End of summer (?!)

I am in denial that school is starting next Thursday. Well, sort of. It's getting harder and harder every day to not go ballistic at the kids. Trying to keep them entertained while doing the stuff I need to do while keeping them fed and the laundry and dishes under control has become a losing battle. My house hasn't been clean in two months. Neighbor kids have overrun the place and I am tired, cranky and overwhelmed. Ahh, summer!

The kids have been busy so I have a lot of catching up to do.

 It has been raining a ton lately, which is awesome. The kids go out and stomp around in it, just like I used to do when I was a kid. Rain in the desert is very exciting.

 Lots of rainbows and pretty sunsets as a result!

 

And then there was this.......a whole ant colony got flooded out and relocated to this spot on our patio underneath where Mark had put our door mat out to dry. Those white things are hundreds of larvae. Yum!!! (Mark exterminated all of them. Buggers have been swarming our kitchen for months.) I got bitten four times on the leg/foot while taking this one picture. Stupid ants.

 

 Madelyn's reaction to seeing this enormous beetle, haha. It had been living in our garage.

We've been watching the Olympics every night, someone's always using the desktop computer and our laptop has not been working, so Luke's had to resort to using his portable DVD player to get his Ni-Hao, Kai Lan fix. He is deeply in love with that device, as you can see...

Speaking of deeply in love....

Madelyn really has a thing for Mike Rowe. No really. She loves his show Dirty Jobs so much (and has done for over a year) and whenever one of his Ford commercials come on, she squeals, "There's Mike!!!!!!!" Her little girlfriends are all into Justin Beiber. Apparently, she prefers more manly men. Ha!! (Well, to be honest, I think she just finds him very funny and his show super entertaining, which it is.)

A couple of weeks ago, she came to me asking if I could help her build her own movie theater. 

This is what she meant. Put a sheet over the TV so she could have her own private viewing tent, lay on a cushion and eat milk and cookies while wearing her leotard.

Then she went out and showed me how she could flip the swing to make it higher and higher off the ground, and then practiced doing a gymnastics dismount.

Then (she had a busy day), she got daddy's bungee cords, hooked them to Luke's belt loop and took him for a walk. He already loves pretending to be a dog, so he went right along with it and barked and crawled on all fours. Kids.

Luke's been driving me crazy by staying up VERY late every night. (See the clock in the background? It's midnight.) His nap/bedtime schedule got way off this summer. Plus he climbs into bed with me all the time. I feel like I never get a break from him!

There was a kerfuffle in Nursery a couple weeks ago, and he ended up getting bitten by another kid. This picture was taken several hours after it happened, and you could still see all the teeth marks. It bruised and looked pretty sore for a week. :/

Then, this past Sunday, he got a high fever, which lasted for a few days. Madelyn got it, too. Luke broke out in a rash all over once the fever broke, so it was probably Roseola. Madelyn's had it before, so she didn't get the rash. Still, it was a miserable few days!

Not that it stopped Mr. Mess from doing stuff like this (chocolate Pop-Tart squished into the rug). Sigh.

In fact, in just the last 15 minutes, he's dumped out a basket of clean, folded laundry and squirted half a juice box onto our printer/file cabinets/floor. SERENITY NOW.....

My brother Kevin, Lori, Hattie and Jack came over to hang out a couple weeks ago. Madelyn's been playing with baby dolls lately, so she was excited to have a real one for a change.

 Then Kevin stopped by again a few days later on his way home from an organ workshop in SLC. He had to show off his sweet rental car, a Mustang 5.0 GT. Luke was particularly jealous. (He put a Snoopy band-aid on it.) Then Kev took his wife and kids and drove it to California to visit our 94 year old G-ma, who loves cars. She was quite excited to see such a gorgeous ride.

Here's a pic of Kev after he got to play the huge 1847 organ at the Salt Lake Tabernacle. He met Dr. James Drake, who is one of the organists there for their daily organ recitals, and he let him come in after hours and play it for 30 minutes. I know that's something he's dreamed of doing for YEARS. Pretty awesome.

Anyhoo, back to the munchkins...

Madelyn and her friend Emma had a lemonade stand on Thursday. It was very hot, so it wasn't long before they wanted to quit and come to our house and swim. 

Btw, that book on the table? It's Madelyn's comic book of The Far Side. She falls asleep every night either reading that or Calvin and Hobbes. What a girl.

 

Five more days till school starts!

Aprons.....ApronsApronsApronsAprons

So, I don't know how these things happen. It's not like I sit down and say, "I think I'll make ten of these!" At first, I just had three girls in my ward that were getting married, and I decided to make them aprons. Here's how they turned out:

 (I don't know why the coloring looks so different. It's the same floor...)

