Happy Half Birthday, Lucy!

Lucy is 18 months old today!

She is such a joy! For such a small person, she has big presence. Doors don't close, they slam. She doesn't take one crayon, she dumps all 64 of them out. She doesn't just pet the cat, she lays down on top of him.

Her absolute favorite thing to do is play with balls. She likes little bouncy balls and big beach balls, glittery balls and bakis (basket)balls, golf balls and baseballs; she likes balls. We have to avoid the big bins of bouncy balls in the store because she gets really excited (legs pumping and yelling, "Ball! Ball! Ball!" ) and then upset if we don't buy one.

She also enjoys balloons (bwoons), shoes, combing her hair ('pitty'), and reading "Moo, Baa, La La La!" by Sandra Boynton. She makes some good funny faces and adores Mollie.

My favorite thing is how she will just walk into the room and squeeze my legs in a hug! Happy 18 months, little Lu!

Printmaking

We were inspired by this post at whip up (linked from A Crafty Crow, a GREAT website for creative kids' projects) to try printmaking using fruits and vegetables today.

Mollie's friend Bella joined us and it was a lot of fun! We tried both acrylic craft paint and washable crayola paint. Both work well, but it was best to thicken them up a little with some flour (to a paste consistency).

The fruits and veggies we used were things I had around the house that were a bit past prime:
garlic
onion
apple
butternut squash
asparagus
lemon (my favorite, by far)
bell pepper

Slice the produce, make the paint paste, dip the produce in, and make prints! It helped to have some sponges to wipe off excess paint; a light coat of paint works best. The girls enjoyed touching the different fruits and veggies and discussing which textures make the best prints.

The produce manager at our grocery store said he would give us some of the expired veggies to use next time. I would love to try a pomegranate, star fruit, and corn on the cob. You don't have to waste the whole fruit/veg either- you can just use a thick slice and eat the rest! If you use non-toxic paints, rinse and throw the produce on your compost pile after painting.

Happy Father's Day

to Matt, my dad, Charlie, Blake (Mollie's godfather), Bill (Lucy's godfather), Sam (Lucy's honorary godfather), C.T. and all the dads and father figures out there!

We are remembering my grandpa George; this is our first father's day without him.

Fun (and free!) Online Photo Software

One of the fun things about digital photography, is playing with the pictures! If you haven't tried it yet, you should check out Picnik. You can do all sorts of fun things with your photos. Best of all- it's easy! Here are a few examples:

Original

Orton-ish

Black and White Focal

1960's

These transformations took about 5 minutes, in total, since I just used the stock effects. I haven't tried printing them yet, but I'm interested to see how they turn out.

For those interested, I still haven't figured out how to photograph fireflies... they are so ethereal anyway. Maybe they aren't meant to be caught on film.

Photographing Fireflies

Summer in the South is not what I would call pleasant. There's the heat, the humidity, and the bugs! However, there are some good things- the fragrant gardenias, the creamy white magnolia blossoms,

and fireflies (yes, they are bugs too, but in a completely different category than roaches, ants, and mosquitoes).

The fireflies are my favorite part of summer, but capturing them on film (or digital storage media) is hard! Anyone have any ideas? I'm thinking slow shutter speed and wide aperture and a tripod.

Mother's Day

I had a nice mother's day with Matt, Mollie and Lucy in Columbia, S. C. We saw the "Turner to Cezane" exhibit at the Columbia Museum of Art and enjoyed the sunny day in Columbia!

Sewing Round Up

Well, I never manage to do as much sewing as I would like (there's all that dinner-making, diaper-changing, and actual work that gets in the way), but I did manage to do a fair amount of sewing in April. I didn't manage to post any of it!

Besides the stroller liner and the shirred dress, I turned a T-shirt into a romper (part of my effort to practice sewing knits) and modified a few of Mollie's dresses.

The T-shirt romper did not turn out great. When I cut out the crotch (ew, crotch.) I did it with the shirt folded in half, thinking that would make it perfectly centered. Um, no. The shirt was all wonky so the crotch was off to the side. That meant I had to make a bigger cut-out than planned, the the legs turned narrower than I wanted. Not so good for my chunky baby! I will definitely be trying this again though as we have an ever-growing supply of T-shirts and the whole thing only took about 20 minutes. I followed these basic instructions, but I reinforced the crotch and put snaps on it instead of velcro.

The other project - dresses (sorry for the blurry picture). Mollie got some hand-me-down dresses that are CUTE. But she won't wear them because they are not fancy enough (is she really my child?). Some fabric yo-yos, buttons and rick-rack fixed that!