the color of your eyes

This is what's making us smile today:

Anicka loves this video, and so do I.
:)

Why my husband is the greatest - reason # 47

How many dads can teach their kids to walk on the ceiling?

Adventures in Motherhood - Episode #3

One day last month we went outside to play in the grassy area next to our apartment, and it was such a beautiful day that I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures of the trees... because the leaves were finally starting to turn. That's quite an exciting thing for me. Autumn is my favorite season, and we don't get much of an Autumn here in St. George.


It was such a peaceful, beautiful afternoon. The kids even played together nicely for some time before their game of 'kick the ball' turned in to a game of 'keep the ball away from Ryker'.


At which point I interrupted the game with the suggestion that we go exploring. Ryker decided to lead the expedition.
They were quite exhausted after their mad dash across the lawn, and found a nice stump to rest on. 'Ahh, a photo op!', thought Mom. But Anicka was intent on having her 'favorite stick' with her in the photograph. I was able to get one picture without the stick, where they were both sort of smiling and had both eyes open...

before Ryker decided that enough was enough.

(Mooooom! Ryker's eating diiiiirt!)
And then the children went their seperate ways. Anicka decided to spend the remainder of our time outside in a deep, meaningful conversation with her stuffed dog.


And Ryker decided to try his hand at mountaineering. (Hey. A stump is tough business when you're still trying to figure out the whole walking-with-shoes-on trick.)


Once he had conquered the stump, He moved on to bigger and better things. Namely, the picnic table. His look of satisfaction was pretty darn cute.
As was his indignation when I so rudely removed him from the table. Ah, the heartache.

Halloween in December

How sad is it that I'm only now getting around to posting Halloween pictures? Ah, well. life is busy, what else can I say? Anyway. (These pictures are just for you, my dearest Crystal. :D )

Halloween is my favorite. I can go all out on decorations and costumes, I get to try new things and let my creative side run wild... It's awesome. This year I made almost everything for our costumes. Anicka and Ryker were a Princess (Belle) and a dragon, respectively. And Adam and I went as Cleopatra and Marc Antony. My first idea was to go as Dr. Horrible and Penny, but I didn't think many people would know who we were. Anyway. Adam and I made the 'armour' out of cardboard, and I crocheted my wig and made all of the jewelry.

I made Ryker's costume out of a couple of blankets and a scarf from the dollar store. The cape/wings was my favorite part of his costume, but we couldn't get a good photo because this was about the happiest he was all night:


Here is Anicka's princess pose:
Her dress came from this:


Which I found at the D.I.
It was about three sizes too big, and pretty plain, so I spruced it up for her.
And here is a picture of the Three Musketeers, who had fun trick-or-treating together. Sienna is a ballerina and Kaycee is an old woman (complete with sagging bosom, though you can't see it in the picture):They are the cutest little girls on the planet, seriously.
Annnnnd, lastly, a few photos of our Halloween Decorations. There were the hanging bats in the window (can you guess which ones Anicka made?):

the pumpkins that we painted, plus Anicka's scarecrows (which she calls 'co-crays' for some strange reason) and her beloved stick collection:
our paper-bag pumpkins, which sadly looked more like orange pineapples:
and our cute ghost jars, which looked pretty sweet when they were lit up with glowsticks:

Well, folks. that is the end of my very verry verrrry belated Halloween post. Goodnight.

Organization on a dime

Have you ever heard of Cansolidators? They look pretty handy, right? When I first saw them I thought that they would be the perfect tool for organizing our food storage. The problem is that the smallest ones cost about 30 bucks.
Each. Yeah.
I'm cheap. No, I mean really, really cheap. I've never spent more than 12 dollars for a pair of jeans. All of the furniture in our apartment was either gifted or thrifted. There's no way I'm going to spend 30 dollars for a little platic thing that organizes canned goods, no matter how handy it is. So, instead, I 'organized' our closet like this:

looks nice, right? Heh.
And then, one day I came across this amazing istructable about making furniture out of cardboard, and the wheels started to turn in my head. A quick Google search later, and I was looking at a tutorial about making your own cardboard can rotation system. Awesome! Adam made three of them for us. We didn't follow the diagram on the tutorial, instead using the measurements that worked best for us, but we did like their idea of using a tube of caulk (which we had on hand) instead of elmer's glue. The caulk dries much faster and leaves the finished product a bit sturdier. We also doubled up the cardboard to make sure that it didn't buckle under the weight of our canned goods. So now one small corner of my closet looks nice and tidy. Now I just need Adam to make about a dozen more...



