Not Your Grandma's!

 Maddy invited me to join her on Tuesday for a paint by number event.  She'd had a PBN done of their two pups from a photo and it was amazing! 

 All in pencil!  It really made me wonder how they did that!

She took a set of paints and I did took a different one and off we went!

Anyway, we had a ball, drinking our ciders (slightly alcoholic...  I had the honey crisp one) and painting away.  Matthew joined us after a while but didn't jump in with a paint brush.

I think it turned out super!  

I had supper with them and then hightailed it home. 

 It's not your grandma's paint by number!!

A Crafty Folk...

 Ok.  I've got 10 minutes before a meeting... So here goes.

Leon and I went to a painting pottery place a few weeks ago and we got our fired stuff last night. 

One of the items... Leon took off with his mug to show his dad and I didn't get a pic of it.

 And while there, we indulged in a couple more pieces.  He's kind of crafty.

Mine looks like grass wilted into the soap dish.  I needed a new one for my kitchen.

MY attempt at being crafty was repainting our bathroom ceiling a few weeks ago.  Actually on the same day that we did the first pottery paint day.  It was a welcome break after the fiasco I went thru on that ceiling and my pottery looked better than the ceiling.

But anyway, I had a plasticky tarp over the whirlpool bath tub and was carefully stepping around it with a small basin of white paint and a brush.  I was almost done but wanted to get the area JUST above the bathtub one more time. Wouldn't you just know it?...

As I put one foot at the head of the tub, I placed the other on the back ledge facing the wall.  All of the sudden I could feel myself losing my balance and falling backwards.  I just knew that the back of my head would either hit the faucet or the edge of the tub on the opposite side and I would be dead and Robb would have to use my life insurance money to hire a maid until he could find another wife. Who knows?  The maid might just fit the bill... but anyway!

I twisted and spun my body around, screaming as I fell and landed in the tub on my butt.  WELL!

Robb came running in and looked stunned that I'd survived it without any major injuries!  I was just disgusted that some paint had splashed on the side of the tub and had him hand me a washcloth so I could clean it before having to stand up.  I saw a paint splatter go across the tarp and splashed onto my bathroom scale and a little on the trim from where I sat so I asked Robb to clean that up for me.

Whew!  I was angry with myself for being such a klutz...

When I stood up to resume my painting I noticed other paint sprays, like a blood splatter at a crime scene...  There it was on the window, across the trim and onto the pink wall...  REALLY?!!  Well now I was really mad!  So I put down my white paint and cleaned THAT up...  Got q-tips for the tiny areas that the washclothes couldn't get to.  

Got my white paint together again and went back to work on the ceiling. That's when I noticed more on the window. CRIMINY!!!!  

Shortly after that, Leon came in and asked when we were going to the painting place.

You know WHAT?!  Let me get cleaned up and I'm out of here!!!

Maiden Voyage and the apocalypse

Leon had wanted some friends over to play Legos, so the night before last, he asked me to message his friend's moms.  There are three of his friends that live within a two block radius.  I kind of love this neighborhood most days!  They all said their kids would love to, so Leon was excited.

THEN when Leon got off the bus yesterday he said, "Plans have changed!  I'm playing at Ry's."

Ummm  No you're not!  Go tell him it needs to be here because two other kids are coming over and their mom's don't know about this!

So he rode his bike over and broke the news to Ry and got back in time to play with the other two.

They've started a club!  I can't tell you how many clubs I started when I was a kid...  The garden club, the dirt club, the detective club...

Leon's is called the Lego club, for lack of a better name.  They each picked out one of Leon's Lego instruction books and started digging through his Legos to rebuild the item. 

I worked from the dining room and kept an eye on them as they played.  About 30 minutes later, someone found a tiny Lego gun and that prompted them to hunt down ALL of Leon's guns.  They had a zombie apocalypse going on, right in my home!  I found later that they'd barricaded Leon's bedroom door shut with his little bench book shelf.

They went home at 5 and I hustled up Robb and Leon and we headed to town.  We picked up Ryan and went to his new business that he is part owner of.  He and his boss are building an escape room business!  Right now, they're in the process of painting stripes all over the place and they haven't even gotten to the main escape room yet.  There will be a kiddie escape room as well with a tv in the lounge for you to wait in until it's your parties turn to go in.  Pretty cool set up!

While Robb and Leon held down the fort in one room and ordered pizza for supper, Ryan and I painted our little hearts out!  His boss showed up and worked on paint in the front hall.  

