15th

Happy Birthday, Anthony! 

We celebrated his 15th earlier this month. What a joy it's been to have him in our family! He paved the way, letting his Dad and I learn to be parents...through trial and error. 

He's such a cheerful, kind, and brave person. 

Watch him opening his birthday presents...it's so funny....I think he opened them in order from least to most favorite.

1st: Book that he's already read. (But I swear he's read it I don't know how many times. I thought he should own a copy!)

2nd: Fluffy, fluffy avengers blanket (from Grandma). I'm not sure, but I think he really loved how mad Sofia was. She's a bit of an Avengers fanatic.

3rd: The microscope I told him he wasn't getting. (They're sorta pricey.) Sometimes you just gotta cave and buy their dream gift. That's us - nurturing nerds since 1997. :)

Easy Peasy Valence

So....I had this beautiful vintage dishtowel that I may or may not have stolen from my sister-in-law. LOVE the colors! They were the basis for my kitchen color scheme...inasmuch that it has one.

I would try so hard to keep it hanging over my oven door handle, but my family just doesn't understand the concept of decorative towels. After catching my daughter using my treasured towel to clean up PAINT, I decided it needed to be taken out of harms way.

I folded over a few inches on top (conveniently covering up the green paint that is still on one corner) and used matching gray thread (this is key, folks!) to sew a pole pocket.

After trying and failing to make a cute gather here, I decided on a few pleats instead. I just made four slightly staggered folds in a row and then sewed up through the middle of them.

....and, in under ten minutes, I saved my vintage dishtowel from almost certain destuction. I think my family would have to be pretty desperate to take this down and use it to clean up their evil, evil spills.

 Now, do you think my husband will let me take the hardware  and hinges off of our back door and paint them "satin dark walnut"?

The Finished-ish Buffet

When we found our lovely home, a little over a year ago, we knew there were going to be some storage issues in the kitchen. To preempt the problem we bought this buffet to keep pots and other kitchen whatnot in. 

It was wood, so we knew it'd be relatively sturdy, but....you can't see it in this picture...the finish looks like someone speckled it with a little black paint and a toothbrush. Yuck. I wasn't crazy about the hardware either. As it turns out, it was easier for me to spray paint the hinges and drawer-pulls than to find new ones that fit! (...or spackle and drill new holes. bleh.)

I did get new door pulls...but I'm glad I kept the original drawer ones. They have character. And....which, now that I'm looking at this picture, I can see one of which is upside down. Oops. It's a good thing I blog or I never would have noticed!

Like my light gray? I know Kriste was expecting yellow, but I'm trying to keep things toned down a little.

Thank you, Allicia! Don't you think the yellow flowers on that doily go perfectly. You were so right - it belonged in my kitchen. ;)

I still don't feel like this is a totally finished project. Look at the sides of the drawers. That makes me slightly crazy every time I think about them.

...but after having the hardware off for a year and a house rule that "no one is allowed to shut the drawers all the way (no pulls), because then Mom has to pry them open with two butter knives!" , we just had to put it back together and call it good.

Slowly....slowly....

Dr. Who

Our neighborhood was the center of a big roadwork project this summer. Nice now that it's finished. Not so great when the streets were torn up for months at a time and we were having to park around the block.(No driveway. :( )

Every time we'd drive past one of the many port-o-potties the city had put out for the workers, Cozette would point and exclaim, "The Tardis! The Tardis!" (For you non-Whovians, the Doctor's time ship thingy that looks like a London police call box....and apparently a port-o-potty.) Sofi was thrilled that her genius 3-year-old sister thinks about Dr. Who enough to mistake anything for the Tardis. She was less thrilled when her Dad made this:

Tee-Hee

Red or Blue?

Who will win? 

To make the contest a little bit sweeter (and give us all something to do during the long wait), we decided to make Republican and Democrat pies. We're eating the winner tonight and the loser for breakfast.

Annika was thrilled, and, although she's giving me the teenager-y-est look ever in this picture, she was leading the charge on pies.

...she and Jon are also filling out their electoral maps with great enthusiasm.

Now we just hope we won't be crying into our loser pie tomorrow morning. ;)

The Big Candy Day

 

Oh, Halloween. I think kids dream of it all year. They just love it so much. Choosing a costume and having every adult give you FREE CANDY. What more could you want.

 

Once your an adult, it's more of a spectator sport...but still fun. Stressful and fun.

Why does it feel so hard to get everyone in a costume and hand out candy? It's probably the last-minute costume sewing.

 

Cozy got her costume from Grandma.

 

 

...the flying unicorn pony costume she's been living in for the past several weeks.

 

 

And yet she was still not happy to be awoken from an unscheduled nap and stuffed into said costume in time for "trunk or treat". Weird.

 

 James was "Shaun the Sheep"....but his eyes went all wonky once he got the costume on...so I guess it was a dizzy Shaun. I should have used the glue gun.

 

 

Jon was a ninja, his career of choice. He has a whole plan that involves wearing a fat suit to his day job - to keep people from suspecting his true ninja identity.

 

He really wanted to be a butler, but his mom had trouble figuring out the whole tailcoat thing.

 

 

Annika was a spanish dancer. Bonus points to her for wearing a store-bought costume.

 

 

Sofia was female Loki. (It would have been easier to identify if she'd made the big gold headdress.)

Apparently Loki has taken female forms before...even a female horse...in the which case he was impregnated and gave birth to the eight-legged thing Odin rides. Gotta love mythology.

 

Green dress with lots of pleats courtesy of Sofia and me. I really just go along with her inconvenient costume ideas...so that she'll do a sewing project with me once a year. I expect she'll be wearing this to Comicon any year now.

 

 

Anthony was a mad scientist. Pretty good for 5 minutes before we left!

 Sof and Annika wanted to stay home and trick-or-treat in our neighborhood with some of their friends, while everyone else wanted to "trunk-or-treat". There may have been a girl involved in Anthony's decision, but I'm super grateful he came with us. He took trunk duty, while I walked the littles from car to car.

 

 

Once they had their buckets full, the littles settled in next to Anthony and started in on their candy.

 

{Tony: Why is the back of the car full of candy wrappers?}

 

 

Jonny actually took off his mask in order to attack a young maiden. What a gentleman.

 

When we got home, the girls were back, but the unicorn and the ninja still wanted to ring a few doorbells.

 

Ah, candy.