Project progress

Saturday we got a lot of work done, and it's nice to actually see the progress.

Mr M tilled up the spot where we're putting in our garden next spring. There's tons of rocks in the ground here, so he has more work to do still unfortunately.

While he was doing that, I finished clearing the leaves. After raking and bagging 20+ bags of leaves from just a couple trees last year, we decided to take the easy way out and get a leafblower this year. Totally worth the money! I cleared the driveway and parking area Friday and all the grassy areas Saturday. So much quicker (and easier on the body) than raking and bagging. It's nice not to have to get rid of all those bags of leaves- I just blew them into the underbrush and trees that surround the house and lawn- there will be more mulch in the woods come spring.

Side deck, not powerwashed yet 

Mr M was finally able to finish powerwashing the back deck while I stained the side and front porches. We still have to stain the back deck next week. I can see why the previous owners didn't keep the decks clean and sealed- it's a lot of work, and you have to have the time to work on it when the weather is cooperating (which hasn't been the case lately). We can't wait till we can afford to replace the high maintenance wood with low maintenance Trex-type decking.

Side deck, powerwashed and stained

When we re-do the decks we're going to screen in part of the back porch. We had a screened-in back porch at our last house, and it's a lifesaver in the summer. There's so many bugs here that we end up staying inside to avoid them. It'd be nice to be able to spend more time outside.

In the meantime, it feels good to be making progress on the myriad projects that need to be taken care of around the house.  Ahhh, the joys of homeownership :)

I wrote this last Thursday night, but needed a bit more time to process it all before I actually posted it.

So..... yeah, I got a big shock tonight.

Our ward got split a week and a half ago, and we're in a new ward that was formed from parts of three other wards (much less geographically spread out now). We've never been in a ward when it was split, so it's been neat to see the whole process. Did you know that ward boundary changes go all the way to the First Presidency to be okayed? I didn't.

A week and a half ago we had stake conference and after conference was over they had a special meeting for the three wards that were going to be affected. They explained the process of forming a new ward and showed us the new boundaries. Those who are in the new ward were released from their callings in their previous wards and the bishopric was called.

They've since been busy meeting with people and extending callings. This past Sunday we sustained a bunch and this Sunday we'll be sustaining a bunch more, including us. Mr M got re-called (called again?) to 11 year old scouts. The stake president wants continuity with the scouting program so they're trying to keep the leadership the same as much as possible (the 11 year old scout group has boys from three different wards in it right now because there's only a couple 11 year old boys in each ward). I was kind of thinking this would happen, so it wasn't a surprise at all.

My calling is another matter entirely. After Mr M accepted his call, the bishop turned to me and said they'd like me to be the Relief Society president.

Huh????!!!!!!

A side note: we knew we were going in to get callings so I was trying to think which callings had been sustained on Sunday, and I was pretty sure all the "major" ones had been taken care of already this past Sunday.

Or not.

My reaction?  "You're kidding, right?"  (yes, I really said that to the bishop, but in my defense, he's only a year or so older than me and we used to live across the street from them before we bought this house, so it's a little easier to be more casual with him)

His response was "I would never kid about something like this."

Which I knew, but I was so shocked that I wasn't really filtering what came out of my mouth. RS president has always been one calling I never wanted (there's a couple, but this was definitely at the top of the list). I've been more relaxed with what I eat lately (Halloween and all the candy is not a good thing for my self control) and I've been feeling a lot more fuzzy headed lately. I never feel as in touch spiritually when my brain is fuzzy.

I was talking to my mom a few days ago and I mentioned the ward split and that we would be getting new callings. I bemoaned the loss of my previous calling of Sunbeam teacher (which I really enjoyed, along with being a nursery leader a few years ago- neither are on my don't want list) and mentioned that I've been feeling stressed out lately. Homeschool, extra activities for LMS, trying to get the house organized and looking nice (lots and lots of paint), and so on are keeping me super-busy. I said something about not being sure I could handle a time-intensive calling, and she reminded me that I needed to accept whatever calling came my way. I responded that if I got a time intensive calling maybe that meant I needed to re-think what I'm spending my time on.

By itself, that was a good reminder since I am not always good with time management and it's easy for me to feel overwhelmed by everything, especially if I'm not feeling as good as I could be (like now). Since I didn't get a super easy, cakewalk calling I do need to rethink some things, but overall I should be ok. As the bishop reminded me, if I'm feeling overwhelmed, than I'm not doing the calling right. I need to call good, capable counselors and allow them to do their callings and not take on everything myself (which my OCD tends to want to do). And I will definitely be learning lots from the experience.

