v.2

Comments(0)

Friday Sienna’s school had a breakfast with Santa event and the parents were allowed to go (it was a paid event). Breakfast included a bagel, fruit cup, coffee/tea and juice. You get a photo with Santa and a small gift. It was nice enough. Sienna cried when I had to leave as the event ended at 10:30 and she had until 11:25 for school to finish. I had a nice time hanging out with the other parents!

Sienna with Megan

Sienna with Alexis

Eli, Costas and their mom Antoinette

Emily and Olivia with Sienna and Megan

Sarah with her mom and little sis Sam

Sienna with Dariny

Santa is in the building! When I asked Sienna if she wanted to go over and see Santa, she said she wanted to get a bagel instead!

Sienna ate almost the whole bagel!

I was a little disappointed that the “photographer” was using what looked to be a point and shoot camera to take the photos. I wonder how it will come out.

dancing!

Waiting to head back upstairs

Sienna and Natalie

Comments(1)

I totally thought I posted these photos but alas, I did not! It’s from October when we visited the Bronx Zoo’s Boo at the zoo and met up with Tammy, Mark and Baby Zack (we probably should stop calling him that but Sienna calls him that and it sounds so cute!). It was so nice to get some one on one time with them!

They put these pumpkins in a lot of the animal displays for Halloween. I thought it was funny and in my mind, made up a story of how the turtles were freaking out over this big orange thing in their home.

I missed the kiss but Tammy sent me the photo (at the top of the post) that Mark caught. So cute!!

Comments(2)

Here are some crafts I’ve done (mostly for swaps) in the last few months that I haven’t posted yet. Either I was waiting for my partner to receive the swap or it didn’t fit into a specific category. It’s a lot of photos and I don’t know if clumping them all in one is going to bore you or make you glaze over them a little too fast. Just trying to keep up to date!

For the send you handmade specialty (my partner likes Georgia O’Keefe)

Dia De Los Muertos embroidery swap


Paris photos and crochet dishclothes (2 different partners) as part of the Etsy Inspire swap (I posted the other projects under the Silhouette machine post)

Pocket Alien swap (from the Felties book)

Part of the Handmade Holly Jolly Christmas. The glitter is supposed to be orange and it doesn’t look as bright in the pendant as it does in the bottle. I think I know what to do next time to make it brighter. Also for the same swap, since my partner likes orange and flowers, I made these with my Sizzix:

And a magnetic bookmark for the same swap/partner (pattern from Pretty Little Presents):


Photo Scavenger Hunt. I’m bummed that the partner I sent this to has fallen off the swap-bot planet so I won’t be rated and she flaked on her partner.

Part of the Month of Sundays swap (you send 4 sealed envelopes of stuff so your partner gets to open an envelope per Sunday)

Domino Book swap. This was a lot of fun to do! I made a travel theme and used my Silhouette to make the negative. I thought it appropriate to use a photo of me and a camera on the back. This one from Chicago circa 2007 was the only one I could find!

The fabric flowers (tute from Lil Blue Boo), paper flowers (Silhouette) and these 2 carvings were part of the 12 Days of Christmas swap. I’m really digging that tree! Might have to carve one for myself!

Ornament swap. The photo doesn’t really show the metallic thread I used with the regular thread. Free pattern from Colonial Patterns.

These earrings were part of the Holiday Lucky Parcel swap.

This was for the Secret Santa swap in the Nuts for Sewing Group. My partner is a big pen pal writer so I made up this stationery folio for her. And her favorite color is green, if you haven’t guessed!

And last but not least! Not for a swap obviously but I’ve been wanting to do this to Sienna’s room since she outgrew these foam mats we had bought for her when she was a baby. I’m still not sure what to do with the other part of the mats!

next up for her room is a little vinyl jungle by her bed. Wonder how long it will be before I make that!!

Comments(2)

After school yesterday, me and Sienna hopped on the train to go meet Yves for lunch and a tree. I usually take the tree at Rockefeller Center for granted, only going if I happen to be in the neighborhood (I missed it last year entirely!). I thought Sienna would enjoy seeing it. First we took a look at the holiday windows at Lord and Taylor (maybe we’ll check out Macy’s next week.)

There weren’t any ice skaters when we got to Rockefeller Center because the zomboni was out preparing the ice. That was kind of a bummer since the skaters add to the atmosphere.

Family portrait take 1

Take 2! Got it!

Her posing cracked me up!

We also put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. Pretty early for us but it was fun to get into the festive spirit now that Sienna is really getting into the holidays. She told Yves that she loves Christmas! Who can blame her? I even joined in on the decorating of the tree! (I’m usually off doing something else)

All done! Now it’s Santa’s turn!

Here is a video of Sienna “singing” a Christmas Medley. LOL

Christmas Medley from Lisa on Vimeo.

Comments(1)

I decided at the last minute that I wanted to make an advent calendar for Sienna. There are so many cute ideas out there on the web and I could have easily drove myself crazy getting it together. Thankfully, I had my senses about me and decided to keep it really simple. (I’m sure if I had decided to do this a lot earlier, I would have totally done it up! There’s always next year!) I stamped the dates on envelopes in red and green and taped it on the wall by the dining room table. I didn’t put up all the envelopes as I haven’t filled them all yet. I don’t want to put too many candies in the envelopes so I mixed it up with some other stuff. I made things with her 2 current obsessions,(Super Why and Disney Princesses) like magnets and paper dolls. I need to remember to add some Spider-Man and Batman (she picked those books out at the library!) I also included a vinyl sticker for her computer. Yes, HER computer! We set her up with our old 14 inch powerbook. She plays games on the pbs website. I’ll have to take a photo to post. Anyhow, here are a couple of shots.

Getting the envelopes ready

Hung them on the wall. Looked a little lackluster so made this title.

She really enjoyed using the tape to put it up!

Comments(2)

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.

Chowing down!

Sienna and Yves looking at something

Dancing with her teacher, Mrs. D.

The chicken dance with Julian

Saying cheese with Kostas

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.

Comments(1)

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.

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.

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.

I made this shirt for Hailey’s birthday.

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!)

Christmas tags for a swap

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!

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.

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.

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

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!)

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!

Comments(1)

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.

Sienna is playing with Caitlin, Hailey’s older sister

I couldn’t resist this shot!

Sienna shows us her Princess twirl!

Jana with Leah

Emma shows off her crafty creations

A cute photo of Emma and Sienna!

Someone is really enjoying their cupcake!

The birthday girl, Hailey! With her mom Heather.

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.

That blur is Sienna with her classmate, Alexis

Playing with another classmate, Dariny

Sienna gets a tattoo

Pizza time! Sitting next to Alexis

They played lots of games. There are the birthday girls next to Sienna, wearing princess dresses

They got to take home these balloons. Here is another classmate, Megan.

Comments(0)

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!

Comments(3)