hey guess what!

I got some pictures off my camera! And even uploaded them to flickr!

So to finish off a previous post, Here are my kids on last month’s story book dress up day at school:

Ethan went as the woodsman/hunter from Little Red Riding Hood, and Jocelyn went as a Princess.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of Ethan straight on – his costume was a simple plain shirt with suspenders and jeans, and his robin hood style hat.

Jocelyn was more than ready to pose, however.

Jocelyn is wearing a princess hat I made for her out of posterboard and ribbon, and one of her dress up dresses. The dress has an upside down V opening on the front that opens to reveal white lacy underskirt. However, Jocelyn doesn’t like this. She likes the purple skirt better and therefore wears this dress backwards so that only the purple shows to her eyes.

Another little project I tackled one Saturday long long ago (probably 3 weeks ago) was a super girl shirt for Jocelyn.

You see, Ethan has these Batman pajamas. Complete with CAPE. He LOVES wearing them, and after he gets them on, will take a running flying leap onto his bed and then instantly turn to me and say, “Did my cape fly?” (He means flutter.) “Did I fly?” Then he does it all again, except he tries to watch his cape as he does so. Unfortunately the cape doesnt’ flutter that well because it’s a flannely type of material that is thin and tends to stick to his jammie shirt. He still loves it.

Well, as soon as Ethan starts “flying” Jocelyn joins in, and I thought how sad it was that there are no super hero jammies in her life. (Says the woman who when she was 6 wore Wonder Woman under-roos until they fell apart!) Target however has batman and superman t-shirts in the boys dept, so I thought I’d get her some of those and then narrow the shirt down a bit. Maybe add a cape!

So that’s what I did.

The first day, she wouldn’t let me touch it. It hung on her and bunched around her hips and generally looked awful. She loved it.

The next day, she finally consented to let me tweak it to fit her better. I turned it inside out, laid one of her shirts over the top, and drew lines up the sides and out off the sleeves for where to sew. I sewed it up, but it was still incredibly long, and the sleeves reached practically to her elbows. I was planning on chopping them off and hemming, until I remembered the fun we used to have with old tshirts when I was young. THey don’t fray, so you can cut strips in it to make fringe, which is what I did with hers.

She was closely supervising my every move, so at first she protested, until I pointed out that this would make the shirt “twirly.” Then she was eager to see the results.

Super girl!

The cape I planned to attach with velcro, so we could take it on and off, but I didn’t have any when I thought I had, so I just sewed the cape on, lest Super Girl be powerless against her foes for the day.

This is her self-proclaimed: “SUPER FACE!”

She posed for quite a few pictures, but when she was done, she looked like this the rest of the day:

Ethan has a super man t-shirt too, which I think I will attach a cape too as well. Then he’ll have a cape he can wear during the day, instead of just at night. I’ll get to it someday. And I should get velcro first.

Tonight: packing for our not-really-camping trip over the long weekend. Fun fun!

-amy

Remember my mystery squash? You were all correct. It was a pumpkin. It turned orange and then the vine started to mysteriously die and I thought, what the hell, it’s not october?! GROW SOME MORE! So I’ve no idea if it was the right thing to do, but I picked the pumpkin and pruned the vine back a bit, hoping that will spurt some new growth and new pumpkins.

Also I think I figured out how it got there. The only thing I planted from seed was the sunflowers surrounding it. I planted other seeds, but not outside, I started them indoors (most of them died of neglect once they got outside and I had to buy plants at lowes). So I was really confused on how in the world that freaky pumpkin plant GOT there!

Then I remembered that I laid out compost in the late spring. And I BELEIVE I tossed last years pumpkins in the compost bin last fall. And while most of them were carved (no seeds) I beleive that there was one that sat there whole until it started to rot and then was tossed with the rest.

Thus.. pumpkin seeds in the compost. compost spread in beds. VOILA! Pumpkin vine! Pumpkin!

The pumpking is inside now awaiting to be made into pumpkin cupcakes, the best pumpkin destination I know for it.

In other garden news, my raspberries are really taking off. There were always one or two ready to pick and eat, but when i went out yesterday, I picked (and promptly ate) enough to fill a bowl. Exciting exciting stuff! The tricksy part will be NOT eating them so that I can do something with them.

However, next year I’m going to have to make some sort of support for them because they’re tall, bent over, and I’ve got raspberries growing on the dirt.

In other catch up news, I got my latest piece of etsy artwork and I love it I love it I love it:

\

Obviously not enough to actually hang it yet, though. Shoosh, I’ve been busy. I did get a frame though, don’t I get credit for that?

I never did post the other artwork I got, so here you go, it’s hanging in my guest room:

ain’t it beeyootiful?

have a loverly weekend, all!

I struggle sometimes with the whole princess thing that Jocelyn has got going on. I think having a boy first has really ruined me as a mother to a girl. Boys have such hands on play. Concret. Action. Point A to Point B. Dumping, pushing, scooping, driving, tooting, building… it’s all very simple really. When Jocelyn’s 2nd christmas rolled around, I honestly had no idea what to get her. Clueless, was I. What do girls DO, ANYWAY, was what I thought.