Some things I've been thinking about, some of them even before tonight:

- LMS does not need to take a ballet class. She loves playing ballet class, but that doesn't mean she needs to take one.
- I don't need to do it all. I was planning on making Christmas gifts for family this year, but even though I want to do it, I don't need to it. It's ok to give store-bought gifts.
- It's ok not to get the house all painted and the needed furniture (bookshelves and such) built before Christmas. Not that that's realistic anyway, it's just my OCD really wanting to get the house just right as quickly as possible. It's ok to take my time getting the rooms painted, as long as I get the bookshelves built and installed as soon as possible. I can't handle the stacks of books all over the front room anymore.
- I'm glad I've been working on a menu plan for us, since mealtime can be stressful if I don't have something planned ahead of time (especially if I'm not feeling good). This has also helped lower our food expenditures a bit.
- I need to be better at getting to bed on time and getting up earlier in the morning.
- This will be a a good opportunity for me to look outside myself and serve others more. I haven't done that much over the past few years because of the celiac and Mr M's deployments (I was focused more on getting myself and LMS through each day).

Which of your callings have you found the most challenging?

American Girl Dolls

image source

I'm not sure how this happened, but somehow I ended up on the mailing list for American Girl catalogs. Although I'd rather my name be on it than Little Miss Sunshine's- I'd be really concerned if it was in her name.

Anyway, have you flipped through an AG catalog lately? I remember reading a few of the first couple books that came out, and I knew there was dolls to go with them (there was only two or three dolls at that point), and you could buy an extra outfit or two and a bed for them, but that was about it.

Fast forward 20 years, and things have gotten insane! I don't know how many dolls there are (at least a dozen?), and they each have books to go with them, elaborate outfits and accessories, dining sets, bedroom sets, matching outfits for dolls and their owners, the list goes on and on.

Flipping through the first catalog I felt a bit of nostalgia and "oh, it'd be cool to get one of these for LMS eventually" until I looked at the prices. Holy cow! $100 just for the doll??? Yeah, that's not going to happen. Guess I'm going to have to make sure she doesn't see the catalog because that's a super-expensive road to go down.

I then started wondering about the books- did the books come first, or the dolls? It's been about 20 years since I last read one, so I don't remember the quality of the writing. I imagine they're fairly historically accurate or someone would have complained by now.

I'm going to have to do some research into them to see if it's worth the fuss to check the books out of the library and forestall any requests for the dolls (and their plethora of accessories).

Has anyone read any of the books more recently than I have? What were your thoughts on them?

Instant gratification

Our neighbors with the one year old daughter stopped by the other day to pick up a bowl they left here and to share the good news that they're pregant.

LMS has apparently been pondering this (I didn't realize she even heard them), because the next day she asked me why some kids get brothers and sisters and she doesn't.

We've talked about how some families are big, and some are small, and some are in between, so I reminded her of that. I also reminded her that she has at least 3 or 4 friends her age who also don't have brothers or sisters. Of course, that didn't really help: she wants a baby sister NOW. Like by this weekend.

Poor kiddo. We're still working on the paperwork, so it'll be awhile.

Sunday Funny

I've been doing a lot of painting lately, and the other day the little miss came up to me and asked "does the wall need another jacket of paint?"

Jacket, coat, it's all the same, right?   :)

Our Halloween Costumes

I was editing the Halloween costume pics when I realized I didn't get a picture of the back of LMS' costume. Since I'm particularly pleased with how it turned out, I had to wait for a sunny day and reshoot the costume pics. And then I had to wait till I had some spare time to edit the photos before adding them to the post. So, a week and a half after Halloween, here's my costume post :)

Little Miss Sunshine dressed as Princess Leia. She wanted to be a princess again, and I managed to direct her in a direction other than the Disney variety :) She's seen the original three movies, so she knows who Princess Leia is and was ok with being her instead of Belle (I sooo did not have time to sew Belle's yellow ball gown this year).

I was Upper GI and Mr M was Lower GI- a fun idea I found online that worked out well- all we had to do was dig out an old uniform and make name tags.

 You can't see my name tag, so here's the tags we pinned to our shirts.

I used my silhouette to cut the black cardstock for the back and the cream vinyl to go on top.

I followed ideas found here and here and used pictures from here. I drew an outline around LMS (with her laying on some newsprint) and used that as the pattern for the dress. I used a synthetic fabric (nylon or polyester something, I don't remember for sure) that has a really nice drape to it. I cut two of everything so the dress had a self lining. A rectangle formed the hood and was attached to the neckline with pleats. I put a zipper in the back and used some stiff interfacing to help the collar keep its shape. I then sewed some silver lame on some white canvas to make the belt, which also has velcro on the ends to close it.

I bought a skein of yarn and a costume wig and played with some ideas for the cinnamon buns. The wig didn't work because it didn't have a center part in the back and because I couldn't touch the nasty fake hair for longer than 5 seconds without being completely icked out. Have you ever touched the fake hair in a cheap wig? Yech! Anyway, I carefully cut the hair off the wig base and then sewed yarn to it with a center seam for the part. Using the wig base definitely made the whole thing so much easier. I then gathered the yarn and twisted it into cinnamon buns and sewed them in place with some yarn. It's not perfect, but it's good enough and definitely recognizable for what it is :)

  I really like how the hood turned out :)

  

  

Isn't she cute?

Halloween 5k

Yesterday I ran my first race in costume :)

Since it was a Halloween race and costumes were encouraged, I figured, why not?

It snowed Friday night so before we went to bed we dug out our snow gear so we'd be nice and toasty. I woke up Saturday morning and it was raining (and all the snow was melted). I knew the race was going to be cold and miserable and I almost rolled over and went back to sleep.

Instead, I got up and got dressed (and woke up Mr M and LMS too) and we headed out.

I'm glad we did, since it was a fast race- the fastest 5k I've run in years!

1st mile was just under 10 minutes (fastest mile I've done in quite awhile)

2nd mile was about 10 and a half minutes

3rd mile was just under 12 minutes (I had to stop and walk twice-my endurance isn't quite what it should be yet and my lungs were not liking the cold)

I think my finish time was 32:03, which I'm very happy about :)

Warning: some crappy pictures ahead

Me running to the finish line. It wasn't really that dark- Mr M was having problems with the camera settings. 

But it's the only pic of my costume in action :)

 LMS escorting me through the finish chute.

Me, wet and cold, but happy to be finished.

It was a nice course through a gated community with some good hills that I didn't have too many problems with since I've been pushing LMS up and down the hills in our area in the jogger. It rained the whole race, so I got soaking wet (which the cotton shirt and skirt just sucked up) and my glasses were covered with raindrops which did make it a bit difficult for me to see where I was going. There weren't a lot of runners- only about a hundred- and it was nice to not have to jostle with lots of people. I even started pretty close to the starting line! Despite the cold and rain, it was a fun race :)

My Costume

When I decided to wear a costume in the race, I decided it needed to be simple so I could run in it, but still fun and unique.

I remembered the awesome tree costume my mom made when I was in 3rd or 4th grade- out of paperbags. We'd seen the idea in a magazine, and she copied it and it looked great, though it was hard to sit down in :)

 I realized I could make something similar, but since I would use fabric, it would be a lot easier to move in.

I bought a lightweight, long sleeve cheap-o brown shirt at wallyworld, and another brown shirt in as large a size as I could find.

I looked through the silhouette library, thinking I'd use a simple oval leaf shape. Then I found oak leaves and acorns. I knew I had to go that direction, even though it would be more work :)

I used the Silhouette to cut out three different leaves and an acorn out of cardstock. I used them to trace designs on the felt I'd bought at Joanns (on sale for half off!), then started cutting- about 50 or 60 leaves and a couple dozen acorns. 

 Little Miss Sunshine helped cut out a couple of leaves.

I cut the green leaves, LMS cut out the yellow one :)
(the leaves are on the farmhouse table I built- the top had to be stripped, but I hadn't sanded it yet- but that's a story for another post)

I used variegated green/gray cotton yarn to sew the leaves to the sleeve hems and neckline and add a little bit of detail to the leaves (LMS insisted that they needed lines, and they do look better with them).

I also cut out an owl shape from cardstock with the silhouette and traced it onto felt. I was going to sew the pieces together, but I ran out of time so I used an owl I cut from a piece of fleece.

I cut off the top part (from the armpits) of the large brown shirt, then made a simple casing and added elastic, giving me a simple brown skirt. I like running in skirts, so I went with a skirt instead of pants. I ended up wearing it over my skirt/capri set from Athleta (love it) so I didn't have to worry about what the brown skirt did or didn't do.

I used the sleeves to make ankle cuffs that I sewed 'fallen leaves' to (another thing LMS insisted was necessary, also a good idea).

I used some of the cut-off shirt to make a headband and I sewed leaves and acorns to it.

I was looking online for costume ideas and saw something similar for kids, though they had brown sweat pants and a stuffed squirrel in a pocket (and they used boring oval green leaves).

The Results

Overall the costume worked well- I was able to run in it without any technical difficulties, though there are a few things I'll change for next year (I'm not going to make another running costume, though I might use the costume I wear at the Disney half in January).

