. . . . sort of. Honestly, this school year has been insane for extra work! I don't know how people with more than one child in school manage it all. So, I went to parent teacher conference last night and was secretly relieved when Wild Child got the lecture about not doing the extra reading instead of me! I am a bad parent. However, I have been leaving the extra reading up to Wild Child because it's been taking a good amount of my time just making sure she's getting her homework done and turned in. The upshot is that Wild Child says she is more committed to doing the extra reading now.
In other news, it turned out that the cat got in a fight and what I thought was an infection just turned out to be battle scars. Oh, and the cat's teeth are dissolving so let's just pull them out now and I can pay the vet $600.00. Yeah, right! I should have stuck with my fourth-grade aspirations to be a vet. I'd be able to afford a real Hermes Kelly bag by now! Anyway, all the cats are grounded inside now to hopefully keep them out of trouble and out of the vet's office. I ended up forking over $125 just for the vet to look at the cat and give her a few shots.
I have made a few birthday cards, but I've been a little grumpy from the cold and lack of time to devote to them, so I haven't been all that happy with how they've turned out . . . so no pics, sorry to say. However, I have composed a few ultra-lame sentiments for the Christmas cards, so I am hoping I am getting close to composing a decent one. I am considering caving and getting a stamp with a sentiment on it, but I am going to try a few more times before I give up.
Stay tuned for updates on the cards!
I was looking over patterns for purse cards the other day, and I found this link on Hermes' website:
DIY Paper Mini Kelly Bag
Yes, you can now have a mini version of the Kelly bag that costs more than my vehicle. I printed a couple out and tried to make them, but I kept ripping the strappy front parts when I was trying to tie them together like on a real Kelly bag. And then when I got the silly thing together, I found it was way too small to put anything in it . . . well, maybe a mini paper lipstick would fit in there. Mostly my goal was to make a purse that I could put a card in. This purse is too small for that. However, it is kind of fun, in a party favor sort of way.
That link is for the plain white mini bag. Hermes actually has a few more with colored designs on them. To find them, go to www.hermes.com, click United States, then Travel the world of Hermes. After the next page loads (kind of slow on my connection), click the orange bar on the left. Wait for that to load, and then click the link "Surprises". Here's the tricky part -- wait for a bunch of pictures to load. Once they've all loaded, click on the white purse picture. That will take you to the main menu that shows you all the different mini purses that Hermes is offering.
Leave it to a luxury goods company to make the menu non-linkable and their website arty, yet not-so-user-friendly. If anyone has better luck putting those bags together, please share your tips! I need all the help I can get!
Anyway, I have nixed the purse card holder idea entirely now because I am sick yet again, this time with a cold. I am just not in the mood to score and fold cardstock and then hope it stays together. I still have a few crafting projects to get through as well -- like finishing up birthday cards for November and December, and figuring out what the heck I am going to write on the inside of the Christmas cards I made earlier. Also, the cat is sick and I have to take her sick self to the vet . . . and depending what is wrong with her, may end up spending a fair amount of time nursing her back to health.
I know I am woefully behind in my blogging. I had planned to write a very snarky post about trick or treating, and weekend boating in the rain, but I am going to break form here and talk about something serious. Gasp! Kuni, serious?!! No way!!
Now that you've gotten over the shock, all I want to say today is go Vote . . . . and not for a car dealership or department store that's trying to use the election as a ruse to market a super spectacular sale. I voted today. I didn't vote early because my polling place is also Wild Child's school, and there's never a huge line right before school gets out.
If you voted early, hooray! If you haven't voted yet today, there's still time. Go out and cast your ballot. Don't worry that the candidate you prefer won't win in your state, or that your opinion doesn't matter. IT DOES MATTER. People have endured persecution and lost their lives so that every American over the age of 18 can vote. Don't waste their sacrifices on your behalf.
And by the way, if you haven't registered to vote, do it today. Don't put it off any longer. Most state websites have a form you can fill out and then either send electronically or print out and mail in. You don't even have to go down to the municipal building! You'll be all set to vote in the next election, which could be as early as next year for local offices.
As I mentioned in my previous post, Saturday was the big church Halloween party. Well, the party was outside, with the exception of a mini spook alley that Wild Child had to help with. So, she was inside for half an hour tops. However, she and the other kids had a lot of fun with the spook alley and the "trunk or treat". I did trunkless treating, as I walked to the party. I just stood by one of the cars and handed out candy.
