v.2

As promised, the last installment of our Myrtle Beach vacation! We ventured away from the beach one day and went to check out one of the many shopping centers/entertainment places. We picked Broadway on the Beach. We really didn’t want to do much shopping so we went to a little tiny amusement park called Pavilion Nostalgia Park. You could really feel the heat when you are away from the nice ocean breeze so it was HOT!

Sienna really liked this ride because it whipped around the bend. She went on it at least 2 times.

She claims to have enjoyed the ride although her face doesn’t really tell it.

She rode several other rides as well as this train ride but I will spare you!

Yves being silly

Feeding the fish and boy the fish were hungry! See:


Did I mention that it was hot? So someone got grumpy!

I’m sure she is smiling under there!

The sun wore us out so we ordered delivery! It wasn’t bad!

The next morning we DID NOT GO TO WAFFLE HOUSE! Gasp! HA! You can’t find banana walnut pancakes at Waffle House!

Fried Green Tomatoes at Mr. Fish. We came here twice because the food was very delicious!

Shrimp Po Boy

I guess Sienna is really hungry!

Outside our hotel, there was a cute little area with tables and swinging chairs.

We checked out a playground a few blocks away.

Checking out another area of Myrtle Beach, by a pier.

Back to Mr. Fish on our last night. Soft Shell Crab and fish and chips.

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The long waited part 2 of vacation is finally up! I realized I do have a lot of photos from Myrtle Beach so part 2 will be divided into 2 parts. I promise not to wait as long to do part 2 of part 2 as I did to post part 2! 🙂

Our Room at Camelot by the Sea. We stayed in a 1 bedroom. Top left shows the bedroom with the front door. Top right shows the kitchen which leads into the living room (bathroom is opposite the frig). Bottom left is the living area with balcony. Bottom right is the couch in the living area.

The lazy river! Our first time experiencing a lazy river. This was the first and last time we tried it. I thought it was fun although I was giggling the whole time I was floating around it. I guess because I don’t know how to swim and I’m not familiar with that floating feeling is what was making me giggle. The water was pretty warm. I think Sienna rather be in the water than floating on it.

Pool! There was the lazy river and 2 pools and 2 jacuzzis (one of each partially inside and one of each fully outside), and a wading pool with a water sprinkler. This was the inside pool. I don’t have any action shots of us enjoying the jacuzzi because I was mostly in the jacuzzi enjoying it!

Here are views of the outside pools from our balcony. The blue awning was over the bar.

Beach time! A self portrait. LOL

View of the hotel from the beach

Food! A sampling of some of the food we ate.

Waffle from Waffle House. This is Yves’ waffle. I don’t put butter on mine. Actually, I don’t usually get a waffle at waffle house! HA! We only went 2 times.

Our thai dinner after our first full day.

Our 2nd time at the River Cafe. We came here the first night we got there. Sienna really liked this place because you can throw the peanut shells on the floor and she got doritos with her hot dog.

After a full day of fun, this is what we found on the sofa:

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Videos that Yves took!

Photos and another video in my previous post!

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My little girl “graduated” from Nursery school last Thursday (a lot earlier than I had thought!) Her celebration included her class marching in (to the tune of “When the Saints go marching in” LOL), singing and calling out their designated colors (hers was white), obtaining their “diploma” from the principal and then marching out (to the same tune.) So very cute! Then there was cake and refreshments afterwards. It happened to be one of the hottest and muggiest days (95 degrees!) of the year but the sweat factor wasn’t bad. My dad came but it was too early for my mother (9:30 am).

Sienna got to sing 2 songs (most of the kids sang 1)
Singing Twinkle twinkle little star with Megan, Natalie and Abby.
Singing Puff the Magic Dragon with William, Abby, Megan and Kosta.
Getting her diploma!

Walking over to Pre-K

The cake

Here is a video I took of them as they were walking off the stage. Hopefully Yves will post a video of Sienna singing her songs soon.

Sienna officially “graduates” from Lisa on Vimeo.

Sienna with Mrs. V, the assistant teacher

Sienna sitting on the lap of her teacher, Mrs. D and Mrs. V.

Sienna and Darany (her and Megan would fight over Sienna!)

Sienna and Lexi (I find out the scoop from Lexi!)

Sienna and Sarah. I don’t know Sarah too well since she is a full day student.

Sienna and Abby. I overheard Abby tell Sienna she likes her. Awww!

Sienna and Caius. Caius always gives Sienna gum after school.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get photos with the rest of her classmates! There is the last birthday party next week so she will get to see her old classmates another time. I’m happy to report that Sienna got into the public school that was our first choice. We registered earlier this week and met another little girl that will be in her class. Thankfully, they started playing with each other as me and her mom were filling out forms. I’m hoping that would get her excited about starting at a new school. Fingers crossed!

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I’m going to separate our vacation to Myrtle Beach into 3 parts. Part 1 will be the drive down, part 2 will be the actual Myrtle Beach vacation and part 3 will be the drive home. So here is part 1!

