Vote for June

Happy voting day America!

So I realize that I've promised more pics of baby girl and a birth story and such...and rest assured they are coming! But we are currently holed up with icky colds that just won't ever end. I was the last to get it and it's hit me hard. Just hoping that this doesn't turn into one of my brutal sinus infections that last a month. Baby girl is getting better but I'm so nervous she'll get a new strain and end up with RSV (both my boys got it when they were babies so I'm extra paranoid).

Anyway. I also have a slew of illustration work going on this week so I thought I'd share this pic of hard working all-American June with you. Fitting for today. She's actually a paper doll and this is one of her outfits. Way to go June! Thinking of you, my boys, my baby girl and all of America's future little ones today.

Vote well America.

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy...

As usual we had a fabulous time at my family's Fourth of July reunion in Colorado and as usual, we went all out. This year we decided to go with the birth of America, 1776 theme and the end result was nothing short of amazing. My mother created a lovely patriotic environment complete with homemade lanterns out of tin cans, cuddly quilts to lounge on, a perfect thrifted fabric for a photo backdrop, red white and blue treats to bring with us to the fireworks show and so much more!
Our summer has been rather busy so we decided to just reuse clothing and costume items that we have created and utilized in the past. My sisters however, well they took this theme and ran with it, making darling dresses for their girls...and even themselves (you can check out my sister Lorajean's pin board for the event here)! My older sister Daryllyn made a gorgeous yellow gown for herself and topped it off with a fabulous white wig. Her little darlings were just as impressively decked out.
My mother sewed all of the little girls cute little white bonnets and my sisters adorned their hair with ringlets. Everyone just looked so great.
In fact, everyone was asked to pick a particular person on early American history and not only dress the part, but come up with a mini skit or an informative piece of sorts sharing a bit about that historical figure. So we had a Davy Crockett, a Danial Boone, a Betsy Ross, a Paul Revere, an Abigail Adams, and more!It was extremely hot this year so aside from dressing up, we didn't do a whole lot. Typically we have a number of games and activities but after dressing up, eating and take a number of festive photos, we all then ditched our warm costumes in favor of swimsuits and my parents pool. Because of the number of fires in Colorado this year, all personal fireworks were banned. Our local communities larger fireworks were also cancelled so we traveled to a near by town to see a few overhead fireworks there. It was a great ending to a fun and festive day!
We did miss having Jon along for the trip and many mentioned missing his playful, actor, "life of the party" contribution to to the reunion. But aside from missing Jon, the boys and I had a fantastic time. In fact, the Littles have had a hard time transitioning back to our day to day summer life without a mob of cousins to run and play with.

Oh and I discovered that the secret to getting a moody "Count of Monte Cristo" look from my 6 yr old son is to pull him away from all the fun and ask him to pose for the camera for a few minutes. And oh will he stare you down...barely blinking...and refusing to crack even the slightest of grins... I have to admit, I was sort of impressed with his resolve and had to try not to giggle when after at least 10 clicks, he didn't budge at all. I'm seeing stubborn teen in a number of years...Oh boy. But man do I love that kid!

Summer Fun Jars

I have to give full credit to my cousin Crystal for this summer fun idea. For the Mudpuppy giveaway she commented:

"So this summer me and the kids made a summer fun jar so I don't have to be as creative everyday. Each week they pick out an outing, a food to make, and an activity to do at home and we make sure we do all three that week. "

Crystal I LOVE, love, love your idea! So of course we had to implement it here in our home as well.

 This approach to summer fun works really well for us. I often get super busy with work while it seems like our friends are gallivanting off to swim parks, camping trips and more. I've been feeling really bad for my little guys and have worried that their summer just isn't turning out as fun and exploratory as I'd hoped it would be. So when Crystal mentioned this idea, I thought, "Hey! I can do that!" This simple approach satisfies my little ones need for structure and planned events (especially my oldest who has been ansty non-stop ever since school let out) and also allows me the freedom to chose when the events/projects work best in my schedule. I don't have as much pressure to do something extravagant every day and the littles love looking at our calendar, looking forward to what is coming up next!

