The Way We do Things Around Here

A bunch of the same busy busy busy around here.  Keeping sane by keeping busy. Mornings are still pretty much without TV.  We do puzzles still.  Lots of coloring.  Today Otis made a ramp for his cars with the ironing board.  Anything to pass the time!

I've been pretty busy crafty wise.  I had a new consignment order for a place right across from State Fair Park, and seeing as State Fair started today, I had to get my stuff there in a timely fashion.  I also have two other consignment orders to work on, and another Maker Market is coming up September 1st.  So, busy mama.  Ingrid and I made this felt doll for a friend's birthday present.  Ingrid was too funny, "Mom, I have to play with it to make sure it works, okay?"  Apparently it was in working order.

 I went through some old photo books and found some gems.  I love that I'm taking pictures of pictures.  Here's Brendan and I the first summer we met ten years ago.  We are little kids, it's crazy!

 Speaking of little kids, there has been a bounty of little kids around our house the past week or so.  We watched a friend's girls one afternoon, here's Eleanor and Otis looking sneaky.  They found this water fountain (or "bubbler" if you want to get Milwaukee on me) and took turns seeing who could actually get to the water.  It was hilarious.  They're both just a tad too small so they were trying SO HARD to climb up!

 We also went to the zoo with our neighbors the other day.  Here they are at the barn with the cows.  I still can't believe my mom had four kids.  How do you do it?  I have it down pat now to look for each of my kids, but four?  Jeez louise.

 And here I am looking like I have long hair.  WHICH I DO.  Which if you've known me in real life you'll understand how freaking amazing this is.  I have had short hair my whole life.  Except for a short stint in middle school/early high school with a perm and some fierce bangs, I've had a pretty short hair style.  Like boy short most of the time, what feminine people call a pixie cut.  I have always just said it was short, you know, like a boy.  But now that I have money to pay someone amazing to cut my hair in a flattering way, what do you know?  I can grow it out.  It still seems so new and crazy that I can pull it back in a ponytail.  Like a normal girl.  Weird.

Spring Weekend

It's so funny how a little sun and warm weather makes everyone so happy.  Especially when you have shitty weather for most of your year, like we do in the midwest.  This weekend was like all smiles and sunshine and fun, because it was nice out.  We got a lot accomplished!

Saturday morning we went to the zoo.  We saw the baby jaguars, they were playing with their mama, it was pretty cute to watch.  We had a picnic and then the kids crashed in the car on the way home. 

Brendan took off the front door so we could paint it.  By "we" I really mean "HE" since he ended up doing all the work.  I chose the color. 

Our door had a funny panel nailed on the front.  Brendan said hey, I think this is really a six panel door, they just covered it for some reason.  So he took off the panel and found that they had filled in the panels and then nailed a piece of cardboard over it, painted the whole thing an ugly navy blue color or black that faded in the sun, and called it a day.  So...hours later he'd managed to yank all the junk out of the panels and today he sanded and primed and painted.  It's still drying, but we will have a nice six panel, classic red front door soon!

We also got new house numbers.  It's amazing how something so small makes such a big difference!  Our neighbors were like wow, we never even noticed our numbers before but yours look so great!  And the best thing is, they were $6 a piece from Home Depot.  Next up is a new light fixture for outside. 

The kids got their fair share of play, too.  Chalk, tricycles, playing catch with the dads, going to the park, and popsicles.  Not bad for a weekend!

The Cowpokes

Not even October 31st and I'm already Halloweened out.  Last night was Ingrid's school Halloween dance.  So...costume time #1.

 This morning we went with our neighbors/best friends to the zoo, where they were having a Halloween event with Trick or Treat stations and carved pumpkins all over the zoo.  It was fun, but COLD.  So we threw on our winter coats and realized you couldn't even tell the kids were dressed up.  Hmmm.  Costume time #2 was a bust.

Thanks to Jennifer from Oliver's Forest for lending us this amazing vintage Health Tex western shirt!!

