers on for shin guards. it was good enough and i just didn't have the energy to do anything more complicated. my poor children. someday i won't be such a halloweenie.

friday workday

sawtooth star

 beth had to go to work unexpectedly this friday, so i was the only student for friday workday this week. beth was sorely missed, but now i will have a chance to reinforce the lesson by teaching it to her.

wild goose chase

we learned the technique of the double half square triangle with the sawtooth star and wild goose chase squares. this is actually something i had already had exposure to with another quilt that i am working on, so it wasn't too hard. once again, i'm happy with how they turned out.

we have a heavy homework load coming up. next time: pinwheels, drunkards path, and kaleidoscope.

not in the mood

sometimes i just don't feel like blogging. and sometimes not for long stretches (compared to my norm, that is. not a judgment on anyone else's blogging cycles). not taking many pictures, combined with diane's complete unwillingness to sleep day or night, combined with curl-up-in-a-quilt weather has led to one of those longer stretches. just haven't felt like it. 

but, even though diane is not sleeping, she is growing up quickly before my eyes and i should probably post a couple pictures of her for a certain grandmother's sake. 

at least she's still cute. even if she won't sleep. seriously though, i've tried everything. i've been consistent with proven methods and nothing. 

nothing. 

at least this one can sleep through hours of her sister screaming and is a sleeping champ. okay, i'm done complaining about sleep and comparing my children.

 diane is cruising everywhere. she's done a few unassisted standing stints here and there and i'm pretty sure she'll be walking sometime in the next month. she's a determined little thing.

a moment of trepidation

 we had our first snow of the season yesterday and madeleine was thrilled to try out her new snowsuit and boots. she and rachel got all decked out, headed into the backyard and then stood at the edge of the snow for a few minutes before heading out.

we could not get them to look at the camera. they were too interested in making tracks in the snow.

and yes, i do try to do my child's hair, but she usually won't let me. clips come out moments after going in and are scattered across the house, just waiting for a little sister to choke on them. sometimes i just avoid the struggle altogether. this was one such morning.

i need to knit madeleine some mittens. her hands were freezing after being outside.

diane was pretty happy to just stand by and watch. so was i.

thursday workday

bear claw

 due to some scheduling problems, we moved our workday to thursday this week. we learned to do half square triangles (although i had already used this technique in my pink lemonade quilt) and pieced our bear claw square. i love how mine came together. i went with the traditional browns for it instead of incorporating my focus fabric, but i'm glad i did. especially because i tend to neglect my light brown fabric if i have to leave a fabric out of a square design.

t block

 we didn't have time to piece the t block squares during our workday, but i finished them yesterday. we are leaving them separate until we know how we are putting the final quilt together. the t block isn't my favorite quilting square, but it is fun that the negative space makes its own t block.

overall, another successful workday. next time: wild goose chase and sawtooth star.

pictures of the ones i love

when you make goofy faces, you run the risk that they may end up on the blog

 just because i can...

 playing on construction equipment outside my parent's house.

 with rachel.

 she was pretty excited about this one.

 eating finger puppets.

 yum!

 madeleine giving me her best smile.

 eating forks, too. really, eating anything near me.

 and standing on anything near me.

 playing together.

healing well.

she got in this predicament all by herself. and i got a camera instead of stopping it. she looks way too old in this picture.

taking one for the team

at church, i work with the eight year old girls in the activity days program. every two weeks, 4-6 eight year girls come over to my house. they come in like a hurricane and when they leave, i am always surprised at how much energy they had. it is fun and exhausting all at once.

by now, you should know how much i abhor halloween. okay, abhor is a strong word. despise? i am trying to work on that. for the children's sake. so, with halloween approaching and my big ball of eight year old energy rolling through today, i decided that i would take one for the team and do halloween crafts with them.

to make sure that the crafts were do-able for eight year olds (i have realized too late before that other crafts are not), i decided to try them out beforehand. here are my models (including the ghost above):

this ghost was my favorite. the easiest and least ghoulish.

this was supposed to be more embellished. i decided to just tell them to imagine it with ribbons, etc. around it.

this was by far the girls' favorite. all but one girl started with this one first. who knew tissue paper candy corn would be such a hit?

the faux stain glass pumpkin. probably my favorite, but mostly because i got to work with con-tact paper. what is it about that stuff? but i digress...

having learned from past experiences where i either have an activity that takes five minutes and then i have a bunch of bored eight year olds running around my house for fifty-five more minutes or their parents are coming to pick them up and we are half way through the activity, i picked these five easy ones and figured that they could get through as many as they wanted in an hour. sure enough, one of them didn't even finish her candy corn and one of them did all five.

who can predict the behavior of eight year olds?

conversation with madeleine

madeleine: where's daddy's birthday?
me: daddy's birthday was yesterday.
madeleine: is it in his stomach?

i thought, "yikes, she's got a lot to learn about birthdays." after further investigation, i figured out that she was talking about his birthday cake. i still think she has a lot to learn about birthdays.

27!

randy turns twenty-seven years old today. i've only known him for five of them (we met right before his 22nd birthday), but i think he's pretty spectacular, even with that limited exposure. what a man. i could gush, but i won't. but really, i could.  words and words about how much i love him. imagine them and it will save randy the embarrassment of me actually doing it. i've probably already crossed that line. 

good thing he never reads our blog.

a play kitchen for the girls

it all started with this cabinet that i bought off of ksl. okay, actually, it all started with this tutorial that i saw on a blog that i follow. i thought, "i can do that." so i decided to, and began searching for a cabinet to turn into a play kitchen for the girls. i found this nightstand on ksl for $12 and some paint, a metal bowl from a thrift store, a dowel, some fabric, and some new hardware later, it became this:

i debated whether i should give it to madeleine for christmas, but we are doing christmas in boise this year and since we couldn't take it with us and madeleine is a little too young for, "i made you a play kitchen, you'll get it in a week," i decided to just involve her and let her play with it for a couple extra months. we'll dress it up with some pots and pans and felt food come christmas. in the meantime, she can use her imagination.

the sink is probably my favorite part. i wanted a bowl with a bigger lip so that the hole we cut didn't have to be as precise, but since i couldn't find any bowls like that for under $10 (the goal with this play kitchen was to keep it inexpensive), i bought this one from a thrift store and put my trust in my dad's superior tool skills. he pulled through and worked some definite magic with a jigsaw. the bowl fits in like a glove.

better than that though, is the fact that he had this faucet fixture for us to use. i was planning on using a j-shaped p.v.c. pipe from home depot (low budget, remember?) and was thrilled when i was explaining my plans to my dad and he said, "i have just the thing for you." i couldn't have planned it better.

 

i painted the burners on with black paint.

added a handle and painted the inside of the cupboard front black for the oven.

made a curtain with some fabric that madeleine picked out of my fabric stash and threw it on a dowel.

 

madeleine was asleep when i finished it, so rachel got to check it out first. she immediately climbed into the cabinet.

i am really glad that i decided to just make it now and let madeleine be involved in the process. it was really fun to have her get excited about it, too. she even got to help with the painting.

 

i decided to let her paint the back, originally thinking that i would just paint over it at the end. but after letting her do it, i decided that i would leave it. it's the back and no one else really sees it, but it's fun for me to look at and see her imprint on the project and to remind me of her when she was little in years to come. 

 

kind of like blue ink handprints across the white wood floor.