September

Prize goes to the first person who can tell me what this picture reminds me of ("Prize" is acknowledgement at the beginning of the next blog, whenever that will be, ha.):

First grade Cub Scouts are Tigers. Second grade (when Justus joined): Wolves. Third grade: Bears. But boys aren't Boy Scouts until sixth grade; the two final years of Cub Scouts allow the boys to complete a rigorous list of challenging accomplishments. During this year the boys in this group are called WEBELOS (WE-buh-loes), which stands for "We'll Be Loyal Scouts". New uniform required:
Two years ago when his Cub Scouts uniform was brand new:
We school year 'round, you see, so our children do not at all get in on the Back to School fun. For the past two years we have acknowledged 'back-to-school' with a gift bag of treasures and a card of encouraging words and scriptures from each parent....




One of my absolute favorite times of the day is our daily family worship and reading time. Supper is cleaned up, everyone is winding down for the day, and we settle in for a couple songs, a passage of scripture, a prayer, and then some reading. We are still working our way through the Little House series, using the Prairie Primer unit study curriculum; it is going wonderfully. We're reading The Long Winter currently, and the curriculum suggests for the listeners to each start a silent crafting project to do during the reading. Natasha is learning some new stitches in a knitting project she plans to give to a young church friend. [Her face in this picture is a crack-up. I wonder what just went wrong!]
Justus is enjoying latch-hooking project! He likes it surprisingly much, yay. :)
I just finished my final knitting project that I know for sure I will knit completely in English style. I am now on the road to learning Continental, and I have an extremely important baby gift I'm gearing up to make, but before I started that, I needed to transition out of English and into Continental at this time. This scarf was my 'mindless' project; I've decided that from now on I want to have a mindless project going a the same time as a challenging project, so that at times when I can't put my whole brain into it, I can still be creating. ~shrug~

I have been using and experimenting with Essential Oils for the past five years or so. After so many pleasant experiences, in the last year or two I have started creating oil combinations to give away. This one was for a particularly special gift-giving occasion (bridal shower); I made three oil mixes, but wanted something unique and nice in which she could store them, and which would double as a pleasing presentation.... An old, stained shirt had been hanging around as I tried to decide what to do with it. This day I decided its second life would be as the storage container for these oils. Here is what I made:

Oh, okay, the line underneath the bottles is actually a shallow 'pouch'/pocket. I printed instructions for use on a small piece of cardstock which I folded and tucked in that long pouch.
back
Haha! This is funny. Okay, for yyyears, I mean, probably NINE YEARS I owned two necklaces, neither of which was ideal for my style or body type, but they were what I had and I wore them. During the last six years I have been gifted a bunch of necklaces! (I have also had the opportunity to use amazing coupons to purchase a couple of my choice, brand new!) Storage for necklaces is tricky, however, as y'all well know.... I was going crazy fighting this problem. Enter: Command hooks! (Made by 3M, there are hooks of all shapes & sizes that come off the surface without damaging it!) On our lovely bedroom furniture, the two sides of the dresser mirror turn in ... in this picture, behind my jewelry box and purse, there. I decided to use the surface on the back of that side of the mirror, as you'll see in the following picture, below! BIG SOLUTION!!

Natasha needed a haircut. I wanted to save the $15 this month. I offered to trim her hair and she readily agreed, except ... as I was tying the towel around her neck she said, "Will you please cut a lot of it off?" Wwwelll, then! *blink* I wasn't planning on that, but she told me what she wanted, and this is the result she got (She says she's very happy with it! Yay! -and Phew!). The first picture is shortly after the haircut. The second two show what it looked like after she 'shaped' it with the blowdryer after washing it that evening.

Summer knitting projects

This summer I finished two significant projects, both baby gifts. First a stuffed rabbit, which I did with a LLLLOT of help from my wonderful sis. (Date on the rabbit pics is wrong, if you care.)

I didn't figure out until I was stuffing it how POOR my effort was at sewing the edges together; I thought it would be like "sewing". NOPE, there's an entirely separate ... "genre" of knitting skill called "finishing". Needless to say, after my sorrowful experience on the rabbit's seams, I learned how to 'finish'.

He is OH-SO-VERY homemade; I had to hold him/arrange him at just the perfect angles for his photo session, so he wouldn't look completely misshapen. :\ Hey, it was my first one!