 We had a few hours between the zoo and our neighborhood trick or treating, so I came up with a plan to keep them warm and show their costumes.  Which involved many layers of shirts and fleece jackets under their cowboy shirts. And remembering I had a cute vintage Wrangler jean jacket for Otis!  I'm glad I saw it hanging up!  Finally, costume time #3 seemed to work right!

I made Ingrid wear the only pair of tights she owns, which are orange.  She cried that she was going to look like a chicken!

 That was the only picture I think I got of Otis wearing his hat.  For someone who runs around screaming "AT ON! AT ON!" and grabbing everyone's hats, he was not impressed with his cowboy hat.  Oh well, with the bandana on he still looked like a cowboy. 

But now we are exhausted from running around all day and eating too much candy.  Tomorrow there are more festivities, but I don't think I can handle a costume time #4.  I'm done.

 

Bay View Bash

This weekend was Bay View Bash, yet another street fair with tons of beer, music, and assorted junk to look at.  We went with our neighbors and immediately found the bounce house, the only reason Ingrid wanted to go!  Along with the bounce houses, they had bean bag toss games, mini golf, a place to make your own buttons.

 And they had a place where you could get a tattoo!  Otis got an anchor with a mermaid.  He is tough.  Rogan, our neighbor and Ingrid's best bud, is obsessed with Spiderman, and of course chose a spider.  Ingrid got a puppy.  She didn't like it, she made me take it off as soon as we got home.

It was kinda trashy, lots of junky things for sale and a LOT of drunk old people cramming the street.  At four in the afternoon.  It is Milwaukee, after all.  But nonetheless, it's a fun way to spend a couple hours on an otherwise boring Saturday. 

My Weekend Alone. And then Labor Day Crazies.

Saturday morning Brendan took both kids with him to the cottage.  I stayed home.  I seriously felt like this:

I had SO MUCH FUN being by myself.  I went to the bathroom alone, I finished my own food without anyone coming up asking for a bite.  I cleaned my house and it stayed clean.  It was amazing.  I rearranged furniture in the living room and Ingrid's room.  I made the kids new buntings for their rooms.  I came to the realization that I will never paint Ingrid's room, so I may as well just deal with the green since her stuff goes.

 My days were so relaxing.  I could read, watch whatever TV I wanted.  I went to the antique shop, I had dinner and drinks with a friend, I took naps whenever I wanted.  It was so nice to catch up on me.  I hate when people talk "me time" but for real, after dealing with kids nonstop for days on end, it was really quite nice to remember I used to love reading on the couch in a cleaned living room, and that a bowl of Ben and Jerry's is a nice way to end the day.  (Okay, I admit, there was no bowl, it was right out of the carton...)

And then they came home.  I was immediately put back into my place as mom, doer/cleaner/helper/fixer.  No more relaxer.  They are so lucky they are cute, they don't even know!  We had friends over for Labor Day and cooked out and ran around in a sprinkler and tried to stay cool on the hot humid day.  It was super fun.  Otis did not want me taking pictures, but I thought this was a good representation of how crabby he can be.  He was yelling at me not to take his picture.  HA!

And now we have one more day until Ingrid starts school and we have no more slow paced mornings, where we have to be out the door by 7:30 instead of getting to lay around in our pjs.  Bummer.

New Pals

More of the same summery goodness lately, made even better because we have made friends with the neighbors across the street.  They have a little boy six mo. younger than Ingrid and one just a couple months younger than Otis.  It's been instant BFFs around here! 

Today after nap time we had them over to play.  I'd made this paint I saw on Pinterest, which did not really turn out like paint so much.  It's simply flour, water, and food coloring, but all I had on hand was whole wheat flour, next time I'd try regular flour and hope for a better consistency.  But all in all it was a nice messy project for the kids on a hot day.

We had a pool of cold water ready to wash them up, and of course, popsicles.

The other day we stayed inside for the hot weather, and the AC must have been cool enough because we baked cookies.  I'd gotten some cookie cutters from Ikea that Ingrid desperately wanted to use, so we made moose sugar cookies.  They were delish.