Your Shoes

Remember these?

Yeah.

Well, I wore them out once and they actually got a lot of positive feedback (it's amazing how the right pair of pants can fix more than just your figure) but the paint was cracking so bad that there was just no way.

So I put in a last ditch effort to save them.

 I still have to fix a few things, like how I accidentally primed the heel, but overall I think they are a lot better. 

Yes I did roll up my pants for you. Nothing but the best for my friends.

And I'm pretty sure that's all I have to say about that.

Now, I have a massive head cold so I think I'll take some nyquil, hit the sack, and hopefully be more coherent tomorrow.

Technology

Ode to the DVR

Once upon a time before there was you,
my life was like crafting, without any glue.

I had to watch commercials and reruns a lot,

but now I don't have to, so with you I'm besot.

Gone are the days when I missed half my show,

due to flipping the channels on commercial break, doh!

You have shows for my kid and movies for me,
Should I be more concerned about this love of tv?

Once upon a time I took a picture of my DVR with a pen and cheerio underneath.
Please ignore.

Once upon a time I put Logan in socks and sandals.
It's my proximity to Portland.
Ignore that too.

Long exposure

It's a miracle! I'm back on the photo challenge. 

It's kinda hard to tell that I did long exposure with this one. Mostly it looks like running water. Which it is. 

But I know that I did it, and now I know how to change shutter speed on my camera.

Hooray for learning!

Challenge Schmallenge

Eh. And this is why I'm not a professional blogger. Among other reasons.

 I'll get on it again sometime, promise.

In the meantime, check out what has been consuming my life the last week.

Logan is turning 2 on Sunday! I know. Two years ago I was a cankled, swollen, stretched out, excited, and naive mama to be. 

Now I'm just naive and still a little stretched out.

Anyway, to celebrate Logan's achievement of surviving in this house thus far, we threw a party with him and 11 of his closest friends.

Cars themed.

I think know everyone thought I was crazy for having a party with a bunch of 2-year-olds, but it was the best! Logan loves his friends and talks about them constantly so having them all in one place was heaven for him.

And I had a ball getting ready for it.

Yes, yes we did make a balloon arch.

Annnnnd I should have done a tutorial on this! I didn't even think about it, mostly because I wasn't sure it would really work. If you want to know how to make an easy balloon arch let me know, and I'll show you how.

Here's a shot of the food table with some of the fixins. 

I did start to do a tutorial on those "tires" on the right but they didn't turn out as cute as I wanted so I had to abandon ship.

They were delicious though.

Here's the present table, sans presents. It was hard to take pictures while the party was going on. I'm impressed I got any pictures at all and those I do have are mostly courtesy of Kelly and my dear Mother-in-law (who totally saved the day by coming early and distracting Logan while I finished the final touches) wielding my camera.

We're missing a few kids, but here they are having lunch in all their little cuteness. 

Logan has heard the birthday song before for other people and was thrilled to hear us all singing his name.

After they were done with lunch we decorated cookies...

and then opened presents.

I loved this picture because you can see Logan's little moment of excitement amid all the chaos.

After opening the first present, which he loved, he was ready to run away and play with it, but the other kids weren't willing to let the rest of those presents go unopened so they helped unwrap the rest.

Meanwhile Logan is looking at all the other cool things coming out of the wrapping paper and realizing they they are for him too. Don't worry, he got to play with all his toys in the end.

One last shot of the crew!

Thanks everyone for making Logan's 4-days-before-his-birthday Day so wonderful!

And for not destroying my house.

Cheers!

Silhouette

A shadow is a silhouette right?

I wish we had gotten the three of us a little better but trying to take a picture of the shadow of a running kid is even harder than the picture of the kid.

Eyes

We're watching you...

Yourself with 13 things... but not really

Apparently I don't want to do myself with 13 things. Which is probably why there was nothing on the blog yesterday... oopsies!

I was hoping an extra day of thinking would help me come up with something interesting but no. So instead I thought, how about I show myself when I was 13.

Is this a better idea? Should we find out?

Yes.

I, for one, am glad the internet has been introduced to my 8th grade i.d. And my Adam's apple. All I can think when I look at this is, thank goodness everyone was awkward at 13. Please tell me that is true.

And just for fun why don't we check out the decades before and after this so that my worst-yearbook-photo-ever isn't the last thing you see from me today.

So here I am on my 3rd birthday..

And my 23rd.

If only everyone was awkward at 23 too.

Sunset

These are old but oh well.

Sunset from our trip to the beach, Aug 2010.

Something Blue

Yes. 

I did add to my "collection" and make another melty crayon art piece.

In fact, I made two more for a total of three.

You do not even want to know how long (or how many pints of sweat) that circle one took me. Several days worth of nap times, I'll tell you that.

Now if I could just get them framed and hung by the end of the year that would be great. 

A childhood memory

One of my favorite things to do when I was a kid was catch the numerous frogs, toads, and snakes that roamed our 11 acre woods. I would store them in buckets and an old plastic swimming pool that we filled with sand and water. 

I considered myself quite the frog caretaker and I knew that what I was doing was giving them a better life. Although putting snakes and frogs in the same container may have been a misstep.

One day I was watching a show on pbs. The show was discussing the life of the monarch butterfly and showed a man helping a butterfly migrate in cold weather by cupping it in his hands and gently breathing warm air on it to heat it up enough to fly. This action, I believed, saved that butterfly's life. 

Fast forward...

I was in the woods exploring on a cool fall day when I found a frog that was alive, but stiff and sluggish in the cold. 

I remembered that little nugget of information about the butterfly and I knew that I could apply the same technique to this very frog.

I would be the frog whisperer.

So I cupped my hands oh so gently around this frog and as he lay still, surely in the throes of death, I took a deep breath and exhaled a sigh of warm life giving air around him.

And that frog jumped straight into my mouth.

Several years and a lesson about amphibian hibernation later, I bred the second generation of frog torturer whisperer and have been training him in my backyard.

 He caught two yesterday without hurting either one.

I am a proud mama.

Bloggus Interruptus!

We interrupt this challenge due to a grievous error in craft/fashion/repurposing judgement.

I made a wee little mistake.

Here we go, from the top. Recently I bought a yellow necklace and later, a yellow belt. I love yellow! So what final accessory do I need in yellow? Shoes of course. So the first thing I did was look in my closet to see if there was a pair I could repurpose. And there were these little guys.

Nothing special, but not hideous either. They are a good brown shoe, but I have another pair of brown flats that I like better so whenever I needed brown shoes, they won.

I mentioned to my friend Kelly that I was considering spray painting some shoes yellow. She suggested I do teal or coral instead but yellow was good too.

Hmm... I like those colors too but... 

I had a vision you guys.

A vision of darling yellow shoes, a color of shoe I had never owned before. One that would create limitless combinations in my wardrobe. One that would make me look more interesting. Perhaps, one that would actually make me more interesting.

Oh, are you reminding me of these shoes?

Okay, yes. Those exist too. But gold glitter is not the same as yellow.

Fine, I'll admit I was rethinking the yellow as I drove to the store to get paint. I do really like blue, maybe that? Or red? I don't have any red shoes (now that I covered them in gold glitter, ahem). And that teal idea is actually sounding really nice too.

Ugh! What to do, what to do...

...

I went with the "vision"

GAH!

Ugly ugly clown shoes. Not good. When I asked Tyson what I could do to help them he said make one into a bus. A bus! And on top of everything else they made my feet look hairier and my legs look fatter.

And yet from certain angles they don't look sooo bad.

Oh but they are, they really are. And the paint's already cracking. Should I not have spray painted shoes? Did everyone already know this? Stupid vision.

So now what do I do with them? Trash? Fabric? Glitter?

Ugh.

Please advise.

Someone you love

I know. This one's a shocker.

A Bad Habit

Because taking one day off treats is a triumph, but two days? That's just wrong. And possibly bad for your health.

And because I am otherwise perfect this will have to be my bad habit. 

:)

Fruit

Here's the deal. 

