The Return of the Super Awesome Hair-do

Fantastic Sam's @ Grossmont Center, thank you.

For hearing what I asked for, and getting it right.

Fantastic Sam's in Lemon Grove could learn a thing or two from you.

Mallory got her hair cut this weekend!

Back to the cut she had last May.

The super duper cute and stylin' hair-cut that I would totally have myself if I were thin enough to pull it off.

The bangs are a little blunt and funky....

that's cause I did those myself. :o)

for baby...

My sister-in-law had a baby shower last weekend, and I only had a short time to come up with a gift, so this is what we gave:

Plain little baby onesies that I added some appliques to (cut with my Big Shot diecutter).

I didn't have time to stitch around the edges of each applique like I wanted, but that was ok.

This one was my favorite...

...because of the bum:

:o)

I found the idea for a "ruffle-bum onesie" online, and I wanted to make it right away. Then, even though it was short notice, I was given a reason to actually do it. Love how that works.

I wish I had a chubby-bummed infant of my own to model it.

Maybe I'll add some ruffles to the girls' underwear instead. :o)

kids & crafts

Last Friday was so much fun!

We had a craft night with Arissa's Drill Team. We spent 4 hours in the studio, 3 of the parents (plus Sherry) offering a different craft to make. The girls got into small groups and then went around to each of the different "stations".

We also had lots of good food, and lots of laughs. :o)

Arissa, Vanesa, & Olivia ("the trio"):

Hard at work:

For my craft, which I agonized for days over what the heck to make (and changed my mind 4 times), I did a "memory jar". The girls decorated a glass jar, wrote notes to or memories of each of the girls in the group, and then took home a note from each girl to them in their jar. An idea I got from a Valentine's gift that Jesse gave me a few years ago, which is still so much fun to look through.

I made a jar for myself before hand, to have an example to show the girls of what they were making:

my example of what kind of stuff to write on the notes:

I ended up with a jar full of notes to myself, from myself. :o) And embarrassingly, I still had fun pulling them out and reading each of them. That's sad, I know.

It's okay. In the end, I did end up with two notes that were not from myself. One of the girls wrote one to me after she was done with all of hers, and Andrea (my friend & DT super-mom) wrote me a nice one too which I will keep forever and ever. :o)

Me and this sweet little DT sibling took a break to have fun after she'd made her jar...

I used my Martha Stewart butterfly punch to punch out 'lil bitty butterflies, and they kind of jumped out as my little friend tried to catch them:

See the jumping butterfly??

There it is!:

Fun fun fun.

So the girls all came home with a memory jar, an awesome stamped pin (made out of a domino), a cute little keepsake box that they decorated:

and a frame they embellished:

Are they cool or what??

Did I mention already how much fun it was?

Those kids are so sweet.

You should see those notes they each wrote to one another.....I wish I could have kept a copy of each single one of them. So so sweet and kind and encouraging and happy.

I love those girls.

Day of love

We had lots of fun on Valentine's day!

We got all our goodies delivered, and we received some too.

My Dad brought over cards & soft stuffed animals for us girls...

and Jesse's mom brought over some delicious award winning cookies in a super-cute heart shaped box. The cookies are long gone; the box, in all it's lovelyness, remains. :o)

We had little gifts for the girls sitting out in the morning:

The little LOVE-topped containers filled w/ m&ms were a big hit. The girls kept asking me if I made the toppers...I kept saying no I didn't but I wish I could say I did. They didn't believe me and kept asking so eventually I said fine yes I did, and I'm glad you like it. :o)

They each got a book and a pair of socks:

and of course a card:

We all worked together to make lunch: our traditional (as of 2 years ago) heart-shaped pizzas.

I made the dough in my bread-maker early that morning, we rolled it out and somehow maneuvered it into heart shapes:

We added our toppings....this year we even put love into the pepperonis:

'lil heart shaped ones I made with a teeny tiny cookie cutter. :o) We of course had our special ice cubes, in our little heart cups I bought at Target this year.

I love Valentine's Day.

Performances a-plenty

Sometimes it seems like our lives revolve around dance!

I don't mind though. I'm glad the girls are active, and I'm glad it's dance that they're involved in. I'd rather spend my time watching dance practices & recitals instead of sports or something I don't personally enjoy as much!

A few weeks ago we had another recital:

Then the next day was the Martin Luther King assembly at school, and each class performed.

This year's assembly was really good; the performances were cute as always, but also this year the speaker was pretty good too. At one point he said that he likes to imagine what it must have been like for his great-grandparents when the emancipation proclamation was signed....how one day they were slaves and the next day they were free. I missed the next several minutes of his speech because I was still pondering that. :o)

But those performances were super cute. Mariah wore her Peace Medal that she received at last year's assembly.

After the assembly, Jesse and I caught up with the Drill Team who were doing their annual "School Tours", where they perform a few routines at the elementary/middle schools in the area.

This year we had an extra element to deal with:

Clouds, rain, wet roads, and thunder.

But with some extra sturdy, heavy-duty umbrellas that some of the parents brought, the girls made it thru the day just fine...and dry.

Instead of just sittin' around, Jesse was put to good use.