 On one of the gray aprons, I made a curved pocket instead of a rectangular one. I'm pretty sure it was because it was the only shape I could get out of the last scrap of material. Then I added the contrasting pink fabric at the bottom to add length and color.

Then, a month ago, we had a service auction for a Relief Society activity. I volunteered to make an apron (ONE apron) for the highest bidder. Well then afterwards, I had a couple more ladies come up to me and ask if they could buy one from me. So then I had to make at least three.

 Well, I wasn't sure what colors they liked and I figured I'd make a couple of extra just so I'd have some on hand for other gifts or whatever. Last Saturday, I forced myself to finish them all so I could bring them to church the next day:

 Five should have been PLENTY, right?! Well, after I'd sold a pink one to the first lady, the second lady saw that I had extra and decided to buy the other four of them.

This meant that I'd run out before I could give one to the girl who won one in the service auction (but who was I to turn down a sale?? I made $50 bucks!). Siiiighhhhhhhhhhhhh. So I had to go home and root through my fabric stash so I could make a couple more.

I made these yesterday and today. Hopefully I am done now!! I am giving one away, but will still have the other laying around for a rainy day. Pretty cute, huh.

This fabric was from Walmart(!) and the large black & green floral, the pink floral and the dark blue floral were too, in their heavier decorator/outdoor fabric. The rest of the fabric was from Jo-Ann's.

 I did a basic apron tutorial a year ago if you want to check it out. I made this apron back then and I still have it around. (I think the pattern and color are too blah for most folks.) But if you want it, let me know! I'm trying to get rid of it!!

Now I should probably put one of these on and make some dinner for the fam. Haha!! Or I could pop some popcorn and plop down in front of the Olympics. Yep. Yes....that sounds like more of a plan to me. Goodbye.

Important Nerdy Developments

Sorry, it's been a while! (5 days. A While.) I've been working on more projects, visiting with family, watching the Olympics, trying to keep up with housework and church obligations and now taking care of poor Luke and Madelyn with a 102° fevers. Summer fun at its best!!

Anyhoo, I am a fan of LOTR on facebook, and they posted a link to an interview with Sir Ian McKellan (Gandalf) from Comic-Con 2012 a week or two ago. Which then linked up to interviews with Richard Armitage (Thorin) and then to Peter Jackson (director) and Phillipa Boyens (screenwriter).

Have you heard rumor of The Hobbit being made into three movies now? Apparently, it's TRUE!

Squeeeeeeeeeeeee

This means a number of things:

1. We have to wait till December 2014 to see the concluding movie. This both infuriates and excites me. That is a long time to wait, but I know a whole extra movie will be worth it.

2. This is presumably one of the reasons why the highly excellent BBC show Sherlock is on hiatus till next year--because Dr. John Watson (a.k.a. Martin Freeman, a.k.a. Bilbo Baggins) is busy down in New Zealand filming. Coincidentally, his Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch (a.k.a. Sherlock Holmes) is voicing the dragon Smaug. :D :D

3. Peter Jackson mentions in his interview that they have the rights to film everything that's in the Appendices at the end of Return of the King. Have you ever read those before?! Do you realize how much juicy material is there?!?!?!?! Oh my word. The two most important additions, which happened during the same period as The Hobbit:

• Gandalf and Aragorn going to Mirkwood together to find the Necromancer (Sauron) while the dwarves and Bilbo are still in the middle of their quest.
• Aragorn and Arwen's first meeting/love story.

 I don't know what exactly they're going to include, but I'm geeking out at the possibilities. Most of the same people who worked on The Lord of the Rings are back working on The Hobbit, meaning it's bound to be super freaking awesome fantastic. The music! The scenery! The story! My favorite book of all time!!!

Here's the interviews and a movie trailer. Part 1 (An Unexpected Journey) comes out this December 14th. Just over four months! Gahhhhh

Ian McKellan interview:

 Richard Armitage interview:

Peter Jackson/Phillipa Boyens interview (this was before the official announcement of the third film):

An Unexpected Journey trailer:

:D

The Tote Bags of Awesomeness and other projects

So, today I rounded up pics of lots of random little projects I've done over the past six months that I've never posted about. (Believe it or not, there's a lot of them...)

I helped Madelyn and her friend Aidan make these little critter puppets back in March. They came in a kit, so I don't get many creativity points, but they were fun!

 Cute little Aidan moved away to Iowa right after this. We miss you, buddy!

