Guest Blogger-Rebecca

I'm Rebecca, Cyndi's oldest daughter. You know Mackenzie, my little sister, yesterdays guest blogger. Isn't she funny? I'm reading the Warriors series,wich has EVERYTHING I look for in a book. Thats the kind of book you look for. Today at school I got a paper that only two other kids got, inviting us to a Fishercats game! My best friend was one of the kids who got a paper and I hope she goes. The game is May 28. My mom said I can go!!! She is so great! Thats all for now!

Guest Blogger-Mackenzie

I'm Mackenzie, Cyndi's kid. you see me here i love smiles and i love to do that too any way hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Ok thats it.

Blog thoughts

I have been thinking about starting yet another blog. This blog would just be about crafting. I have been doing a lot of crafting lately, daily actually and would like to share what I have been doing and include directions on how to do the crafts. I am thinking about seperating it because not everyone likes crafts or to read about crafts especially if it involves step by step instructions. Also, as with any of my blogs I do them mostly for my own benefit first and foremost, though I love to get comments and share with other people. This blog is to let family and friends know what we are up to but it is also a reference point for my scrapbooking. My project 365 is it's own little project that I felt needed it's own spot and I feel the same way about the craft blog idea. It would be a place to keep ideas I find, inspiration and links. Kinda like an online notebook.
So those are my current thoughts. I will of course post the link here when and if I go through with this so that you can check it out if you want. If you have any opinions please feel free to let me know what you think.

Mythical Creatures

The Museum of Science currently has an exhibit about Mythical Creatures which is something the girls love-unicorns, dragons, mermaids. We had wanted to go during February vacation but Becca was sick. The girls had no school today due to teacher conferences (both girls are doing great.) So after meeting with their teachers we headed down to Boston.

It was pretty cool, but they didn't allow photos in that area to protect the exhibits. But I did take a few without flash when the dude wasn't looking. Such a rebel.

Cool Dragon.

It was pretty interesting. They showed the myths and then the probable explanations. The girls had fun and seemed to really enjoy it as well as the rest of the stuff we looked at.

This is called a Roc and could pick up a full grown elephant in its claws.

The dinosaur exhibit was also a big hit with the girls. Here is Kenzie next to a Dinosaur footprint.

The girls and Mr. Triceratops.

Weekend Highlights

If you've checked out my Signs of Life blog you know that Dom and I went to the Bruins game this past weekend.

We actually spent Saturday night down in Boston. The tickets and the hotel room were gifts from Dom's parents for his 40th birthday. We also had gift certificates for Morton's Steak House and Legal Seafoods. We tried to get reservations to Mortons earlier in the week and couldn't get in at a reasonable time so we are saving that one for another time!

We had a good time at the game. We had Premium seating or "the green seats" which are more comfortable and where waitpersons will come and take your order and bring you your food. Also sitting on this level it is way less crowded and there is lots of cool memorabilia lining the hallways. There are also restaurants and you can watch the NESN broadcasters.

In honor of St. Patrick's day they were giving out green bruins hats to the first 10,ooo people and Dom and I each got one. It's a nice hat for free! The Bruins won the game which is of course very important.

After the game we walked over to Quincy Market and then onto Legal Seafood to eat. Being the weekend before St. Patrick's day the bars were overflowing with people, even at 4:00 in the afternoon! After that we headed back to the hotel and hung out a little bit and then decided to walk back to the garden and catch a professional Lacrosse game. The Boston Blazers were playing the Toronto Rock.

I know nothing about Lacrosse, neither does Dom and it was interesting to watch. I didn't realize how physical the game was. They really pound on each other and it's legal. It seems similar to hockey but it was difficult figuring out what was a penalty and what wasn't. The only thing I didn't like is that they played music through the whole game. Really loud music. Like concert level, bass vibrating. I don't know why. I would think it would be a distraction to the players but maybe it psyches them up. Or maybe the players do a lot of swearing and they are trying to drown it out. I don't know, I guess I am getting old. Anyway the game was really exciting and the Blazers came from behind to tie it up at the end of the fourth quarter but lost in overtime. We scored a free t-shirt that they were throwing into the crowd and some thundersticks. We got some good loot between the two sporting events!

Sunday morning we slept in late, something we rarely get to do with kids and animals at home.

