Happy Thanksgiving!

As much as I want to curl up in a ball and wallow in self pity from dealing with some health stuff, today is not the day for that (besides which, it really isn’t so bad, it could be worse!) I want to take this day to be grateful for all I do have and I am truly thankful. I am thankful for my family. My wonderful husband who is supportive and always there for me and who is a great father. My miracle, my daughter. What a joy to hear her singing or talking to herself in the morning as we are getting up from sleep. She truly is a joy and I have to remember that with the few times she does upset the applecart, they are so few and far between. For my parents. Although we have a difficult relationship most of the time, I am grateful they are alive and live close by. I am grateful for the little time they spend with Sienna. I am grateful for the roof over our heads, for the money that buys our food and for the opportunity to be able to stay home full time to take care of Sienna and do crafts in between. I hope I have these things to be grateful for for a long time to come.

And to keep this post from being all sappy, here are some photos I took at Sienna’s school. She had a Thanksgiving party and the parents were invited. There is also a cute video at the end of her singing and dancing to the Please and Thank You song.

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Chowing down!
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Sienna and Yves looking at something
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Dancing with her teacher, Mrs. D.
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The chicken dance with Julian
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Saying cheese with Kostas
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The last 3 photos were taken of photos posted on the wall from when they went pumpkin picking back in October. So cute!!

Please and Thank You from Lisa on Vimeo.

Silhouette Love

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I bought a Silhouette Machine back in September! There were a whole bunch of blogs hosting giveaways of the machine and I had entered every one of them. Needless to say, I did not win. I tried to convince myself I didn’t need one but then discovered that Overstock had a great price on it plus I had a $10 coupon and with $3 shipping, well, welcome to your new home!

When I bought the machine, their software wasn’t compatible with Mac just yet but they were supposed to release the software around the same time (they were a little delayed.) There was a plug-in to use it with Adobe Illustrator so I was using that for a bit. I was really excited when the software came out because then I was also able to shop the store for shapes! There were some glitches in the software and I was pleasantly surprised that contacting customer service was a nice experience! They responded pretty quickly and put me in direct contact with the programmers of the software. I helped them test out different versions of the software so the machine got a bit of a workout early on. That’s a good thing, tho! It helped me get used to the machine. Here are some projects I did with it.

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One of my first projects was making this card set for a swap. Pretty simple stuff but I was still feeling the machine out. I used the sketch pens for the thank you card on the right.

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I made this with vinyl for Sienna’s door. It’s a tad bit crooked because I didn’t use transfer tape to help it on.

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I made this shirt for Hailey’s birthday.

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These were for Emily and Olivia’s birthday. I wanted to do a different design but my brain wasn’t functioning (I was just starting to get sick!)

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Christmas tags for a swap

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I’m really happy with how this came out! This was for an Etsy inspire swap. You look on your partner’s Etsy faves and create something inspired by their faves. I hadn’t intended to outright copy it but when I saw it on my partner’s list, the Silhouette was the first thing I thought of. I did this by layering paper and coating it. Here is the original item, which is made from recycled vinyl record, pretty cool in itself!

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This is for a recipe swap on the Silhouette users Yahoo group. I cut out the tag, the snowflake and the title with the machine. I used the sketch pens to write out the title and also for the hors d’oeuvres written on the snowflake.

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This was also for the Etsy inspire swap. My partner had Paris bookmarks on her list so I made her bookmarks with photos from my honeymoon in Paris (bookmarks will be shown in another post). The holder was also cut out and was intended to be used as a money holder and I cut out the Eiffel Tower in the middle.

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This one held photos of Paris and I used the cut out from the previous item and glued it on here!

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I used the Silhouette to cut out this GS logo (my partner is a Junior GS leader) and used it to etch it on the glass ornament. I suppose I could have left it as is but I used alcohol inks to give it some color. It was so much fun! I have 2 more glass ornaments that I am definitely going to do something similiar (not with the GS logo tho!)

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This was the latest item I made. Sienna somehow got grease stains on this shirt and although this logo doesn’t cover all the stains, I figured you would be distracted by the logo to notice the stains! HA! The pink is neon and I think I had the iron too hot so it melted it just a tad. That is why there is a little white around the pink. I’m very happy with it just the same!

