We’re still here. We are slowly winding down, getting to the end of the school year – and not a day minute too soon.
I’ll be back soon with updates and projects and plans.
Right now we are taking some time to stop and pick the flowers.
The musical is finally over. After all of the sewing, painting of sets, sewing, rehearsals, sewing, songs continually stuck in our heads, and of course, the fretting that it was never going to “come together,” I can happily proclaim that the musical went off without a hitch. Well, it went off, and it went very well.
Em knew her part and was a superstar. I predict some serious stage time in her future.
Perhaps not singing, but she does seem to enjoy being on stage.
(Can’t say that for all of her castmates.)
Oops…a little late (later) than usual today. But where did Monday go?? My sister was here this weekend, a kind of impromptu, last minute, we-just-realized-that-a-free-ticket-was-going-to-expire, sort of trip. She was only here for 3 days, and we didn’t do much but just hang out, but now I feel mopey again. The short little visits are almost worse, I think. You just get a taste of the fun, and then they are gone again. It was the same way when my parents were here last month – long enough to see them and realize how much you miss them when they are not there, and then you are back to missing them again. (Plus poor Dad was so sick, we still have a full agenda of things to take them to do! Next time…)
Anyhow, there is my excuse. Not too much crafting. I actually did do 2 birthday cards for friends last week and forgot to take photos of them before I sent them off. One of them is for someone’s birthday tomorrow…so make sure to stop and give her some love on Wednesday.
I did remember to take a pic of the card Addie and I did for Hope – her little friend who had a crazy fun birthday party over the weekend. But I didn’t take a pic of the inside where she signed her own name, with no help from me! And it is legible! It was a very proud moment for her.
Ugh. The colors are so, so off in that. But I don’t have time to go back and fix it. You get the idea. I have a list on my desk of cards I need to make in the next 2 weeks before vacation. 17 cards! Yikes. I better get on that.
But on to my new obsession! Which is indeed crafty, but requires a little bit of planning on my part. We were at a friend’s last week and she has a whole summer curriculum planned out for her kids, with all kinds of experiments, crafts, learning, field trips, etc. It completely inspired me and got me so jacked up to do a similar (a little more subdued, perhaps) program for the girls. At first I was trying to get rid of the stuff we have to do this summer so we could just chill, but I already got an “I’m bored, Mama!” from Emma and school isn’t even out! So I think we need a little structure and continued learning in our long summer days.
Last night I sat down with my trusty markers and posterboard and mapped out our Summer School activities. Emma is beside herself with excitement. She keeps asking me – where we are going, what we are going to learn, who is coming on the field trips, do we get homework? It just goes on and on…(She is such a first-born girl like her Mama! Homework? YES!!)
Addie is a little bit more, well, she is cautiously optimistic that it will be fun, but not on the same bandwagon as Em.
Let’s just put it that way.
I set it up so each week we’d have a topic and then I can set up field trips around our “subject.” We are doing ocean animals (field trip to Aquarium and actually 2 weeks of this one, since we are going to do stuff in Hawaii, too!), bugs and butterflies (field trip to the Nat. History Museum’s Butterfly Pavillion), botany – flowers and trees (field trip to Huntington Gardens), planets and stars (field trip to Griffith Observatory), dinosaurs (field trip to Nat. History Museum again – dino exhibits), and then just animals – differences between mammals/reptiles/birds (field trip to the Zoo). And, the girls really want to try camping. So we’ll take a week to prepare for that and do a little overnight tent camping trip mid-July.
That should keep us busy, right? I’m using these books for the academic stuff and I’ll just tie our crafts into whatever subjects we are studying that week. I’m really excited about this. So I feel like my scrapbooking and sewing will probably take a back seat for the summer (again!) while I do fun little plans for summer school stuff – but we should definitely have some Crafty Tuesdays in all of this.
Any other ideas or websites you have to help with the Great Summer School Project of ’09? Have anything to share today??