Yves’ plan was to leave at 8 am on Saturday and we actually left on time!!! Since the drive to Myrtle Beach is supposed to take 12 hours (and that’s without stops), we were going to stop somewhere past the 6 hour mark and stay in a hotel. I sat in the back with Sienna since this was going to be such a long trip. Things went pretty smoothly. We stopped at a rest stop after 2 hours and then for lunch after about 4 hours. We somehow ended up at Frank’s Diner in Jessup, MD. Pretty unassuming place and kinda happy we didn’t end up at a chain (we took care of that on the way home! LOL). It’s an old diner that smelled like old people when you walked in and even had mini jukeboxes at each table! There were only a few tables occupied but like 6 waitresses. Sienna got a grilled cheese and both me and Yves got patty melts with different bread and cheeses. Something must have happened in the kitchen because our food took awhile to come out. The waitress apologized to us and even when Sienna and Yves’ dish came out, mine took another 5 minutes to come out. I do have to say, tho, that it was pretty good!

With the help of our ipad2, we found a Hampton Inn in Colonial Heights, VA to stay in. Although it was not really super necessary to use the ipad to find a hotel, it sure helped us find one with free wifi (which most hotels offer), LCD tvs (which not every hotel offers), indoor pool and vacancies without getting out of the car! Come on, that’s cool, right? We almost picked a hotel with the tube tvs, which would not have worked with the apple tv we brought along, so quickly found one with the LCD. It ended up not working anyway because their wifi was not so high speed. We relaxed a bit in the pool and jacuzzi (woohoo!) before having dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. Yes, a chain but unfortunately, I did not have the energy to try and find a local place. Surprisingly, the food was pretty tasty! We even got dessert! They had one of 4 mini cupcakes (2 red velvet and 2 carrot cake), which was perfect for us!

The next morning we ate the breakfast the hotel offered and off we went! Sienna decided to take over my camera and wanted to take photos too, just like mommy and daddy! Here are her feet:

Find her set of photos on my flickr page here.

We had a planned stop at South of the Border, a place I really wanted to check out! We were going to even eat lunch there but after some investigating, decided we would rather stop somewhere before that to eat (reviews were pretty bad for the restaurants). I used my ipad to find a restaurant and found rave reviews at the restaurant we ended up at. Well, what a disappointment! It wasn’t horrible but wasn’t all that. I can’t even remember the name or where it was!

Anyway, we made it!

It was a pretty hot day so we didn’t stay that long here. If it wasn’t for Sienna, me and Yves probably could have spent a couple of hours walking around the place taking photos! But that’s ok, we got some nice photos.

and some ice cream!

(You can see more in my flickr set!)

Here’s another Shot by Sienna photo that I would like to end this post with. After South of the Border when we were back in the car. Cracks me up!

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I’ve been creating! I’ve been creating! I just haven’t been good about posting them up in a timely manner so while I am on vacation (Myrtle Beach, SC) I thought I would catch up a little. Here is what I have made in April!

These were for the altered bottlecap pendant. You were only required to make 1 but I was inspired and made my partner 2. The top one was used with some aluminum roses and an old finding from a grab bag of vintage items I got from a flea market ages ago. The bottom one I painted a blue flower white and used alcohol ink to color it but when I diamond glazed it, it lightened the color but it totally works! The L was made using faux enamel.

These items were made for a different kind of Easter basket for the Zombies, Aliens, Monsters, Vampires and Robots group. Bela and Frank are rubber stamps that I stamped on glitter and glued on a Tim Holtz fragment. The stuffie is obviously a vampire rabbit. I wanted to show the back because I also made the tail. I finally used my Clover pom pom maker!
I think these were made for an Easter lucky parcel, I can’t remember! I printed out the Easter vintage tags and used my Silhouette to cut them out. I made 2 magnets with a Tim Holtz fragment and a bottlecap.

These were made for part of a Mother’s Day mini lucky parcel. One of my partners favorites is the Addams Family. I saw Morticia and Gomez earrings on her Etsy favs so used that for inspiration for the top one (bad photo!). I bought the tv bezels a while ago and finally had an opportunity to use it!

I signed up for a swap NOT on swap-bot! {gasp!} It was a crafty peep swap on Strumpet’s craft blog. My partner likes flowers and bright colors so I ran with that! For the card, I used my Silhouette to cut out the flower. The felt flowers (Sizzix die that gets used a lot!) as magnets and an A heart pendant. I also made her these following 2 pendants but will talk about it below.

I discovered this new technique on Lisa Pavelka’s website and wanted to give it a go so these 2 were actually “testers” which turned out to be my favorites over the other ones below. I especially love how the glitter came out in the moon burst zipper pull probably because I was just being free with it.

The glitter really sparkles but I took a bad photo of this. This was the main pendant I made for my partner and funny enough, my least favorite. I had to put a lot of layers on this and I still wasn’t completely happy. Oh well, at least my partner got the other pendants and felt magnets.

Using the same technique, I made this for my MIL for Mother’s Day.

I made this one because I like the graphic. I still have it so may just keep it for myself.

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Easter turned out to be a beautiful day so we had our first BBQ and dyed eggs outside. It was a nice day!

