StuntSewing

Okay so my only involvement in the Festivus stockings was that I pinned.. well.. one of them.

"If I jab myself one more *bleeping* time, I swear!"
"You're jabbing?"
"I'm jabbing!"

BUT I gotta give it up for my lovely wife on this. I think she had the vision for these things when she bought the slip covers from whence the stockings came. Yep, slip covers. Now I know purple is the color of royalty and all, but these things wanted, dare I say needed to be re-purposed. Their future as slip covers was indeed bleak.

They really did turn out nice, even if they were "thrown together" on Christmas eve. She even made one for her mother, and stitched "grammie" on one side and "Annie" on the other. Her mother seemed genuinely touched.

Nice job C!

(pictures to follow when the light is good, or one of us fgures out how to use a real camera)

Edit - 3-03-07 - adding the picture *finally*

Ahhh... the lazy days of summer are about to come screeching to a halt. Three of the kids start a new school on Thursday this week. Uniforms, lunch boxes, backpacks and hair done first thing everyday... I can't wait :-/ I really could wait, if that were a choice, but it's not so we'll all pack in The Taylor Bus aka Odyssey a couple of times a day and we'll smile about it damn it!

Enough about that, this is supposed to be about our cookie party. The only flavor of cookie Grace will eat are sugar cookies... This is quite a bummer for me since I'll take just about any kind of cookie any day of the week and there are far easier cookies to make than frosted sugar cookies. Ahh well, I was smart this time, I doubled the recipe and still have 1/2 in the fridge waiting for us to do this all again... hmm was that smart??? I should have double the frosting as well, oh well! As you will see there was about equal parts frosting the cookies and eating the frosting. Jax swooped in, after a mario super strikers fest with the neighbor, frosted and ate all in about 2 seconds. Olivia liked making her animals multicolored, Maiah mostly cared that there was a cookie in front of her and a spoon with frosting in her mouth and Grace, ah Grace is my perfectionist, if a limb broke off I had to 'glue' it back on, she wouldn't leave a cookie with a mm unfrosted. It didn't matter how long it took it was going to be 'professional' she said to me.

The final picture is of our cookie zoo, they look nice an easter ish don't they :-)

Down the hatch!

A couple of weeks ago we were initiated into the winter season. SNOW! Grace and Maiah thought it was wonderful, mostly because that meant it was Christmas! Jackson, well Jackson was the most bundled up and stayed that way. Big poofy coat, done all the way up, hands in the pockets, not coming out for anything. As you can see the girls were in jackets, making snowballs, and feeding Max. Sadly, we gave away all of our snow gear because I *thought* we would have no need for it. Ya know, the whole it never snows in San Antonio thinking! The kids had fun and of course finished it off with hot cocoa. Here's my first attempt at a slide show!

While we were having a romp in the snow Terry was doing his part peddling 150 miles from San Antonio to Corpus Christi in the MS150

I'll admit my idea of the bowling alley stems from when I was a kid. First it's dirty and dark and dingy and then it's mostly filled with grandma's and grandpa's. My own grandparents still frequent their local alley :-)

However, Terry was home so we set out for a morning of fun. It really was!
Nice, clean, full of other families, a really fabulous Sunday morning. Like most places, thanks to the clean air act, it was smoke free and best of all they sold fries to help keep little fingers busy while waiting their turn!

I thought tree's grew, for the most part vertically. This particular tree, however, is so large that this huge, and low to the ground, branch is just right for sitting and crawling across that's right we didn't tree climb, we had a great tree crawling adventure. I must say that I am having a bit of quilt here in the 70 degree days, having just ditched the best snow on earth.

Humu was our read this morning, after which we set about making our own fishy drawing. She is such a perfectionist.. When she had a hard time making the body, across the room goes the crayon and the paper is a ball on the floor. Notice the crumpled side and hand clutching the bottom of the paper.

Take two.

Mom helps with the basic body shape and M gives it a face and arms, oh wait, fish don't have arms. MELTDOW....

"No, no Maiah see these flippers are fish arms." Phew! She takes the crayon and changes them from stick arms to flippers and starts to color them in.

I think she did a lovely job!

Just a little plug for "Humu" It's an all around fantastic book about a fish who learns that it's best to like yourself just the way you are. I'm not sure they come any better than that.

A lesson about color mixing, it was fun but now fingers are stained.

If you want to know how I got those colors. These are the ingredients.

1. you get a bowl and put water in it.
2. you get some food coloring.
3. you drop only one drop of each color

details: if you want it turn black then mix it all together with a spoon or something.

For Valentines Day a little contest was brought forth... Choose between "most beautiful", "most original" or "Most Funny" for your valentines collection buckets... no larger than a shoe box (there where some seriously HUGE shoeboxes there) and use your iminagation. What are a 10 year old boy and his dad to do? Paper Mache a Toilet, yup that's right! Off to the craft store the two of them went, returning, so proud, with styrofome, paint and other supplies. It was a fun and time consuming project but so totally worth the First Prize status! Most Funny of course.

