Indiana Comic Con: Where Dreams Come True (Especially if Your Dream is To Own a Print of Wonder Woman as a Cat)

We LOVE Comic Con, where you're free to be as weird as you are! Even Will, who does not engage much with pop culture, has plenty to get excited about, with every third person she passes dressed as an elf with a dragon on their shoulder, etc. There are also plenty of booksellers and comic book writers and artists, and literally, I swear to you LITERALLY, we were all walking through the exhibition hall together when some random guy sitting at a table caught Will's eye, said to her, "Hey, what's your favorite type of fantasy book?", and like a kid promised candy if she'd just get into the nice stranger's windowless white van and help him find his lost puppy, Will peeled off from us and spent the next ten minutes discussing... I don't even know what. Something about Tamora Pierce, I think?... with him.

Our Will. Voluntarily shot the poop with a stranger. Wonders never cease.

We later set the kids free to roam the exhibition hall on their own while we went to more panels, but we did make them get some pop culture education with us. Here we are listening to Jim Swearingen, who designed the original Star Wars toys that were later featured in the documentary, The Toys That Made Us:

As he spoke about the designs he'd made for existing creations, I became curious if he'd ever been interested in doing any original toy designs, so I asked him. He said that he and a friend had made one original prototype once, an extremely spicy lollipop with a personal fan attached so that you could cool yourself while you licked it.

Oh. Okay.

His Star Wars toy designs are brilliant.

Here we are enjoying Matt fanboy over Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman in the 1990s cartoons:

We're cosplaying as the Hogwarts Comparative Muggle/Wizard Literature Professor and her partner, the Quidditch Coach and Flying Instructor, taking two of our students on a field trip.

Even if I'm not personally that familiar with a speaker, there's always an interesting take-away. Conroy, for instance, spent some time talking about his audition for the Batman role, and he explained to us that when auditioning, an actor has to make a choice about how to portray their character. The casting director may give them some guidance, but it may or may not be that accurate compared to what they're actually looking for, and that's not their fault, because what's in someone's mind is so subjective. But an actor who auditions has to make the choice right then, and that choice, how they're portraying the character, is what gets them hired or not. Probably they could have given the character the tone that the director wanted, but if they didn't make that choice but someone else did, then it's that other person's good luck, and if they're the one who happened to make the choice that got them the part, then that's their own good luck, but luck it is.

Fascinating, and I'm not even interested in acting!

Here are Matt and I listening to Timothy Zahn speak, while the kids were off playing retro video games in the exhibition hall:

 And here we are playing retro video games in the exhibition hall!

They had Crazy Taxi. I was basically in heaven.

Optimus Prime made an appearance:

You might remember that I collect fan art, and Will's into dragons, and Matt's into comic books, and Syd's into My Little Pony and comic strips, so we always spend plenty of time browsing the exhibition hall when we go to Comic Cons. I'm kind of pissed about it this year, because to keep myself from buying ALL THE THINGS, I like to check everything out, and then check out the artists' websites later and maybe buy what I really want, but this year, the organizers deleted the exhibitor list from their app and website basically as soon as the weekend was over, and NOW I AM NEVER GOING TO FIND THAT GUY WHO LASER CUT PUZZLE BOXES AND PUT TEA LIGHTS IN THEM.

I am really sad about that.

Here, at least, is Will's favorite artist. She collects original dragon art, and for the last two Comic Cons where she's been allowed to choose a souvenir, she's chosen one of this guy's pieces. Feel free to buy her something from him for her birthday!

The kids and I were also SUPER interested in this guy, and I'm definitely going to buy them some things from his shop for Christmas. I mean, he sculpts both cats AND dragons! And door knockers, which I really, really want. And steampunk goggles. It was pretty cute to watch Syd seeing all these people cosplaying in steampunk and all of these steampunk accessories in booths and fall in love with all of it in the course of about eight hours.

I have promised to score her a bunch of clock parts and leather scraps if she'll do steampunk for the next Trashion/Refashion Show.

