What to do with Jenga Blocks

First I was inspired by this post over at Doodle Craft.  Then I asked my husband if he thought we'd ever play drinking Jenga again (this was more of a nicety, I knew the answer was no).  Yesterday I proceeded to make up my own version of what I wanted it to be and voila!  I ended up with this

I hot glued the Jenga pieces together in stacks of 12 and 4 across.

I drew in portraits in the frames with a Sharpie.  Some of them are hard to see from this far away, but I have some dogs, kitties, hiding girls and just silly people.  :)

Some of the Jenga pieces set a little off so when I covered my scrapbook paper with Mod Podge there were little pockets of air at the edges.  No worries though.  :)

I put on two coats of Mod Podge, stapled long lengths of black ribbon to the back and hung it up!

This piece now accompanies my other Mod Podge project....

For the white pictures I bought small wooden squares at Hobby Lobby, painted them white, laid the pictures down with Mod Podge, painted the names on them and then put two more coats of Mod Podge on the top and edges.  :)

Hometown Olympics

To celebrate the Summer Olympics I thought it would be a lot of fun to put together our own mini Olympics.  We started by putting together pictures of the Olympic rings and wrote "My Olympic Dream" on it and then made a couple of pictures of what they would want to compete in.

I made medals out of bake clay and Monster Bean painted 3 gold ones and 3 silver ones yesterday.  This morning before we headed out I made up our board of events.

First Event: Hula Hoop Jump

At first I had them placed several feet out but when I had a tough time jumping to the first one we figured we'd revamp it :D

Second Event: Soccer ball kick

I originally thought Little Miss would have the upper hand on this one but Monster Bean gave some strong kicks.  :)  It then of course turned into a run around the park kicking the soccer ball game :)

Third event: tee-ball

Monster Bean has been hitting really well this week so I thought he'd have this one.  Little Miss surprised us with a really strong hit :D

Medal Ceremony

As we handed out the medals the hubby jokingly started singing O Canada :)

Happy Olympics!

Weekend Wrap

Another weekend wedding out of town!  :)  Even though I brought the camera it didn't come out during the wedding (we were late) or the reception (I forgot).  Good thing technology has graced our phones with cameras, albeit crappy ones.

We had some time before meeting a friend for lunch so we took the kids to this super cool park.  I admit that whenever we go to MN I'm always green with envy at how awesome their parks are.  I wish we lived there so I could take the kids there all the time.

I was wrongfully under the impression that I would be able to sit for the 20 minutes we were there and so I didn't change my shoes.   Sure broke in my nice Betsey Johnson's though.  :D

Hanging out at the Arboretum for the reception.  This is the anthill sculpture out front.  You can't see it very well but there is a queen ant on top and a couple inside.

 

Brother and sister hug in front of the flowers

 

I did more driving on this trip because I didn't have any knitting!  Shame on me.  But I felt better knowing that by Monday shiny new yarn would be waiting for me in my mailbox.

I'll be making socks out of the top two

And this is becoming....

 

...this!

yes, it doesn't look like much now, but it will one day grow into a real shawl.  :D  I originally bought the yarn for a Jared Flood shawl, but then when I looked at the yarn and at the pattern, I realized I needed worsted weight and I have sport (which is half the weight).  After much perusing and lots of queuing I picked The Crow Waltz Shawl.  The cool thing about this shawl is that you knit the border first and then pick up the stitches to fill it in.

Until next time!  :)

April Wrap up

It hasn't hit  me like a ton of bricks yet that in 19 days (O.o!) there will be no more school, it will officially be summer, it will be three months of children 24/7, it will be three months before one starts kindergarten and the other begins her foray into the education system and three months of what I hope to be some sort of calming down.  I mean summer is all about relaxing, right?  (I hear you laughing in the background :D )

I keep thinking that summer is going to be filled with nonstop activity but really...it's pretty tame in comparison to some people I know.  A few days to celebrate my cousin's wedding,Vacation Bible School, a week of camping, my SIL's wedding...not too much traveling and insanity. 

As you know last week I finished up a sweater and needed something to occupy my hands on the drive out of town Saturday.  I had one leftover skein of Knit Picks Full Circle wool that was just begging to be made into a hat.  I figured why not.  I had already used its other sad leftover half skein to make a Cabbage Patch sweater (I will put the bare bones instructions in another post).

Awhile back I had knit Tiny Owl Knits pattern Orchids and Fairy Lights.  It's a beautiful pattern and I just didn't have enough yarn to do it justice.  It worked okay, but I think I only did half the amount of repeats needed and so it is more of a beret than a beanie.

Original

New version

Looks way better, right?

So now I have no guilt about throwing myself into an intense shawl pattern :D  I also have heard from my friend about what kind of baby sweater she'd prefer and so I'll be peeking around on KnitPicks for a washable yarn since it'd be silly to give her a newborn sweater that will felt :D  Oh!  And I finally got a better picture of my last sweater.  With buttons!  :D

Kid Craft

This afternoon I decided that we needed to make something for St Patty's Day.  While digging around online I found this cute idea for a planter full of three leaf clovers!  And I really wish I remember where I found it, I was using the hubby's computer  :(

But here we are in action

Making our clovers

Taped to our bendy straws

 Our finished product! 

Lastly, because I can't resist a sweet picture of my  kiddo's hanging out together, especially reading!