Aquarium on a hot day

Went to the aquarium a couple of weeks ago with Heather and her daughters Caitlyn and Hailey and Shirley with her son Daniel. It was a pretty warm day. After the aquarium, Shirley and Daniel went with us to Nathan’s and then me and Sienna went to the little amusement park next to Luna park (I think it’s Deno’s Park?).

There are a lot of photos of Sienna and Caitlyn, can’t help it, they look so cute together!

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Holding hands

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Stingray

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Shark!

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So many fishes!

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Look at that fish!

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Surprisingly Sienna wasn’t that into the penguins!

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I caught Heather’s flash on this (purposely) so that’s why it looks a little funkysillygirls.jpgposinggirls.jpg
The girls posing and being silly in front of the fish

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I love that I caught the light rays in this shot

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I wasn’t lying! Shirley and Daniel were there too!

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He’ll be a ladykiller when he’s older!

Here’s a video if Sienna dancing at Nathan’s after lunch. I swear, I don’t know where she learned these moves from!

Nathan’s Dance from Lisa on Vimeo.

I told Sienna she could pick 2 rides and the first one she picked was the roller coaster! She is my daughter after all! The first 2 go arounds she was having a blast laughing and screaming. By the 3rd and last go around, she was ready to get off. I could tell she was saying stop around the 3rd turn. Good thing it only went around 3 times or it would have surely ended with Sienna crying.
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She’s ready!
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I know it’s blurry, I was just snapping away!

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Almost over!

I was surprised she picked the merry go around for the 2nd ride but I suppose after the craziness of the roller coaster, she wanted something more calm? (Of course after the merry go around, she wanted to go on the tilt a whirl!)
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And I couldn’t resist taking yet another photo of the wonder wheel. I applied a lomo effect on it. I promised Sienna we would come back another time to ride it.
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August Challenge

Christy Nelson’s August Challenge snuck up on me, as they usually do. I know I say this every month but when this month’s supplies came, I really thought Oh, boy! What am I going to make with this? I was baffled.
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We got some black polyester fabric, some cute animal paper and blue glass beads (from Italy!), some hardware bits (from Ikea) and a sample pack of adhesive squares.

I was really thinking and thinking about what to do when I was looking at an old wooden frame that was on my desk. I thought the fabric might look neat wrapped around the frame. I cut some of the polyester into strips and began wrapping them around the wood. I thought about painting the wood but thought the natural color would keep with the color theme of the paper.  I used the adhesive squares and it stuck it really well.

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I liked how it came out! I knew I wanted to add some embellishments and used my Sizzix and the flowers layer #3 die with the rest of the paper and polyester (did you know that if you placed paper on top of fabric when cutting, it will be a cleaner cut for the fabric?) and added a bit of color to the edge.

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I knew I wanted to use one of the nails for the middle of the flower. I used this white plastic nail and put one of the adhesive squares on it (I was a little leery but it worked out!) for the beads and a little glitter for bling. (I couldn’t get a good photo of the adhesive on the nail so you’ll have to make do with the beads and glitter!)

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Then I thought, now what am I going to do? I liked the animal theme of the paper and decided to go from there. I used Tim Holtz’s Fragments to glue over 3 squares I cut out of the paper for more embellishments. Here I show 2 of them, a dog and a cat. The 3rd one is a heart.

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It started coming together real fast so there are less assembling photos. Here it is all finished and on my desk!

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I printed out 2 photos of my daughter Sienna, one of her with our cat Neo and the other with our dog Skippy (get the theme I was going for?) I glued bigger pieces of Fragments over them. I used the rest of the paper for the background, added another flower and found a spot for this on my desk! Here’s some close ups!

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(it’s too bad you can’t see the glitter in the photo. Believe me, it’s there!)
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I used cotton fabric for this flower to add a little bit of color
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Bronx Zoo!

We joined the Wildlife Conservation Society and went to the Bronx Zoo a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t even do the whole zoo and we were completely exhausted at the end of the day! Sienna fell asleep on the way home for just 40 minutes and her energy level went back up when we got home (ah, to be young!) We haven’t been to the zoo in about 6 years and I was a tad disappointed because I feel like we didn’t get as close a view as last time (see here and here) or maybe because I haven’t been taking photos as much I lost my touch!

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I think these are gazelles but I can’t be sure!
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“Melvin” (we were on the lookout for the Madagascar Movie animals)

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I love the look she has here at the turtles
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“King Julien”,”Maurice” and “Mort”
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Climbing up the rope web
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I think Sienna’s favorite part was the petting zoo!
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She was having a conversation with the alpaca!
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This chicken in the tree cracked me up!
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Sienna big ears
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When I tried to show Sienna this cool porcupine, she replied “We don’t have time to look at that”
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I love the contrast of the bird with it’s neutral surroundings!
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We saw these elephants on the Asia Monorail ride, something we saved for last because I thought it would be nice and relaxing while seeing a bunch of animals. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see much. 🙁
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I saved the bug carousel photo for last because I’ve been playing around with some vintage photo filters and picture frames.
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Dress Up!