Matt met and bought some art from Ty Templeton, whom he's really into, and I became deeply obsessed with a woman who draws characters as if they were cats. I bought a print of Cat Wonder Woman, but I didn't get her business card, and when I try to Google her there are actually, um, a lot of people who draw characters as cats. Huh.

OMG OMG OMG you guys! I just found THE TEA LIGHT GUY!!!!!!! I was tidying my desk, because I suspected there was some grammar that I hadn't marked somewhere in the pile of clutter (there was), and I found exactly four business cards that I remembered to take from booths that interested me, out of the approximately four hundred booths that interested me.

Lesson for me: remember to take business cards, because sometimes people will delete their exhibitor list right after Comic Con, dang it.

Lesson for exhibitors: put your business cards front and center so I can remember to take one!

I'm probably gonna go buy a bunch of tea lights now, and also about fifteen clocks.

Okay, so here is where the magic happened. Syd's favorite comic strip, by a landslide, is Foxtrot. She's read every strip, and reads the collections over and over. She talks about it when we're hanging out. She retells entire comic strip runs. She references it any time we're doing something relevant, like eating food or doing math or touching a computer. LOVES. IT.

Hey, you know who was one of the guest artists at Comic Con this year?

We bought her a print of her favorite comic strip, and he signed it for her, and drew her a little Sharpie Quincy. She was starstruck and so happy.

It was magical.

And we get to do it all again in June, with more business cards this time, when Indy hosts the Pop Con!

How to Make a DIY Magnet from Any Paper

I collect fan art, and one of my favorite artists is the author of My Life as a Background Slytherin. I was SUPER stoked to buy a print and a book of collected works from her etsy shop last year, and even more SUUUUUUPER stoked when it came with a teeny-tiny bonus print!

My teeny-tiny bonus print was not going to go live in a drawer, so instead I made it into a super awesome magnet, which is something that is super easy to do with any paper.

Super, right?

Here's how to make your own DIY magnet from any paper:

Step #1: Don't trim the image that you want completely to size, instead leaving some border around it that you can trim later. Turn it over, and cover the back well with double-sided tape (for the quick and dirty solution) or archival-quality glue, if you want your magnet to last forever:

Step #2: Stick your paper to the back side of a piece of mat board, then trim to size with a ruler and craft knife:

Step #3: Use clear packing tape (for the quick-and-dirty solution) or archival-quality sealant (if you want your magnet to last forever) to protect the front of the magnet from stains:

Step #4: Use an epoxy glue (I prefer E6000) to attach a magnet to the back of the mat board. Let it cure, then use your magnet!

I know, I know--ALL my magnets are pretty baller. I've got a souvenir from our Alaska cruise up there, as well as some Super Mario Bros. magnets, as well as some DIY Scrabble tile magnets!

I might need an even bigger metal board...

Fangirl

Some of you may know that fandom, and fan cultures, are major interests of mine. I'm interested in fan cultures academically, because I'm fascinated by the immersive experiences that fans can create around a book, movie, TV show, or video game, and the community that also participates in this experience, and extends it. People take ownership of creative works that already have "owners," because creativity cannot be owned. They feel empowered to rewrite and recast characters and situations to fit their own visions, whether it's finding a way to get Harry and Hermione together as a couple, or exploring the adventures of Rose Tyler and John Smith in their alternate universe. People also forge communities through their fandom, subverting the often socially isolating experiences of TV watching, book reading, and video game playing. They connect online, of course, constantly, finding common ground with other people all over the world who also think there's totally a ton of sexual tension between Sherlock and John, but they also connect in person, through conventions, and the experience is really, really, really fun.

I say that last part because, of course, although I'm very interested in fan culture academically, I'm also interested in it personally. I read and write fanfiction. I have a favorite wizard rock band (It's Swish and Flick, for those of you playing the home game). I collect fan art. I make fan art. I attend fan conventions. And, yes, I cosplay at those conventions. Here I am cosplaying as my favorite superhero, