Cowboy in a garden center

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garden center dance party

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face of mischief

Friday, my boys’ school broke uniform protocol and let the kids dress up like cowboys. It happens once a year and the older grades have a big ol’ hoedown with dancing and singing. It’s all great fun right before Spring Break. They looked like this before school–

67.365: cowbabies

The photos at top were taken at a Houston Garden Center. I went with my mom to browse and Andrew got pretty dang silly while we strolled through the Japanese boxwoods. I am glad I had my camera bag with me. I just pulled it out and snapped off a few frames.

I’m also glad that Spring is near. Everything is so lusciously green! The COLOR just makes me swoon. I was even happy for the cold front that pulled through because everything is looking so pretty anyway.

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Last Day of Winter Break

07.365: at play

January 7, 2013. My kids’ 3-week vacation ends. We spent a chilly hour at the park.

I took photos with my Nikon 1 (affixed with the 18.5mm f/1.8 lens). I am in love with this little camera. I still adore my D7000, but this baby is just so handy! I also don’t feel like such a weirdo when I bring it out. The giant DSLR makes me feel like I’m screaming, “LOOK AT ME! I have a camera! I take photos! Ask me to take your photo!” when I bring it out. I need to work on my confidence.

Anyway. I love this camera and it helps me capture special moments with my boys. I didn’t even notice I was taking photos of each of them doing the same thing (sorta) while we were there.

They did some:

climbing
climbing,

crossing
crossing,

balancing
balancing, and of course–

sliding
sliding! Fast slides are the best.

It was pretty great. They’re back at school and, I gotta say, I miss these faces.

hanging out

seven years and seven months

Christmas: the card

card

I finished up our Christmas card, this weekend. I had a few different ideas, but in the end, simplicity won. I took the photos about two weeks ago in the boys’ bedroom (the windows in their room are right next to each other, so there’s great light). They wore gray gingham shirts from Target and I crocheted some simple bow ties. They totally brought the charm and I got several nice photos.

_brothers1

_anathan

_andrew

_xmas3new46

When designing the actual card, I wanted something beautiful, but not outrageous. I found the font on Lost Type Co-op [Lavanderia] and was in love. The rest was pretty simple, a line here, a line there, and some stars. I ordered 4″ x 6″ prints from Snapfish and mounted them on white cardstock. Easy peasy.

What took time was my peace dove. If you turn it upside down, it’s an angel! I’m leaving it to the recipient to decide what it is.

the lino carving

Anyway, my original plan was to put it on some white cards and then have the photo on the inside. I made a few using some pewter ink (from my Speedball metallic ink set), but I didn’t really dig the huge contrast between white and dark gray. I liked the print enough to know I wanted to use it somehow. After rummaging through supplies, I found the kraft bags and since they were the perfect fit for the print, I decided to give it a shot. I used white ink and fell in love. The hours of printing and washing and carving (over and over and over because I kept finding new pieces to carve out) really paid off.

lino2

lino1

lino4

lino

And that was that! I closed each up with a bit of Christmas-y washi tape on the back. The ones I have to mail will be put into white envelopes for some extra protection.

Have you made your Christmas card yet?? Are you DIY-ing any part of it?

I’m linking this post up to The Paper Mama’s Holiday Photo challenge. Go check out the adorable entries (and maybe enter yours??)!

Halloweeen!

bros2

The book character parade was all sorts of adorable. My kids looked like THIS before school. My heart went all mushy for my baby in overalls. I wish he could wear them all the time. For trick or treating, Waldo turned into some sort of zombie thing and the little mouse transformed into Darkwing Andrew. I didn’t get around to finding a duck bill, so we sort of nixed the duck part. He still looked pretty darn cute.

da1

na1

[You can see past Halloween photos HERE]

While they went trick or treating, I sat around and handed out candy. I got only a handful of trick or treaters before 7:30. The big groups started coming after 8, which is when I went in to get the boys ready for bed. Jason handed out the rest of the bucket and that was that.

Helloooo, November.

Handmade Halloween Costumes

bookchars

At least mostly handmade.

These are my boys’ costumes for the book character parade at their school. Andrew (4) chose the mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Nathan (7) chose Waldo of Where’s Waldo? fame.

You would think the Waldo costume were the easiest thing in the world to put together, but..ummm…NO.

The first thing I did was make the hat. That part was easy. I CO 60 with a 5.5mm circular and k2p2 for like 20 rounds, then switched colors and knit about 20 more rounds, then did a basic crown decrease. Giant pom-pom completes the look. It fits him perfectly and took only a few hours. I want to make more in a bajillion different colors.

Next, I looked for a Waldo shirt. I only found red & white striped shirts that were for the adult version of the Waldo costume. Nothing that would fit a 7 year old! So, I figured I’d just paint a white shirt. I looked at Target for a white shirt–nothing. I looked at Wal-Mart–nothing. Frustrated, I moved on to the glasses. I thought I’d just find some at a thrift store and pop out the lenses, but no. I couldn’t find any round ones! SOOOO, pipe cleaners to the rescue! And the boy could help, so WIN!

I just needed the darn shirt. I finally found white long sleeve t-shirts at Old Navy and they had his size–whew! Painting was a whole other ordeal. I mixed my acrylic paint with some textile medium I’ve had forever. I used blue painter’s tape to mark off the stripes. It came out better than I was expecting. Even though some of the lines are a little messy, I still like the look. I heat set it, today, but I’m afraid to wash it, so the boy is going to wear it as-is. The acrylic was really rough, but the iron smoothed it out considerably. He’ll wear blue jeans and I’m thinking of letting him take my old Polaroid camera with him. He wants to be a zombie for Halloween night and I’m going to try so hard to get him to be ZOMBIE WALDO. How cool would that be?

Andrew’s mouse costume was easy-peasy. I made a basic crochet beanie (SO QUICK!) and then I knitted the ears on. I made the ears in the round with short-row shaping. I don’t know why I decided I would knit them, but I’m glad I did. Since they’re double-thick, they stand up and are just so damn cute. He wore the hat to the school’s Fall Festival this weekend (and a blue cape!) and received many compliments. However, they all thought he was a cat or even some sort of bear? Oh well! His tail is a long tube with a JUMBO pipe cleaner shoved down the center. Seriously. Easiest costume ever. I added a little loop to the back of his overalls to “tie” his tail on. He’s in love and so am I.

This next costume is for you 90’s kids. Get ready…

darkwingduck

Do you know who he’s going to be? Hmmmmmm??

If you guessed Darkwing Duck, you are correct! My husband introduced them and so my littlest has been raving about a Darkwing Duck costume all month. The first thing I knew he would need was a purple blazer. OF COURSE there were no purple blazers for boys to be found. I went to Goodwill and found a cream linen blazer, picked up a packet of purple dye, and BAM! Purple blazer. The boy swooned. Like, really. He was so giddy to put it on. I made the cape (cut out the general shape, use double-fold bias tape around the neck, then zig-zagged around the edges) and crocheted the mask (I made the first row around a pipe cleaner so it’s stiff!). He already had the fedora. I just need to figure out what pants he’s going to wear. Darkwing Duck doesn’t wear pants, but it’s going to be too cold to go pants-less. He has some yellow boots to wear as duck feet, so I was thinking white pants, but I can’t find any! Ah!

Anyway, I kind of went all out with the DIY, this year. To be completely honest, this is the first year I’ve put together costumes for them. It’s usually my sister that buys them whatever they want or we go to a thrift store and my kid picks out a super-hero costume. I’m pretty excited for Halloween, this year! We may put them on tomorrow so I can get photos.

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