Anything wrong with this picture?

Lydia's off from school today and it's a beautiful day outside so I decided to take her with me for a run on the trail down by the river near our house. Threw her bike in the back of the truck; her helmet, nano, water bottle, and jacket followed. Grabbed my water bottles and waist belt for them, heart rate monitor and watch, ipod, and my green tennis shoes from our shoe box and threw that all in the truck too and then we were finally off. Parked at the head of the trail and put my right shoe on. All is well with my life. Put my toes in the left shoe. Notice anything wrong with this picture??? I considered driving back home for the left shoe for about 3 seconds but with all I wanted to get done today, said screw it and ran 5 miles wearing 2 right shoes. Not the most comfortable run I've ever had. We passed about 6 people on the trail at different times and nobody noticed. They were probably distracted by Lydia's whining about her ear buds not staying in her ears. It sure was a beautiful run though.

Pumpkins and Brain Cupcakes

I had off from work for most of the day today so Lydia and I decided to make some cupcakes -- brain cupcakes that is.

We carved pumpkins this week too. Ken's is on the left, Lydia's is in the middle, mine is on the right. I think Ken and Lydia's pumpkins turned out great. Ken said his looked like he felt the day we carved these and I believe him (sore neck).

Lydia also painted several pumpkins and had lots of fun with this.
Lydia is a cheetah for halloween this year. I totally misunderstood the look she was going for. I bought the leopard jacket thinking she wanted to be one of the members of the Cheetah Girls singing band but when she asked me to paint her face I realized she was going for the actual animal. Hey, she's happy with it, so I am too.

Cupcake Card Swap

This is a quick post. Just wanted to share these really cute cupcake cards I got this month in the swap. The card I made is the set of 5 above and in return I got the following 5. So fun!

Halloween Banner

I love all the banners I see people making so I thought I would make one for Halloween to hang from my fireplace mantle. I made it too darn big for my mantle so here it is hanging from my curtain rod. *sigh* Next one will be smaller so I can hang it from the mantle!!
Scout turned 13 yesterday. Never thought he'd see the day, especially when we found out he had emphysema at age 7 and he was given one week to live without surgery. He had the surgery and here we are 6 years later. We celebrated with presents and pup cups. Love you Scout!

Happy 40th Birthday Dawn!

My good friend Dawn turned 40 on October 2nd. Happy Birthday Dawn! I remembered she had commented on this book I got a few months ago called Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. She said she really liked the birds from the book. So, I made her some for her birthday. The first one, which Lydia got to keep, was a little tricky until I got the hang of it. If you make some of these birds from the pattern in this book, do not sew the loop in where the patterns says to. Move it up closer to the head or your bird will hang crooked.

5th(?) Annual Door County Weekend

Cheers to another super fun weekend with the girls in Door County. We laughed until our stomachs hurt and shopped pretty much until we dropped. We hit the thrift stores and garage sales hard and I came home with some fun treasures.


My friend Dawn tells me this embroidered piece is probably a pillow case. There was also a "Good Night" that I didn't buy. It would go on the flip side of the pillow if I were to use these as originally intended. My plan for this is to frame it for my kitchen.


I really like this table cloth and these napkins and glasses I found. We used all of this for supper last night and it made a very pretty setting. (Orange is my favorite color.)



Lydia wants to be a Cheetah girl for Halloween. I found this jacket and boa at Goodwill. These will be perfect for her costume.

I am looking forward to next year!

39th Annual Art in the Park

Today we attended the 39th annual Art in the Park event held at Pfiffner Park in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. It brings artists and crafters together to display and sell their work. I remember being Lydia's age and attending this event. We started off doing some painting, compliments of the Art Village. Above, Lydia and her friend are painting a square with blue and white paint which will become part of a larger composition like you see in the first picture. The piece in the first picture was created last year and the theme was circles. This year, the theme is blue and white.
The two girls on the left are the crafters who made these bracelets. I should have asked for their names! Lydia and Emily each bought a bracelet from them.
These are locker pockets. They have magnets on the back so you can hang them in your school locker and put pens and pencils in them. Each of the girls got one.

