Three Teenagers in the House

Oh my. I have crossed the line into "older-ness" today by having my third child turn thirteen.

If you live in my house and it is your birthday, you get to choose all of the family meals. You also get to skip school if it's a school day.

For part of his birthday gift, we visited the Science Center. We spent a fair amount of time in the "Why the Sky" area, then finished up in the "When Things Get Moving" area. He proclaims a love for dominos, as shown in this video, which was the last of three domino chains that he made. His older brother assisted with this one.

Card inspiration hits again

I publicly announced my birthday this year, and with a birthday comes cards. Maria gave me this handmade card on the right. My brother wrote something obnoxious about my age inside, so I won't show that part of the card.

Last night, during a thirty minute wait to start a movie (Hoosiers) laid down by my husband, I made an inspired card, the one on the left. You can see where her card inspired mine -- the happy birthday strip of paper, the brad, the package with ribbon. But I had no patterned paper (hers was really nice). I stamped my own pattern on the background (it says 'friend to friend'), and stamped 'happy birthday,' too. letter. by. letter. I wasn't really careful with the 'a' stamp, so while I cleaned it on the scrubby pad, the rubber tore away from the foam. I used a glue dot to repair it. I don't feel incredibly bad since I paid $1 for the entire mini-alphabet, but then again, I use this set frequently, so I do feel bad in that regard. But I guess I've gotten my money's worth.

my craft activity this week

it's been a slow week for crafting. on top of being the regular, crazy-schedule class day, running home school kids around town, my birthday was yesterday.

i had my hilarious nephews over for a couple hours. D's marble maze is just a tube. It was the tallest maze. The marble goes straight down. No bends, no curves, no frills. He thought it was "the best one."

Then we have B-man's marble maze. He took the slide and tried to make it more predictable by adding a length of tubing to the end. After many tests and "G" of GAIN's advice, he shortened the tube. They were really funny.

My boys made lemon bars instead of a cake for me. "A" of GAIN decided to top the bars with a "3" candle and nine individual candles -- it made for quite the blaze. So now I am publicly proclaiming my age for the first time ever: I am 39 years old. Still haven't said it out loud, but this is a first step.

As I look back on the crafting I did, I find that there was some productivity. I painted three more eggshells for eggshell dioramas. I accidentally gave away too many for Christmas, and when "I" of GAIN didn't find the one she chose (which I had forgotten), I figured that I could replace it with another one.

I also started to lengthen the prayer shawl started many moons ago. I picked up some yarn from my parish's fun knitting group. There was no ball band, but I'm assuming that this yarn is Lion Brand Homespun. I also read about using T-shirts to make tubular yarn (it's expensive. I bought some before Purl's closed.), and with all the Vacation Bible School T-shirts that leaders have to wear, I've amassed a collection to harvest. I've set aside a shirt (from the theme year of Fiesta!) to test.

I'll end this really long post with shots of this week's watercolors. "I" of GAIN and I like this calendar. I've hyperlinked because I'm getting questions. (Mine came from Barnes and Noble.)