Barcelona

The Hubby and I are in the cool OLD city of Barcelona. He has a few days of work and I tagged along. The we are staying on for a few more days to enjoy the city and surrounding countryside a bit.

 We went to church on Sunday morning and didn't understand much except the hymns and makeup of the meeting were sure familiar. We attempted to read different words to familiar tunes. We partook of the Sacrament which is the reason ultimately to go to the meeting anyway. A fun experience.

 We also went to the Catholic church that day, as there are hundreds in the city and this old and beautiful one in the Gothic quarter was amazing.

 There is a new window in this one up above the entrance as the old rose window was destroyed in an earthquake in 1429. The new one was completed in 1459. Quite new, right?

 The magic fire water show was pretty cool at night. We arrived by Metro subway and the whole place was hopping with people on a Sunday night in September.

 Hoogy big.

It was like a holiday. I can't imagine how crowded it could get on a busy day.

 We notice that the nearby stadium had an event going on and hoped that we would get back on the subway and out of the area before the game got finished.

 The whole avenue was lined on both sides by fountains with the culminating one at the very end. We will come back here to go into the Picasso museum during our stay.

Subways always intrigue us west coasters and this saxophone player had back up music and was quite talented. His "Take Five" rendition was heard for a hundred yards before and after his location. It really fills up the corridors. Very cool.
I'm excited for a fun week.

Faux Fire Crackers

I "pinned" some crafty wood fire cracker decorations last year and after saving our old 4 x 4 posts from the backyard redo, I thought I should use them up. I like using things up because then I can clean out a cupboard or nook & cranny that they are holding up in.
I added my little touches without purchasing anything except a new jar of mod podge. Pretty good deal.
I sent some to my two girls for their homes and my DIL who lives close by helped by saving me some postage.

 When I'm in the middle of a craft project, my kitchen island tends to look like .... a huge mess. This time was no exception.

I used one power tool, and this cut a 1 1/2 inch circle in the top of the square crackers so I could insert a tea light candle in case some one really wants to "light" it up. I had our carpenter from the house project cut up my firecrackers last year when he was redoing the back yard so that saved me a few minutes.
Always thinking ahead.

 I had plenty of fancy papers to use for what ended up to be 6 sets of "firecrackers."  I made 4 inch square ones in 3 heights, and 2 inch circular crackers also in 3 different heights. One of my favorite additions was these cute old fashioned advertisements from the early 1900's. I just glued them right onto the sides of the crackers.

 I also had some little candles that look like pop bottle rockets that made a fun addition to some of the sets.

Hope everyones July was fine and Yankee Doodle Dandy!

White Christmas

I didn't have to dream of a White Christmas this year.
The Hubby and I traveled to Colorado to spend the holiday with our middle child.  #4 met us there as well and the snow came to us.

But first, we shared Christmas morning with these cute little chillens.

Such excitement in our lives!!!

 Team work

And look at this one!!

On Christmas day we woke up to a couple inches of snow on the ground and the beauty of it was not lost on us.

 Don't you just love it when the snow sticks to all the tiny branches and makes the world glisten.

Katz got a great lens for her camera and she took some amazing pictures that she will be posting soon, since she is on bed rest now so she doesn't have a baby at 32 weeks. Hint hint, Katz?

 Overlooking Black Lake outside of Ouray, CO. What a WONDERFUL setting for a mountain home.

And inside this magnificent home of my brother and sister-in-law are some pretty wonderful people.

Thanks Uncle Steve and Aunt Connie. We had a great week in between the 2 holidays!

Happy New Year!!!  2013 here we come.

Katz or Steph, if you have a pix f the house from the other side of the lake, send it my way?

TX

Gingerbread Houses

What memories I have of past gingerbread houses. I'll get to those stories later, but for now I'll show the latest two creations.

These two little munchkins helped me on Monday afternoon to decorate the two simple houses that I made that morning. As soon as Luke the two year old understood we weren't just chowing down on all that candy, it went fairly smoothly. He didn't like the gumdrops anyway, so after he tried two they became less of a temptation. I just put the Royal Icing "glue" where they wanted with my trusty pastry bag piper, and the kids placed all the candy where they wished. I did tell them that one of the two of them had to use the Necco candy wafers for a roof, cause I'd purchased them a long time ago and wanted them out of my cupboards. Lena created a "red and white pattern" with the mint M&M's. She was very excited to place red then white then red then white. Made me wish I had her around more often when I'm trying to do random placements of things. Impossible.

Pretty good smiles on those cute faces I'd say. 

My picture taking habits are suffering right now because of my computer/photo saving/sharing issues, so thanks for taking this cute picture (post assembly) Kara.

Big J" for Turkey Day

The Hubby and I flew to sunny Colorado for the Thanksgiving weekend. Through Phoenix this time around, we enjoyed the canyon land geography between Phoenix and Grand Junction. It is truly amazing how deeply crevassed and many monolithed the western country is even from 33,000 feet up in the wild blue. I kept speculating where we were in relation to geographical points of interest that I am familiar with, and I was usually wrong. Next time I should grab my nephew Christopher who personally flies those routes often enough that he knows what and where everything is located.

My parents took us for a lovely drive in my childhood "backyard,"over "the Monument" (Colorado National Monument) which is located a few miles southwest of the city. We felt like we were in a car commercial with the scenery around us.

 One of thousands of precarious rocks

 The "Coke Ovens"

GPK's in their Lexus SUV

We were pleasantly surprised when Jonathan decided to join us for a couple days and we enjoyed being able to spend some time with him as well as my little sis Camille, her husband Brad, my mom Joyce and my dad Sam. Mom is seeing less and less and her arthritis is giving her some miserable pain

Grandma Joycie and Jonathan G.

