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Or are you just happy to see me?

HA! Sorry couldn’t help that! “Uncle Peeder” came over last weekend and we had a BBQ. Both Sienna and Skippy were very happy to see him. Poor Pete kept getting harassed by Sienna to play with her. We told her after he finishes eating so practically every 5 minutes she kept asking if he was done yet. Fortunately, Pete got a kick out of her harassment. That’s why we love him! They played with chalk  in the driveway and Skippy sat right on a drawing, hence the pink butt! Too funny!

Somehow, Sienna convinced Pete to mimic her running down the driveway (those are bowling pins under their arms). I missed the going down the driveway but I caught the coming back up:

Yayayayayayayayaya from Lisa on Vimeo.

I made basil pesto pasta salad (basil fresh from our CSA!) and salsa (heirloom tomatoes fresh from our CSA!) and apple potato salad (apples fresh from our CSA! and potatoes from the supermarket). I used rice pasta for the salad and it did not do well cold. The pesto also did not have enough salt so it stunk all around (thankfully, it heated up well and Yves loved it and took it to lunch the whole week!) I also made some pickled cucumbers with kirby cukes we got from the CSA. They were a tad too vinegary but I thought it tasted well in the burger.

We went upstairs for the dessert portion. Pete bought donuts from our favorite donut shoppe and I also made a blueberry peach crisp and I asked Pete to bring ice cream as well.

Pete did well to wear Sienna out because she really did fall asleep on him! (Pete was pretending for the photo’s sake)

Nate met Pete at our house so they could walk to Williamsburg! It’s 10 miles and Pete is warming up for his 12 miles walk for the Jimmy Fund Walk he’s doing in a couple of weeks. So he had to leave Sienna sleeping on the sofa. We tried to wake her up to say goodbye but she just didn’t budge. Wouldn’t you know it, she woke up fully a few minutes after he left and when she learned he had gone, she was so sad, she cried!

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I can’t believe it is already September! The summer seemed to fly by and in a couple of weeks, Sienna begins school! It’s just nursery school for 3 hours a day but this will be the first time she is away from me for so long. This is just the beginning. Before I know it, she will be in real school all day!! I can’t even imagine. At any rate, this post isn’t about Sienna! Here are some of the swaps I sent during the summer!

A shaker postcard swap. My partner likes lighthouses so I dug through my archives and found this photo I took when Yves and I went to Washington State right before Sienna was born.

An owl stuffie from the Stitch Fall 09 magazine. I’ve already made the raccoon and the chipmunk is the last one in the trio!

The owl stuffie was part of the Woodland Profile swap. I made my partner an owl pouch, woodland creatures glass magnets, hedgehog keychain, and a mushroom keychain.

I’ve been experimenting with some glitter and rub ons (print my own rub ons that I got for my birthday from Yves). I made the top one into a keychain for a keychain swap and the bottom one is a pendant for a WTA in one of the groups I’m in.

Bird pc for a mail art group

I joined a swap to make Red flowers from this pattern. I had so much fun making them that I joined the swap to make orange ones. I almost did not want to send the orange ones away. (Unfortunately I’m still waiting for the orange swap from my partner and it’s past the due date. argh!)

We had 3 partners for a handmade earring swap. The above 2 sets were for someone I knew personally!

These 2 sets were for the host of the swap, who likes flying pigs (I had her for a partner before!)

It was hard to make this last set for the last partner because she really didn’t indicate her likes in her profile. Still waiting to hear if she likes these!

This was for a Sublime Stitching embroidery swap. I had bought these Aunt Martha paint pens thinking I could use them to color in the patterns (I see such beautiful coloring by so many people!) They didn’t turn out the way I thought (it’s supposed to be used for outlining, why would you want to do that?!) Anyway, I figured out how to use them, which I’ll show in another post. Here I used my gocco fabric paint for the brown and used the glitter paint from the same Aunt Martha order.

These notecards were for the Hand Carved Stamp group. I just finished reading Water for Elephants and was inspired to do a circus theme. I carved the circus tent, CIRCUS, elephant and ringmaster. I even had some clown scrapbook paper!

And finally, for the woodlands wearable swap (I’m finally happy with the photos) ! I made my partner a bunny pendant necklace and a bird bracelet. I’ve gotten a lot of uses out of the woodland graphics I got from Etsy seller Plan F Studios and the bird is from Piddix.

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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!

Holding hands

Stingray

Shark!

So many fishes!

Look at that fish!

Surprisingly Sienna wasn’t that into the penguins!

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

I love that I caught the light rays in this shot

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

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.

She’s ready!

I know it’s blurry, I was just snapping away!

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!)

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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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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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

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!