Storytime Treasury, A McCall Book Sleeping Beauty
The Wolf and the Seven Baby Goats
 

Now, of course, I have a much better idea, but it still seems to me that her playing is much less concrete. Much less action oriented. She’s quite content to put on a twirly dress and then kind of wander around. The most action oriented playing she does is when she plays in her kitchen or with her dolls. I realize that this type of playing is fine, it’s just harder for me to wrap my head around it. You’d think having BEEN A LITTLE GIRL MYSELF, with a huge interest in dressing up like a princess and dancing around the house would clue me in to the inner workings of my daughter’s head, but I think I’ve been abducted by aliens and lost that part of my brain or something.

Fratelli Fabbri Editori Publishers
I love the stars!
 

She has a very strong fascination with disney fairy tales. Now don’t get me wrong, I love fairy tales. LOVE THEM. I have collected fairy tale books all my life and read and re-read many different ones. I actually kind of took my older sister’s favorite fairy tale book when I went off to college and she had to nag at me for 5 years before she finally was visiting once and outright took it (damn her!)

Baby Princess, before her christening
I love the fabric all through the book, how it folds and trails.. ahh so beautiful!I wanted that hair long before I ever saw Princess Leia, and here’s why!
 

It’s just the disneyification of fairy tales that bugs me. And I’m lucky! My daughter is in love with CINDERELLA, and that was back in the golden age of disney before it started to change around the story! Don’t even get me started on The Little Mermaid and how they messed THAT up! (She dies. At the end, “Ariel” dies. Talk about taking liberties!)

All the fairies gathering at the christening
More stars! and look at those headdresses – don’t you just want to die, they’re so lovely?
 

Anyway, I don’t mind the fact that for the last month, she will often inform us, “I’m Cinderella!” and insist that we address her so. I don’t mind that she has changed the names of all her dolls and stuffed animals to Cinderella as well. I can understand watching a certain movie over and over and internalizing it to such an extent that you want to BE that character. I personally, wanted to be the Lady Amalphia and run around as a unicorn, and that was only when I wasn’t spinning around in a circle pretending to be Wonder Woman while wearing my Wonder Woman under-roos.

The fairies giving their gifts to the baby princess.
I used to pore over this page, and the one above, just studying each fairy and their apparel.
 

I don’t even mind the disney Cinderella movie that much.. But I decided to take some pains to introduce her (and Ethan, by default) to the other sides of fairy tales. The side that doesn’t have mice scampering around making dresses and birds dressing the main character. The disney movies don’t ever transport me to that magical place of times old and past of kings and queens and princesses..

I broke out my most beloved fairy tale book from when I was a girl. My grandmother must have ordered these books from a magazine. They are in a series called “McCall’s Treasury” and the copyright is for Fratelli Fabbri Editori –which i think is just the publishing house name, not the illustrator’s name.

She was my favorite – again, I love the fabric, falling away from the headdress, and also sheathing the princess.
Oh, and don’t forget the stars! Love the stars!
 

Each book contains 2 stories, and though my grandmother gave them to all my siblings, my brothers weren’t all that interested. I have the ones given to me, some of the ones given to my brothers, and some I’ve purchased on eBay.

The witch has done her worst, and now the youngest fairy will try to undo it.
Look at that sweet little baby face.. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but there are halos and halos of ruffles all around the baby’s head – so sweet!
 

This book was my favorite, and if you could see the actual book, you’d be able to tell – the binding is completely shot and one of the pages is ripped significantly. It originally was given to my brother Larry, and my grandmother even wrote a little note to him on the inside cover, with the date as 1972 (2 years before I was born). I’ve been meaning to scan pages from this book for a while, and was going to do it right when my computer died.

The princess as a teen, just after she pricks her fingers.. the material of the clothes – gorgeous!
 

I loved these books as a child, and I think I love them even more as an adult. These illustrations are simply breathtaking. I, of course, loved to pore over the fairies, especially their dress and their headwear. I love the way there are little stars in almost all of the pages, giving it that magical glamourous aura.

Love the teeny kingdown in the distance..
 

So far, the reception of this book has been met with all around approval. They’ve both requested it to be read to them at bedtime. Because of it’s condition (falling apart) and it’s value to me, it is kept away from other books out of their reach, but if they ask for it, I’ll sit down and look through it with them, and then put it away again when we’re done.

Stunning 2-headed dragon!
 

This page is so beautiful! It’s laid out over 2 pages and I had to scan the 4 corners separately and then try to fit them together. This is the last one I scanned, as the “wake up” scene is also on the title page it seemed pointless to scan it again. I strongly urge you to click and look at the bigger versions – they are even more stunning and you can see more detail.

I was thinking I may get some prints of the illustrations framed and put them up on the wall.

Anything to counteract this, currently on the wall above Jocelyn’s bed:

-amy needs a headdress like those just to wear around the house and wash dishes in.

This post doesn’t have any spoilers of the last book. Just photos and me blathering. Just FYI.

