Crafting streak

Christmas is sneaking up on us, and the crafting bug has snuck up along with it!
Stay tuned for my advent calendar idea this year...

A new Cousin

This week the girls acquired a new cousin! After a long awaited arrival, and the difficult notion of picturing a baby in the expanding tummy of Aunt Jenn, the girls finally got to meet their new cousin. It is a pretty special event for them, as it raises their total # of cousins to 2!
It will be fun to see them interact with him as he grows. They have always been kind and inquiring about the babies they have met through friends, but have always had playmates their age who quickly turn their attention to something else. But being the only other kid in the family may make him slightly more exciting...

Welcome, Ryan!



And well, after seeing this cool idea, I had decided to give it a try... homemade gifts after all are kind of fun, and much more in our budget at the moment... BUT... I managed to mess it up! It doesn't look too bad in the picture, but all the background paper bubbled up on me... I realized my mistake as I was doing it, but it was too late.

I finished it off out of sheer stubbornness, and so I could blog about it... after all, not everything we try in our household is a success! So Jenn and Jay, my apologies on the lack of gift, and just maybe, I will give it another go someday... maybe for his first birthday!! :)
(there was even brown glitter on the clips... sigh)


(Edited to add - I think if I was to try this one again, I would make a few changes, continue the pattern along the bottom and reposition the word Boy to the right or left. Well, I probably would have fiddled some more had I expected the outcome to be gift worthy... I was thinking of making something similar for the girls rooms... maybe I will have another go at the technique.)

The House

BeforeDuring
After

And there is still more to be done, but it is starting to come together...

Visiting a local gallery

Last Thurs, we spent the afternoon exploring a small local gallery with friends. I would have loved to post pictures of the interior, as they had such a nice collection of pieces ranging in styles. A good portion was native inspired work, but with a variety of media. The girls really enjoyed moving from room to room and pointing out their favorite pieces to each other.
We also had great weather, and took the time to explore their beautiful grounds. They had a few sculptures placed around the gallery, and also a set of ponds which we happily explored. It was so nice to be out walking in the leaves with the mild weather and the early setting sun casting its shadows. The afternoon went by far too quickly.

What we are reading now

Well, we are actually almost finished, but I thought I would give a quick review.

The one is titled "The Enormous Egg" by Oliver Butterworth.

The reviews on the back of the book are these...

"Quite a yarn. Recommended." (School Library Journal (double-starred review) )

"[An] engagingly hilarious comedy." (Christian Science Monitor )

Well, we are most of the way through... about chap. 14 I think, and I have to admit that I would not necessarily call it hilarious. The girls are definetly enjoying it, although, to be fair, there aren't many books they don't enjoy, but I can't say I find it all that well written, or very engaging for that matter. It is on my list as "just ok".

We are reading the book as part of a small book club, although we haven't had a chance to get together yet due to illness, but I am hoping when we do, the girls will enjoy the social opportunity of sharing a book and get more from that, then I think they will have gotten from the story itself.

I picked up a few books, starting into a Christmas theme that we are planning to delve into in the next week or two. Will keep you posted...

Halloween pictures

Halloween pics from a few days before the girls got sick. Aislinn wanted me to mention that the original plan was to dye her hair with purple streaks add her cape and apply face makeup, but if nothing else here are a few pics for posterity.

Halloween

Well this Halloween, the girls dressed up as H1N1 flu victims....This is Tara at about 6:00pm, when the first Trick or Treat'rs were starting to arrive.
Aislinn was feeling a bit better, so we let her visit just our closest neighbours (and from a distance) to trick or treat.
We also decided it would be best to not have an open door, so set up a little treat stand on the front step.
We had packaged the treats up more than a week earlier, and they had been standing in the back room, so we deemed them safe to give out. The girls had also done their pumpkin carving a few days earlier, so Tara's pumpkin "Mrroww" and Aislinn's pumpkin "Happy" were there to meet the visitors. Unfortunately some teenagers visited us early on and helped themselves to a large portion, so our 80 pkgs of treats only made it through about 30 kids... I guess that's the problem with unregulated goodies...
A few of the neighbours have been great, and have popped by with small bags of treats for the girls... Not that they have been up to eating much of them... Aislinn's fever has popped back up to 103.6 tonight... and I thought we were getting through the worst of it...

Since the girls didn't dress up, I don't have pics of their costumes, but my friend has some from a get together the girls had... I will post them soon, as Tara's costume really is a must see...
(and not just because of all the work we put into it... :)