Zendoodle, Zentangle, Tangle, Doodle, Whatever You Want to Call Them

 Recently, thanks to Pinterest I've discovered this form of art.  It takes me back to high school and doodling to stave off boredom.  The first one I did was a scribble with different things drawn inside the scribble.  The second is all about the circles and then I got interested in adding animals to the design. 

Holiday Decoration

 I was rather proud of how my house turned out for Christmas.  I put a little more effort into it and I'm especially proud of how the impromptu art idea over the piano turned out.  A little filament, glass balls and a frame made for a nice addition to the decor I've used for years.  Taylor and Olivia made the wreathes at a party they attended this year.

Halloween, a Retrospective

It's that time of year when the kids start thinking about Halloween and I start to wonder where my glue gun has gone to live.  Taylor was talking about all the things she's been for Halloween and it was kind of hard to name them all.  So I thought it might be fun to go back and relive those great moments with all the kids.
2001

We bought these little onesies and the hat, so cute.

The scarecrow (Olivia) and clown (Taylor) costumes were hand me downs, although I made the little scarecrow hat and had to make the clown hat a little bigger for Taylor's giant noggin. 
2002

We bought these costumes.  Olivia was thrilled to be a ladybug in a pot, Taylor, not so much.  
2003
Hmmm... I seem to be missing something...
2004
And here too. 
2005

Madeline and Lucas were Raggedy Ann and Andy. We used clothes they already had and I made the wig for Madeline.  For Lucas I just glued some yarn to his hat.  These might be my favorite costumes of all time.

Olivia was Cat Nape' a popular cartoon at the time.  She was dressed in an all black sweat suit, I made the ears and tail and the mask.  Cat Nape' was a cat burglar, so the mask was important.  Taylor wanted to be a flower so she wore a white sweat suit, I made the leaves and petals out of foam sheets.  And then since Olivia had a mask she needed one as well.
2006

 

Madeline was a cute little princess with a homemade crown, the dress was one we had from a previous year.  

 

Lucas made an adorable cowboy.   

 

  

Taylor was a great fairy princess.  Olivia wanted to be a mermaid princess so I made the tie on fish tail and the star bikini.  I thought it looked great with the white T shirt underneath it.  

2007

 

 I really loved the costumes the kids chose... well OK, Madeline's was a bit 2007 but the rest were really fun.  Taylor was a ghost, a white nightgown from the Goodwill, some makeup and she was ready to go.  We also ratted up her hair for that really scary ghost vibe.  Olivia was a bat, I took apart an umbrella to make the wings and attached them to a black sweat suit and then made her some really big bat ears out of a black foam sheet. Lucas was a spider, the arms were his arms, his legs and then I used some black tights stuffed with poly fill to make the other legs.  The fake legs were attached with a string to his arms so they moved when he moved his arms.  I painted a glow in the dark spider web on his black sweat shirt just for fun.
2008

 A witch, a hatching flamingo, a firefighter and a fairy entered a bar.... I mean went out to enjoy Halloween.  The firefighter costume and the fairy dress were both bought.  I made Madeline's wings, they were very sparkly.  Taylor originally wanted to be an egg, then a hatching chick and then she fell on her head or something and wanted to be a hatching flamingo.  I was able to buy a mask for this and then added the feathers, made the wings, the neck is made out of a pink boa and the egg shell bits were paper mache'. All of this was attached to a skirt I made out of pink fabric and some elastic.   A black sweat shirt, pink sweat pants and pink shoes finished off the costume. 

For Olivia I made the witch's robe, the hat out of paper mache' (although I would just say buy one, they are cheap and making one wasn't as easy as I thought) The belt and then we bought the socks because accessories are important, even if you are an evil type of witch.

 2009

 

I'm just going to cheat for this year.

2010

 For 2010 Madeline was sporting a witch costume we got as a hand me down.  Olivia was a black cat we bought the mask this time around for a different look.  Taylor was a corpse bride and a really creepy one at that.  My favorite was Lucas'.  He decided he wanted to be a weatherman.  I had to buy a wig since at he time he was sporting a mohawk and aI bought him the little suit from a second had store.  So people didn't think he was selling insurance we attached maps to the sleeves of his coat so he could give the forecast when people asked.  The right side was the 7 day forecast which consisted of tornadoes, snow, rain and falling candy for Halloween.  The other map was a map of the USA with the southwest on fire, the north frozen, tornadoes in the mid west and lightening bolts in the northwest.  He got a lot of really great comments.  (Note to self, next time save a copy of the maps because they were hilarious. )

2011

On this year we had a zombie Flo from Progressive, a zombie princess, Cleopatra and Dracula
2012 

For 2012 we have a corpse bride, Dracula, Cleopatra and Juliet (with her bottle of poison). 