He was interesting to talk to and I mistakenly asked him which part of Ireland he was from.

BAM!!!  You do NOT mix up Irish accents with the English accent!  Ryan was horrified for me.  

IMAGINE my faux-pah! 

My ear is not keen to the fine distinctions...  

I'll just have to visit both countries and find out for myself, eh?

There is a back room that only staff can use, but there is a sink and counter in there.  I'm guessing these rooms used to be a doctor's office...  Ryan was in that little room with the sink and yelled for me to bring him some paint brushes to clean out.  I brought them back and found the door shut. 

and the knob wouldn't work...  He couldn't open it from the inside either!  He was trapped...

How ironic... 

He called for a screwdriver and/or a credit card.  Well, there were no screws on this side of the door and the screwdriver wouldn't fit underneath the door...  Neither would the credit card.  Apparently there was thick carpet on that side.  

After a few minutes of him starting to get claustrophobic, he said, HEY!  Hand me the credit card through the ceiling panel!  After wrongly assuming one side of the tiny room, I finally saw his hand waving through a skewed panel and handed him my dental credit card.  No biggie if that gets bent up...

And then he was OUT!  Having performed the maiden escape from the future escape room!!

Ahhh... the benefits of a misspent youth!

Then we headed for home leaving him there to paint more.  

He has leftover pizza so he should be fine.

I can't wait to see what they do with the place!  I hope we get to try it out first...

Made and Missed Opportunities

 Here is a bit of my sewing from last Saturday.  I know it's hard to make out just what this is...  BUT, this is the overblouse for the dress.  I intentionally left a large swath of fabric on the bottom that I will cut around and be able to gradually merge down onto the grecian skirt.  

I need to move the skirt up the satin bodice about a half inch too.  

But I've got a list of things to do and will get to it as time allows.  

As for the rest of the photos...  I picked up a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume last weekend and Leon loves it!  I didn't know why the brown strips of cloth were on each sleeve and assumed the turtles liked fringe.  Leon knew what to do with them though...  

Last night, Meri and I attempted to take Leon swimming at 7pm and unfortunately the swimming lessons have begun...  The pool closes to the public at 7.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth stemming from that so I took Meri home.  And Leon too.  

We dug out the water balloons and since they were the old fashioned kind 

and I didn't have the proper tools to make a hundred in a minute, I made them ten.

And after Leon threw the last one at me, 

I realized ten was exactly the right number.

Robb's Dopp kit got waxed and thrown in the dryer this morning.  It's going to be pretty slick!  I just need to attach the handle.  That Highschool Musical pillow case is toast though with wax bits inside now.  Probably a good thing.  The kids were with Robb when he saw that set of queen-sized sheets on sale for $5 and bought it for me for Mother's Day one year.  Ryan said that he wanted to live with me after the divorce.  BUT no divorce and the sheets were actually used!  All that's left of that set now are the pillow cases.  And NOT even those anymore!!!

And this is Leon's project that he did for Ryan for Father's Day this coming weekend.  I bought a cool framed photo at the Salvation Army for a pittance.  Took the print out and flipped it over.  Leon painted his masterpiece and after it was completely dried this morning, I put it back in the frame.  This photo was still when it was drying.  It looks so nice in the gold frame!  I'll show you after Sunday.  I wrote a small label on it so he'd know when, for what and by whom it was made.  Leon DID write his name on it also... Just not his age.

Anyway, that's what's going on around here...  My sister won't come for her visit until tomorrow afternoon instead so the house was clean for no good reason.

Sorry she'll have missed it...

McValentine's Weekend Foibles

Per usual, I've been busy this weekend...   

On Friday night I did relax by making some homemade pizza with a few twists.  I found a video that someone posted on FB about making food roses.

Nailed it!  Kind of...  Some looked like mutants.

For the last couple times I've made pizza, I've also added cheesy breadsticks to my repertoire.  

Oh man, these are easy AND yummy!  I roll out a thin strip of dough about a couple inches wide and 5-6 inches long.  Then, because I had gobs of string cheese in the fridge, I wrapped one up in the dough and then baked them.  I made several.  

I haven't figured out how to make them not explode yet, but I'm willing to keep trying it...  They make the BEST breadsticks!  So soft and yummy...  You can brush them with egg white and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top if you feel fancy.

After supper, I sewed and sewed.  

On Saturday, I sewed and sewed.  

I'm determined to finish these bowling shirts by next weekend!  

 I used my new found hobby, because you just can't have too many of those!!!  and embroidered their names onto the shirts in true bowling shirt fashion.