My new space is amazing. I am not sure why I didn’t claim the little nook in the extra room for my office/craft area when we first moved in, but it was so worth the work required to get it moved around last week. I love hanging out in there. It is cozy and organized and it just makes me feel inspired – even if it is just to go in and pay bills.
Plus I have windows now – and these pretty flowers to look at right outside of them.
I think I am even inspired to tackle the new week. Well, almost.
Sometimes the stars align and I get a new batch of fantastic photos that I fall in love with.
This is my new favorite bunch of pics of the girls. I had to redo my header because I just can’t stop looking at my sweet, silly monkeys.
I’m really digging these “This & That” posts. I realize some of you will actually be reading this on Friday – but I’m sliding it in here, and it is still Thursday on the west coast! And since I feel like we’re traveling at warp-speed, these kind of updates just seem to fit into our life right now.
Fun weekend wishes to all of you, too!
Thunder. A little bit of lightning. And an even smaller bit of rain. Funny how the girls know what an earthquake is and what to do if we are in one, but have no idea what to do with a thunderstorm!
I so miss thunderstorms. We are lucky if we get one a year here in SoCal. But today as we were leaving a friend’s house, we got a little taste of one. (It is still kind of rumbling, but no real rain.) And Buckley, Em’s little friend, was so excited. “Hey! Do you know when we have a thunderstorm we get to have hot cocoa, popcorn and watch a movie?!”
So what are the girls doing right now? Yep. Drinking hot cocoa, eating popcorn and watching a movie. And I’m having a nice hot coffee. It is the perfect afternoon.
Do you really think Miss Caroline would miss her lead swan for the dance recital this afternoon? Probably not!
*Sigh* You are probably right.
Here is our version of a city girl’s tent..
…or a hillbilly’s canopy bed.
Either way, good use of Daddy’s Engineering degree, wouldn’t you say?
Why, hello there! Just digging myself out from behind the sewing machine over here. All of the costumes are done and just waiting for the musical this weekend. Can I get a “Hallelujah?”
Plus, I finally got Addie’s little pillowcase dress sewn up. She had it on for exactly 1.5 seconds, so photos of the dresses actually ON the the girls are still coming. But here is the finished dress…
It is a really small pink and green checked seersucker. It is girly and cute and looks really sweet on her!
But the REAL project around here the past two days has been our playroom/office/craftroom.
So the story. We had our desk on the big wall of the room, which also has the outlet that is controlled by the lightswitch. So for awhile, we had an extension cord for all of the desk stuff (phones, computers, etc.) that ran across the doorway to another outlet. Not optimal.
And then, we had the great flood of ’09 and I had to rearrange the cords to get make sure nobody got electrocuted and therefore the lightswitch did not, in fact, turn on any lights, but would shut our computer off if it was on. It was very inconvenient.
So this weekend, J. went in to rig it all back up properly, and he innocently suggested that maybe I would like to move the office and craft area back into the little nook area – otherwise known as the “black hole of toys.”
First, I LOVE to rearrange and organize rooms, but I’m not really able to rearrange many of the rooms in our house now because we have lots of windows, and most of the rooms have really only one “way.”
So, of course, I had to accept that challenge! Plus the toys have been needing a good whittling down for awhile, and we are having a garage sale in a few weeks, so perfect opportunity. Three garbage bags for the tag sale, and one garbage bag to recycle later, and we are getting close to a finished room. Again.
The new layout leaves a lot more room for the girls to actually hang out and play.
And it also tucks all of my stuff back into this little area, full of beautiful natural light. I love it!
Of course, I’m not doing any real close-ups of my area yet. I’m going to tackle that tomorrow (today). But I could possibly even put up a little curtain and hideout back there. Maybe I shouldn’t have put my sewing machine away so quickly, hmmm…
What about everyone else? Any good crafty stuff? Any Clean House projects? Let me have ’em!
And….we’re off! June is rolling in today full of projects, recitals, musicals, end-of-year activities, and a few surprises, too!
Catch us if you can! And you can probably catch more BSMs today at Tracey’s too!