Smarter than the average...

Olea noticed that the bottom half of the Christmas tree was lights out. Gary pulled the strand off and while I searched for gingerbread house icing recipe he pulled each light out and checked it. After I found my recipe I turned my attention to Gary's project. He had the whole strand off the tree and was severely puzzled. Half of the strand was completely out but the other half lovely blue.

"I bet it's a fuse." I said,

"Where are the fuses?"

"On the plug."

After he found where the fuses go and realized that one was out, "DeeDee you are smarter than the average bear."

"No, I'm smarter than the average Woman. Smarter than the average Man."

After getting the fuses,
"If you knew it was a fuse a long time ago why didn't you tell me before I took it off the tree?" (in a king Julian accent).

What am I?

I'll tell you what I am not.

Tonight in exasperation I told Zurich after just handing him his milk
and him trying to hand off his cracker for me to hold,
"I am not a cracker holder!"
Gary just laughed.

I am also not a
Coat rack
slave
shelf

What does Santa Sound like?

Saturday night we went to a Ward Christmas Party. Olea and Zurich were very excited because it was themed Polar Express. Zurich loves Trains and Olea is, I think, at the height of her Santa Clause Magic. Genève really enjoyed sucking on her ticket.

After dinner they had Santa Clause come. When he came in all winded and started talking over the mic Olea proclaims,"That's not Santa!"
"Why not?" I wanted to know.
"He doesn't sound like Santa, he looks like him but he doesn't sound like Santa, he sounds like a mice!"
"What does Santa sound like?"
She gives her best deep voice and says, "ho, ho ho"
I had to hand it to her. She was right his voice was a total let down. He was by far the most rotund Santa I have seen. Gary said he was probably so late because he was having trouble getting into his suit. There had to have been pillows in there.
But Olea sat on his lap and told him what she wanted anyway, in hopes he would tell the real Santa what she most desired. She calls them Rollerskates.
Zurich didn't want anything to do with this impostor, he did take a bell on a string though. I didn't bring my camera that night, which is okay since he wasn't the real Santa anyway. ;)

The night before we'd been to the city Santa Visit and Zurich didn't have any problem with him. Neither did Olea. I guess he was the real one. Of course Genève didn't mind any of them.

He was a very good Santa.

The Offensive Coat: aka Make your own iron-on

Once upon a time Zurich didn't have a coat. Oh, he had jackets and sweaters, but not a coat to be found. A kind cousin passed along one for him. It was great, and fit perfect. However, Zurich wasn't having it. I couldn't get him to wear it for anything. If I could get it on him he'd have it off the moment I turned away to pick up the baby. We were always in a hurry to get Olea to school so he always won and just ended up wearing his fleece. He'd come home all upset because he was so cold.
Step 1: Obtain object to receive Iron-on
The Offending Coat

The Silly Boy

So I had a thought.

Step 2: Gather materials and choose design
I had embroidery thread and heat and bond. I could make an iron on that would help him to attach to the coat. I set to work, picking an icon he loves but that wasn't branded.
A train.
(You can use and iron on transfer pen to put a design guide on your fabric, which I did at first... but then decided it was too big for my immediate need and just free hand stitched on instead, so that's why there are both in the hoop)
Hand Embroider onto Muslin

He sat and watched Thomas the Train as I stitched and periodically commented on my stitching.
"Train." Oh good, he recognizes it.

Step 3: Make it stick
Then use Heat n' Bond to make it an applique (use instructions on heat and bond)

Trim the extra fabric.

Iron onto the coat


Step 4 (Optional): Secure
...and since I am anal about securing things I took more embroidery thread and stitched around the design. Which I think helps it blend into the coat better anyway. You could use a sewing machine for this step but I didn't want stitches to show on the inside of the coat so that is best done by hand.


Step 5: Feel smart
Finished product.

The little boy and
The cool train coat

FINALLY!
...do you think this would work to help kids KEEP their gloves ON?

I'm linking to Creative Cats

A Christmas Song

Last night for FHE Gary asked Olea to, "Pick a real song, one we all know, a Christmas song."
She'd been making up songs...
So she thinks about it, "I know!" she said, "How about, Jesus Wants Me for a Christmas Sunbeam?"
Gary shrugs, "ok," and starts singing.
I couldn't.
I was laughing.
Through the whole thing.

TADA!

Merry Christmas to me!
You can't tell what's new?!

