Really! I wanted a picture for Grammy's birthday, so I parked the kids outside in front of the spirea bushes, took a few pictures, decided I didn't like the shadows on their faces, turned them a bit north, and tried again. As I was getting ready, Julia turned her head and gave her brother a peck on the cheek! I snapped the photo and luckily got a good frame and focus. "I'd rather be lucky than good," the saying goes. Needless to say, Grammy loved the picture!
Aaron has loved learning about the Solar System lately. He got a Wall-E cartridge for his Leapster for Easter, which teaches about the planets and constellations among other things and we planned a planetarium trip for a day we thought Daddy would have off from work for an IEP meeting with Aaron's school. (We ended up doing the meeting with him on the phone, at least.) We still went to the Natural History Museum, excuse me, the Museum of Nature and Science (I've been calling it the Natural History Museum since I was 7!) and went to the planetarium for the first time since they rebuilt it and went all digital years ago. It was kind of funny that my first reaction was to keep my kids off the escalator (which had a window under it so you could see the inner workings--how cool is that?) because as a teacher I went with the 8th graders every year to the museum and the house rule is that students can't use the escalators! We checked out the weather exhibit (Papa is a meteorologist newly retired from NCAR--the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder), and of course the kids got bored with it long before he did. Then we walked through the space exhibit towards the planetarium and got an almost private showing (two other young men) of "Cosmic Journey" which was a half-hour long trip to each of the 8 planets, plus Pluto, since the film was made before Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet. Both Aaron and Julia recognized the planets before they were named in the film!The day before, while doing my shopping at Wal-Mart, I was passing the toy aisles and this box of plastic planets caught my eye. I try not to buy things on a whim, but I knew the planets would complement the space theme already going in his bedroom and that he would absolutely love them. Into the cart they went! When we got home from the museum, I surprised Aaron with it (I didn't notice it at first, but he did, that the box also said they glowed in the dark) and I hung them up for him, using my math skills to try to place them roughly a proportional amount from the "sun" as in reality. (The collection also includes Pluto, which went in the far large corner near the entry way.) Aaron thought it was a great idea to have his light be the sun! So, here's Aaron's Solar System:
Way in the back, that blue spot??? That's Pluto!
For this one, I laid down on the floor and took a picture looking up.
Before I close, a giggle for the day. I was driving Julia to preschool today and we were stopped at a red light near a Safeway when she suddenly said, "I see a Santa." Not believing my ears, I asked her to repeat it. "I see a Santa." I looked to my left and saw an elderly gentleman with a paper coffee cup in his hand walking on the sidewalk towards the intersection, and he had a long white beard! Just like Santa!
I figured I could at least tell you what I have been doing instead.
In February, we paid off our Subaru! I wanted to save that "extra" money to eventually buy an HDTV. I invited my parents to some electronics stores one Saturday and found my "dream" TV: a new Panasonic 50" plasma, one that actually uses less electricity than comparable LCDs! Now that I have a tangible goal, the car payment gets dumped into the savings account instead, and I figure come June I can buy that TV! Now, you must understand that Asperger's people can get obsessed, and this HDTV idea has snowballed into several other ideas for the house: I'll need new furniture to hold the new size of an HDTV. Since it's an open back, I'll paint the wall behind it a dark color. To hide the wiring for the surround sound speakers (I want to upgrade to that and Blu-Ray, too), I remember an idea of using crown moulding... that will need painting... heck let's just paint the entire room! I'll need to clean up some clutter for the new furniture; let's declutter the entire house. I need room in the basement to store some things I won't have room for upstairs any more... we need to clean out the basement (good news for thrift stores, bad news for MDH, as a lot of that is his stuff to go through). Now that the basement's clean, I finally have a place to paint the wood I bought for the kids' room shelves 3 years ago... need to buy paint to do that. I'm at the paint store, let's buy some to paint the kids' bathroom (since I've always hated the "new house beige" with their white fixtures). The basement's cleaned up now after finishing the shelves... let's play ping pong! The basement just hasn't given me any inspiration to scrap lately... what if I got a matching home office (matches the entertainment wall) for the living room and moved my scrapbooking upstairs????
Bottom line, my scrapbooking hobby, which once got done on one half of the ping pong table, is now put away on basement shelves and has pretty much remained there for three months, with the exception of World's Largest Crop (my Creative Memories consultant has had several family problems and has had to cancel several crops at her house) and as a bonus you have a pretty good idea how an Asperger's brain can work sometimes.
The bad news... the money I've saved so far for a TV just got spent on a new dishwasher. The old one (8 years old; it's a basic model that came with the house) left grit on the dishes after one washing; a second go around got them sort of clean. I refuse to wash dishes by hand (I am so grateful for dishwashers and washing machines), so they kind of stacked up until I gave in and went dishwasher shopping. Other than the fact that the motors sometimes buzz, the machine is deathly quiet and cleans better than the old one ever did. (Thanks, Dad, for helping to install it.) By coincidence, this week is the city's bulk pickup week, meaning you can put as much trash as you want out in the curb and a trash truck will take it away for you. Scavengers know this, too, and several pickup trucks and flatbed trailers made the rounds of our neighborhood this weekend taking away things people had left out. Our old dishwasher was gone in less than two hours (and yes, I took off the latch so no little ones could get trapped in it).
The good news... I have done a few things on that long "to do" list above: We decluttered the house and basement and gave away lots of stuff; I painted the kids' bathroom and their shelves. Don't believe me? I've got pictures!