To make our summer fun jars we used old pickle jars (we are pickle fanatics here), covered the lids with decorative paper and affixed a label for each summer fun item, reading "LET'S GO, LET'S MAKE, and LET'S EAT." 

If you'd like to do the same, I've made some jar labels for you to download here.
Each Monday evening, during family night, we have our kids draw out one slip of paper from each jar. The kids then love looking at and discussing what types of things we have in store for us that week. In our "LET'S GO" jar I've put in outings to local hot spots as well as things we can do closer to home such as "have a BBQ with friends." In our "LET'S MAKE" (which could also be called "LET'S DO") I've placed a number of prompts for us to get creative such as "make a summer scrapbook" or "learn a new skill".Our "LET'S EAT" jar has been a huge hit (notice the explosive amount of papers in the jar). I decided that I'd finally do something with all the delicious food pins I've been collecting on Pinterest. So I printed out several pages of pins, cut them up and then placed them in our "LET'S EAT" jar. This is so popular we actually ended up pulling out two food items, one sweet and one savory each week (I ended up making another savory jar, not shown here).

*(You could also use this Pinterest approach for your "LET'S MAKE" jar. Just print out all the DIY's you've been saving up and start doing them! If you need motivation to get started, take a look at a few of the pins from Mer Mag).
The kids love looking at what we have in store to make and eat. Somehow it's so much more exciting than just reading it. For example, take these delicious Mint Brownies from Brooke of Inchmark. I've been dying to make these ever since she posted about them! And now they have been drawn and placed on the calendar. We will be making them today!
So when we draw a food item from the jar, we then go to back to Pinterest to get the recipe. All the ingredients to make that item then goes on our shopping list for that week. The kids loving doing this and I love that they are learning a bit about shopping and cooking (and if I'm really ambitious I can give a little lesson about money on our shopping trip).
And it may be a bit late in the season (unless you are in Cali where school just let out for the summer) but we finally made our summer calendar. My mother would do this for us each summer and we loved visually looking forward to trips, events and fun summer activities. It really made summer SO much fun. To make ours I simply took a piece of black poster board and divided up the space into squares with decorative washi tape. I then used white oil pastel to write in all the dates and days of the week. From there we simply taped it to the wall with more washi tape.

And when the boys draw something out of our summer fun jars, we choose a day of the week and then have them tape up the paper right to the calendar. They love it!
 
And now we need to prepare for our big summer fun activity... our annual trip to Colorado for the 4th of July! We are so excited! To see some of the great summer reunion fun we've had in the past, take a lookly lou here, here, here and here. This summer we are going with a traditional 1776 white wig, Betsy Ross type of gala. No fireworks though, due to all the fires in Colorado :( but I know we'll come up with something just as fun. Apparently my mother is making little white wigs for all the kiddos and I just can't wait!

[a dilapidated barn and a...]

We had our annual photo shoot whilst on vacay, as is now the tradition, and what better backdrop than my parents out-of-service barn? We've used this fond location before but this time we decided to venture on inside and we were delighted with what we found.

Not only was there a delicious amount of woodsy debris, but right in the midst of everything, was our vintage blue wooden rocking horse made by my father (he made this for my older sister when she was a little girl and we've all had a turn on it at some time or another whilst growing up). Honestly, it was perfectly placed in the middle of everything and all we had to do was put the boys on it and click away. Totally kismet. (Oh, yes, and Little O made sure that Woody came along for the fun...so very like him. If you notice, Muno came along for the pirate pics. He's pretty much never without a famous friend of sorts somewhere near by).

The above pic is the best one we got of Little A. He's apparently, at the very "old" age of 5, over his parents and couldn't wait to get back to all the fun with the cousins. I think it was something short of torture for him to be pulled away from it all, if even only for a moment.

The below pic is my favorite. I like the playful nature of it and Jon is such a cutie, don't you think?

And I had to get a pic of me with my little sister, Lorajean, our resident family photographer. I love her vision she's a natural behind the camera.

Thanks so much little sis' for letting me pull you away from the fun for a bit of photo mania!

[fireworks and a...]