Not surprisingly, Wild Child woke up on Sunday morning with a nasty cold . . . and spent the rest of the day whining, crying, and knocking stuff over. Projectile chicken soup, anyone?
Today Wild Child seems a little better, and luckily there's no school today. I'm also lucky that Halloween is on a Friday this year, so if Wild Child gets sick again, she can recover over the weekend.
I've been working on Wild Child's Halloween Costume for the past little while. I was thrown into a panic when I found out that the neighborhood Halloween party is tomorrow -- not the day before Halloween like I had thought it was. However, I focused on the task at hand and got the thing finished this evening, after several late nights of working on it. Hey, who needs sleep? Halloween is all about the night of the living dead -- that would include the sleep deprived!
I admit I have been lax with the posting. In addition to all the run-around-homework-volunteer-at-school craziness, I've been trying to work on Christmas cards when I get a spare moment. I am hoping to send them out the weekend after Thanksgiving. However, Wok and I had this discussion about my preoccupation with making the cards:
Wok: Hey can you go to the fabric store and get me some velcro for the seats in the boat?
Kuni: Well not tonight -- I am working on Christmas cards and have the workroom all torn up. I'd like to get through this set I'm working on and then clean up the room.
Wok: Uh, aren't you, like, DONE??? How many of those things have you made already??
Kuni: Around 30ish. Probably 30. I guess.
Wok: 30??? What the?? How many are you planning on making?
Kuni: I don't know, maybe 60 as a high end estimate? Maybe a few more . . . I guess. Can we stop talking now so I can finish?
Wok: Uh, between the two of us we know like 10 people.
Kuni: As if! Dude, you know the neighbors are all gonna bring us homemade candy and crap and if we don't give them a card they will feel totally snubbed!
Wok: Hey why don't you make candy instead? Mmm, candy.
Kuni: There is NO WAY I am making that much candy. Besides, every time I try to make fudge we end up tossing it because it's grainy.
Wok: So?
Anyway, I will be getting the velcro most likely this weekend when I go shopping for fabric to make Wild Child's Halloween costume . . . which is another topic of discussion in this house . . . like, why can't we just buy the freaking costume like normal people? Then you'll have time to put velcro on the seats in the boat! I guess I'm just old fashioned when it comes to Halloween and can't give up the homemade costume experience.
If my Jr High Home Ec teacher had told me that I would one day have a child that would trash her backpack after a few weeks of school, and that I would have the task of repairing said backpack, I might have paid more attention in class.
The webbing part of the straps on Wild Child's backpack fell apart last month, and I sewed them back together on my handy dandy sewing machine. Well, two weeks ago the strap part that held the webbing in place fell apart, most likely because I kind of McGuyver'd the first job.
I went to a fabric store this time and purchased new webbing and some heat n bond. I made entirely new straps, and then figured I'd make homemade patches with the denim left over from Wild Child's jeans that she outgrew a couple years ago.
Yesterday at Wild Child's art class, a reporter from our local newspaper (The Daily Herald) showed up. He asked me and the other parents if we minded if he took pics of the kids to put in a story about the Provo Center. I told him to go ahead. Well, it turns out that there was only one pic in today's paper, and it was of Wild Child! I was surprised that the other kids weren't in the paper, but, hey, when you've got IT you've got IT. Who would have guessed that Wild Child has the makings of an IT girl?
All kidding aside, Wild Child was super excited to have her pic in the paper. Hopefully the other kids won't feel left out. We'll see if any of the kids say anything when class meets tomorrow.
The image is pretty large, so I put a thumbnail on this page. Click the image to see the full size version!
I may have mentioned earlier that I signed up to volunteer at Wild Child's school, Amelia Earhart Elementary, mostly to keep an eye on things. So, for the past three Mondays I've been helping Wild Child's class during writing time. I am not sure how much I am actually helping.
The first Monday that I was there, the kids were copying a rough draft of a poem onto a clean sheet of paper to make it all pretty to turn in. Mostly the teacher wanted me to make sure the kids were skipping every other line on the page. Seriously, I am not making this up. The woman needed a volunteer to help her with this.
Anyway, after the teacher told the kids to get started, two of the kids just sat at their desks and stared at the blank paper with a deer-in-the-headlights look. I went over there to see if they had any questions about the assignment. The stared at me as blankly as they had been staring at their papers. The teacher noticed me over at the kids' desks, and told me they knew what to do. So I moved on.