This is the bathroom from the hall, to show the shade of blue I picked. (Oh, and the towel bars are uneven because a child hung from one and ripped it out of the wall, so I replaced it a bit lower than its twin.) I also bought a new light fixture to replace the "hollywood bulb" bar and a new faucet, since the plastic knobs were too hard for Julia to turn off by herself (this one's got a lever--much nicer for little hands). And the old beige soap pump, toothbrush holder and nightlight didn't match any more, so I found a white soap pump and toothbrush holder on clearance at BBB, and that neat nightlight came from Target (you can't see it well unless you probably enlarge the picture by clicking on it, but the clear plastic is embossed with a brocade-like pattern).
These next three are prints I bought at Hobby Lobby ages ago for the bathroom, and uncovered when I was decluttering. I had them rematted in white and placed them in clearance-priced frames from Wal-Mart. On clearance because they had black smudges on them. Well, I just happened to have some white paint left over from the ceiling, door, etc., and I know that the frames will then match perfectly! (I just love the bear... he's adorable!)
And this is my own design for custom shelves for the kids' rooms. A 7-foot shelf and a window seat. The seat was going to have a shelf under it too, but I forgot about the outlets under the windows (which in Julia's room is the only one not behind furniture) which also house their nightlights, so I had to forgo those. The arches are supposed to mimic those in their furniture, and the paint are the same colors as I used before in their rooms. Also, I had to cut out a bit by their beds, so the drawers could open! Other than the fact that they're a little rickety, side to side, I think I did a pretty good job and it houses their clutter belongings much more prettily than cheap oak-like bookcases. The one downside is that because there is furniture all the way across without a gap, I think it makes their rooms look a little smaller (and they aren't big to begin with, roughly 10'x10').
On a closing note, I have another reason to be glad we upgraded our DSL speed recently. Updating a blog with lots of pictures used to take me all afternoon, because the pictures would take forever to upload. But today, I got it done in less than an hour! And there are several pictures here! Maybe I'll be tempted to blog more often..... nah.... I'm not a daily journalist and I never will be. You'll just have to wait and be surprised.
As I was looking for a pattern to make the Nixons' baby sampler, I came across a pattern I'd saved, hoping to make it for one of my own someday. I'm happy to say someday has arrived!
The pattern is from a cross-stitch magazine (I used to subscribe to several, and I tore out the pages I wanted to save). The original was dominant in pink, but since Julia's room is painted mostly green with a purple accent wall (and other purple accents), I switched around the pink and purple, and picked purples and greens to match her room.
After I completed Julia's, I felt I had to make one for Aaron, too. I just love the shape of a diamond, and thought that if I picked different colors and found something more masculine than flowers, I could recreate something for him.
Ta-da! I picked up a package of blue Aida cloth, looked through my books of borders and little motifs, used some designs from the original and again matched colors from his room (yellow and blue). Wait, have I posted pictures of their rooms? I don't think I have. I painted both their rooms back in 2006 to give them their own look (apart from "new home beige") and I'm very proud of them. Guess there's no time like the present, huh? Just a minute while I go find them and watermark them......This is Julia's room: green walls, one purple wall, and the ceiling and woodwork painted white. The curtains (on a butterfly rod) are purple, as are a few other accents. The quote is from a font I bought online (Pismo Clambake), printed backwards onto cardstock, cut out and attached to the wall with decoupage glue. The butterflies are various foam stamps bought from craft stores, dabbed with acrylic paint, and mashed on the wall. The textured wall creates a neat effect with the paint, like it's stenciled or something.
And here's Aaron's room. I picked the color with help from paint chips: I matched the gold in the top of his furniture, then picked a lighter color on the paint chip. The ceiling and woodwork are the same white as Julia's and the blue stripe was picked to match the blue in his furniture. The curtains are denim, clearance at Target! The rods are like the ones in my kitchen. I thought they might match, brought one up and they're perfect! So I bought more at Lowe's for his room. The quote is cut from cardstock using letter stencils and the stars are punched from the same cardstock and all is put up with decoupage glue.
First is the Christmas card that went out. Three quarters of them were red; one quarter used green paper.SUPPLIES: Gold cardstock from Michaels.
Red (and green) holiday paper from Hobby Lobby.
Stamps sets are all Hero Arts: Fantastic Flourishes, Christmas Borders and Winter's Butterfly, stamped with VersaMark and heat embossed with gold.
Second is a birthday card for my sister. It's totally a rip-off of Kathi Carlson's card, although I tried to be different and recreate a flower from the paper instead of using any of my butterfly punches.
SUPPLIES: Basic Grey Urban Prairie 6x6 paper pack, CTMH black, Ocean and Breeze cardstock.
Circle punches.
CTMH Happy Birthday stamp set, black inkpad.
These are the front and the inside of my nephew's birthday card. I didn't have an apostrophe the appropriate size so I inked up one of the little flies and used it instead!
SUPPLIES: Scraps from the Alligator page.
Stamp Sets: CTMH Dream Wishes, Fun Times, Solos 2, Happy Birthday. Hero Arts Trajan Monogram.
CTMH Olive, Cocoa inkpads.
Nestabilites circle dies (my Christmas present from my dad!)
The finger didn't come with the card; I merely borrowed it from my four-year-old to help hold the card closed so that the froggie would be visible through the hole.
