Soot Sprites

Have you seen the movie Spirited Away? One of the best movies ever. I love it! A few weeks back, Sweet Pea and I made our very own soot sprites. A few pom-poms, some googlie eyes, a little glue and some star sprinkles and we have our very own fleet:

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Haunted by Margaret Thatcher?

  I now know entirely more about Margaret Thatcher than I ever thought I would.

Is she visiting me in dreams? No.

Is she haunting me? No

Am I attending a graduate course at the local college on the highlights and lowlights of her life and rule? No.

It's time to do a school project. Not me, but Sweet Pea. And being the wonderful mother that I am, I am assisting. And I have to say, I'm really sick of reading about her. That's all.

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Miniature Armadillos

So, the other day I spent some time gathering pill bugs. Yes, that's right. Gathering pill bugs. (also known as potato bugs, doodle bugs or miniature armadillos)

What?!?! Why on earth would anyone do that? Well, Doodlebug is doing something in school with ecosystems in jars and they needed some bugs. The first place we looked was the basement. In the spring, we always get some pill bugs down there. But could we find one when we need one? Of course not. But, spiders are also fairly common in the basement. There are several who have names, who stay politely in their webs, so I leave them alone. The brave and strong hubby attempted to capture one of these, but it was too wily and skittered into hidden spots before it could be captured.

So, we finally headed outside (gasp!) to look for bugs. We found some very cooperative pill bugs in the rocks out front. We gathered up about 5 of them along with some rocks and rotting leaves.

And this morning, Doodlebug headed off to school with his bugs in his backpack. Wait, what? What's that on the table? Is that a jar of bugs??

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You Have Arrived!

So, I was taking Sweet Pea to a trumpet lesson. It was the first lesson with a new instructor and I wasn't entirely sure where I was going. After driving around in a dark, rainy neighborhood with winding streets for several minutes I finally pulled over and turned on my phone and brought up my GPS. It took several minutes to load and connect. Then it took several minutes to enter my destination. Finally, everything was ready and this is what I hear:

"You have arrived!"

What?!?! My GPS guide sounded very confident and pleased with herself but I was pretty sure I wasn't there yet. It turned out I was about 3 houses away. Close, but not quite there. What tipped us off to the correct house was the person leaving the house and walking down the driveway with a trumpet in their hands. Thank god their lesson ended when it did! You have arrived indeed!

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You Can Never Have Too Many Shoes

Here are the latest shoes I painted for Sweet Pea. This is Nyan Cat. According to Wikipedia,  Nyan Cat is the name of a YouTube video...which became an Internet meme. Nyan Cat has a Pop-Tart body and he flies through space leaving a rainbow trail. Apparently the video ranked at number 5 on the list of most viewed YouTube videos in 2011. You couldn't prove it by me. The only reason I'm aware of Nyan Cat is because Sweet Pea is a fan. But he is cute!

These shoes started out hot pink, but Sweet Pea isn't into pink so much anymore, so I covered all the pink. With some rainbow shoelaces, these are perfect!

 

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So Easy Even a Caveman Could Do It - Or Could He?

And here's some awesome art created by one of the ducklings - Snickers made an awesome Caveman sculpture:
 

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Shrews, Anteaters and Ducks

We had a family trip this summer that included a visit to the Philadelphia Zoo. I must say I was a bit worried when we first got there and saw the sculpture outside the front of the zoo that depicted a grizzly scene involving a dead lion with an arrow through it. There were other similarly violent sculptures throughout the zoo, along with some more standard, peaceful sculptures. I have no idea why they have those strange sculptures, but other than that, we had a great time. It was a beautiful day! Here's a few pictures from the trip:

Not the best picture, but the elephant shrews were by far the cutest, most entertaining animals of the day. We all loved these little guys! I want one!

I've always thought I liked anteaters, but I have to say these guys were a bit, um, yucky. They have much less hair than I thought and really resemble pigs quite a bit. Still, cute, but not quite what I was expecting. I must have watched too much Pink Panther growing up or something.

And we manage to find ducks wherever we go. We love ducks!

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Raining Down Like Sand

  So, the theme of the most-recent birthday party in the Ginormous Duck household was pizza. Yep, that's right. Just pizza. So, no surprise here, we had pizza as the main meal. It was delicious.

And for cake, I made two cookie cakes decorated to look like pizza. And while they looked pretty good, they didn't taste so good. I could tell, for one, because just about every 10-year-old boy at the party took one bite and left the rest. And I could also tell because I myself have taste buds and when I took a bite I felt the cookie suck every last drop of moisture from my tongue before it rained down my throat like sand. But did that stop me from eating the entire slice of cookie-cake? Of course not! I optimistically expected every next bite to be moist, tasty and delicious. Alas, it didn't happen.

