Concert Number Two

She's a lucky girl. Grandma's friend had an extra ticket to the Keith Urban concert in Edmonton. It was an opportunity Storm couldn't and didn't want to turn down! Here they are with Storm sporting her new Keith Urban shirt already.

This time she made herself a sign to wave around.

Isn't it cute! Yeah, by 14 she'll be the one with a huge sign in the front row!

I heard it was a fantastic concert. Like I said, lucky girl!!

Sleepless sleepovers...is there another kind?

Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. That's all I see these days.

Knee deep in harvest, I haven't had much time to myself, but I thought I'd post you all a picture at least.

Last weekend Storm had two friends over for a sleepover. Other people's kids are notorious for not really wanting to eat supper when they are over. I swear we eat normal food. I figured I'd set out a little sundae bar for them for after supper. Not many kids turn down fruit and ice cream. Especially with chocolate chips and sprinkles.

Yes, I hopped them up on sugar, and then I sent them outside to sleep in the tent. Or rather, to jump on the trampoline at all hours of the night.

Two kids, may or may not have, went home with very little sleep and not much real food in their stomachs.

Such is the life of a nine year old!

First Day of School

A day of Firsts.

First day of Grade 12 and the end is in sight.

First day of Grade 5 and the first day of a new middle school with hundreds of kids.

First day of Grade 4 and being the oldest in the small elementary school.

First day of Grade 2 and no Hunter there to play with.

All up and eager to get back to school!

We've created a junkie

A concert junkie that is.

Storm went to her first concert last night. Taylor Swift in Edmonton. To say she had a good time would be a huge understatement. I may never get her out of the T-shirt Dad bought her.

Ryan took her as we only had two tickets and I so didn't want to try and find my way in Edmonton, in the dark.

It was an amazing experience for her. Taylor puts on a great show.  I also gave her our old digital camera that has been sitting up above my desk collecting dust since I bought our new fancy one. She took a bunch of videos and a few pictures as well.

She looked a lot like this last night when they finally got home at 1:30.  But glowing.

I'd say her first concert experience was a success. And not her last.

Storm's Love

Storm has a love. A love of color. A love of paint chips colors. So much so she comes home with another handful every time someone takes her to the hardware store.

She was fooling around gluing some of them together the other day. She had plans of putting them on the wall in her room. I figured I better re-direct some of that creative energy before I ended up with glue all over my walls. I showed her a post I had just seen over at YoungHouseLove where Sherry had made some art out of paint chips. Storm thought it looked pretty cool and I succeeded in persuading her into doing that with her chips instead. We started out with an old picture frame that held some of our wedding photos in the laundry room.

Oh, hello Hunter!

We also made a trip to the hardware store, where I pretended to shop, and she helped herself to a whole bunch of chips. She decided she definitely needed orange. And blue. And green. And purple. And yellow. I told her I liked the way the shades looked on display at the store and we decided to replicate the same order in our frame.

I had Ryan cut down the mat from the frame from four 4x6's to one big rectangle. Then I wanted him to figure out where I should start so that I would have the same size of blocks on each side. He, of course, took it a big step further and drew out lines for me to follow while gluing.

We ended up having to go back to the store to grab one more of each color, as Storm decided she didn't want the paint chip number showing so that moved them all up just enough that we came up short. Well, actually Grandma was going to the store anyways, so she picked up a few more chips, and then we went back down again to grab one more, and a milkshake. Hard work pedalling all the way downtown you know!

She loves it. As you can see, we ditched the mat and just put up the colors solo. I hung it in her room, but no word if the placement is final. I'll have to wait for the boss to come home from Grandma's and approve.

And as for the mat, never fear, it didn't end up in the garbage.  Blade claimed it and made his own art out of it!

I love the creativity of kids.

Making do

What do you do when you can't find a kid's bike basket to save your soul?  Make one of your own.

We started with this old Easter basket that Storm found at Uncle Michael's rental place.

I cut off the handle. Storm decided on paint colors and painted it inside and out. A quick spray of clear protective coating and it was ready to install.

I punched a few holes into with a nail and used four zip ties to attach it to her bike.

It may only last the season, but it was free!

She's happy she can be my little delivery girl down to Grandma's now!

Storm's Art Part 2

Here's a couple better pictures of Storm's art in her room.

Storm's Art

This:

has been kicking my butt this week.

I started it last Saturday, sorted out the right paint shades and painted the words.
I got about this far:

And there it sat for more than a few days, while I distracted myself with virtually anything that would allow me to not sit down and finish painting all that black around those teeny tiny swirly letters.