Another close-up of the bad seaming job:
The second baby gift is for a boy who has two big sisters; I figured his home is already quite blessed with mmmany girl toys, so I wanted his stuffed animal to be particularly masculine, so I chose the boy doll. HILARIOUSLY, his 2yo sister, Cora, has absolutely adopted this dude as her own. lol --figures. lol She's sssssso stinking preciously adorable and actually possessive with him, hahaha!! Poor Clay.... HOPEFULLY I crafted him sturdily enough that there'll be something left of the doll by the time Clay is old enough to play with him, haha! [His mom has already said she'll pay for a duplicate; I have NOT committed to that yet.]
So, here is a picture of my first actual 'finishing' job. This is the back of the hat, with the seam up the middle; the front of the hat is in the picture below.

Here are more finished seams I was very proud of, on the pants.

Embarrassingly, I forgot how to 'finish' between when I did the hat-and-pants, and when I finished the legs ... but I *thought* I remembered how, and -- like with the rabbit -- didn't figure out that I'd done it wrong until I got them stuffed, rrrgh. It's possible, with a llllot of extra work and headache, that I could have un-done those seams, but, you know what? He's got pants. So I left them.
:\ Also, an experienced 'finisher' would have gotten the stripes to align perfectly down his back. We are our own greatest critic!!The pattern for this doll was dumb in one way. The 'shirt' only covered the top half of his torso, and even though the pants come off, there was no pattern for the rest of his torso and the tops of his legs! :\ That threw me for a loop, so I did a bunch of brain-bending math (ha) to figure out how to continue the stripes down a ways, thankyouverymuch!
The hair? One word: Uggh. On that topic, my greatest interest is to see how long it lasts. Cassie (Mom) assures me that Cora (2yo sis) is a capable tester. ;)

The doll has THUMBS!! Ohhhh, my applause goes to whoever it is who writes knitting patterns; those folks are GOOOOOD! *blink*

Blank Park Zoo, & a wedding!

Oh, wow, isn't it nice when once out of every, say, 100 posts, the picture that posts first is the one you wanted posted first? :) How lovely. lol [Thank you for continuing to bear with me regarding my laziness (or time stewardship, depending on perspective) in not taking the time to rearrange the order of pictures....]

Jeremy was privileged to be the officiator of a beautiful outdoor wedding a few weeks ago. I was absolutely charmed by the setting, which we were forced to conclude is a family's old farm that was ultimately sold to the city (Johnston, IA, on the north side of DSM). They have turned the house into a museum, and the barn is rented out for events. Since we (no surprise) arrived with plenty of time to spare (yay), I was able to take all the pictures I wanted. These are my favorites:

Haha, after I took pictures of N with the background of her choice (below...), she said she'd take one of me with the background of my choice. Uhh, okay then!

Haha, her pose of choice, a 'dramatic' pose.

Justus had a very important job: keeping Jeremy's phone.
The very end of the family picture session.
My job in the weddings Jeremy officiates is (with the couple's permission) to record and remind regarding the wedding party's entrance timing. This means I'm actually still at the back when the bride and father are heading to the front! What a unique perspective of a wedding!
This picture, taken by N, was sssssso dark before Jennifer, with her effective photo editing software, was able to lighten it to this point:
Bride & groom made a pretty cover for the plain barn door, the spot they had chosen as the backdrop for their ceremony. It was pretty, just plain wood, covered with black tulle, and sparkly lights for the evening!


Natasha felt embarrassed to be in red when the rest of us were in black. Additionally, we decided on this occasion to alter her dress to fit her better.


Cellar door in foreground.

We have year's free pass to Blank Park Zoo here in Des Moines. We rrrrreally like our local zoo, but we don't voluntarily bear the heat of summer if we don't have to. So we waited 'til temps dropped some (It was still pllllenty warmmm.), and spent a day at the zoo! :)

Natasha with a parrot over her shoulder, and a hook on her hand....

Justus feeding a llama. There is something ssssssso cute to me about a little boy in a backwards cap ... in an appropriate situation. ;)
When we moved on, in the petting zoo, to feed some other animals, this donkey became emotionally disturbed and started braying LOUUUUDLY!!! We laughed so hard!
That llama looks down at most people.

I took these next two pictures just to show the quality design of these two goat pens. The goats can go up one side, walk on the overpass above the humans/vehicles, etc., and then down the other side into the pen on the other side. Somebody was thinkin'!

Natasha requested that I take her picture THROUGH the jellyfish tank; she wanted it to look like she was a dead person floating in there ... I think(?). lol!