I was very disappointed! I've made this recipe before and it was delicious. But at least they look yummy:

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Show Some Ankle Baby!

It's that time of year again. The time of year to show some ankle. Spring is here, things are warming up and it's time to bring out the capris. And by that, I mean the ducklings have all outgrown their fall/winter clothes and have six inches of leg sticking out the bottom of their pants.

It's a tough time of year - the time between when the pants are definitely, without question, too short, but I'm reluctant to buy a whole new set of pants when shorts weather is right around the corner.

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Purple Mountains Majesty

Snickers and Doodlebug have been watching the crayon saga with interest. They don't always like my art, but they always watch it develop with interest. And now I'm using something they can relate to - crayons! And seeing how much I was getting into the whole thing, Snickers got me an awesome birthday gift! He got me one of those amazing, uber-cool boxes of crayons with 64! crayons and a built in pencil sharpener! Whoa!! I always wanted one of those! That will keep me busy! The cornflower, the cadet blue, the blue-violet, the purple mountains majesty, the orange-yellow! So exciting!



Here's my second go at the crayons:

I also got a very cool set of charcoal, pencils and pastels from a friend for my birthday - all in an awesome tin. (Everything is automatically cooler in a tin for some reason). I'm still planning on what to tackle first with those. Oh, so much to do . . .

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Shoe Painting - Like Finger Painting, But Different

So, what uber-important thing has been consuming my time lately? Well, shoe-painting of course.

And, not shoe-painting  as in using my shoes to create a painting - although that does sound somewhat intriguing - but rather, painting on shoes with brushes and paint. You know - I've done it before with Sharpies, but this time I got out my acrylic paints and brushes.

Sweet Pea is a girl much like myself with many varied interests. Yet, unlike me, she likes to have a pair of shoes to go along with each of those interests.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE shoes! But I don't necessarily wear shoes to match my interests - or fandoms, as Sweet Pea calls them. I prefer, for the most part, a more understated shoe. Although there are exceptions.

Anyway, she is a fan of one of the best movies of all times - Spirited Away and of the movie Totoro. Hence, these shoes:

She is also a fan of Doctor Who:

And then there are the shoes not pictured here - the minions from the Despicable Me movies and the Adventure Time shoes. And there has been a request for Bravest Warriors / Catbug shoes.


What fun!!


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Fever Flakes and Other Yummy Things

So, Doodlebug had to do a book report. And not just any book report, but a cereal box book report.And what on earth does that mean, do you ask? Does that mean he's writing a book report on what he read on the back of the Fruit Loops box?

Nope.

It means he has to decorate a cereal box with information from his book. The ingredients are characters and settings from the book. The name of the cereal and the prize should reflect the name or theme of the book. It sounds like a clever fun project, doesn't it? The only problem is that his book is Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. It's about the yellow fever.

How do you create a cereal based on that? I mean, a cereal that isn't gross? Fever Flakes? With a thermometer for a prize maybe? I won't gross you out with all the ideas we tossed out but we ended up with 'Bring Out Your Bread'. The cereal was toast shaped, the prize was a miniature coffee house and the picture on the front of the box was a boy eating some awesome 'Bring Out Your Bread' cereal from a wheel barrow.

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Fighting Over the Last Cookie

I created a sketch not too long ago of some turtles. Sweet Pea was mortified!

 So, to appease her, when I did a color version, I made a few changes. This is the modified one:

But I always really liked my original sketch, so to be true to myself :) I finally had to complete a color version of the original. Here the color version of the original:

I've heard that turtles can be downright nasty! What do you think they are fighting over? I'm guessing it's the last cookie.

Discuss.

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Locked In!

I have been very busy in my Crafty Corner lately and have been loving every minute of it. When I put my Crafty Corner together at one end of the room I tried to take up as little space as possible so the room could still be used, but still give myself room to work. So it's a tight squeeze to get into it, but once in I have room to move around a little bit. And since the entrance was rather tight, and since I had a large board hanging around, I made a door. It's just a large board that's between two pieces of furniture that can be pulled out to block the entrance. It's mostly a joke. But Doodlebug likes to pull it closed and lock me in. Which I don't mind in the least. I could stay in there all day. The only problem is that the 'door' doesn't slide easily. So when he 'locks me in' I'm locked in!

The other day I spent several minutes trying to extricate myself so I could answer the phone.

I grabbed the edge of the door and pushed, but wasn't at the right angle so it didn't budge. So I bent down and tried to shove the bottom. It didn't budge. After a lot of cursing, sweating and pushing I managed to get it to move an inch. I stopped to rest and draw a little. Then I started to get hungry so I got back to it. I finally managed to get it to open just enough to squeeze out. By that time the phone had stopped ringing.

