i made some stuff (in may and june)

 mermaids for my friend and her daughters (also for me and audrey)

 a wooden embroidered pendant for a friend's birthday (i love how it turned out and it was also lots of fun to do)

 earrings with beads and birds

 necklace with turquoise beads and a feather charm

 yoda hat

fox hat for my friend who recently had a baby

frog dance

miles did a frog dance at his school (back in may). he did the jumps, heel taps and spins right with the timing. he was too cute.

painting olaf

 

for christmas audrey received a gift certificate to U Can Paint. she chose to paint "spring olaf". she enjoyed it but didnt like having to wait in between steps. here she is with her beautiful artwork. she even won a gift certificate for next time.

im a penguin

miles is busy acting like various animals around our house.
here is his adorable penguin imitation.

project goodwill, again?!

yup, i did project goodwill again. it was fun to stretch my design and sewing skills in the competition but i didnt win. but thats ok, it was just for funsies anyway.
for those of you that dont know what project goodwill is: a design competition where you are given $100 to shop at goodwill to create a look using what ever you can find. 
here are my materials for the first look i worked on. i wanted to use that art print as the bodice. but the art print was glued to the cardboard of the frame behind it so i had to carefully pull it away and i lost a good 1/4 of it limiting how much i could use. i tried to work with it but the paper just got more and more tortured as i worked on it and i had trouble trying to figure out what i would do for the bottom of the dress, i ended up not really buying any good options and not enough. so i scraped that idea and started over (good thing i hadnt used up all my money).

 i was going to make a necklace/collar with the brim of the fire hat and all the sequins from that purse in the upper left corner. that got scraped as well.

 heres what i came up with: i used a white sundress and changed it into a jumpsuit. then i ombre dyed the pants (this process was actually fun and turned out great so i will definitely try it again.). i took a button up shirt and used the sleeves for the cuffs of the pants. the obi belt with the purse chain and leather strap was also made from some of the shirt as well as the necklace which had whiffle balls and marbles inside for the beads.

 heres my lovely model. thanks so much sarah for doing this for me.

 heres some of the other looks on the runway.

science fair - egg geodes

audrey participated in her school's science fair. she wanted to study minerals so we made geodes.
she learned what geodes are and how they form. what egg shell geodes are and how they form. we also experimented with different ingredients to see which one would make the best crystals. we tried baking soda, epsom salts and alum powder.

 painting the egg shells (that grammy cracked so carefully for us, thanks grammy) with glue and then sprinkling the ingredient (baking soda, epsom salt, or alum powder)

 

 baking soda

 epsom salt

alum powder

the finished project

names

when we chose the names for our kids the meanings of those names was very important to us. i wanted to have something in each of our kids rooms with those meanings and verses that seemed to fit well with the meanings. heres what i came up with:
Audrey - noble
Anne - full of grace
1 John 2:12-14

 

Miles - soldier
Elliot - the Lord is my God
2 Timothy 2:3-4