The cardboard box painting is what Lydia was really looking forward to.


The girls had a great time painting the boxes. I think they spent just as much time painting themselves too! They definitely had a lot of fun with this.
The weather was perfect today for this event. We saw lots of neat things and I came home with a few ideas too.

Pleated Handbag

I have been a busy sewer these last few days. Today I finished this pleated handbag which is a pattern from Amy Karol's bend-the-rules Sewing book. This was my first time creating pleats. They are so easy to make! I will be using this bag for sure. It's a keeper. I love the shape and I like where it lays when I have it on my shoulder. Very comfortable. The instructions called for cotton flannel lining but all I had was a sheet of batting so I used that. It's a very cushiony bag.

When my mom was going through chemo a few years ago we went to Hancock Fabrics and she picked out this red fabric for a head wrap I was going to make for her. I never got the chance to make the wrap because she didn't live long enough. There was just enough of this fabric to make this bag. Also, the yellow fabric is a table cloth I got from my mom's craft room. Still using up the supplies I have on hand and I think my mom would really like this bag.

By the way, Amy Karol's bend-the-rules sewing book is a great book for beginner level sewers, FYI. I have made several of the projects now. There are many cute and useful projects in the book and they can be completed in relatively short amounts of time which is good for people like me who need to see results quickly.

Reversible Purse - Trick or Treat Bag

Lydia really liked my reversible purse so I made her one for trick-or-treating with some fabric I had left over from some bandanas I made the dogs a few years back. I am trying to use up some of my old stash.

Reversible Purse

I found this really cute pattern for a reversible purse at www.marthastewart.com. I thought it would be a great bag for church as well as for my annual weekend in Door County with the Jensen girls which is just around the corner! Woohoo! Can't wait. I used fabric I had on hand. I love this print but I thought it was too busy to do the whole bag in it so I cut up an old pair of jeans and used it as an accent. I am happy with how it turned out even though it does have a few imperfections. This would have been a lot easier had I not made modifications to the pattern to accommodate the printed fabric.

First Day of 2nd Grade

The big day finally arrived. Lydia was very excited for school to start. She loves school.
I had tears a few times, once when waiting in line for the rest of the kids to arrive she said to me, "You can go now mom. I'm OK". I am continually amazed at how fast the days and years go by.

Labor Day Weekend 2008

We enjoyed the holiday weekend. Ken and I had an opportunity to visit with some friends from way back, about 17+ years. Lydia had her friend Emily over for a camp-out. We made smores.
Lydia and her dad play "Natural Disaster Barbie" and "Smash Barbie". Smash Barbie is when they get hit by cars or they fall off of stuff or get launched across a room. Natural Disaster Barbie is when they get caught in an earthquake or get sucked up in a twister or they get burned in a fire. (Leave it to my husband to dream this up.) Today I had the opportunity to play "Natural Disaster Barbie". An earth quake caused the car to land on Barbie. She broke an arm.
The theme for the card swap this month is "cupcakes". I came up with this so far. The top of the cupcake flips up to open the card.

Tomorrow Lydia starts 2nd grade. I remember starting 2nd grade myself and now my daughter is. (sniff sniff) We had to run to get some gym shoes today. Other than that we've been ready for this big day for awhile. Lydia loves school and is looking forward to getting back to it. As for me, I am a little sad because the summer is over and it feels like yesterday that I was waiting for it to start. I do love Autumn in Wisconsin however. It's my favorite season. I've noticed the different colored leaves on my runs already, and the cooler mornings. Love that stuff.

Dog Fashions

After our babysitter commented on how well she likes the bandanas our dogs wear, I have been wanting to make some for her two dogs. I went to the fabric store yesterday looking for fall fabric and found this. I will have these wrapped up for her when she comes over tonight. It was nice to use the sewing machine today. It's so relaxing. I enjoy dressing our dogs in different bandanas. Since Ken won't let me get a chijuaua (yet), this is as close as I can come to dressing my dogs.