Par-tays!

Sienna had 2 birthday parties last month! She had so much going on with Halloween and the birthday parties that her social calendar was a lot better than mine! The first was Hailey’s 1st birthday and since that was Halloween theme, Sienna dressed in her full Princess costume as I had posted here.
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Sienna is playing with Caitlin, Hailey’s older sister
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I couldn’t resist this shot!
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Sienna shows us her Princess twirl!
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Jana with Leah
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Emma shows off her crafty creations
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A cute photo of Emma and Sienna!
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Someone is really enjoying their cupcake!
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The birthday girl, Hailey! With her mom Heather.
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Cake!

The 2nd party was for her classmates, twins Olivia and Emily, held at the Party Gym. We went to open play there a long time ago! Sienna had a lot of fun.
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That blur is Sienna with her classmate, Alexis
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Playing with another classmate, Dariny
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Sienna gets a tattoo
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Pizza time! Sitting next to Alexis
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They played lots of games. There are the birthday girls next to Sienna, wearing princess dresses
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They got to take home these balloons. Here is another classmate, Megan.

RIP Grandma

My grandmother on my mother’s side passed away last night. She had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks after she fell in a restaurant. She had broken her leg and went into the hospital to get it operated on. I’m not clear on the details but I think when they gave her pain meds, she never woke up from it. She was 92. I was not very close with her, even though she lived in Queens. I did not grow up with her around. When I was younger, my mother stopped talking to her and we never saw her (reason still not told to me.) My last memory of her when I was younger was getting a baby doll from her for Christmas. I can’t even remember how old I was. My mother reconciled with her about 9 years ago but I still did not see her much, along with my 2 aunts and uncle and cousins. Nevertheless, I can go on and on about my family or lack of. We did meet up for dim sum back in August and my Aunt sent me some photos she took of us. Here’s the best one!
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2 kinds of sandwiches

A couple of weeks ago, before I got deathly sick (cue dramatic hand to forehead!), I met up with Pete for lunch. I was in the mood for a sandwich type and somehow found Num Pang, a Cambodian Sandwich shop. One word, YUM! Very similiar to Banh Mi, the Vietnamese sandwich except about half the size! (I joked that the Cambodians must not eat much.) We opted to get 2 different sandwiches and share them. I got the pork belly and Pete got the mackerel and we both got blood orange lemonade to drink. I can’t wait to go back!!porkbelly.jpg
My pork belly sandwich
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Pete’s mackerel
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Alternating between the 2 sandwiches
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Pete eats
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Num Pang decor

I left Pete after lunch since he had to go back to work. My next mission was Macarons! I don’t know why I didn’t realize this before and why it didn’t come out in my research but it’s gluten free!! This french pastry uses almond flour. Good to know when I go back to eating (mostly) gluten free. I have only eaten a macaron once before, at Almondines in Dumbo when I went to Etsy labs. I’ve decided that will be a regular stop before Etsy labs from now on (their macarons are only $1.25 and just as yummy) I read that Madeleine Patisserie was one of the best places to go for this (at $2.50 each, a special treat indeed)
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I brought home chocolate, strawberry, caramel, pistachio with blueberry, cassis, orange with white chocolate and I can’t remember the last one right now! They were all delicious and they last a few days in my house.

Trick or Treat!

Yves and I have both been sick this week so I didn’t have much energy to do the follow up about Halloween until today!

I took Sienna out trick or treating with our friend Jana, Allen and their girls Emma and Leah. It was the first time Sienna went trick or treating. We didn’t go last year because we went to the Halloween festival at Owl’s Head Park. She got the knack of it really quick! She would ring the bell, step back from the door and wait. Sometimes I had to remind the girls to say trick or treat but at least they said a lot of thank yous on their own. Sienna would zoom to the next house and be at the door before Emma and Leah barely left the last house! That cracked me up. She realized that ‘hey, I ring people’s doorbell and they give me candy! How awesome is that?!’ I was half expecting her to ask to go trick or treating the next day but she didn’t. Guess she understood that it’s a one time thing.

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Check out her goods!