** shorter leaves around the ankles- they dragged a bit on the ground

** different brown Tshirt for the top- I thought the lightweight fabric would be ideal for running in, but I didn't like the low neckline and it stretched out weird after just one wearing (getting wet didn't help, either)- I'll use a regular crew neck t for the top when I re-do it.

** I may not put the owl back on- the fleece owl worked, but I'm not sure I like the overall effect. Maybe the felt owl will look better, or maybe I'll do a squirrel. It's hard to get a 3D applique on a t shirt, though, so I may just leave it off.

Do you have any ideas for running costumes?

Quick and easy stickers for the ukulele (Silhouette project)

LMS loves her pink ukulele, but so do the other 3 girls in the class who have pink ukuleles. This can lead to some confusion as to whose uke is whose.

We could just write her name in sharpie on the back of the neck, but where's the fun in that?

So I decided to use my Silhouette to do some personalization.

I found a hibiscus flower in the Silhouette library and cut a couple different sizes.

LMS helped me put them on, and we were done!

I had originally envisioned a white sticker on the pink ukulele, but then realized I don't have any white vinyl, so we used some dark pink instead, and I think it turned out great.

Hee hee. This is what LMS does half the time during uke class- play with the grass and flowers :)

Fire Station Field Trip

A couple weeks ago Little Miss Sunshine and I went to the local fire station with some other homeschoolers for a tour.

First up- trying on a real fire helmet.

The fireman showed the equipment that's on the trucks (this cabinet held the jaws of life).

The kiddos got to climb in the cab of the truck and try on the headphones.

Then they headed outside where they got a chance to use the hose- they all thought that was the coolest thing ever!

 

Just before they drained the hose, all the kids balanced on it- it was hard as a rock. Then they turned off the water pressure and the water drained out and the house flattened, which the kids thought was hilarious.

It was a fun trip, and a good reminder that we still need to decide on an emergency evacuation plan and make sure we all know what to do if there's a fire.

Grilled elk tenderloin

While I was laid out on the couch last night (I think it's highly unfair that I have to endure painful monthly cramps when none of my other lady parts seem to be able to work properly) Mr M made a really yummy dinner.

He grabbed an elk tenderloin from the freezer, defrosted it and then rubbed some salt on it and let it sit for awhile.  While it was sitting, he put a butternut squash in the oven to bake.

Mr M briefly rinsed the salt off the meat, then brushed on the fauxmato bbq sauce that he had made a couple weeks ago (I still need to do a post on the fauxmato sauce). He then tossed it on the grill to cook.

When the squash was done he scraped the flesh and pureed it in the BlendTec, using some canned coconut milk to thin it.

When the meat was done, he sliced it and we sat down to a dinner of grilled elk tenderloin and coconut squash puree. The elk was a smidge salty (he'll rinse the salt off more next time) and the squash a tad runny (he'll use a little less milk next time), but it all tasted soooo good! The tenderloin was so tender and juicy no knife was needed, and the flavor was great. The flavor combination of the tenderloin and the squash really hit the spot.

I didn't get any pictures because we ate it all up so fast :)  I'll try to get some next time, since we will definitely be making this again.

I'm so glad I have a husband who likes to cook and who has taken on the challenge of cooking meals we can eat :)

Wright Brothers National Memorial

Little Miss Sunshine showing off her 5 Junior Ranger badges

One of the things we did while in the Outer Banks was go to one of the three National Parks in the area. Ok, they're not technically 'Parks', but you get the idea. There's Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Wright Brothers National Memorial, and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Each site has a different junior ranger program for the kids.

At Cape Hatteras they can be a seashore ranger,

at the Wright Brothers Memorial they can be a flight ranger,

and at Fort Raleigh they can be a Roanoke ranger.

Personally, I think they differentiate between them to keep interest up in the junior ranger programs. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I really do think they add a lot to the experience for kids, and I know we (Mr M and I) have learned a lot of stuff we wouldn't have if LMS wasn't doing the program.

Because of the road still being washed out by the hurricane we weren't able to do anything in the southern part of the Outer Banks, so we didn't go to Cape Hatteras or Fort Raleigh. Since we plan on going back again, we'll hit them up on future visits.

We did go to the Wright Brothers Memorial, which was pretty cool. I spent my junior and senior high school years not far from Dayton, Ohio, and it always confused me how Ohio could be "The Birthplace of Aviation", when everyone knew the first flights were in Kitty Hawk, NC, not Ohio, and why were they going to North Carolina, anyway? Maybe this was covered in Ohio history in elementary school? I missed that and had California history instead. After going to the memorial, I now understand. The Wright brothers experimented and built their designs in Ohio, then loaded everything on a train to North Carolina. They had made some inquiries and determined that Kitty Hawk had the ideal conditions (wind, lack of vegetation, etc) for their flight attempts.