(it’s too bad you can’t see the glitter in the photo. Believe me, it’s there!)

I used cotton fabric for this flower to add a little bit of color

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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!

I think these are gazelles but I can’t be sure!

“Melvin” (we were on the lookout for the Madagascar Movie animals)

I love the look she has here at the turtles

“King Julien”,”Maurice” and “Mort”

Climbing up the rope web

I think Sienna’s favorite part was the petting zoo!

She was having a conversation with the alpaca!

This chicken in the tree cracked me up!

Sienna big ears

When I tried to show Sienna this cool porcupine, she replied “We don’t have time to look at that”

I love the contrast of the bird with it’s neutral surroundings!

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. 🙁

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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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.

Erin made yummy cucumber sandwiches and antipasto for lunch!

Time for another outfit change for the dance party!

Waiting for dance instructions

Sienna liked this hat!

Mikaela gets in on the hat wearing!

And sharing necklaces too!

Water Bottle singing (it was actually an exercise video so MK was copying the moves!)

All tired from dancing, a super quick game of Candyland because Sienna was getting tired.

Mikaela was sad because it was time to end the playdate.

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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.

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.

Here is Sienna calling after the swans:

Yves with gorilla on his shoulders:

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!

It seems as if Sienna is saying, you’re coming into my mouth steak satay!

I forgot the name of my dish but it was basically chicken with mixed veggies:

Yves’ Pad Thai:

And we even got dessert! Coconut custard!

Everything was yummy!

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Continuing on my t-shirt kick, I made one for Sienna. I was excited to combine some stenciling and heat vinyl on her shirt. I don’t usually do step by steps but I thought it would be a good reference. I used Sienna’s favorite color, pink!

For the stenciling, I used one of the fabric sprays I made with the Earth Safe Finishes product. I wrote a post about it here (I have since gotten some tips from ESF for a truer red, more experimenting to come!)  For the vinyl, I used heat vinyl I bought from Nick at Craft Vinyl earlier this year. He is really an awesome vendor! My vinyl arrived the same week (I ordered regular vinyl, glow in the dark vinyl and the heat vinyl.) I was really excited to try the heat vinyl (initially with my Sizzix to cut) and was totally bummed when the instructions say not to cut through the protective layer of the vinyl. Drat! All the fancy digital die cutters can do that (none of which I have but feel free to buy me one!)  but certainly not a Sizzix machine. I tried looking online for some helpful tips or videos. There was nothing. I finally wrote to Nick and he asked me to call him on his 800 number. He was so very nice and informed me that it was ok to cut through that layer and just use my nails to take it off that layer. I was still reluctant so had done a test on a scrap shirt. It was easy to come off! And if you don’t have nails, you can also put it through the wash and it will come off there too or at least loosens it up to make it super easy to come off. What a relief!

For the heat vinyl, I printed out her name on my computer, cut those letters out and then traced it on the heat vinyl. Because of the plastic protective layer on the vinyl there were no worries of my marker transferring to the shirt.

I did an initial layout:

Then started spraying! I used ESF’s tackifier to keep the stencil down. Stencil is from The Crafter’s Workshop. I learned while doing my test shirt to do the spraying in layers

and to dab off the excess between each spray

the spraying is done!

Now on to the vinyl!

I’m not very patient so did all the letters at the same time. Here is the teflon sheet you should use over it and then iron. You don’t need to iron for very long but make sure you keep it moving! Let it cool before peeling the protective layer. If you see the vinyl coming off when you try peeling it, don’t worry, just iron it some more.

You can see the layer that I peeled off. I may keep them to use as templates or stencils for future projects.

All finished!

And Sienna was kind enough to try it on and pose for me!

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My birthday was 2 weeks ago and I’m finally getting around to showing the eats!

Yves took me out the Saturday before my birthday. Since I didn’t satisfy my seafood craving while in Florida, I thought going to Randazzo’s would fill the need. I believe my dad took me there when I was younger (although he doesn’t remember) and I figured that it must be a somewhat decent place in order to still be in business. Unfortunately, I was not really impressed. To be fair, I wasn’t very hungry since we went out for lunch to Jay and Lloyd’s earlier that day and Yves isn’t a big seafood person so I didn’t get to sample too much. We shared fried calamari (they didn’t bring a lemon with it! What’s up with that?), Yves got a crab cake sandwich and I got stuffed filet with fried zucchinis. All I could say was eh. I am willing to go back and try some other dishes.

For my actual birthday my parents took us out to a new place in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. I don’t recall the name but it used to be Ming Gee’s on 6th Avenue and around 63rd. Sadly, not impressed here either. We got peking duck to start and it was a bit chewy. Sienna didn’t care for it. The other dishes were Japanese style short ribs (I ended up being the only one eating this!), the usual Hong Kong style steak,  sauteed snow pea greens and fried rice (that took forever to arrive!). It wasn’t terrible but we definitely had better. Probably won’t be going back there anytime soon.