Smallest Thanksgiving gathering ever

Still a few dishes for Brad to do.

Another trip to the Monument for a hike was also part of the trip for John, Jonathan, & Brad.

Hiking Father and Son

Very cool formations.

The other thing that we did a lot in GJ was go to movies. Saw a couple of good ones.

A great relaxing week with some wonderful people.

Thanks all!

Mine are the Cutest

Here's a little belated Halloween post. Full of pictures of the 5 cutest kids ever.

The purple and green Witch Ballerina and the Skeleton Ballerina in their homemade matching tutu's start off this parade.

The Rocket Robot has got to be the best costume his dad ever conceived and was the hit of the party as well as the neighborhood.

 Check out the back of this costume.

And the face on this kid is so cute and excited. He couldn't take stairs very well but I heard no complaints as he navigated our neighborhood with his much faster sisters. 

 Can you hear this one saying Woo, Woo all day long?

 What an adorable little owl. She was joined by her Red Robin mother that was "sitting on the nest," and her father who was a Bird Watcher, and ...

this little Peacock who was decorated with care from head to toe.

 She loved being able to fan up her tail whenever she pleased, or just leave it down for a pretty tag along tail.
Cutest 5 in the world? Talented kids of mine putting these all together.
I rest my case.

Another Charlotte

The Hubby took me on a ride last year and we stopped by a cool quilt shop in Livermore. (CA)
While there he said that I should make a small quilt for each holiday and hang it in our family room on the tall wall adjacent to the shorter kitchen ceiling.
I thought, "Sure, now you are adding to my to do list that is already a couple miles long." But I didn't think it was a bad idea, so I stashed it in the back of my mind. My home isn't the type that would lend itself to hanging quilts on walls, but I do make my share of different kinds of quilts, and although I don't want a country or farm house decor, the small quilt off by itself will probably work.
So this October I finished my first small holiday quilt.

*I already have one that my sis made me for Christmas, so now I've got 2.

Here is a picture of the quilt in the making. I first made a stop sign shaped black center and then started adding strips or a different black fabric all the way around. Choosing several patterns of black fabric I continued more rows outward until the desired octagonal size was achieved.  I used silver thread to quilt it to a backing and batting creating the web.

Now time to make spiders. A bunch of bright halloweeny colored circles were cut and I made yo-yo's of various sizes out of them. I used
2 circles that were 7 inches in diameter,
2 - 10 inches and
1 - 15 inch yoyo.
These fold gather to approximately half of the original size of circle.

The legs were made from narrow ⅜ inch ribbon. Take a 8 - 14 inch piece of ribbon and fold it in half, then fold one side over the other at the fold. Now take the ribbon on the bottom and fold it crosswise over the top, fairly tight to the first ribbon. Now that 1st ribbon is on the bottom so you fold it over to the top. Holding the ribbon so the top is the center and newly folded ribbon, continue folding the ribbons alternating them back and forth over the center. Pin together the two ends when they are too short to go on further.  Continue, making 8 legs for each spider.

Then I glued these legs onto the fabric under where the spiders would be sewn.
I put googly eyes on each spider. (don't look close, this was a sloppy glue affair) Large and medium eyes make for some interest.
The small spiders are just small yoyo's with colored cotton string for legs.

 Walla! My Halloween quilt. Up high on the wall that stops where the kitchen ceiling begins.
Not too scary, but still October 31ish.

Peacock Costume

Tutu's in every form are the new little girl halloween costume. It seems that there are entire websites dedicated to these costumes. Check this one out. Ghosts and Witches, to Dorothy and Belle costumes are all being embellished with accessories after the initial tutu is decided upon.
Well, any who … Ellery is going to be a Peacock and so I was enlisted to make one of my very special tutu's. I then changed it up a bit and made another version.
Most tutu are made like this.
*   Take tulle any color you please and cut it in strips twice the length plus about 1 ½ inches you want
      your finished tutu to be.  Double the tulle up (fold it in half) and pull it around a strip of 1" elastic
      pulling the cut ends through the folded other end of the tulle. Continue around the elastic waist
      forming a circle.  Keep on going.  Keep going until it is as full as you wish it to be.
Then there are those that are made like this.
* Here you take strips of chiffon fabric and gather them like crazy row after gathered row and then you
     do it again on the inside of the skirt.  This takes an especially long time.
Now this time I decided to do the peacock tutu a little different way. I used the gathering chiffon effect and layered it with graduating colors going down toward the bottom. Not attaching them layer after layer to the layer just on top of them, but actually attaching them to lining fabric underneath the skirt so they all come off separately, making for a cascade of ruffles.
Kinda like this skirt. Basically a combination of several ideas.

 Notice the top layer is 2" of chartreuse green along with 4" peacock blue. Then I added a back layer to attach the next 2 layers of the same blue and teal. Then teal and royal blue, and finally royal and tan.

 The same colors that are in a peacocks feathers. See the feathers here and I then made a "tail" that fans out the back of the waist and connects with a ribbon bow in the front of the skirt.

I attached the feathers with glue and some ribbon and Katz is going to have to figure out how to get the tail to stay up around Ells shoulders after she tries it on her.

Fast forward 4 days. The postal service did pretty well.

So far she looks like she will just hold onto it forever.

 "Okay, you can take a picture of it down."

 "But I really like it better THIS way."
More pictures next month in full regalia. (Is that spelled correctly?)