Adventures in Painting

I have a loft that I used in my classroom in my pre-mommy days. I want to turn it into a swing set/play structure. In order to weather proof it a little, we decided to paint it with exterior grade paint.



We decided to let the girls help.....Can you see where this is going???





Maybe I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves!!

I don't know if you can tell or not, but Emily's paintbrush is laying on the board in front of her!


She is trying to get the paint off of her hand (and getting more on in the process!)

I should say, that Sarah only ended up with a little paint on her (mostly from Emily touching her!)

Christmas in September

We got a new refrigerator! We had a power surge problem during a recent storm and a bunch of things got fried, including the refrigerator. Well, God provided a really nice one that is even nicer than our old one.

It was kind of hard to get a good picture because there isn't much room since the stove is right across from the fridge! (The old one's door took up the whole space!)

Right after the delivery guys from Sears drove out, in drove the FedEx truck!

It was the "preemie" size prefold diapers that I had ordered. The yellow lump in the bag is my lanolin for treating my wool soakers.







They were very stiff and thin feeling, so I threw them in to wash them.








This is after one washing and drying.













Now after 2 washing and dryings.









After 3 washing and dryings. It doesn't look much different than after 2, but they are supposed to get softer with each use.

Now they are all folded up and ready to go in William's room.

Watermelons!

I finally brought the watermelons in the house since their vine had died off.

They were "supposed" to be about 8 inches in diameter, and only got to about half of that.

Almost a Nursery!

I couldn't wait until it was all finished to post pictures of William's room!

This is the color it started from being Emily's nursery.





















The girls helped paint, too!








Emily had the sponge backward so she just painted herself, but she had fun anyway!














Sarah wanted to use a brush but I told her we were using the sponge for this time! (She helped to paint Emily's room with a brush)



The pictures of the girls painting show the wall color pretty well. I was trying to make the walls look like water, and I don't know if I succeeded, but I think they look okay!

Here are the "after" pictures:

















I still have to put up the wall decals and do a little more decorating. I also have to make a cover for the rocking chair cushion.

Rogue River Reenactment

Emily is helping Grandpa get the fire started.











Which was an important thing since it started out really cold!


You can tell by how bundled up Sarah was!























This is the next day and the girls were working on their 'knitting"

Here is a close-up of Sarah concentrating on her "knitting"

More Fruit from the Garden

Since the vine died off, I "picked" the cantalope from the garden.

This is the bunch of them that we got.

This is the largest one:

With a ruler

and next to a store bought cantalope for size comparison.

They weren't big, but they still had edible fruit!

William's First Soaker

I decided to make some "longies" for William when he is born.



It is done with 2 identical sides that are then sewn up for the legs and crotch.




This is one of the sides laid out flat.






I wanted them to look like jeans!

Green Soaker

Here is Emily's latest soaker.






















Back view!














Front view!

Vegetable Dyed Yarn

Dan wanted to try dyeing some yarn using vegetables. We did some with the tops of beets, carrots, and beets.







We prepared all the yarns in water with alum and cream of tartar.













This is using the tops of beets to get a dye bath.















We strained the pieces out and put the yarn in.
















This is the yarn after it was all done.












We didn't take a picture of the carrot dye bath, but this is the yarn after we were done next to the original color yarn.















This is the beets dye bath.












Here is the yarn right after we pulled it out of the beets.












This is after we rinsed the yarn off. It is laying on top of the original color yarn. We were a little disappointed with the color it turned out. We were hoping for at least a pink!

Air Show

Sarah going "flying".













Emily in "her" plane.













Dan & Emily checking out a "bird" (as Emily kept calling them!)












Dan & Sarah posing by a different airplane.

Potatoes

Emily and I dug up the potatoes and we got about 15 pounds of them!













This is one of the larger of the potatoes, but they came in all sorts of sizes!












Here is the garden now. The vine plants (watermelon, pumpkin, cantalope, and cucumber) are all dying. The sunflowers are propped up because a rainstorm knocked them down.