Night and Day

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We have a sparkly gold and silver theme going on. I love it. Our new snow flake led lights I picked up at Ikea last week pull the whole thing together.

Nighttime

Daytime

This is my favorite room right now.  It's warm and cozy.  Almost every night, we've had a fire  in our fireplace, we sit  and watch christmas movies together.   

Some New Art- Shrinky DInks Framed

I was asked to help out with a classroom art project that would be auctioned off at a school event.  So I hit up Pinterest and came up with a cool idea.

This is a screen shot of the image from Pinterest.  There was no website to link it too.  I just figured it was done with Shrinky Dinks.  

Here's the shapes the class made.

 I brought in plastic cups with different in diameters for them to trace circles.  Then,  the kids colored the plastic Shrinky Dinks with colored Sharpy Markers.  Lastly, the kids cut out the shapes.

These were fifth graders, so they did an excellent job.

Here's the final Classroom Art Project.

 My Mother in Law really liked the finished project and was bummed she didn't win the art at the auction.  So, another idea was hatched.  At Thanksgiving, I brought over all the supplies and together as a family we all made shapes.  I love the idea of everyone being involved.  Here's the final project.

Here it is on the wall.

Finding the right order to place all the shapes is part of the process, I wanted it to be symmetrical

CLose UP

a corner, there's no place like OM

Because this was for Gram, lot's of Love was put into it!

I sorted it by color to make the piece balanced.

The center was hearts, lovely!

And the finished piece.  

(ha, I just realized all the photos are upside down, sorry)

 The frame is a Ribba from Ikea.

I'm so happy withe results.

Palm Springs Aerial Tram and a Hike

We've been wanting to take the kids up in the Palm Springs Aerial Tram for a while.  Last time we did this was before kids.  I'm happy to say, I'm in such better shape now.  I kicked butt on the trail, so happy to be healthy.  It was a blast.   These are in random order.  Basically, you began in Palm Springs and travel up the mountain 8500 feet.  We packed a lunch and hiked around for a few hours.  Snow ball fights, and great family memories.  Enjoy!

the ride is fast and rotates very slowly

on our way up, it's a quick 10-15 minutes in the tram to go up the mountain

the trails-make sure to get your nature permit, the rangers are on the trails and check

we did the round valley loop

we found snow-snow it=s a big deal to my beach kids

we're all great hikers now, the kids can totally keep up with us

the tram up close-it holds about 80 people

almost to the top

 

the ride up is fast,  and the car spins twice on your way up

a fallen tree-beauty everywhere

fall foliage

nice message

more snow, the kids loved throwing snowballs at each other

the view

this is the building we started at in the distance 

pano

 the view

couldn't decide if this was nature or man made

I'd highly recommend this family outing.  The kids and adults both had a blast.  We gall got our nature fix and some exercise to boot!  Looking forward to doing this one again!

Craft Lab: wall hanging

I haven't crafted in so long.  Life is just different, my time is spent on other things.  I miss crafting.  So here's my first attempt at fiber art.

Planning out my colors.  My sister in law is an avid knitter, so I asked here if she had any remnant yarn balls.  Ask and you shall receive, I got a huge bag from her!  

I used a tutorial I found on Creative Bug.  I basically just made huge loops of the yarn.  Each color is a different length.  I had a nice piece of wood left over from our remodel, so I cut it to length.  I just glued the yarn loops onto the wood.  After it was dry, I cut the loops at the bottom.  Once I hung the wall hanging on the wall I trimmed the bottom edge kinda like cutting bangs.

Here's it is all hung up and trimmed.  This was very easy to make and kinda of free cause I had everything on hand.  It was nice to get my craft on.  

School Garden Fall 2013

This is my forth year of tending the school garden and this year we are off the a great start.  We started a garden club and every Tuesday at lunch 40 kids come over too weed and plant.  We
also have a few parents who are helping out this year.  I'm so excited to finally have some real help.  

Over the next few weeks we will be planting our salad garden.  So far the lettuce, broccoli and cabbage are in.  And the kids planted sweet peas along the chain link fence.  The kids are also crazy good weeders.  The garden looks good!

This is what we were dealing with in September, so overwhelming.  

Now things are all cleaned up and the fun part can begin!

FIreplace Update

I finally got around to styling our new fireplace. We are in Love. 

Etsy Love

I have been looking for a fanny pack to wear while I walk and hike with my friends.  I need something to hold my phone.  Back in the day, like 25 years ago I had a purple nylon one that I'd wear to concerts.  I started a search and it's sad out there.  Most are very ugly.  I was so excited to find RaisCase on Etsy.  They are making some very cute fanny packs, ones I wouldn't be embarrassed to wear in public. Go check Raiscase out, she make super cute pillows too. 

All photos by Raiscase

Seed Bombs

We recently hosted a shower for my niece at my pad to celebrate the arrival of our newest family member baby JP. My other niece planned an adorable shower.  We got all crafty and made these seed bombs.  Super easy.  Made with recycled materials.  We got the idea on pinterest.  

End of summer adventures

It's our last weekend of summer before the kids go back to school. We packed a lot of fun in and we made some awesome family memories.  I feel so lucky to have the chance to explore with my family so often.    

We went on a night hike.  At the end we met this guys hanging out by the showers.  I freakin love frogs.  I wish we could have made him a pet.  But we let him be.

My son spied this white morning glory in the dark.  Everything was pretty much black except for these.

Hello Good Year Blimp.  This one went right over the house.  So cool!

We camped locally and loved it.  The sunsets have been amazing lately.

We camped with this rabbit.

Nice, Right?

I took the kids for donuts and had my first Cronut.  It was good, but, chocolate would have been better. 

got my fishin' on again. 

I have rad friends, they helped clean up the garden.  This was the cucumber harvest.  The little onions on the left were delicious.  I'm mentally gearing up for how much time I need to give the garden right now. 

We spend a lot of time at the beach.  I usually just sit and chill.  Last week, right when we got to the beach we noticed dolphins.  This is normal at our beaches.  However, it was a little dolphin family, baby dolphins and all.  The stayed at our little beach all day.  It was amazing and exciting to watch the dolphins teach the little ones.  They were doing jumps and gave us a wonderful show all day. 

My latest painting.  We spent a weekend in Arrowhead recently and my friends have an art studio in the basement.  I was in heaven.  It was fun to paint in a new space.  I came home and cleaned up my garage/studio space so I can paint.  I can't wait to get started this week on new projects. 

I took the last month off from the gym.  It was hard for me.  My body needed a rest.   I did manage one hike. 

This summer went by really fast.  We spent weeks camping at the beach and weeks camping in the mountains.   Our family is so much fun.