Now, he's not as pretty as the other girls, but I think he was an awesome banner-carrier nonetheless. Lol. :o) He needs to work on his smile though...he sure doesn't look very "peppy"!

That's actually the second time he's carried a banner for Sherry's Gotta Dance. I think maybe it's a calling. :o)

The first performance of the day was at 8:30 and the last didn't end until 6. The girls were tired and a little worn out at the end (at least Arissa was). I was exhausted too and all I did was follow them from school to school, take pictures, and cheer! But it was a fun day. It's so cute to watch the girls perform in front of their peers.

Watching the kids in the audience at all the different school, and how some were well behaved and some were little terrors whom the staff had no control over, also gave me some insight as to which Middle School I want the girls to go to! Day well spent.

love love love!

love pops

Lastly, these are what we made for other people we love (who don't fit into the category of: drill team buddy, classmate, daughter, etc.):

Love pops!

I dread making sugar cookies, but these turned out okay. I wasn't sure if they'd bake onto the sticks right, but they did. The icing, on the other hand, didn't go as planned.

I tried to do a special "royal" icing, using corn syrup, which is supposed to dry hard in a glaze finish.

But mine had no glaze, and was just a big total mess.

So to cover up the matte finish, I used lots (lots) of pretty sprinkles. :o)

love notes

The mailboxes were wildly popular with the girls....I've been kicking myself for not thinking of it earlier!

Every day was a happy mail day for each of us:

Some of their sweet love notes to each other:

And a few of the ones I made for them:

I used my die-cutter to cut the love notes (the paper and the felt ones). But I can't die-cut them fast enough...the girls are writing love notes like there's no tomorrow! :o)

kisses

For the girls' classmates, I decided to make little treat pouches filled with Hershey Kisses.....which I learned how to do at a workshop hosted by Cula last year.

Last Valentine's, I made them for Arissa's drill team buddies. This year, like I said, I made them for the classmates.

I used a lot of paper, a lot of adhesive, and a lot of yummy Kisses:

My favorite part about them is that once they're made into little pouches, you crimp the ends so they resemble a store-bought item (the original project likened them to "sour cream containers"....but no sour cream I've ever bought came in packages like that. To me, they're more like a kind of ice cream/push-up/sno-cone thingy I remember from my childhood).

What happens when you have 108 of these to make, and want to get it done in one evening?

If you're me, you rush and end up (once again) "half-assing" it, so to speak. I ran out of the super-sticky adhesive half way thru, so I used some other stuff that I had.

The next day, the adhesive had given out and all the little pouches opened up, Hershey Kisses everywhere. And I had to re-do all of them. I was not a happy-camper. But I can't say I was surprised either...I do silly stuff like that a lot!

pinwheels, hair-clips, and....Adam Lambert?

I couldn't decide what to make for the girls' classmates for Valentine's Day this year.

At first, I had no ideas.

Then suddenly I had too many, and I couldn't pick which ones I wanted to do, and which to save for next year.

I ended up doing these for Arissa's drill team buddies:

They're pinwheel pencils.

I just cute lovely Valentine paper by Making Memories into 4x4 inch squares, cut lines from each corner almost to the middle, folded one corner from each section in, and secured with a pretty pin (thru the eraser). The pins were far too long, so I used wire cutters to snip the ends off so they don't poke thru the back.

I poked myself plenty of times while making them, I didn't want any of the recipients to have to go thru that too!

For 2 super-cute drill team siblings, I made little hair clips (almost exactly like the headbands I made for my girls):

A big THANK YOU to Mallory's Sleeping Beauty Styling Head for modeling those. :o) She was a pleasure to work with....more well-behaved but not nearly as cute as the live models I usually use.

Here's how I finished up the "packaging" for the clips:

And while I was working feverishly on those, this sweet guy was being crafty himself:

He was working on a birthday gift for our neighbor, Courtney.

We wanted to silk-screen something for her, cause that's Jesse's latest acquired skill and it's pretty awesome. Courtney happens to be a fan of Adam Lambert, so we went with that.

Jesse found a photo of Adam Lambert online:

and used photoshop to convert it to black & white with maximum contrast.

Then he traced that onto a sheer fabric in an embroidery hoop.

Then (the hard part)....he used mod pdoge & a paint brush to cover the areas he didn't want to be shown on the final product. The modpodge clogs up the tiny holes in the sheer fabric, so that when paint is applied, the paint doesn't come thru in those areas.

Is that not the most awesome thing ever??

(The silk-screen, not Adam Lambert.)

After the mod podge dries, he sets the embroidery hoop on the item to be printed on (in this case, a canvas tote bag), and carefully applies paint to the whole thing. The paint comes through the open areas, and not thru the mod podged spots, and the image is transferred.

Jesse learned how to do all this by googling it. It gets really detailed, but Jesse is good at stuff like that. I avoid super-detailed things...if something takes too long, I get bored and half-ass it or just quit. Jesse, on the other hand, sticks with it and gets it done. And somehow he's got the rep for a short attention span. Go figure!

He's currently taking orders if you want Adam Lambert printed onto anything. ;o)