Before heading to Gloucester to pick up the girls we walked over to the Constitution. The USS Taylor was also in port. It's a little intimidating seeing the sailor on watch with rifles. They had hoisted the colors at the Bruins game the night before and were in town for the St. Patrick's parades on Sunday.

The USS Cassin Young is a Fletcher class destoyer from 1943 that we went on. Dom works with a guy who volunteers on the ship and we got a "behind the scenes" tour of the whole ship. It was pretty cool. I can't really imagine being in those cramped quarters for long periods of time or during battle.

Here are some pictures of the game courtesy of my husband. He has a Nikon D200 and he was photographer for the day. I did take a few pics with his camera during warm-ups but all these are his.

"Eat my glove, Little man." Chara crushes one of the Islanders who kept chopping at Thomas after he covered up the puck.

Chara protects the net after the puck squirts away from Thomas.

Savard taking the face-off.

Art Gallery

I found this idea in Family Fun Magazine awhile ago and am just getting around to doing it.

It is art gallery for the kids artwork. I put in down in the "Kid zone" where the walls were pretty bare.(except in my craft corner where there is a multitude of stuff hung randomly around)

These are just some frames painted after removing the backs and glass. Then just stick them on the wall with some clips which makes it easy to rotate the artwork. I got the frames at the dollar store so the whole project was cheap. I added the photos of the "featured artists" for fun. Just one way to encourage the kids to be creative and to let them know that what they create is important.

Hurry up Spring

This weekend we got a taste of spring with temps in the 50s. We enjoyed a nice visit with mom and dad at their house. It was nice to sit out on the deck with no coat. The girls enjoyed playing outside in the yard and Toby enjoyed following them around. Today was another beautiful day and the girls were outside for 2 hours straight. We have to enjoy it while it lasts because it is supposed to snow again tomorrow. I am getting tired of this pattern of it warming up, we get significant melting and then it snows and we get it all back again! Hurry up Spring!

Cool Collage

I got this really cool free download where you can make a collage of your photos. You can even make them into different shapes! Also if you have photoshop you can save the image as a PSD file and you can move the pictures around to your liking! You can check it out here: www.vincentcheung.ca/shapecollage

This is a collage of our trip to Maryland:

More Craftiness

So I went from being totally uninspired to totally inspired by everything! That's a good thing because I am a happy camper when I can do lots of creating. So being in a crafty mood usually means a trip to Michael's. I usually go with one idea in mind and have 50 more while I am at the store and another 50 on the car ride home. And though I would like to do my part and stimulate the ecomomy by buying out half the store, it just ain't happening.

I did bring Kenzie with me because of the timing of Kindergarten, and the store being 40 minutes away. So Kenzie of course wanted to be crafty too and we found some cute chipboard shaped books in the dollar section for her and Becca to use and we found these cute cut-outs made out of wood. And then we found some chalkboard paint in Hot Pink! So we picked out some shapes to make little chalkboards to hang in the girls rooms. I also picked up a wood pencil holder. This is what we came up with:

We removed the twine from the heart to make it easier to paint and then we decided to use ribbon to finish the outside edge and to hang it. Kenzie was undecided about wether or not she wanted to use the beads or not, so we left them off for now. I think they would be cute too.

I painted the pencil holder with the chalkboard paint too, then just added some ribbon. So quick, easy, fun and useful. The paint was a little pricey-6.99 for 8oz. but you could do many projects with the one jar and there was about five different colors to choose from. (I discovered even more colors online at http://www.plaid.com/)

Now I was originally looking for the Martha Stewart Butterfly paper punches which I did find.

And I am working on another 3D picture with butterflies this time, It is almost done but I realized I do not have a frame that is deep enough for it so I just might have to make another trip to Michaels in the near future!

Inspired

After several days of wanting to create something and being totally uninspired I finally got my inspiration back thanks to Ali Edwards(www.aliedwards.typepad.com) and another blog I linked from Ali's site called LollyChops(www.lollychops.com). There was a cute little 3D art thing done with different size butterfly punches. I wanted to try it but don't have any butterfly punches, though I did briefly think about braving the snow to go find some. But living in the middle of nowhere who knows how far I would have had to go so I decided it was better to stay home and use different size heart punches. The different size punches made me think sprinkled with love which made me think cupcakes. I don't know why but I think it works! So here is my take on the idea:

The hearts were punched out of a magazine picture of cherry blossoms and the rest is just cardstock. These pictures don't really do it justice but I really like the way it came out and am looking forward to making more.