While Adam was making food storage solutions, I made myself a shoerack. And because I just can't resist a chance to turn ANYTHING into an art project, I mod podged scrapbook paper onto it, and then painted it.

So an old diaper box went from this:

To this:


And the pile of shoes behind my door went from this:
to this:
Ah. Much better. As I was making it I had the idea of modifying it a little to make a doll house. You could mod podge pictures of furniture and art from magazines onto it, and make pretty rugs out of scrapbook paper... Anicka and I might be doing something like this together, soon.

And, lastly, here is my progress on my knitting:


It's coming along, slowly but surely. I've made a few mistakes, but overall I'm pleased with it. Hopefully I'll have myself a nice little scarflet in a couple of days.

My new obsessions

• Knitting!

I tried to pick up knitting when I first got married. I hated it. I wasn't coordinated enough to work two needles at a time! So I stuffed my knitting needles into the back of the closet and tried crochet, instead. I loved crocheting. But I was always jealous of the people who could knit cool cables and lace. last week, when I cleaned out my closets, I found my knitting needles and decided to give them another chance. This is my progress after two hours and many, many slipped stitches:

Why yes, I AM ridiculously slow. Thanks for noticing. But, yay! I can knit!

• Mod Podge Rocks

Yes it does! I love mod podge. You can do so many things with it! I can't hotlink the photos from their blog, but that just gives you more of a reason to click on over to there and check it out. Because who doesn't need a pair of modpodged shoes?

• Wardrobe Refashion

The members of this blog take a pledge to make their own clothing for a specified amount of time. You can also buy handmade or used items during your pledge, so many people take old clothes and thrift store items and refashion them into something totally different. There are some awesome ideas! like turning a man's button-up shirt into a little girl's dress


or embellishing boring tanktops with crochet collars.Sign ups for the next round of pledges start this Thursday, and I've decided to add my name to the list, since I just cleaned out our closets and I have a giant pile of clothing that needs to be repurposed. This should be fun.

• Crafty Nest

This blog is rife with ideas for the do-it-yourselfer. I only wish that I had a house to decorate, so that I could attempt some of these projects. look at these awesome ideas!

We got our little glue ghosts hung up yesterday. It took them an entire day and a half to dry completely. My guess is that we did them a little thicker than they needed to be. But that's okay, because I figure they're less likely to tear now. Don't they look cute, haunting my center piece?

And this is the vase that I talked about in my last post. It was a graduation gift to my brother from our high school art teacher, Mr. Jones. Eric asked me to keep it safe for him, since he has nowhere to store it. (Oh, I'll keep it safe for you alright. Verrry, verrry safe.) Isn't it awesome?

I mean, of course I have my own vase from Mr. Jones, but... I want this one too. It's so pretty. The picture doesn't do it justice.

We've done a couple more Halloween crafts this week, too. Anicka did a cute painting of a tree using apples as stamps. I don't remember where I first saw this idea, but it's floating out there all over the Internet. And it turned out really cute. I'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall for the fall season.

I found some fuzzy black yarn in my stash and tied a spiderweb up in the corner of our living room.

It was super easy to do, and if anyone wants instructions I can tell you how I did it. I think it has a cool, graphic look to it, and I like it better than the cheesy cobwebs that you can buy at the dollar store. (But anicka loves the cobwebs, so we'll probably be putting some of that up, as well.)

Super cute crafts

Today while Ryker was napping Anicka and I decided to get our craft on and decorate the apartment for Halloween. We don't have many decorations, and can't buy much because... erm... we're poor. But there are a ton of cute Halloween ideas here, and I think we're going to be busy testing them out for the next few days.

First, we made a couple of kitty pencil holders. Anicka made the first one black, for me, because she knows that I love Halloween. But she had to make a second 'pretty' one, because... well, the girl is a diva, and she likes her crafts to be as pink as possible. Seriously, look at how excited she is about these things:
Do you like her belly-shirt? It's one of her favorites. Because it's pink. But today I decided that I'm going to add some long sleeves and some fabric at the bottom to give it a layered look for winter. I've never attempted a refashion before, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Our second craft of the day was this sheet of glue ghosts. Aren't they cute? The little one on the bottom left corner is supposed to have "lots of mouths to make it scary" but I think it looks like she needs to wax her upper lip. Just sayin'. They're supposed to dry overnight and then you can peel them off of the wax paper and hang them up. I think they'll look pretty awesome hanging in our oh-so-stylish vase-full-of-twigs. (Seriously, Eric. You're never getting that vase back.)