Crafter's Block

My blog posts have been few and far between lately. I seem to be procrastinating about crafting. What the heck?!? I am observing, partly due to the lack of posts on this blog, that whenever I find some free time I come up with something else that "has to get done" before I craft; Stuff like organizing all of my daughter's hair gizmos (rubber bands, barrettes, etc.), cleaning out desk drawers, file cabinets, and closets. I usually don't get the urge to do these things. Ever.

Today I actually crafted some things to necessitate a post. The card above is for a swap I am in that I turned in a day late but nevertheless did finish. We were given the owl stamped in black. I am looking forward to seeing what the other girls in the swap did with this guy.

I didn't feel like putting the paper, stamps, and inks away just yet so I made this card for a relative whose b-day is coming up soon.

My friend Dawn put one of my cupcake pincushions in a cupcake swap that she is in this month. I had the cupcake close to being done (as shown in this post) but she needed to finish it off with some embellishments which I never got around to doing (shocker). I am looking forward to seeing what she did with it because she is super crafty. I love cupcakes. The theme for the card swap in September is cupcakes too!

Talent Show No. 1

Lydia decided to put together a talent show. She recruited her dad and her cousin Laurel to perform. Lydia has planned another talent show for this coming Tuesday and I am a part of the show this time as well! I will be doing card making.

7th Birthday Celebrations

Well it's been more than two weeks since we celebrated Lydia's 7th birthday but when thinking about a crafty project to post, her birthday cake was the most recent thing I could think of that I have "crafted"! That is pathetic! I am going through a very long crafty dry spell.
Lydia and her friends enjoyed the birthday party very much. One of the games we played was a scavenger hunt. I took pictures of 12 items. I cut each of the pictures up and put each in a sealed envelope. The girls had to put the pictures together like a puzzle to discover the object they needed to find. Once they found the first item, they were given their next "clue", and so on. I split the girls up into two teams. The first team to find all of their 6 clues "won". This game was a huge hit with the girls and Ken and I had just as much fun watching them.

Back from Vacation

After talking about my "little monkey" in my last post, I thought this picture from our vacation to Bayfield/Madeline Island was fitting. The monkey on the left is a good friend of Lydia's who came along with us on our trip. We ran into the middle one at the Monkey Business store by the ferry dock in Bayfield.
I picked up a lot of this vintage fabric at a garage sale we stopped at on our way home. I LOVE it and I am itching to make something out of it!

American Girl Dress & Hat

Here's the American Girl outfit I mentioned yesterday. I think it may have taken me longer to make the hat than it did the dress. Now that I did it once though, I think the second would go quicker. Lydia loves the outfit and it's gotten her interested in her doll again. Ken mentioned yesterday he thought it was pretty cute to watch Lydia walking her American Girl in the stroller up and down the road along with Zoe (our Samoyed) wearing her matching bandana.

We went to the fireworks last night. We got about 2 blocks from where we parked when Lydia realized the hat wasn't on her doll any longer. She looked at me panicked and then asked if I could make another one. I had to smile and I laughed to myself because it took me 4 or 5 hours to make that hat, I wasn't going to let it go that easily! I walked back the way we came and found the hat a few feet from our SUV. Phew!

One more quick story. After I got home from biking to the pharmacy for some medication yesterday, the neighbor stopped by to ask me if I need drugs. He followed that by telling me that Lydia told him "my mom needs drugs". He replied to her, "oh really?" She then told him "my mom needs birth control pills because we already have one monkey and we don't need anymore monkeys running around". If you know my husband you know where she got this from. Sounds just like him. I had a good laugh from it.

Happy 4th of July Bandanas

I ran across this fabric that I found in my mom's craft stash when we cleaned out her craft room a few years ago. I decided it would make great bandana's for the dogs to get them in the festive spirit of the 4th of July. I decided I wanted to use all of the fabric up so I made a pillow case for a doll pillow of Lydia's and then I still had some of the fabric left after that so I made a dress for Lydia's American Girl doll. I plan to make a matching hat for her doll today so I will post a picture of the rest after I finish the hat today.

By the way, Scout is doing much better since he started his medication!