Later in the week, Joy took me and Sienna out for lunch. I was still trying to satisfy my seafood craving and read that Rocco’s Calamari was good. When we got there, the gates were down as they were closed for vacation! Joy’s suggestion of Spartan Souvlaki turned out to be a great back up. As per usual, me and Joy ordered too much food! I ordered a cheese pie for Sienna and then we got grilled octopus and a salad to share. I ordered the Greek sausage pita with fries while Joy got the gyro sandwich with greek fries. I think Sienna filled up on pita bread and feta cheese because she didn’t even try the cheese pie plus she probably was leery of us as we got her to try the octopus and she didn’t like it. The octopus was absolutely DELICIOUS!And it didn’t matter that Sienna didn’t even eat the cheese pie because me and Joy chowed down on it! It’s made fresh to order! Feta and ricotta cheese in a flaky phyllo dough. MMMMMMM. The greek fries come with lemon, feta cheese and oregano. YUM! We didn’t finish the salad and Joy ended up taking one bite out of her sandwich before calling it quits. I only ate the insides of my sandwich and was quite satisfied. I liked the place so much, I went back the next night with Yves! So these photos are from that night.

This salad came with Yves’ dish! I was expecting a small scoop on the side of his main dish. We were able to share this.

Yves enjoyed the octopus as much as I did and asked why I ordered the small plate.

Yves got the sausage and unfortunately did not care for it. There was something in the sausage that he didn’t like and that I did not taste in mine the previous day. Plus they didn’t cut it up like that in my sandwich. I wonder if they were different, well they must have been because mine didn’t taste like this did. Hmmmm…

Every Saturday in the summer they have a pig roast. When we arrived, we saw the pig roasting outside in the front. I didn’t take a photo of it because I thought I would take one when we left. It was done by the time we left! Just the head was laying there.

Oops! I totally forgot to take a photo of the greek style fries! Oh well!

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I discovered Earth Safe Finishes from the Totally Creative online magazine. ESF makes environmentally friendly, VOC free paints and varnishes. Now, I am all about being green and using less toxic stuff but to be honest, what drew me most to this product was the ability to make my own paints/sprays in my choice of colors. I ordered their green gift starter kit that comes with 3 colorants (red, yellow and blue), a bottle of fabric magic, acrylic paint base and ultra thick. I added a bottle of tackifier and a bottle of white and black colorants (to make sure I have endless color possibilities!). It came within the week! Wowee!

I was especially excited to use their fabric magic for spraying using stencils! I do enjoy using my ColorArtz (as seen here and here) but the smell can really get to you! And with Sienna around the house, I always feel guilty using it. I bought a dozen 4 oz spray bottles and went about mixing all different colors. I even tested them before putting them to use. Here is a scrap shirt I sprayed with 5 colors I made. The pink, green and orange were mixed and obviously the blue and yellow were not. I put between 5 and 10 drops for each color. This is before washing:

and after washing:

Not as vibrant (which is to be expected) but you know, not too shabby either! Also, the lighting isn’t exactly the same in both photos so this is not really scientific. I was heavy handed with my spraying so when I lifted off the stencil, the paint slid off the stencil and onto my shirt. I’ll have to remember to clean up the excess spray next time.

My first really project was for my new earring display so I used the acrylic paint base and red. I was really looking for a true red but didn’t get it. I guess because the acrylic paint was white. The bottle says you only need a couple of drops but I ended up putting a lot of drops in. I don’t remember how many but definitely more than a few. I still didn’t get the red I wanted but the end result wasn’t a bad color. That was a little perturbed about it and not sure how to get a real red. I’ll have to keep experimenting.

For my next project, I wanted to make fabric paint for stenciling the robot on Nico’s shirt as seen here. The “recipe” called for water, fabric magic, the colorant and ultra thick.
I followed the exact measurements but look how watery it was! I’m thinking maybe next time I’ll try less water or maybe the acrylic base instead of water? Hmmm…

I don’t think it would have done very well with the stencil so I did not use it. I saved it so I can do a test with it on a scrap shirt. I did use their tackifier as a temporary adhesive for the stencil and it works great for that! I am loving it and can see using it a lot. Maybe I can throw away that temporary spray adhesive that smells and sprays everywhere and gets everything around your project sticky!

I also used the fabric spray on a t-shirt I made for Sienna that I will post soon. I look forward to experimenting more with these products and the ability to make whatever colors I want on a whim will make me keep on using them.

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