Getting started with the dye kit. I know I could have made my own dyes but the kit was cheap and a no brainer.

That was the egg Sienna dyed in school and she was fake eating it because she doesn’t eat eggs.

I think the colors came out nice! Sienna’s playing with them here.

Skippy is saying “what’s going on up there?”

The chocolate lollipop was from school and the Godiva was from my Aunt Helen (they were super yummy!)

Wha?

Inside the Godiva

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I joined a stuffed mini book swap last month and it was so much fun! Basically, it’s a 3×3 book you make out of a 12×12 piece of scrapbook paper and makes 3 pockets to put things in. I really put a lot of work into it and I believe my partner enjoyed it. Her profile said she likes flowers so I kinda ran with that theme!

All Tied Up. I glittered a chipboard frame for the front

Pretty Thick book!

Front and Back covers with a made with love charm

White embossed the flowers and painted it with twinkling H20s (sadly the photo doesn’t really show the shimmer)

Used some glittery stickers and glued a fragment on top of a Georgia O’Keefe flower I printed and stamped cherish

My favorite spread! I used the nine fold explosion and used floral wire to put the flower in the middle. I really like how it came out! The flower was actually sent in my mini book from my partner!

I used copper embossing powder for this stamp and used distree stains to color in the flowers

Another flower pop up that was so fun and easy to make!

Final spread. Had to use my silhouette at some point! I used pop up dots for the flower.

The stuff I included in the pockets. Some paper flowers, metal flowers and the links on how to make the 2 pop ups.

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Here’s the 2nd in a series of food posts. I went to dim sum with my parents and aunts in Queens on the first day of Sienna’s Spring Break. I forgot to take note of the name of the restaurant but they were having a weekday special where all the dim sum was $2. Needless to say, I stuffed myself and I actually did not eat much dinner later that day! There were the usual standard fare (none of Yves’ favorite-funkore-probably not the correct spelling!) and then a few different items. Chow fun noodles, fried chicken (never actually saw fried chicken at dim sum before), some crab meat dumpling wrapped in rice and muscles with a cheesy like topping. Everything was pretty tasty.

Chow Fun

“I’m gonna eat you don tat”

Fried Chicken

Crabmeat with rice, this was eh

Mussels with cheese like topping. The mussels were good, the topping not so much.

Sienna thanking Aunt Helen for the stuffed dog (among other toys she got from her!)

I really dug these lamps

Sienna asking who I was taking a photo of!

The next night was date night! We dropped Sienna off at grandma’s and grandpa’s and headed over to The Burger Bistro. You get to choose every aspect of your burger, from the bun and meat and cheese and toppings! I was tempted to get the lamb, as I do love lamb burgers, but since it was our first time there, thought it better to see how they make their beef burgers. We started off with one of the special appetizers, frito pie. Basically nachos with frito chips instead of nacho chips. The waiter really played up the dish but it fell short of expectations. Oh well. Thankfully the burgers made up for it! It was huge! I got beef with cheddar, portobello mushroom and bacon on a whole wheat bun with a side of frizzled onions. It was very good. My only complaint was that the bacon were crumbled into bits. I much prefer they were kept in strips. I’m not sure what Yves got and I didn’t get a good photo of his burger. Definitely beef and probably bleu cheese!

This didn’t warrant the $7 price tag and I hate when places use sliced cheese melted over nachos!

Can you tell how huge that burger was? (I did not eat breakfast the next morning!)

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Here’s the completed box that you can see Sienna start painting here. Yves requested a box with a Spider Man theme to put his watches in. I could only find this wooden box with a mirror on top at the craft store so I thought putting a web on top would be cool. I used my Silhouette to cut the vinyl. I attempted to use the transfer tape but it actually made it harder!

Here’s the thank you card I made for Stan for sending Sienna the Wonder Woman doll and Green Goblin that made her so happy, as you can see here. I should have thought to take a photo of the writing Sienna did inside the card. I told her to write I love my Wonder Woman doll, love Sienna. It was all over the place so I also wrote in a translation. LOL

Some cards I made at a Stamping Meetup based on alcohol inks:

The butterflies were made with soda cans cut with a Sizzix die and the circle in the last card is a CD.

Some recent swaps:

This was for the silly greeting a flat item swap. My flat item was the mustache on a stick so I made the card for Something on a stick day (which was March 28th)

I carved this owl stamp copied from a certain popular stamp company catalog. I don’t remember what I made it for! I think it was for a group forum Winner Takes All.

For the Handmade keychain swap.

For the card wallet swap. My partner likes the V monogram so I used my Sizzix to cut out the letter. I also made her some swap cards and put them in.

For the pendant swap in the Zombies, Aliens, Vampires, Monsters and Robots group.

A pendant I stamped, which was partly for the Spring Lucky Parcel swap

These 2 were part of the Eggy Spring Swap with a twist. The twist is that you have to put 6 little treats in eggs or egg shaped. I ended up making felt egg pockets. We got 2 partners so there is one for each. The top are felt brooches and the bottom are upcycled baby food bottle caps turned magnets.

This was for the Woodland Creature with a Moustache swap. I also made the little pom pom tail.

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