Christmas Holidays

Just thought I'd share some photos of our holidays!













Happy Holidays!

– jenny

Happy Christmas

Looking back on this year, I realize just how many blessings I've received. Thank you God! What a great year! I have a kindergartener and first grader. I have many lovely and loving friends who dropped everything they were doing one November weekend to help us move. Then they came back the next day to help more! Unbelievable. I have wonderful parents and in-laws who are willing to also drop everything to come and help when they can.

Even though we are still living among boxes, we are happy to celebrate Christmas and what says Christmas holidays more than the Fireplace DVD? I hope all of you are having a happy holiday this season with friends and/or family close by.

– jenny

We've Moved!

No, this isn't a post about how I've moved the blog to another host, or how I've renamed my blog or changed links.

This is about a Two.  Year.   Wait.  Waiting to sell our little cape cod, our newlywed house, to another willing and eager buyer. Apparently our house was fabulous, but either too small or ceilings too low upstairs. Watch out 6-footers! Finally, our old house finally sold and we've settled into a new house! After a lot of waiting, and a lot (and I mean a LOT) of showings for our sweet little cape cod. We have finally had an offer, found another house and have physically moved. Lots and lots of praise going on right now.

Yipee!!

The photo above is of my new studio/office space. There's still lots to do, but for now, it's bright, it's breezy and it has a ton of storage. What more could I want?

Now back to blogging,
Jenny

Getting Personal

While trying to think up something fantastic for my daughter's preschool teachers (who are incredibly fantastic by the way) I came up with an idea.

The entire year, the teachers work with each child to get them to write their names. So, collecting all the names from the children at the year's end. I came up with this framed artwork. Such a great way to say thank you!

My son's kindergarten class's mascot was a frog. They were called the frogs and whenever they had to line up the teacher would call out for her frogs! Also another fantastic teacher and one we wanted to bless with something special. She has frogs all over her classroom and we decided to add to her collection with the names of her class this year in a frog shape:

I've decided to offer customized art like this in my Etsy shop. A customized piece of art with any names you like - all in a digital format that you can print again and again. I printed these out at my local photo center and they turned out great!

On the path...

First Lost Tooth

Buggin' Out

Since my children are only a year apart in school (one is in kindergarten while the other is is preschool) I get to do back to back school classes, projects, field trips and parties. Seems like I get one year under my belt and then here comes the other one. That can be a good thing as the previous year is still fresh in my mind.

For both of my children, preschool involved the introduction of the zoophonics characters. Does anyone out there remember The Letter People? A totally retro, 70s/80s curriculum of letter-learning. That is how I learned my letters people, by psychedelic half human, half letter puppets in bright jumpers and blue hair. It was groovy!

Now we have the super cute, not quite as groovy zoophonics characters and my kids are singing their songs all the time. Anyway, towards the end of each preschool year, the children are encouraged to dress up as their favorite zoophonics character. Imagine my excitement when I came across this costume that would have been perfect for Jerry the Jellyfish. I mean, cool right? I was positive that no one else would show up as a jellyfish. I would start off conversations with "You know what would be cool? Dressing up as a jellyfish!" But no, my son insisted on going as Deedee Deer. I tried the same tactic on my daughter with no such luck. She knew right away that she would be Inny Inchworm.

Okay, an inchworm. How does one go about making a worm costume? Giant shirts of course! Giant shirts are great for so many costumes and also for just wearing around. My nightgown of choice growing up was a giant shirt (mom's or dad's, it didn't matter). But I digress.

I started with a men's medium green t-shirt. The $7 kind.



Then I cut off the sleeves with pinking shears and used this pattern to form the hat. I was a bit nervous making this hat as the sleeves only offered the exact amount of fabric. I am not a one-hit wonder with the sewing machine so I prayed as I sewed that I wouldn't mess up. I added a snap closure as I didn't have enough fabric to do long ties. I highly recommend the cap pattern to anyone interested in taking a costume from good to great!



Nothing else was done to the t-shirt itself in the way of cutting. I only had to figure out a way to make the segments of the inchworm's body. Hm, I'm no entomologist but inchworms have segments of some sort, right? Oh well, if they don't I made segments anyway so my daughter could look more like a bug rather than a girl in a giant sleeveless t-shirt.

All I needed was some stretchy elastic and I was in biz. I didn't use the thicker, stiffer elastic that is used in waistbands as it is difficult to stretch. I cut a length of elastic that was about three inches or so too short for the circumference of the shirt. Sewing slowly, I stretched the elastic but left the t-shirt alone, gently guiding both through the machine. It worked! I did three loops around the shirt, creating four separate segments.

To finish off the costume, we just hooked some green pipe cleaners to a headband and we were done! I have to say this costume is pretty cool. Maybe I'll let go of the jellyfish idea. Maybe.


 Inny Inchworm and Catina Cat

On the path...

Back with a Roar!

We celebrated my son's sixth birthday with a ferocious roar! Well, as ferocious as a toothless Tyranasaurus Rex would be as he bared his ferocious gums. He requested dinosaurs which really deviates from the normal cheetah obsession, so we had to create a prehistoric jungle.

OF COURSE!

I had so much fun painting the toothless dinosaur head that I really didn't want to leave the upstairs room where, paints in hand, I had music playing and sun shining through the windows. The rest of the team, meaning my brothers, SILs and parents, came up to find me and drag me away from my art project to help with the rest of the preparations. The little guy loves to be surprised so we were all working away creating the most believable jungle atmosphere before he got home with the pizzas. No, he wasn't driving. He was with his daddy.









I had to show the cake twice. Isn't it cute? As I was scanning for party ideas a few days before (I know, it's like cramming for a test; these holiday birthdays always seem to get lost in the shuffle), I came across this tutorial.

We all had fun masks and ate dinosaur claws (Bugles!). I really wanted everyone to have tails but hey, you only have so much time in the day, right? They didn't seem to be missed as everyone was having a great time. Especially with the dinosaur habitat sounds playing in our "jungle".



Fun masks found here. Awesome dino bones here.

Happy 2012!