Totally impromptus, totally unexpected and totally silly. We made paper carnations for the Teachers V-day gift, put them in a $2.00 watering can and called it good. Grace, always improving on my ideas, twisted up all her carnations and used them to propose marriage to her dad, down on one knee and everything. I know his heart melted just as much, if not more, than mine. Even with all the trouble of having 2 house payments this, THIS, makes it all worth it!

Fair warning: There are no images in the post because I was under strict instructions that there were to be no distractions while driving.

Desert, oil pumps, windmills, Indian Reservations, then the awe inspiring Southern Utah; time to think. Terry usually drives the majority of our Road Trips, this frees me up to pass snacks all around and do some reading. On our move in December I read the Twilight series. This time it was All Mom, All the Time; Driver, Snacker, and Herder all in one.

Day 1 started full of anticipation and our first audio book, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”. Things got really “funky junky” when Olivia asked why we were broke, too broke to buy those crystal light powder packs to make flavored water, priced at a whopping .39 each. Everyone picked out their own special flavor; which led to a large amount of water intake and a forced stop on the side of the Interstate to pee. We ended the day playing go fish, reading books and arranging 5 people into 2 Queen beds. There’s nothing quite like a Road Trip!

We finished Diary and started Island of the Blue Dolphin. Talk about nostalgia; Island was one of my favorites as a kid. Another roadside picnic, strangers telling me how nice it is to see a family with well mannered kids, and time to think. Lots of thinking, reflecting and projecting. 12 hours on the road and we were all ready for a stop. If you ever find yourself in a small town deciding between the National franchised hotel and the Local Inn, which is claiming to have the best rooms in town, my suggestion would be to go for the Franchise. In general I try to buy ‘local’ and ‘indy’ and I wish I could leave the cookie cutter ‘burbs, with the HOA telling me that my grass is too long or too dead or has too much dog poop on it, behind. However, IF we really had the best room in town, I can’t imagine what the other 2 hotels’ rooms could have possibly been like.

Ahhh, day 3. We’ve reached the 4th and final state in our 3 day adventure. Everyone’s happy. Grace is master train spotter, Maiah is all about the horses. Jackson is totally into The Hobbit audiobook. Olivia is so excited to see her cousins that she can hardly sit still. We’ve taken to accessorizing our meal toys and seeing how rainbowish we can make our baby wipes. Lucky for everyone the long day yesterday means today we can climb out of the van by 2 today! Hip Hip Horray

What a great vacation! First, spending a bunch of time with the family, in the mountains (even trekking through some snow), collecting building materials for our fairy house at Grammies. Miley Cyrus, the Blue Man group and one of the largest fire-works displays in the country. Lots of swimming and sleepovers, can it get any better? Oh yes it can...

Then, WOW, over to Sundance for a date, a real date! The symphony on the side of a mountain with a picnic dinner and no no we don't need the shuttle from our room to the concert, or back again; I can't really call it hiking but it was a very nice walk.

Next we set off to Southern California. I've never been to California, man you can't beat that weather with a stick! Coronado Beach ROCKED!, Legoland and the Wildlife Park were great and man, the SD Zoo is something else!

I'll happily post a few pictures of some of our trip, um ... well, soon. I was technically challenged while away. I broke the USB ports on my LT, making it impossible to upload pictures or recharge Grace's "ipod" grrr. This makes a new computer a necessity, but for now I'm pretending that I'm whipping through projects with a mouse and can get my pictures and stuff. This is NOT working out very well so I imagine it won't be long before I take the plunge and get a new one. My other mishap is, let me just say, DO NOT select format on your dslr viewing menu. The first warning sign which I didn't heed is the red circle with the !, next that you have to press ENTER to make it happen. DRRRR, I re-formatted my card. Half of all the trip pictures are gone. But there is still plenty of fun to be seen.

I'm all recharged and ready for an awesome summer and beyond. Starting with a banberry GIVE-AWAY.

SEW WITH ME, for the next 2 weeks the studoTANTRUM pattern ZUMA will be on sale. I'll have lots of posts with sewing help, here at stunt sewing. Including, trying something new (at least for me) GROMMETS and making my own BINDING. All you have to do to be entered into the drawing is post your ZUMA's at the banberryPLACE flickr group before August 18th. The lucky winner will receive 3 yards of fabric!

The littlest Miss wore that cute dress down there exactly 2 times. Whenever I produce it for the days' attire I get the scrunched up nose and the puckered up lips and she tells me how she wants the underdress on top and how while she does like the teddy bear she does not like having a HUMAN on the front of her dress.

I'm working on some skirts. Hers is put together already. But she sees Graces in the cut out stage and declares it to be the cutest fabwic ever. UGH! I proceed to get out her skirt. Again the scrunched up nose makes an appearance. Slowly, ever so slowly she decides it's cute enough if only she can choose the fabric for the skirt. Fabric which is in Graces skirt and in no way shape or form coordinates with hers.

These outfits, these LAGUNA skirts with ANTONIA shirts. They are the last ones I will agonize, scrutinize over fabric choices on my own. I'm resigned I have to bring in the 4 year old on the decision making. But it doesn't end there. If the littlest Miss gets to make those types of big decisions there is no way the 6 and 8 year olds will let it slide.

I'm sure now that life will never be less complicated.