Are my Kids Eating the Pencil, Markers, Crayons, Glue Sticks and Other School Supplies?

And if not, where do they go exactly?

When we moved to our new house one of my first projects I completed was this area for the kids to keep their school stuff.  I bought the fabric pockets at the Container Store for this project.  The hook and basket combo I bought there several years ago.  I just used name tags to label the pockets because that way I can change them next year.

For some bizarre reason I thought this would help them locate their homework, do their homework and then take their homework to school and hand it in to the teacher.

All it has really done is allow the children to easily locate the pencils, markers, crayons, erasers, scissors and then... I don't know what they do with them.

When asked the kids are all completely flabbergasted that the stuff has all disappeared.  None of them ever use the school supplies in the cups and when they do, they always, ALWAYS put them back. 

Not even a week ago these handy dandy flea market find cups were filled with all kinds of school supplies.  As you can see, they are now mostly empty.  Logically there should be a large pile of pencils, markers, glue sticks, crayons etc somewhere in my house but there isn't.

My first theory: A school supply sucking black hole located somewhere in the kitchen.  Which leads me to question why the black hole is always leaving dirty dishes on the table.  This theory isn't the best one because it's very picky about what it makes disappear.  Mechanical pencils and glue sticks are it's favorite.  It won't eat broken pencils and backpacks left under the kitchen table don't get devoured either.

At around the same time the cups all turned up empty, all the chap stick disappeared as well.  With that clue another theory might be that one of the kids has opened a mobile commissary for their school friends out of their backpack since none of them own trench coats.  I know they don't have trench coats because I haven't picked them up off the floor in the kitchen.  Yet another thing the black hole won't suck up, coats.  This theory breaks down in that none of them is sporting extra cash to spend. 

OR and I'm leaning toward this explanation, the kids are eating the school supplies and washing them down with chap stick to make the whole kit and caboodle pass more easily.

A Pinterest Pin Done My Way

Lately I've been a little obsessed with Pinterest, a new site that lets you arrange the sites you bookmark like a pin board.  One of the projects I really liked was a way to organize and store earrings and I finally got around to doing it.

I made this one for Taylor, but I think I need one for me and Dee Dee is thinking she might need one as well.

To do this little project I painted a frame we already had.

Then, with Chris' help I stapled rug canvas to the back of the frame.  This was a little harder than I thought it would be because the squares were kind of big and my stapler kind of sucks. 

 Rug canvas is the material used for latch hook projects.  I originally had planned on using the plastic canvas used for cross stitch projects, which would have probably worked better.  Unfortunately I couldn't find a plastic canvas that would fit the frame I already had.  Since frames are expensive, I decided to get a little creative.  The rug canvas turned out to be a good choice.  The squares are large so it makes getting the hooks in easy and it's fairly stiff so the squares hold their shape while you are pulling on them to make the backing tight on the frame.

 

To hang the jewelry I used some fancy Christmas ornament hooks I bought on sale.   They are very pretty, but S hooks would have worked just as well, maybe better.  But they weren't just laying around my house like the ornament hooks were. 

At this point, I'm going to do a little bragging.  Everything you've seen so far, you probably have already seen on the net.  Maybe you've seen the next little step I did, but I don't want to hear this wasn't an original idea, so please don't tell me who thought of it first:)  Hook earrings weren't a problem, but I wanted Taylor to be able to hang her stud earrings as well.  (How twelve am I, the word "stud" makes me giggle).  To accomplish this I cut rectangles out of the aforementioned plastic canvas used for cross stitch.  I bought the canvas with the smallest holes available.  Then I ran a hook through the mesh of the plastic canvas and we put the earrings through the holes.  I was afraid that the small posts would slide right through, but they didn't.  

This was an easy sneezy project, I think it looks good and something that can be used for a long time. 

I need to do this for myself and the other girls in the house but one thing I would change is cutting the cloth a bit longer.  I was trying to accommodate the fact that this frame had a wire for hanging and didn't leave much material on the sides for stapling.  Next time I'm going to use a generous amount of material to make it easy to pull across the frame so there isn't any sagging.  It's easy enough to cut after you are finished stapling it all into place.