Crafting and kids.
Did you know that snowflakes actually look like snowflakes? I thought that was only in cartoons! I’m experimenting with trying to photograph some snowflakes. First attempt with the real camera.
And here it is zoomed out.
I also want to try photographing frozen bubbles! I’m sure we will be singing a different tune in February, but right now we are loving the snow. 🙂
It’s December y’all! And I feel like I’m living on the set of a Hallmark movie. Seriously, it snowed and it was MAGICAL! Let’s see how those November goals went.
And now onto December! (Only ::checks watch:: 8 days late. Whoops.)
I love the beach so much. I think I *may* have mentioned that once or twice on the blog before! lol. Last week RaptorDad encouraged me to drive down to the beach while the kids were at school and it was the best idea ever. It was super cold, but I just wore my new snow coat and I was quite cozy. Side note: I’m a little bit terrified of what happens when it *actually* gets super cold as we’re all wearing our wool socks and snow coats, but the locals are still in jeans and sweatshirts.
It was low tide and there were tons of colorful rocks and shells. I even managed to assemble a rainbow! Maybe I’ll start a little collection of rainbow rocks and make something cool to hang on the wall? Hmm… Something to ponder as I’m sure I’ll be making another trip to the beach in just a few weeks. 🙂
We survived October! It was touch and go for a bit there, but we made it. :). Let’s see how we did on the October Goals.
Now for November?
I might have been most excited about seeing the hippos! On this day, we were picked up from our hotel in Zimbabwe and we drove about an hour to Chobe National Park in Botswana for a morning safari drive and an afternoon river cruise. It was a completely different feel than Kruger National Park in South Africa. Main difference would be the river! With such an abundance of water, we saw tons of hippos and elephants. There were also way less people in Chobe and the park was less developed. Which is not to say that Kruger was overly developed (it’s not at all!!!), but there were a few paved roads and a handful of places where you could stop to buy some lunch or do a bit of shopping. We did not see that in Chobe.
What we did see was a lot of hippos and elephants! I think I took approximately eleventy billion pictures of them. lol. I couldn’t *believe* how close we were able to get to the hippos on the river cruise! The little stinkers are so hard to photograph though what with them being mostly underwater and all, but I was able to get this one when 2 of them poked their heads above water for a minute. National Geographic they are not, but I’m happy with this one. 🙂 Keep scrolling for elephant pictures!
We’re still slowly trying to get unpacked here in Maine, but we did finally find the box that we had hidden the computer in! I promptly pulled almost 6k pictures from Africa off of my camera card. It’s going to take me a while to go through all of them! My goal is to do an initial culling down to about 10% and then delete the other 90%. We’ll see how that goes. lol. I did sort through my Chobe river cruise pics and got it down to about 15% which is a start!
This was one of my favorites. I think it really captures the vastness of the landscape, or at least that was the goal!
In between editing photos, I’m working on setting up my art room. I took the time to paint the mauve wall teal and I’m so glad I did! Now to get to work painting over the rest of the mauve walls in this house. Eeep! I also did a quick inventory of just how behind I am on Project Life (I can’t bring myself to do the same with the scrapbooks just yet) and it’s pretty bad. lol. I have 19 more layouts to do for 2021, 36 (!!!) more layouts for 2022, and I’ve only gotten 9 layouts done for 2023. I’m thinking maybe I’ll try to start in the present and work backwards? and then also start in 2021 and work forwards? We’ll see! I’m worried that there are loads of weeks without many photos, but I’ll cobble something together I’m sure. Mostly I’m just thrilled at the idea of getting to scrap again! All of my stuff has been packed up since May- I don’t think I’ve gone that long without scrapping since I started in high school! Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it sure feels like it.
On that note, I’m going to rotate the laundry and then try to print out pictures for a Project Life layout. Maybe last week? IDK. Stay tuned!
I’m back!!! Oh my gosh, we were in airports or flying for over 30 hours, but I made it back to my family yesterday and I could not be happier! I’m planning to write up a blog post or 2 specifically about the trip, but suffice it to say that it was life-changing. Beyond gorgeous. The nicest people. And 2 weeks with my mom!
But lets take a look at the September goals. I did manage to get some more unpacking done, but there is still loads to go. Still, I feel like we have a (mostly) functional house so yay! And I managed to get packed for Africa! So I’m counting September as a win even if my goals were a bit vague. lol.
October
Well, I’m going to go get to work!
Here’s my very late September goals post. 🙂
August Goals
September goals anyone?
I’m far from finished with the hand quilting, but I’ve decided to try out my idea for binding it anyway. And I love how it’s turning out! (Don’t worry, I’m only binding bits that have at least one line of quilting through them.)
I decided to keep the irregular hexagon edge instead of trimming it and I’m so glad I did. I’m a little bit missing the feeling of a stripy binding acting as an outline, but overall I think this is going to be awesome. I’m super glad that I splurged on my favorite teal and white background and I’m only wishing a little bit that I had hand stitched the 2 pieces of backing fabric fabric as that one seam is the only one done by machine in the entire quilt! The hexagons on the back will mostly be tone on tone white, but every once in a while I’m throwing in a rainbow of Alison Glass. I’m willing to spend so much time on the back because this quilt is going on my bed, and I figure when we get tired of the super busy front, we can have the teal side up for a while. 🙂
We’re all eagerly awaiting moving in to our new house! Target close date is the 30th, but we’re crossing all fingers and toes that we’ll close early.
Oh my gosh, yesterday I took Kate up to register her for high school! Naturally, they made us fill out a form and then schedule an appointment (which is what I thought we had on Monday?) but we are one step closer. We also got information about her two orientation days which sound super fun. 🙂
Other highlights last week include finalizing the twins’ school registrations, deciding that we would let them be in separate classes this year, and deciding that we would let them ride the bus! Cue massive panicking on my part, but at this point I’m just holding them back. It’s for sure time for them to have some more independence, but part of me still looks at them and sees my teeny tiny, sub 5 pound, babies.
We also found an awesome public pool in our new town! And it’s at the end of our street next to a cool park and the YMCA! I’m pretty sure we are all going to be crying at some point this winter, but for now it feels like we are moving to paradise.