Earlier this month, we went over to Erin and Mikaela’s for a dress up playdate. It was a real muggy day but I don’t even think the girls minded at all. Mikaela has lots of different outfits and jewelry to dress up with. It was really fun for Sienna especially since we don’t do dress up at home. I don’t think Sienna even noticed that we were at Geneva and Phoenix’s old apartment.

It really amazed me how much older Sienna looked while playing dress up! They also rented a real hokey and fun disco party dance video from the library. The girls enjoyed dancing to it while me and Erin cracked up (not sure how old it was but a very young looking Jamie Lee Curtis made a guest appearance).

Sienna really liked the first princess outfit. Mikaela dressed as Dorothy.siennaprincess.jpgcheckusoutmirror.jpgsiennacrownprincess.jpg

Erin made yummy cucumber sandwiches and antipasto for lunch!
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Time for another outfit change for the dance party!
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Waiting for dance instructions
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Sienna liked this hat!
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Mikaela gets in on the hat wearing!
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And sharing necklaces too!
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Water Bottle singing (it was actually an exercise video so MK was copying the moves!)
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All tired from dancing, a super quick game of Candyland because Sienna was getting tired.
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Mikaela was sad because it was time to end the playdate.
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Nice weekend

The last weekend of July turned out to be beautiful. The weather was not too hot and we had a break in humidity so we were able to enjoy the fresh air. We started out the weekend by having a picnic at Owl’s Head Park. The first picnic we’ve had since Geneva and co. left for Maine. We tried to get a band started and brought a bunch of instruments to the park. I’m sure you can imagine how well that went with toddlers! I posted the “band” photos up on Facebook, if you are not on FB, you can still see them here. This is a shot of Sienna doing a ballerina twirl with a skirt borrowed from Mikaela.
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Saturday we headed out to Siam Orchid for dinner. It was really cute that Sienna wanted to bring her camera, just like her mom and dad! We took a little walk before heading over to dinner. Besides the boats in the marina and some swans in the water, there really isn’t much to see. I couldn’t decide which photo I liked best so I am posting both.
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Here is Sienna calling after the swans:
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Yves with gorilla on his shoulders:
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And on to dinner! Funny how Sienna loves satay but claims to not like peanut butter (satay is usually marinated with some peanut butter and soy sauce, among other things). One steak skewer escaped before I was able to snap this photo!
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It seems as if Sienna is saying, you’re coming into my mouth steak satay!
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I forgot the name of my dish but it was basically chicken with mixed veggies:
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Yves’ Pad Thai:
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And we even got dessert! Coconut custard!
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Everything was yummy!

Good swaps

I know I say this all the time but I really need to be a lot better documenting the swaps I receive from people. I got a couple of really good ones lately. I was really wowed by this swap from Pandessa for the Make me Something/Anything swap. Having done felt food, I know how much work goes into making it. Check it out!! A whole bento box full of sushi!
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(a little blurry because I was trying to be quick! See those snatchy fingers in the top left corner?)
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Sienna loves playing with it and now has her own when we get sushi!
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And as if the felt sushi wasn’t enough, she included this cup cozy she crochet!

These earrings came as a complete surprise for me! Mamacrafter, the partner I sent the A-Z Creative swap to loved the package I sent to her so much that she bought these from my Etsy Favorites! How sweet is that?? The earrings are from Heather Boyd.
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Here’s one I did a couple of months back for the Handmade Summer Dishtowel swap. My partner likes things showing where you are from so I used the taxi cab fabric from the City Quilter and printed out one of my holga shots of a street sign onto printable fabric and sewed it on.
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Here is one of the items I made for the A-Z Creative swap I mentioned above. My partner had something similiar to this on her Etsy favs so I made her one! The artwork is from TTGart.
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I had lots of fun stitching this one up! It’s a free pattern from Aimee Ray (I can’t wait for her new book to come out!) This was for the Make Me Anything profile swap as I mentioned above. My partner loves unicorns/pegasus so I made this pillow using one of Yves’ almost made it to goodwill linen shirts. Her hair and tail are made up of 3 different strands of floss with one being a metallic. Unfortunately, the photos don’t really show the sheen of the metallic, which is too bad because it looks really cool!
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This next one is for the Woodland Handmade swap. This pattern is from Fall 2009 Stitch magazine (I made the cat pillow from this magazine too!) The tail called for needle felting and I finally pulled out my kit that I bought earlier this year and never tried. Well, I need a lot more practice as it came out pathetic (my partner rated me a 5 with a heart anyway!)
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This one is not for a swap. My friend Barbara from Seattle put a call out for some penguin stamps so I carved one for her.
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And speaking of carving, I made this for a Winner Takes All game on one of the group forums on swap-bot. It was for profile surprises and my partner (Pandessa) likes pentagrams.
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These are the Altered Domino Magnets I made for the swap of the same name.
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And 2 holidays in August for the Wacky Holidays swap! A crocheted potholder for Happy Watermelon day and a pendant for Happy Daughter’s day (her daughter likes Nightmare before Christmas and black and pink!)
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