24 Hour Readathon

Many people were confused or simply thought I was ridiculous when I told them about participating in my first 24 hour readathon. It was lots of fun with my friend Tricia. We spent most of the day at her house reading on her comfy couches and being served by her smiley husband, then spent the night at a Southpark hotel with yummy food from Maggianos and Cheesecake factory. (Meanwhile Austin was at home feeding the kids Cici's pizza for under $10 for the whole family).

Despite the lack of snacks to shovel into our mouths the whole time -Tricia doesn't believe in snacking while reading, or ever - we still had a great time.

I read for about 14 hours of the 24, completed 3.3 books and 823 pages, had lots of laughs and even stayed up past 9 pm for my first time!

By the way, despite what this picture looks like, we had our own beds and didn't snuggle on the same pillow the whole night.

"Punkin" House with Paris

A couple years ago, I bought a few of these kits that I thought would be fun to make with the kids. I think last time Will and I tried one there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, so Paris and I tried one again together and had a great time. Here is the finished project with my cute little baby next to it.

Lucky to be a Boy

Today I inadvertently stumbled upon a talk about periods (as in, once a month) with Cooper. I was trying to explain why girls have them and I got a bit tongue-tied.

Me: Uh, when the egg is released and there is no sperm to make a baby, then, um, everything has to come out to clean out the uterus.

Cooper: Uterus, what the crap is a uterus?

Exactly.

U2 Concert

We traveled several hours on Saturday to see the U2 concert in Raleigh. Enduring tons of traffic and a round trip drive of 5 hours was TOTALLY WORTH IT! I haven't seen many concerts in my life and this was amazing. I would definitely go see them again.

U of M Game Day!

Cub Scout Campout

Austin recently took Coop and Will on the Cub Scout campout and thanks to my lovely friend Heather we have these fun pictures.

I love this one of Cooper and his buddy Tyler - they've known each other since they were little chubby 3-year-olds. I love seeing them together still.

This is what happens when mom decides not to go to the campout and Cooper decides to run in the ashes of the fire - Great idea Coop! Was it still burning?

Will is just happy to be there and by the way, notice his new glasses?

Thank you Austin for taking them!!! I really was happy to stay home snug in my own warm bed.

Always a great start to the day . . .

When I have to sign my tardy kids in to school wearing my not-so-loose hand me down from my sister red reindeer pajamas with no bra and crazy hair. Good thing I brushed my teeth at least.

Yo-Yo Necklace Tutorial

It's my first tutorial! I found this cute yo-yo necklace idea and thought I would try my hand at my own tutorial. Basically it's a bunch of yo-yos that you combine and anchor to your neck with a chain or ribbon. And to give credit where credit is due, I found this idea online and wanted to link to it but couldn't find the link, so this is definitely not my original creation.

I'll show you my steps but if you want a more detailed and really great tutorial just to make the yo-yos, check here.

So first I gathered my materials. Basically you need some fabric scraps, round shapes to use for a cutout, scissors, needles, thread, glue gun, base fabric piece if desired, chain or ribbon for making the necklace and I think that's about it.

Here's the stuff:

Next use several different size circular items to trace your circle shape. Keep in mind that the yo-yo will turn out about half the size of the item you use to trace originally.

Cut out your circles. I am showing just one of mine, but you will need several. I used a total of 8.

Next you will thread your needle and make a knot at the end. Then fold over the edge of the circle and use long basting stitches all around the edge of the circle.

When you have finished stitching around the edge of the circle, start pulling up the stitches so that the circle starts to close in on itself, like this:

This is what it will look like when you have gathered the stitches completely. Go up and down through the middle a few times with the needle and thread and secure with a knot on the bottom of the yo-yo.

Arrange the yo-yos in any order that you like.

Then take a piece of scrap fabric or felt to use as a base for your necklace. Just cut it in something close to what your shape looks like. You will trim it later.

You can stitch your yo-yos together if you like but I chose the faster and lazier way of using the glue gun. I just started with the biggest yo-yo and started securing them to the base fabric and each other with a little bit of glue around the yo-yo edges.

Then turn it over and trim around the glue to make a base that you won't see from the other side.

Next decide what you would like to use for the necklace attachment. I decided to use chain but I have also seen ribbon or even different trims used for this. This is a horrible picture of me sewing my chain to the back of the yo-yo base.

I'm not going to go into detail about the clasp of the chain, crimp beads, etc. But just know that you will need those if you use chain, if you use ribbon, just glue it onto the back and tie it on. Fray-check is always helpful to make sure the ribbon ends don't get all stringy.

Wa-la! Here it is! Wear, give away for gifts and have lots of fun. I love these because you don't need lots of fabric and can probably even use up some of those scraps you may have hanging around.