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A Disruption in the Space-Time Continuum

So I was working in the kitchen the other day and found a nicely dried out wishbone. I called Snickers over and he carefully studied it and chose a side.

"Wait, wait! I need to think of a wish!"

So I waited. Then he went on to complain about how he never won these things. Ever.

So I made my wish and we pulled.

And then ...

Kerblam!

      Kerpow!

The thing exploded!

There were bits of bone scattered across the floor, tinking into the sink, plinking onto the window, scuttling across the counters and stove and over our exposed skin. It was a like chicken-bone bomb!

The dust settled and we checked to see if by any chance one of us had won. But of course not, there was nothing left but bone dust and a couple of spikey nubs.

So, we cleaned up the bone bits that the cat was trying to eat and thought it through. What happened? What did we do wrong? 

Then we figured it out. The universe did not want to grant Snicker's wish. But my wish was that Snickers win this time. So there was no other possible outcome. We upset the space-time continuum and the bone had no other chose but to explode under the pressure.


Quack!

Subliminal Messages

I should have been a jingle-writer. When the kids were little I often came up with little songs - sometimes for fun, sometimes to also try to influence them. One of the best involves a plush broccoli. (doesn't everyone have one of those?) I would bounce Mr. Broccoli in tune to the music:

(send)

I'm Charles Broccoli and I'm here to sing a song,
Vegetables are good for you the whole day long.

Carrots and squash are good for you
And peas and green beans too.
You can eat them by themselves
or put them in a stew.

In order to get your vitamins, you should eat some everyday.
Vegetables are really great, that's all I have to say.

(me)

Unfortunately, the message didn't work too well. Only one of the three ducklings will come within five feet of a vegetable.

(chocolate)

Maybe it was because I sang it off-key.

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Hobbit Vest

As I was leaving for work the other day Snickers came to say goodbye with a hug. But as he approached he stopped, looked me up and down and said, "Mom, I like your hobbit vest!"

Hmmm. Hobbit vest huh? OK

It was a moss green corduroy fitted jacket. And 'hobbit vest' is a surprisingly fitting description. It's not a 'vest' per se, but is very reminiscent of Bilbo's vest. And since he said that, I spent all day craving second breakfast, elevensies and feeling in my pocket for a ring of power. There were definite times during the day when a ring of invisibility would have been most useful!

"Hey, where did that ginormous duck woman in the green hobbit vest go? We need her to do this incredibly complex task. I could swear she was just sitting there!" 
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For Ninjas Up North - Where It's Cold

So you know I've made quite a few sweaters for the Ugly Doll collection. Well, here is the whole crew - pull-overs, cardigans and ear-cozies:

I think I'm finally finished. Whew! That's a lot of tiny little sweaters. I'm all ready if I ever need to make one for one of those tiny vampires I'm always going on about.

And of course the next logical step after sweaters, was the ninja sweater. You'd think I would have made the ninja sweater for Ninja Batty Shogun, but no. Ninja Batty Shogun is pretty cool and ninjy all by himself. I made the ninja outfit for Picksie. I thought it would be a nice complement to his red eyes. It took me a while to find him for this photo (Ninja's are very good at hiding) but I did eventually find him and here he is.

And of course, for a recent birthday we had to make some Ugly Cakes. Here's a few of them:

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Ugli Sweaters

 As I said the other day, I've been teaching myself to crochet. And I decided, what better way to learn than to jump right in. I'm planning to start with a nice simple project - a sweater.

I can hear you now - What?!?! A sweater?!? Are you out of your mind?!? Isn't that little complex to start out with?

Well, yes, but this isn't any just any sweater. This is a sweater for Nandy Bear. Nandy Bear is one of Doodlebugs Ugli Dolls.

"Now what the heck are you talking about?"

Well, Ugli Dolls are these cute little monsters that Doodlebug and Snickers discovered on a trip to Toys R Us a while back. They've managed to get quite a little collection of them via various holidays (birthdays and Christmas and such). But the poor little guys get cold at night. So the boys spent some time a few weeks ago making sweaters for them out of felt and staples but they got discouraged when
I casually remarked that they should be careful not to get poked, cut, scraped, scratched, torn or ripped by all those staples. (Mom always ruins all the fun!)

But when I started crocheting, their eyes lit up and now I have a request to make some little sweaters. I figure it's a good thing to work on. I'll get some practice and if I mess up, the Ugli Dolls won't complain. I bet they won't even notice if one sleeve is longer than the other.

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Ho Ho H!

The other day Sweet Pea noticed that the odometer on the car read 40404. A nice number, isn't it? Nice and symmetrical, full of 4s and 0s. But, to make it even better, I pointed that upside down it read hohoh! Merry Christmas Car! Ho ho h!

 Quack!