My business

Don't read these posts if you can't stand some shameless promoting! lol

I have opened up an etsy shop. www.pinkpandacrafts.etsy.com So far all I am selling are my crochet play foods.

About a month ago I got a custom order for 12 ice cream cones. She wanted them for her daughter's birthday party in 7 days. And she lives all the way across the country from me. Which meant that if I agreed to make them I would have 3 days to make nine (already had 3 that she wanted made) cones with sprinkles!! And I am happy to say that with the kids help and cooperation I got them done!




I think they turned out quite cute if I do say so myself!







June 2009

Father's Day

I think that sadly my father's day efforts diminish each year. No - that isn't right. My efforts don't diminish at all. I just have more to deal with as each year comes and goes! So this year breakfast didn't get finished before he got out of bed. It was still yummy though!

Emma decorated his pancake all by herself!


Daddy was nice enough to make a sailboat on D's.


The kids both concluded that Daddy "you the best evah!". Yes, indeed he is!







June 2009

June pics

Who needs olives when you've got strawberries? lol



This picture cracks me up. I made a batch of marshmallow crackles (thanks for the recipe Sarah!) before dinner. Dinner was a variation on baked chicken. In between kids helping me get the crackles off the stone and getting the chicken browned and into the baking dish it probably shoudn't have surprised me that one of the crinkles got baked with the chicken! I do wonder though that the extra baking time didn't burn it to a crisp!







I'm sure that every time they get chocolate mustashes I take a picture. So here is one of 100!

Bike helmets

A friend of mine told me that I could get a free bike helmet for each of my kids at a safety carnival. So the morning of, we wake up to cold, wind and rain. Bah. Oh well, let's go anyway. A free helmet is a free helmet. It began at 9 am and we got there at 9:05. The kids headed straight over to the bouncy house (which got shut down after about 30 min because of the rain) while I went to find out where the helmets were. And nobody knew anything. I finally ended up figuring the process out after getting one piece of info from each diff person I talked to. Very frustrating. It turns out they gave away 20 bike helmets each hour on the hour. And you had to be in line with your child before the hour and hope that you were one of the first 20. Oh, and your child had to be at least 3 yrs old. That last bit of info I found out after we had been in line in the rain for 20 min. So we told D that he was now 3 and told Em that D was now 3. But the pleasant surprise was that they weren't all just basic black helmets like I was expecting. Daniel's even has actual googly eyes on each side! It's a bit big for him, but he'll grow into it.

Snapshot Sunday

I just finished a crochet playfoods order (post for that later) and the whole time I was making them I was picturing what I would buy with my paycheck.

Yeah - I might have told the kids it was for them, but really - it was for me! lol The tag said $25 (not bad on sale) and it rang up for $10! Sweet! Best $10 I ever spent!




Think it's time for a new shelf? LOL

Our public library recently celebrated it's 100th birthday! Each day for the whole week they had something special going on. Saturday was cake and an open tour of the entire library. Everyone was invited to dress as their favorite book character. So I got out the construction paper and my eyeliner and designed Emma's costume. Any guesses on who she is?


She is "Angie Ballnerina" (Angelina Ballerina)















April 2009

Daniel is in a jammies phase. How can I tell?
















April 2009

Cousins visit

It is so fun to live a block from the city library and park. In the summer the school district does free lunches for kids at a few parks around town. City park happens to be one so we make it to the park nearly every day for lunch. What's even better? Living close to cousins! We love it when they come to visit.

(Ok - I gotta say here. I took lots of pic of these 4 and while you can't see every one's face great in this one it's the best I had. There were apparently a lot of very urgent boogers at the moment! lol)


And when Aunts push the swings!


A lot!!
















April 2009

Craftin'

Our stickers, pom-poms, popsicle sticks, flower petals etc stash used to look like this:


Actually, most of it still does. But the kids rarely played with it because they couldn't see into the boxes and it wasn't very accessible. So I pulled out my old 'hair stuff' organizer (choke) and dumped out the few remaining rusty bobby pins and brittle hair bands, washed it out and filled it with a little of each thing. I put it on the floor to take a pic and couldn't get one before little hands sneaked in to play!

(oops, accidentally posted the same pic twice. Here's the right one.)














April 2009

First BBQ

The weather was so nice during the day so of course we had to bbq some spare ribs. However by the time the coals were ready it had cooled off a bit - hence all of the jackets! lol

Who cares about eating - this is the fun part!


Em just couldn't wait!
















April 2009

This is Em's Easter dress. She chose the fabric back in Febuary and then looked through my stash of patterns for one she liked. I lined it thinking it would be too see-through without but wish I hadn't as the lining makes it rather heavy. Anyhoo! She put it on and my does she look so grown up!














April 2009

It was a long day shopping - I had just found Em's bike that morning and the search for training wheels took us to three stores! We could have stopped at the first but both Tuan and I drew the line and cheap plastic Elmo training wheels. One of the places we stopped at was giving away free potted plants to each kid for a mother's day gift. While we completely wore D out, Em was just ready for Daddy to get the training wheels on her bike so that she could ride it!






May 2009

It's done!!

My sister Cindy sent Emma and Daniel a doll and some awesome clothes that she sews.
So I got online to search for some free patterns for additional wardrobe choices. In that search I found a great free pattern for this doll.


















So I had Emma choose her colors and got to work. (pic courtesy of Emma)

It was more work that I imagined but not too bad all together. I weighted down the feet and hands and bum. The most tedious was the hair. There are 200 strands of hair on that head! I counted! I made the skin tone and hair and eyes to match Emma.







May 2009















And here it is:


I think she likes it!

Emma's Easter Egg Hunt

I had the camera and they had the hunts separated by age so there aren't any pics of D's hunt. :o(

"Hey Emma - how about a smile for the camera while we wait for the hunt to start!"

"Huh?"


"Smile for the camera!"

"Ok - is this good?"


"Love it! Now go find some eggs!"










April 2009

This hairstyle brought to you by . . .

The book Stephanie's Ponytail

Listen to the author read it here.













April 2009

Can we keep it mom?

This cat decided to follow us home from a walk one night. It is very friendly and even puts up with kids sometimes less than soft handling. It was always around and the kids loved playing with it. However it was always running into the house and twice it got on the counter and started eating food (I distinctly remember calling Tuan after it went after some chocolate cake and I'm pretty sure my conversation included the words BB and gun LOL). But we didn't have to feed it (unless you count my chocolate cake I suppose) and the kids got to play with it so I figured it was a pretty sweet deal. Unfortunately our alley neighbor decided to feed it and keep it so the kids never see it anymore.


Emma especially loved it and misses it. I don't think we're ready for any kind of pet yet though.









May 2009

Right this minute

May 2009

Monkey Pull

Em and I were out garage saleing when she spotted this monkey harness/leash. She has created a game with it called "monkey pull", natch. She puts it on and instructs us to try to keep her from getting away. Lots of fun to watch and play for sure!










May 2009

Roasting Marshmallows

After the meat and veggies were grilled I couldn't stand to just put out the coals that took so long to heat up! So I grabbed some marshmallows and let the kids go to town roasting. I love this pic of them both blowing at the same time.









May 2009

I hope my stomach can still handle roller coasters like it did when I was a kid because I think Em will be dragging me along on every one she can find!









May 2009