On Saturday afternoon, Meri had a Jazz band competition about an hour away.  

We loaded up and enjoyed it so much!  

After some confusion afterwards about who was going home with who, we ended up in the right cars and made it home.  

I worked more on the embroidery. I'll show you pics of that tomorrow.

I also proposed an idea to Ryan about putting in velco for the shirt closure rather than buttonholes.  He said that if I expect him to wear it more than once, please do the buttonholes...

But yuck.  I hate button holes!  

It typically takes me 3 weeks to do them and that's just gearing up to do it.  It only takes, in reality, 30 minutes...  But you have to psych yourself up for it and be extremely careful.  At least with my machines you do.  Plus I couldn't find the button holer contraption for my machine so I winged it with setting #17 and traced the heck out of the shirt before I did it.  Also ran several test runs on sample fabric to give me enough nerve.

That was Sunday afternoon.  After praying about it at church and after visiting Ada at the nursing home and commiserating with her about it,  I even put in a call to Doctor Phil, but he wasn't available.

The button holes are done!  I just need to find buttons to fit them now. :)

Talk about the cart before the horse!!!

If button holes don't spell out LOVE for Valentine's Day, I just don't know what...

 Sunday evening I traced out the image for the back that I wanted to paint onto the shirts and went for it.  

This one is Leon's and it is done except for buttons.

On Ryan's I made the mistake of moving it too soon because I was painting on our bed and Robb wanted to go to bed.  Whoops!  Just a minute!!!  There are a couple smudges now.

But all in all, I think they're turning out ok.  No one is paying for these, so that's good!

I don't know if they'll go to the fair yet.

Found out yesterday that my mom had fallen at her nursing home and broken her nose!  I feel so bad that she's clear over there and I'm clear over here...  I'm so thankful for the siblings that were visiting them this weekend and the ones that live in town and can be there for her!

I have a lot of siblings.

So it's been a long but short weekend and I'm exhausted.  This week I need to concentrate on getting my sewing group's newsletter ready to roll AND get ready for Maddy and Matthew to come this weekend!!

What did you do this weekend?

DOTting the town Red!

Guess who spent the second non-work day of their vacation at the D.O.T.??  You're reading her now...  Tiffany had been without her drivers license for roughly 4 years.  It was time she got back in the drivers seat!  She took the written test and passed with flying colors!  However my car has some mild idle issues and the guy testing her actual driving docked her for it, so she didn't get her license that day.  She did go back later in the week with a "working" car and passed successfully.  My car, even tho it works just FINE has been labeled junk by some...  No problem!  No one has to drive mine!

But on that Tuesday after sitting in the D.O.T. drivers license place for over 3 hours...  we met up with Maddy and went to do some pottery embellishments!   Leon was sleeping, so he didn't mind at all.  Well up until I got my plate done, then he was wide awake and wanted to explore with me.

We love places like this!  A wide array of pottery is available to paint.  The customers paint their little hearts out and then leave their treasures there for a few days so the business can fire the pieces.  We picked ours up on Saturday.

Maddy and Meri picked the biggest mugs they could find that would guarantee I'll have to pitch some old ugly ones to make room in the cupboard.  Tiffany and I chose to paint Birthday plates.  

LOVE Mads mug in this shot!

In our house, when we celebrate a birthday, it's a big deal.  I dig out my china dishes and nice glasses, but the birthday boy or girl gets to use a special birthday plate that we've painted just for them.  I know we have one for Ryan, but I can't find it...  And I know "I" don't actually have one yet...  But we have a generic "Celebration" plate to use for those unfortunates that don't have a special plate.

Maddy poses just like she did for one of her graduation pictures.  We might just use THIS one for her senior pics!!  I kid of course... Her fingernails don't match...

I painted Tiffany's plate.

And she painted Leon's!  We're looking forward to the first birthday when he won't want to dash it on the floor...  I'm thinking we'll let him use it when he's 20.

Here are my girls and their mugs.

busy busy girls!

and the finished products!  The middle blue one is Maddy's plate that I made about 6 or 7 years ago.

 The mugs have been used every single day so far.  They really haven't had a chance to sit in the cupboard much yet, so we may not have any issues...  So far, it's coffee/cappuccino to the dishwasher back to a hot drink...

Even tho it's summer... a hot chocolate sounds pretty good right now...  And I've got the very mug to put it in!  Just don't tell the girls...

Enjoy your Wednesday!!!  We're almost to the weekend!!!