My original idea was to paint the sides black, the background a lighter pink with the black backed letters. Sorta like this:

Except...I really didn't like it.  For one thing, I made the pink too bright.  My Storm is not a pink girl.  It was just a bit disappointing.

So, I came up with another idea.  First, I painted the area that would remain pink, a much lighter, nicer pink.

Then I called in the husband to mark out the outline and tape it all off.

Thank goodness for him. 

ready to paint

Following advice on how to get picture perfect stripes, I painted over the tape with the light pink.

And then painted over the tape with black, and filled in the rest of the area.

Then I recruited the man again to take off the tape.

Here it is, all done and drying, waiting to be hung up in her room.

I'll have to take a better picture in the daylight when I hang it up.  Oh let's be honest.  When Ryan hangs it up!

Whew.  I'm glad this project is done.  I get to cross something off the list and Storm is extremely happy with it!

Storm

I should really start charging for her talent.

I opened my picture folder today to print out a few more tags and found these :

Wow.  How cute are those!

And we've already seen these ones:

All made on the basic Paint program, randomly, just because she felt like it.
 
I have one super talented, creative, amazing kid. 
 
Go Storm!

Storm's New Desk

A while back, (before Halloween decorating madness took over the house!), I rearranged Storm's room.  She's really been wanting a desk in there, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get one in without taking something out or stacking furniture.  I even went so far as to measure her shelf unit(?) that was in there already so I could get a desk and stack it on top, sort of buffet style.

Then I eyed up the boy's desk.

They really didn't end up using it for much after I got rid of the old computer that was on top of it (which they also didn't use much).  Blade had his toys in the drawers and it was holding their fish tanks.  That's about it.

One issue.  It was black.  I love black furniture.  I really do.  But Storm's room is white.  (How did that happen?! I don't know.) 

So I decided I'd need to paint it.  The paint job was long overdue anyways, for a desk that has been around for forever. 

And then came Halloween Madness. 

And so it sat.  And sat.  And got used in the decoration and planning of the kids Halloween party.

You can see it in the background here.  It had two 2x4's screwed onto the back of it and covered with our old skeleton couch cover to make a entrance way for the kids to go through and block off part of the sitting room where the games would be played.

Anyways, my long winded point  is, that I finally got it painted and totally done and in her room!

Here are some pics.

Looks better already.

My original plan was to just paint the desk and leave the drawers black.  But then I looked at them closer.  Ugh.  So I thought I'd cover them with paper, which was great but I didn't like the black edges you would still see, and I didn't want to wrap the paper around.  So I painted the edges.

I raided Storm's big book of paper and found some that would go with her wall color.  Of course, there was only 4 pages of each design in that book.  Of course.  So after some minor indecision I picked out two co-ordinating papers.   As you can see, I didn't even bother to paint inside the big drawer. 

I was a little annoyed at the one drawer (the first one I did, of course) that it was wrinkly and bubbly.  Mod Podge and I are still not the best of friends.  I just decided not to stress over it. The desk was ancient, it was going to be okay that it wasn't perfect, Storm would never care, and I wouldn't have to look at it every day. (Can you hear me chanting that to myself?!?!)

I decided I had better put a plexi-glass top on it as this is the child who loves her Sharpies.

To quote Toy Story 2:  She's an artist.

 

So since I had a whole clean white top to cover, I thought I'd grab some left over paper and her poster all about Storm Riyan Sweet to go on top of it.

Ain't it sweet!

I love, love, love this desk now.  And so does she.


She's in heaven.....the top drawer is full of Sharpies.

Oh, and Mod Podge and I are back on speaking terms.  After the desk had totally dried overnight, ALL the papers totally laid down flat and perfect.


Barbie photo from here.

Birthday Crafts

Yup, that time again.  Another birthday in the house!  She had a great day and a really nice party with a couple of her friends.  She's a crafty child, so she was lucky enough to get a lot of new crafting items, including:

Tuesday, Blade and Storm decided to make the pets some new collars and a few bracelets.

(poor Chowie looks like he got taken down!)

Puppy (and Pig) Power!



Hat Trick

Miss Storm loves hats. Loves them.  And she looks extremely cute in them!  However, I would find them everywhere and nowhere where they should have been. 

So I had Ryan  (poor guy, always roped into my ideas!) make her a hat stand. 

Not the cheapest project we've ever done but it turned out so good!

We used a newel post, some weird foam-y crown moulding I found at Home Depot, some caulk, a piece of pine shelving for the bottom, some hooks from IKEA that we've had around for a few years and some high gloss white paint.

Love this crown moulding detail!

Ready to go, with a just a few of her hats in it already!

Thanks Dad!!!