It's visits like this that are a fun part of homeschooling. 

Isn't LMS cute?

Oak Trees

We have lots of oak trees on our property, and the house is surrounded by 50-60 foot tall oaks.  The weather has changed recently, and every time the breeze blows, acorns drop.

The acorns drop from 60 feet up and bounce off the roof and then the deck. Do you know how loud that is? Loud enough to wake us up at night. It was disconcerting at first, but now we're getting used to the constant thunks.

We do have to be careful when we spend time outside, though. We've had several near misses with falling acorns while putting stuff in and out of the vehicles. I'm just waiting for the thunk on my head....

A small portion of the acorns that have fallen- I sweep them off, and they just keep falling.

Happy Camper shirts

Several months ago I saw some cute shirts here, that I thought would be great for our camping trip this summer. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball and didn't get the vinyl ordered in time, so it arrived the day before we left. I was so busy trying to get everything else done, there was no way I had time to figure out how to use my Silhouette, which I still hadn't used yet at that point.

I ended up making them for our trip this past weekend, though I still think they would have been great for our trip this summer. Oh well.

It did take me awhile to figure out how to use the Silhouette and the software and what order to iron everything on the shirts, but I managed to do it all with only one mishap- I forgot to flip the first 'happy' and had to redo it so it would be legible after it was ironed on.

 As I ironed all the pieces on I realized I should have picked the colors a little better- the gray "happy" on my shirt blends into the lavender shirt (this was the one I messed up on and I didn't have any more white left- black would have been better than gray) and the purple trim on LMS' shirt blends right into the black trim.

  

Despite their imperfections, I'm happy with how the shirts turned out, and I like LMS' shirt the best. I'm glad I finally took the time to figure out how to use the Silhouette. Now that I've done that, I feel confident whipping out other projects. It really is quick and easy to use, once you figure out the details, which I just never had the time to do. Doing a challenging project right off the bat really helped me learn the ins and outs, even if it did increase the chances of a disaster :)

What does OBX mean, anyway?

This past weekend we decided to take a quick trip to the Outer Banks, NC.

We see tons of "OBX" stickers on the cars here so we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

image source

We drove down Friday and camped at the one RV campground I could find open- most of the RV campgrounds seem to be on Hatteras Island, which is only accessible right now by taking two different ferries, and they're still recovering from the hurricane. The road was still closed, but should be open in a week or so, which would make Hatteras Island accessible again.

We stayed in Kitty Hawk- you know, the Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers flew their first planes at? That one. There's a memorial and everything.

The three of us in front of the Wright Brothers National Memorial

My  main goal for the weekend was to sit on the beach and read :)

While I did get to do that, we did fit some sightseeing in as well.

We drove up to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse.

And we drove down to the Bodie Island Lighthouse.

We didn't climb either lighthouse, unfortunately. I didn't have enough cash in my wallet to climb the Currituck lighthouse, and the Bodie Island lighthouse isn't open for climbing. The visitor's center was closed because of hurricane damage, but one of the websites I looked at said that the Bodie Island lighthouse is a working lighthouse, which is the reason it's not open for climbing. It looked to us like it was being renovated or had been damaged in the hurricane.

And we played at the beach, of course. LMS *loves* the ocean, even though she's not super-fond of swimming pools (she takes awhile to warm up to the pool, but will jump right in the ocean). When we went to Hawaii 3 years ago we checked out the beach the first afternoon we were there. None of us were wearing swimsuits, but somehow LMS managed to get completely wet, and Mr M wasn't too far behind her (I was on camera duty :).

 

It happened again at the Waikiki beach- we went just to look at it (and say we'd been), when LMS decided she just *had* to go in the water. We took her clothes off for that one and let her swim in her underwear.

We had a repeat this weekend:

Come on in the water, daddy!

Run from the water!

That was fun, let's do it again!

Mr M gave LMS a (deformed) mermaid tail.

And we flew our kite that's been in storage for the last 4 years. The last time we flew it was just before we left California.

LMS was a year and a half old- look how tiny she was!

LMS wanted to fly the kite

which was followed by them chasing after the kite when she let go (they caught it).

Proof that I was there, too :)

Which photo is better? I like the grayer version above, but I like the brighter colors below, too.

We had a great weekend and look forward to going back to the Outer Banks in the future and exploring the islands we weren't able to drive to this time and spending more time on the beach.