Whew! We have finally returned home from our annual summer reunions to see family and friends and as usual, had a most excellent time. The kids were over the moon with seeing grandparents and cousins and we couldn't have been happier either. We pretty much didn't see Little A at all in the past 3 weeks as he was playing non-stop with his cousins (and one time even asked us to leave so that he could play with the other kids without us around) so I'd say he was pretty happy. Yeah, it pretty much was a smashing summer success.

This year for the 4th my family hosted a pirate party themed reunion. We started things out by attending the Real Pirates exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science where we were able to see the one and only pirate treasure ever discovered and actually got to touch real live actual pirate treasure coins. Yeah, it was pretty cool and a great way to get us all on the mood for some pirate partying.

As usual my mother went above and beyond, transforming her home into a pseudo pirate ship of sorts. The small spot below the balcony stairs became "below deck" where a play kitchen was placed for little cooks to "prepare" grub for the crew. The tree in the front yard was de-limbed on one side within the tree to create "dead man's tree" where various pirate toys were placed, complete with handmade styrofoam mountains, for the little buccaneers to play with.

My father and brothers made miniature cannons that really worked! They were so cool, you have no idea. All I can say is that they were made from black PVC pipe, styrofoam balls painted black and fire extinguishers that gave a great smoke illusion when firing. How they were assembled is a mystery to me, I'm sure you could find it on youtube or something. Needless to say, we had some fun with those.

My little sis set up a pirate photo booth and we all dressed up in our pirate best. (This is my brother-in-law Trent in the pic above, who wins "best pirate look" for his overgrown beard and just overall piratey stances and gestures. Don't you just think he looks the part?).

Jon led the littles in a pirate treasure hunt and they loved every minute of it. He pretty much had the accent, swagger and humor down to a science.

After our annual hot dog bar and loads of delicious salads and sides we devoured a most scrumptious pirate ship cake.

Jon finished up the night up with a bang by presenting an exciting display of fireworks that we picked up on our way over.

Then a few of us headed to City Park to see the big overhead fireworks display. Little O fell asleep on my lap while we laid under the stars celebrating the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Another great 4th of July.

*to see more great pics of the party click here on LJ's site.

[Vintage Americana part II]

My talented little sister managed to squeeze in some digital processing between morning sickness, birthdays and the usual busy mom schedule so that I could show you all the rest of these photos she took of our little family. Thanks LJ!









***for those of you who asked-I used the Project Runway Simplicity pattern 2725 for my dress and added the ruffle myself (very easy to do btw).

[sharing with you a little slice of our...]

I thought I'd better share with you a few snapshots of our splendid Fourth of July celebration before the month was actually over. I'm still waiting on a few photos that my little sis took of us that I will of course post later.

I was so happy with how all the boys ensembles turned out. I managed to throw something on the sewing machine for myself the day before festivities began. It never got a zipper so I had to layer a bit but it all worked out...more or less.

and of course we can't forget the much talked about m&m display. It was all worth it, right?


We had a delicious time munching on ears of barbecued corn, dipping bread in various olive oil concoctions, sampling delectable slices of razzleberry, lemon meringue, strawberry and apple pie, and of course scooping up chocolatey crunchy goodness that most definitely melted in our hands as well as our mouths. The littles played rounds of miniature golf (the course of which was handmade by the sweat of Grandfather and father's brows), swam in pools, competed in chalkboard tic-tac-toe tournaments and most of all enjoyed eachother's company. Later there were of fire works, rocket launches, serenades and pj parties.

It was a grand ole time and the perfect way to kick off the summer.

[summer magic...]

Things are coming along with my Summer Magic party sewing. I still have some finishing touches to do on this little overall number for baby O but I'm happy with it so far. I tried it on him and it's to die for. Truly.

And here are little A's knickers that I mentioned earlier. They are a tad too wide for him at the waist so I'm thinking I'll turn them into overalls or make some suspenders to attach to them. A white shirt and little bow tie are just what I need to complete the look.

I also want to see what ma and pa sewing I can squeeze into my schedule before the 4th. I hope I can do what I'm scheming up because I have half a mind to get some family photos with us all gussied up and vintage like.