Duct tape

For when you just NEED butterfly wings on short notice.

She wore them all day.

Just be warned that there might be a little bit of sticky residue left on the shirt.  I got it off OK, but don't do this on delicate fabric.

Pioneers

July 24 is the day that Mormons and Utahns and Utah Mormons in particular celebrate the arrival of the Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley.  I was thinking about pioneers and the celebrations around them a bit this morning.  We venerate them and hold them up as examples to follow yet in doing so we are in a way contradicting the essence of the pioneering spirit.  Pioneers didn't follow traditions.  They changed things.  They left their homes and friends and families, sometimes being disowned by them, usually never to return.  They risked and sometimes lost everything for the chance at a new and better tomorrow.  They moved on and moved forward. 

What do you think?

An elephant named Gerald

Gerald is our favorite elephant.  He and Piggie star in a series of really great kid books by Mo Willems.  I ran across them in the easy reader section of our library.  They are easy to read, but the stories are still fun and funny.  I think that my favorite is still Today I Will Fly, where Piggie flies with a little bit of help.  As you can see we like them ALL.

Paper goes 3D

I've taken my paper cutting to the next dimention, literally.  I ran across a book at the library on kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting and folding to create in 3D.  It is pretty cool.  I tried out a butterfly for My Girl and a ninja for Buddy Boy, Cole DX, for you Ninjago fans.

It was fun.  I'm now trying to figure out how to do the Oakland Temple.  I don't have all the geometry and different levels straight in my head yet, but I'm getting there.  I'll post pictures when I'm done.

Rainbow Daisies

For some reason I remember doing this a lot one summer as a kid.  We had a lot of big white daisies in the backyard and I thought it was really cool to turn them different colors so I tried it out with the kids.  Luckily I had the perfect vase, a wedding gift from a friend.  I like it because it looks like a row of test tubes all linked together.  All you do is put a little food color in the water and wait.

Here is how they started. 

We have some little daisies and a few great big ones to work with.

The color started to show a few hours in.  Here they are several days later.  Some of the daisies had started to fade a bit by the time I took the picture, but you can see the color.

I didn't have orange food color so I mixed red and yellow.  You can tell by looking at the daisy.  The color separates out and is sort of striped.  This isn't like the green one where I used green food color instead of mixing yellow and blue.

the all day all night gown

My girl made a very specific request for a pink sleep dress with short sleeves.  Hmmm.  Luckily I had a plain pink t-shirt on hand.  I picked up a couple in different colors at our local drug store when they were on sale for 2 for $5.  You can't buy the fabric for that price.  Since this was an adult size large shirt I couldn't just pull in the shoulders and call it a day like I did with the mermaid dress. 

I cut the shirt across the body just under the armhole and used a pattern for a little girl dress that I already had for the bodice and sleeves.  I used the neck and hems that were already in the shirt to make it easier for me.  The neck is a little big, but I figured that it would be just that much easier for her to get on and off.  I also cut it out extra big thinking that she would wear it for sleeping, silly me.  The only sewing were the bodice side seams, the sleeves, the gather on the skirt and sewing it on.  I used a narrow ziz zag stitch which worked great for this cotton knit.  I also top stitched the seam around the middle and had to redo one of the sleeves when I put it on inside out.  Without that the whole thing takes less than an hour.

Here is the finished product. 

(Some days you just can't get the picture you want.)

She decided she wanted to wear it ALL the time.  So I made one in lavendar too.  The shirt I started with was a medium so the neck was a little smaller which was probably a good thing.  It's just the same but I added puffed sleeves.  I think I like the plain sleeves better.  I'm just not a lavendar ruffly type person.  The only things in my closet with ruffles are a dark olive drab and I like it that way.  I have to temper the ruffles with a little masculinity like a militant color.  Anyway.  It's cute and quick and fun.  I may get around to doing some decorations like painting or stenciling or something else if I can get them off her little body.

the Joker Soaker

After seeing this I knew I wanted to build my own kid wash for the backyard.  I've been waiting for it to get hot enough to play in the water and then all of a sudden it was.  We had the pvc pipes from a couple years ago.  All I needed was an adapter for the hose and end caps so all the water didn't run out.  I pulled out the drill and drilled away.  It was all rather free form.  I didn't even need to glue the joints.  Just make sure they are pushed in tight so that the water pressure doesn't spring it loose.  I did learn that you can only do so many holes or there isn't enough water pressure to make it all work.  For us the magic number seems to be about 35 1/8 inch holes, if I remember right.  Bigger size, fewer holes.  It's been fun.  If I were to do it again I might look for a different hose adapter.  This pvc one fits tight on the pvc pipes, but is a little difficult to connect to the hose.

And so the Joker Soaker was born.  Buddy Boy named it.  The name fits, although I'm not sure who the Joker is supposed to be.

She isn't running through because she is trying to wash the sidewalk paint off her hands, legs, every other body part, swim shirt...  Not a product I'd recommend for the faint of heart or clean of floor.  This photo shows the full thing and all the water the best.

I strategically placed this over the dry spots in the back lawn hoping to revive it a bit.  If not this summer, it will green up over the winter.

Maybe the table top version is next.

Crystals and the Cambrian

I decided that in addition to the family reunions we would do a little dinosaur study while in Utah. At the time Buddy boy was in his paleontologist phase. Since then he has moved through a couple of ancient societies and now on to crystals. That isn't so bad because the The Brigham City Natural History Museum has an excellent collection of crystals in addition to fossils.  Who knew that Brigham had a natural history museum?  It is in a former elementary school and shares the space with the Boys and Girls Club.  The museum is still a work in progress, but the specimens themselves were great.

Amethyst geodes bigger than the kids.

There was one room that was dark with black lights to show the natural fluorescence of the rocks.  It was so cool.  What was even more cool was that some of the minerals would fluoresce in different colors depending on the wave length of the light, wither orange/green or green/purple. 

To go along with the whole dinosaur thing made a plaster cast of Buddy Boy's hand print and "fossils" of toy fish and dinosaurs. They weren't really fossil-like since we took the toys out and left the impression. I thought of painting them, but we didn't get around to it. I also forgot to bring them home with us. Oh well, they probably wouldn't have survived the trip anyway. We were also going to grow borax crystals, but didn't get around to that either. We may still do that one at home. The crystal fascination continues.

We also went to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point with cousins. There were lots of fossils as well as many many replicas of full skeletons. Everyone loved the T-Rex. My Girl loved the under sea room with the giant sea turtles. She went in to mermaid baby mode and swam around the room.  It was really fun to watch.

There was a fun water table sort of place where the kids got to play with sand and water.  The theory was that they could learn about how erosion reveals fossils.  They spent the most time here and loved it.

They also liked the sand pit where they could dig for bones.

 After a big day at the museum which included an unexpected tour of East Lehi, the kids spent the next morning playing at home while I went to the temple and lunch with my sister in law.  It is so nice to have a built in nephew baby sitter.  He was great and Buddy Boy just loves him.  He is the size of a grown up yet loves Calvin and Hobbes and computer games just like he does.

We spent that night with a different brother in West Valley.  We went to West Fest where Buddy Boy tried out the National Guard climbing wall.  He did really great and got about half way up.  He really liked it.  I think we need to do this again.

The next day was the big swim party at Cherry Hill with the extended family.  Swim, swim, fun fun.  I think the best part was duck duck goose with all the little second cousins.

After that we collapsed and relaxed until it was time to come home.  A great trip, but it was also good to be back.