falling into autumn

houston decided to end summer this week . . . at least for a couple of days. to celebrate the onset of chilly weather, the girls and i decorated our front window (i even cleaned it for the first time in the two years we've lived here):

we put leaves blowing in the wind:

i thought it was pretty clever. hazel and lucy decorated their window (free from my ocd directions) with the extra leaves:

the best part of this 60 degree weather? it coincided with the girls' final swim lesson:

they still had some fun:

and even learned life jacket safety:

once again i'll point out what a thoughtful mommy i am: i brought along two towels for each of them. a hooded one for during the lesson and one for after: 

eventually, despite the towels, the kids were turning purple so the teacher had them hang onto the wall in the water (thank goodness for heated pools, right?). hazel was sneaky and didn't hold on to the wall: 

good thing she's tall. for the final event (jumping in), the teacher carted the kids in the water to a different spot on the wall: 

she was such a fantastic teacher (i wish i had learned her name) and presented the girls with their certificates saying they had passed the first level. to celebrate, we had a dinner of noodle soup and hot chocolate:

they were a lot happier about it than this picture shows. i promise.

the cooler weather also reminded me that halloween is around the corner. hazel decided to be a butterfly ages ago. i had a great idea for her wings. i bent two wire hangers into the basic shape of wings and wrapped them in tulle. it was pretty much a disaster. they were passable as fairy wings but nothing close to butterfly wings. grant and i brainstormed that night and i came up with another idea that grant executed to perfection: foam board cut into wings with fabric glued to it. bingo. i had several yards of ikea fabric that i'd bought with the intention of making more pillows for the couch but the oranges clashed. are you ready to see it?????? 'cause it's awesome:

grant cut four slits into the middle and we threaded some ribbon though to make a harness. lucy's was a little more involved. she wanted to be batman first. then a ladybug. then a bee. then batman again. once i'd told her to make up her mind already, she settled for batmangirl. not batgirl. again i had a vision. it seemed easy enough. i figured the hardest part would be re-learning to use my sewing machine. ha. ha. heh. *sigh* summary: wrong fabric, @#%&^! sleeves, small hems, velcro malfunction, etc. in the end, the easiest part was the insignia which makes the costume:

don't look too closely and definitely don't look at the back. i'll probably try to fix it later but i was in a hurry to finish so we could go to the gym's trunk-or-treat:

here's the back of hazel's wings:

that fabric worked so well for this costume. lucy's cape fell off so i used the safety pin that was holding the back closed (don't ask) and a hair clip to keep it attached. anyway, as soon as we arrived we ran into our friends. rebekah and her baby sister (who's not in the picture) were beautiful peacocks:

what followed next?

candy:

cow attacks:

crafts (put on by the lovely ladies that run the child care at the ymca. love them):

camel riding (no pictures since the girls didn't want to do that one). crowds:

and hula hooping:

easter-ness

i've been too lazy to post about our easter until now. it was nice. saturday night i finally did the resurrection eggs lesson for the girls. lucy enjoyed grabbing and opening as many eggs as possible. hazel listened pretty well but didn't seem to really get it. after going over the main points several more times, grant and i finished with at-least-we-tried sighs. lucy and hazel quickly ran off to play. a moment later, hazel returned with a potato head and excitedly told us, "guess what?! and all the potato heads will be awive and get resurrected wike jesus! isn't that great?!"

easter morning came and hazel found that the easter bunny had left her and lucy some surprises:

i made the girls some stuffed easter eggs. they were pretty easy and i did most of the work on saturday (grant helped me by stuffing them while i sewed them close). they turned out cute:

they also got a little chick sitting in it's half shell:

we went easy on the treats since they'd already had an easter egg hunt. grandma sent some beatrix potter books for the girls and grant read them all to hazel while i finished making breakfast (and lucy tore things apart):

for breakfast we ate hot cross buns:

lucy enjoyed hers:

twice:

hazel just picked at the icing, surprise. you can see the poorly grown grass here. i guess i shouldn't say 'poorly grown' since it did grow well, i just didn't plant enough seed:

(the third from left was mauled by lucy) i was a little sad it didn't turn out quite as i expected. still, i got over it. after breakfast, grant went to get the stroller from the car to run the girls to a park but came back almost immediately to show us what he found on the stair railing:

maybe the easter bunny is really a frog? grant said that he'd do the post about that cute little guy so i'll probably do it tomorrow.... anyway, we had our good friends, amanda and matt, come to dinner:

[you should check out amanda's blog. she is posting a picture every day for a year with monthly themes. she takes gorgeous photos (like ours for our christmas letter) and even posted pictures of the girls not too long ago: lucy & hazel]. back to easter dinner: i made the most delicious italian drip beef sandwiches. i used my crock pot but otherwise followed the recipe. y.u.m. for dessert i made these flower pot things (if you've been clicking on the links [and i hope you are. it takes time, people, and i do it for you!] you'll have noticed that all of the recipes came from the dear pioneer woman. don't worry, i'm not a fan.....like, at all.):

hazel was really excited but didn't eat more than a couple spoonfuls. weird. we were all trying to talk her into eating more, maybe we were over selling it? lucy, on the other hand (i think i use that phrase a lot....but she and hazel really are complete opposites), waisted little time admiring the pretty flower:

and dug right in:

she enjoyed every last drop or at least every drop that wasn't lost on her lap/her face/the tray/the wall:

and the sugar didn't affect her in the slightest:

escape artists

the weather here has been dreadful for the past month and a half. it's unbelievably hot and humid. because of this the girls run around a lot in their diapers. hazel really enjoys this and when we get home from wherever she quickly removes her shirt. this morning, while i was blissfully wasting time on the internets, lucy took it to the next level by removing her diaper. i didn't notice until a postal worker came to the door. embarrassing. about 20 minutes later, hazel asked me a question and i saw that she had removed her diaper too. monkey see, monkey do. lucy has now figured out how to get on the couch. she doesn't fall off. . .very often. she also got her third tooth this week and it looks as though she'll be getting her forth soon.

.

in other news, i finished another quilt. you can see pictures here.

i wuv this chair!

since i had taken over the table with my sewing, for lunch hazel got to sit in lucy's chair: she was very excited and almost immediately after sitting down in it exclaimed, "i wuv this chair!" there's enthusiasm for you.

on a side note, i decided to start a cooking/crafting/sewing blog. i just posted my bread recipe, i know some of you wanted it because, let's be honest here, it's super tasty.

the next martha stewart?

i made these. it's true. i made them with no pattern. after i successfully made the first one, i planned this long braggy post in my head with step-by-step instructions. i took pictures:

that's when i messed up. 'pride cometh before the fall', right? i still ended up with three lovely pillow cases, well two really. the first one was a test and i used some fabric that i accidentally cut some random slits in. i mended the cuts but not very neatly, so it will be a back up or something. anyway, i'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

voilà, fini!

i finally finished my quilt! some of you may remember my post back in january where i listed my new year's resolutions. one of those was making a quilt. well, it only took 3 months to do a quilt that "you can complete......in just a day or two". i suppose, if you squished together all the hours i worked on it, it did take me a day or two. i decided way back while cutting out the squares, that i would make all of you live through the birthing of this quilt. I've learned a lot, mostly what not to do and i need to write it out so the next quilt i make goes more smoothly. here it goes: lesson #1: cut the blocks of fabric into squares. it is difficult to sandwich pieces together that aren't the same shape. i had many issues with wonky shapes that didn't/couldn't go together. lesson #2: don't over think the placement of the blocks. i spent literally hours trying to find the 'right' order for the smaller blocks. i'm happy with the way i did it. it was the first that i tried and i should have stopped there.lesson #3: sew straight seams. (disclaimer: this only works when you have straight edges in the first place.)lesson #4: discourage little helpers from pressing the pedal while fabric or fingers are in the way. (in case you're wondering, no i didn't have any of my fingers sewed by lucy, but not for lack of trying on her part.)lesson #5: once you lay it out, don't get cocky and think you'll finish in an hour or two. because you will have a breakthrough idea that will cause this:can you see it? that's right, i sewed a whole row on the wrong way. this set me back quite a while. at first, i just didn't want to pick all of the stitches out, so i hid the quilt for about a week before i faced up to my mistake. my first mistake is visible in that picture too. did anyone spot it? here's a closer picture of it:i missed one layer of the sandwich and didn't want to fix it properly. if i had known i was going to be picking out a longer seam, i probably would have done it right. oh well.
lesson #6: much like #5, don't get cocky once you've sewed all together. it took me two separate days, spaced a week apart, to cut the seam allowances (don't i sound like i know what i'm talking about). my fancy spring loaded clippers couldn't cut through the 6 layers of flannel so i had to use my regular fabric scissors. my hands bear the marks. i took pictures of the blisters/scars, but my hands looked kind of freaky and i didn't want to scare anyone.

here it is. all washed and raggedy. just in case anyone wants the instructions on how to make a beautiful quilt like this, click here.