No, of course not. That's the idea. But it's AWESOME!
Venting our microwave stove hood to the outside of the house rather than it recirculating into the house. It's way quieter and certainly my cabinets will be less greasy.

move stove, take off microwave and cabinet

Zurich helps locate the studs... Which there happens to be one right where we need a hole, so Gary frames around it

puts in the vent, lines everything up, puts it all back


Olea makes pattern breads and Zurich and Genève play together.
The kids were great throughout the hours it took to get it all taken apart, cut out, put in, and cleaned up so we took them to the dinosaur museum after.
Gary is awesome!

Tea Party

It's very important when you go to Grandma's to have a tea party.
Grandma knows all about how to have a proper tea party.

Miss Perriwinkle
Mr. Billington
and Mrs. Frompasia ( I think)

Trick or Treating

Zurich was so cute, running biffing it and going again, at one point he said, "Go, go go. More Candy," as he ran from one house to the other. He would open one thing and get a taste and hand it on back to me or Gary, and always had one treat in hand at least. Often he'd try and trade that treat with a treat at the door he was trick or treating. Olea was so far up ahead with her cousins most of the time I only really got these two pics before we started out.
The kids are not under-dressed.
It was really warm in Idaho where we went Trick or treating.

The costume I ended up wearing was one Gary used in High School in a theatrical production where he played Timone from the Lion King. His mom made his costume. He's a bit bigger than he was in high school so I wore it instead.

Back at home the kids sort out their Halloween candy.

Halloween Tattie

I wanted to make a Halloween Tattie for Genève but haven't been able to get out and get a nice Orange thread...
So at first I thought spider. I looked up some patterns online and didn't like where they were going and then I landed a jem.
A bat.
What a good idea. So I tried out the pattern, it was too complex for a tattie and too big. But it got my brain going
the right direction and I came up with this little bat. It's about twice the size of a normal tattie. So I will probably
refine it a little yet like take the last underside wing drop off, it gets too cluttered but other than that I do think it's cute.


And just in time. I love this last picture with Neva flying. :)
Olea wore the more complex one that I did from someone else's pattern to school today.

halloween breakfast

Gary said, I can't post what I created last week. He has a good reason. Maintain surprise
factor for certain peoples who may or may not look at the blog....

So I'll post our fun breakfast instead. Sometimes I am a nice and fun mom.
I got this idea from my friend Cyndi who calls it Eggs in Toast.
She used a mason jar lid when we did it. I rarely make sugar cookies and Sunday morning
I remembered that I had Halloween cutters and decided to make use of our morning thusly.
Step one use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of bread

Step two butter bread and shapes and place on skillet... this ancient thing is well loved.
It's a waffle-maker with the small squares, for some reason they don't make them anymore...
and crack eggs into the bread holes salt and pepper. I also salt the hole before cracking the egg into it.

Step 3 cook and flip when ready. also flip the lid shapes, buttering them before flipping (grease baby)

Step 4 put lids on. Cute.

Serve

Don't worry, there was fruit and stuff too. Just not for the picture.

The winner is...

ok I cheated.
hmm, well, not really. But I hoped Gina would win because I had something specially for her. SO I'm not really sure how that's cheating but anyway...
The lovely Gina will be receiving a humorous piece of bathroom art... because we do need to decorate our bathrooms but what do we put in them?
Bathrooms! of course.

Since Gina lives in a all girls domain it is labeled appropriately.
I admit it's small. It's the same size I put in my bathroom though and it's original art.
It's charcoal relief on bristol paper for those of you who know what that means.

For those of you who missed the little give away, I'm sneaky like that. Pay attention.

In other "news" I have been unable to find a plain yellow or gold tshirt Zurich's size so I made do with one he had by turning it inside out measuring out and using fabric markers to make it black. Zurich will be Charlie Brown this year. I did it with a Zurich on my lap... so it's well, the way it is.

Do the techy dance of JOY

I am doing the techy dance of JOY
I won't show you what it looks like...
But I am doing it!
Remember this post?
No, of course you don't.
I was spending all my time on tech support and trying to uninstall the program that I never posted my HUGE irritation.
"Let me explain, no, there is too much, let me sum up."
(I'll give something spectacular to the first person who can reference the quote correctly).

I bought an external drive. It worked. I loved it. It worked on both my computer platforms. It was great. Then I updated the software. It didn't work anymore on my Vista. I did not love it. I was mad. I spent too much time on hold and too much time trying to delete registry entries. It happened back in January. It's October right? Finally I got sent high enough up the chain... Today I called the coveted direct line (because the babies were napping and Olea was choosing to be sweet) and this pleasant fellow provided the solution I have been waiting for (which according to him was available back in JULY... I did chat with someone in July, a number of times).

My drive is backing up almost a year's worth of stuff as we speak. Thankfully the year provided no mishaps or lost files. All is right on my techy front.
Dance it up.