Next was my exploding super glue project! I opened up a new tube of the liquid stuff and it exploded (we're a mile high in elevation, so everything explodes when you open it). Anyway, it got all over EVERYTHING and I spent the next half hour trying to un-stick my hand from the counter, my fingers (which were sticking to each other and the tube and anything I came remotely close to). It was sort of comical. And painful. That glue is no joke! "Bonds instantly." Now there's some actual truth in advertising.

Eventually I did manage to finish what I'd set out to do, which was to make these pins into magnets.

They are quotes from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I got them last Christmas from here and they are super awesome. Gotta love Sokka. And Aang. And the Noodle Firelord.

Next is a little plain jacket that I embellished with a flower applique for my niece Ava.

 

I printed off an image of an appliqued flower and made my own with five layers of fabric. After I ironed each layer to the next (bonding it together with Wonder Under), I sewed around the perimeter of all the layers, which looks like rubbish close up. Well, it turns out that it's hard to sew in tiny little curves! When it's dim and past midnight and there's a bulky button in the middle! Oh well. It's still pretty cute.

I've been freezer paper stenciling stuff here and there. I made these dragon shirts for my little friends Beckham and Ravi for their birthdays back in February and May. (It's the Chinese Year of the Dragon, remember?)

 

And I made another Air Force shirt for my nephew Nathan:

My mom has always liked this t-shirt of mine that I got at American Eagle five years ago. (She plays the acoustic guitar.) So I stuck the shirt on my scanner, printed it out and shrunk the image a little, then traced it onto freezer paper for a tote bag. For some reason, all my original photos of it are gone, but I had taken some with my cell phone:

 

 It was a tricky design, with lots of overlapping elements and different colors. I went with black, white and metallic silver and pewter.

 I think it turned out swimmingly! Mom loved it.

And then my sister Megan (a fellow Whovian) and I got together to make some Doctor Who stuff!!! :D

Here's the design I picked. Minimalist 10th Doctor.

Meg's been up at dance camp at the University of Utah for the past month. Nobody understands what her shirt's all about, but that's okay because WE DO! Yay! Her fellow dancers probably think she's a BBC loving weirdo.

If they even know what that is.

The Doctor wore 3-D glasses at the end of season 2 in "Doomsday" (which is a life ruining episode, btw) to see background radiation from the Void, which surrounds people who have crossed between parallel universes.

 

I also made a tote bag with the design. If you've seen me during the last month, I've been hauling it around every day as my purse. I've caught myself grinning at it a few times.

I had to buy a shirt to iron on this Dance Magic logo for Madelyn last summer for when she was on their 24th of July parade float. But she has since stopped dancing with them and I wanted to do something else with the shirt.

Cue this design inspiration from a shirt that used to be sold at Hot Topic:

So I put the TARDIS where the little dancer used to be, and painted over the words with white. Then I drew and painted in the rainbow vortex (it's not really like that in the show but who cares, it's awesome).

 

 She loves it! And I guarantee she'll be the only second grader in Cedar City with a Doctor Who shirt. Ha! Well, she has watched all six seasons with us and is a big fan. I'm feeling pretty good about myself as a parent now.

When Megan was here, she picked out this other design (quotes from the 10th Doctor) to put on tote bags, but she didn't have time to work on it much. She got me started on tracing and cutting out the TARDIS shapes. But I was so intimidated by the lettering that after I painted the backgrounds, they sat on my counter for the next four weeks.

 Finally, one night as I was watching a European travel show, I saw all these amazing paintings in a cathedral and told myself that if someone from the 1600s could paint some crazy detailed stuff on the ceiling, then I could paint a couple of tote bags. True story. So I traced the words one day and then last Sunday I cut them out with an X-Acto knife while we were watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and it took me the entire movie to finish cutting.

Then, a couple days later, I mixed up all the custom paint colors, broke out some new paintbrushes and hunkered down to paint.

I put the stencil over the first TARDIS and used a pencil to trace all the lettering onto the surface, then ironed the stencil onto the second one so I could paint over it. I had to hand paint inside the pencil lines on the other one. Fun times!!

 

I think it took me four hours of painting to finish them. Phew!

 

I'm glad I stuck with it though, cuz they're a friggin' masterpiece.

I sent Meg's to her up in SLC (she's still there--been gone five weeks) and a bunch of candy in a care package as a surprise. She said she squealed when she saw it. Ahh. Nerd love!

Meg saw this (reference to season one of Doctor Who) at a Trax stop up in SLC. It was gone after a few days, but it was geektastic while it lasted. I want to high five whoever put it there.

Okay. I shall try to curb my DW enthusiasm for the time being. Maybe I'll talk about Harry Potter next. Ha.