Several of the other kids forgot to write on every other line. Most of the kids were pretty cool when I reminded them they needed to skip lines. One kid, however, gave me a defiant look, as if to say "I don't DO every other line." He noticed his teacher looking over, however, and hastily started skippping the lines on the paper.
The next Monday the kids were taking a writing assessment, and the teacher wanted me to just go around the room and make sure they weren't getting stressed out. One of the kids asked me how to spell a word. I didn't think anything of it and told the kid how to spell it. The teacher then got all flustered and said "um you can't tell them how to spell words. That's part of the assessment." I was embarrassed and said "oh, right, duh." After that, another kid asked me how to spell a word. I told him that I was sorry, but I couldn't do that. The kid gave me a defiant look and said "why not???" I told him the spelling was part of the assessment. Another defiant look. "Why???" At that point I passed the buck and told the kid to ask his teacher.
This Monday, the kids were doing research for a project about Native American history. The classroom has computers in it, and so the teacher wanted me to help the kids navigate through some sites she'd preselected to find the information they needed. Well, one of the kids was having a hard time finding information about her assigned tribe on the preselected sites. I said, "why don't you just google it?" This suggestion was met with an aghast "we aren't allowed to use google!" Again, I was embarrassed and said "oh yeah, right. Why don't you go ask your teacher if she has any more sites you can look at?"
Then another kid flagged me down to tell me he couldn't open a word doc. I tried opening it, but the computer said it was already open. Now, Wild Child's school has all Mac computers. I have never used a Mac computer. I was having a hard time trying to find where this silly file was. I was asking the kids stufff like "where's your task bar? why doesn't cntrl alt delete open the task manager?" Yes, I am a dork and completely cluless about Mac! I am sure the kids were all rolling their eyes and pointing at me while I was trying to find the file. Anyway, the teacher came over and said "oh, just do file and then open." Oh. Yeah. Right. Duh!!!!
I think I'm causing more work for the teacher instead of helping her. I wonder if she'd let me switch my volunteer duties to math in the morning. The kids all handwrite their math assignments. I can't screw that up too badly, at least I don't think so!
I needed to make a few cards this week, and I wanted to try out this technique called masking (that I've read about on all the important card designing blogs.)
Masking is a fancy name for putting paper over a stamped image and then stamping another image so that it overlaps. It makes the first stamp look like it's in front of the other stamps.
Wok came home from fishing at Utah Lake State Park to tell me that the jeep had been mysteriously damaged while it sat in the State Park's parking lot.
Now that I'm finally feeling better, I made a few cards. I haven't made a card in such a long time, I felt like I didn't know what I was doing!
This post is going to be pretty whiny. I had intended to put a post in here about a few other things, but after I started writing about Back to School night, the post turned into a whiny rant. I guess I just needed to get that out of my system! Anyway, click on the link if you'd like to read my whiny pity party rant. If you'd rather not, I'll try to post something more positive in a day or so. Thanks for bearing with me!
School starts for us Provo people on August 18, a short week away. Yikes! I am still recovering from Pneumonia, so that has complicated things a bit, and made me more cranky than usual. (I know, it's hard to imagine that I can be any more cranky than I normally am, but it is oh so true.)
Anyway, the doc says that the infection seems to be killed, but it will take me several weeks until I feel normal again. I am still coughing and get tired very easily. It is not fun. So, I have been pushing through all that to get the last back to school stuff taken care of.
The school sent out a packet of stuff last week, and in it they divulged that they will be changing the drop off route. Just to preface this, when the school was built 10 years ago, the city didn't plan the roads around the school all that well. There's the main city street on the east side of the building, and then a little street that they built on the north side of the building . . . but the street just ends in a turnaround circle thing. The street doesn't connect to anything else. So, the school uses the turnaround thing for the bus parking, and the parents have also used the street on the north side, dropping off the kids before the turn around thing.
Hey folks, Close to My Heart is having a clearance sale on their website. There's pretty good discounts on paper, stamp sets, and accessories. The catch is that you have to purchase it from a CTMH consultant's page on their website. If you don't have a consultant, here's the link to my super fabulous consultant's website. Please note that I am not a consultant myself - I just spend way too much money on CTMH's stuff.
Check it out -- there's a lot of fun things!
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