This is quite a bit after, but I suck at getting pictures off the camera, so there you go.

We had a great time. It was a time filled with nervous energy. I’m watching a movie as I write this, and a great line from it describes how we were feeling. “You know how you feel when you’re holding a cup of hot coffee and you feel a sneeze coming on.. It’s a bit like that.”

It was a LOT like that.. In the beginning, it was just kind of fun, and boring. Lots of people. Some kids, running around having fun at all the things the bookstore had set up.

the picture taking/frame making station.

hat making station

cute-slash-dumb signs posted all over the store

lots of people dressed up. Some were lame. There was more than one teenage girl that just fell under “slutty schoolgirl” rather than anything harry potter. But there were some good ones.

Moaning Myrtle (bookstore employee)

Delores Umbridge (bookstore employee)

and my absolute favorite – Rita Skeeter. She was DEAD ON. This picture doesn’t do her justice.

and then random sort of dressing up

Everything was fine… kind of boring, even, for a while. We got there at around 10:30pm, and by 10:45 we were bored and picked out magazines and settled in a corner to wait. Like many others.

I couldn’t really focus on my magazine though. I made James play some Harry Potter related games, like naming spells back and forth to see who knew the most (I did, yay for petrificus totalus!) and also Hogwarts students (he did, damn that little colin creevey).

Probably around 11:30 they started lining us up. Then the realization that it was all happening kicked in and we started getting excited.

Then they started carting out the books and the whole store cheered and whooped and freaked out and then it was really exciting.

Then we had to wait.

this is the book that was on the on the bookshelf right next to me.

When we finally got to the register at 12:21…

.. and bought our books from this nice lady (it’s blurry, but that’s the girl who sold us our books! hurrah!)

I was so excited and nervous that I forgot to also purchase the magazines I had been clutching for the past hour (but don’t worry, I went back 2 days later and paid for them.)

You know, we’ve never gone to a midnight party before. We were quite content to let amazon deliver, or just go pick up the books the next day ourselves with little fuss and bother.

But this was the last book. There won’t be anymore. I kind of wanted to go because.. and this is really cheesy, so just cringe and go with it.. because I wanted to be part of history. Now, I know we’re not talking about Shakespeare or anything, but this was the LAST BOOK! And I think they’re going to be around for a good long time. Never again will we be in that moment of not knowing how it all turns out. Never again will we roll our eyes at all the hype surrounding the latest harry potter book. This was IT.

Why not go? Why not go and get excited and jump up and down and just get all pruney with the cheesiness and the HISTORY (ha ha) of it all? We won’t have another chance, so if we want to get goofy and all over excited like a 3 year old who didn’t nap, well, THIS IS IT!

So we did!

I’m glad we went. It was FUN.

And I’ll be able to (gag, barf) show my grandchildren the pictures.

episode 2 tomorrow – me blathering

Made this real quick for Ethan’s costume for tomorrow. It’s “dress up like a story-book character” day!

I bet no one can guess what he’s going as!

It was very easy to make, took about 20 minutes, most of it just getting the size of the template right.

I used these directions.

Edit: I had linked the wrong website for the hat pattern – corrected now.

I like it.

Nay, I LOVE it.

This is my mystery squash. It turned up right in my row of sunflowers and I’ve no idea how it got there. I recognized it as some sort of squash, let it grow, and now it’s threatening to invade china. Anyone know what it is?

(same squash, different angle)

I shoudln’t be allowed to plant anything that hangs. Only things that have access to the timer released drip irrigation watering system.

I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

overflowing cherry tomato plants, both of which need staking desparately. Still producing prodigiously.

fruit of my labor.. too bad i let the zucchini overgrow

After 3 years, my hydrangea finally produced 2 blooms. This is the one that shows.

My grandmother was a quilter.* My mother is a quilter. She makes beautiful quilts.

Our trip to Utah in May/June included a long weekend camping in souther utah, near Moab. My entire family was there, with the exception of my sister’s husband. All five of my siblings, and all of their kids were there. There’s kind of 2 waves of grandkids. The older kids, and the younger kids. My niece Susan is the oldest of the older kids, at almost 16 and it ranges down to my nephew Eric, who is 9. There are 5 younger kids, aged 5, 4, 3, 3, and 3. Ethan is the oldest, and Jocelyn is the youngest of the younger set.

Anyway, I got kind of side tracked there – my point is, a nice time for our family, having everyone there, and especially for my folks who got to see all of their grandkids. We’re usually the weak link in family get togethers, as we live on the east coast and no one else in my family lives further east than Colorado.

So for our camping trip, my mom got those cute LED head lamps for all the older kids, and for the younger kids, she made each one a camp blankey.

Here are Ethan’s and Jocelyn’s blankeys. (I took these at night, so while I tweaked the white balance so the colors look OK, some of the pictures look a little washed out.)

Ethan’s camp blanket

Ethan’s camp blanket

Ethan’s camp blanket

Jocelyn’s camp blanket

Corner button

Close up of stitching

-amy