I'm pretty much addicted to treats. Whenever Bob and Jillian say something like "Food is fuel! If you eat for any reason other than to power your body, you are using it as a crutch in your life and it will destroy you!", I cry a little. And then I say NO. And then I eat more bags of m&m's while I fast-forward through the boring parts of the weigh in.

I'm cool with using chocolate as a reward for a hard day. And I'm pretty sure if Jillian had a two-year-old she would do it too.

Sometimes though, I do try to eat healthy... healthier. Nowhere to go but up really. I pretty much have a dessert after every meal so... yeah.

And I'm proud to say that I did a good job yesterday! Well, I did have coco puffs for breakfast and pizza for lunch, but I ate zero desserts! And I barely even noticed until the headache and cold sweats started. But by then it was after 9 and I don't typically eat that late. A girl's got to have some standards.

Anyway, I wish I could say that this fruit challenge inspired me to change my life but I can assure you it did not. 

Looks almost pretty enough to eat though, doesn't it?

We have had an abundance of tomatoes in our garden, and if you know me at all, you know I hate them. A cruel joke to have our tomatoes flourish with almost no help from me while a lindor truffle/money tree, a crop I would weed daily for, still ceases to exist.

Okay then, I think I've derailed the blog long enough.

Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

From a Low Angle

Well gosh you guys, I've really been the chump of this challenge. 

When Young Women's hijacked my life the other day I just could not get it together to get a picture up on the blog. Luckily everything went great last night - we volunteered at a homeless shelter and provided crafts and treats for the adorable kids there - and now I can resume blogging.

It's almost as good for the world as bringing joy to children in need.

So, here is my low angle picture. 

My neighbor has sunflowers in her garden (a practice that I will shamelessly copy next year) and they are tall enough to shine their faces over our fence. 

I love them. 

From a High Angle

So, since yesterday was a holiday I decided to take the day off the blog. 

And then this morning the plans I had for Young Women's tomorrow slowly fell apart, like my last batch of cake pops, and so I had to rebuilt them from scratch which involved more planning and trips to the store than I wanted to do today. And so I got stressed and turned into one of those people who talk very loudly on their cell phones in Wal-Mart.

It only became apparent to me after I shut my phone and realized how quiet it was in there. 

In the end what we're left with is a series of poorly shot photos for my "from a high angle" day, the best of which is this.

Eh, you win some, you lose some.

Something Green

Woo! Green glitter toes!

In case you wanted to do this yourself and didn't know how I thought I'd throw in a little tutorial for ya.

First, gather your supplies: a base coat, a top coat, glitter, and a paper plate or something to catch the extra glitter. 

After getting the lint out from between your toes, or whatever you usually do in your pedicure routine, paint your nails with the base coat. I usually try to match this with the glitter color but since I didn't have green paint I just went with a nude.

Immediately after painting, while the paint is still wet, pour the glitter over your nail. I usually do one nail at a time for this part.

Once all your nails have glitter on them use your super-human speed to tap the excess from your toes.

From different angles too.

Then wait.

They need time to dry at this point. Because of all the glitter the paint underneath stays soft for a really long time. If you try to do a top coat too soon it will smear around and kill a lot of the sparkle. That is how I ended up with lumpy, non-sparkly, red nails a few weeks ago.

Things to do while you wait:

Paint your (finger)nails blue.

Eat a cookie.

Watch an episode of LOST.

Tell your husband you have to go to bed a half hour later because your toes won't be done.

Read blogs.

Watch your husband snooze on the couch.

Eat two cookies.

Pin 17 new things.

Comment on everything interesting on Facebook.

Look around the room.

And easy as that your nails are dry! And now that they are I like to dab even more of the glitter off with a q-tip. This way the stragglers don't end up in your clear topcoat and ruin your next pedicure.

I'd like to take this moment to point out my opposable pinky toe.

After you've dabbed and tapped the extra glitter off put a coat or two of clear topcoat over each nail.

Done!

Put on some cute open toed shoes and show off those piggies! 

Pay no attention to the blood loss in the big toes. 

The shoes will always be worth it.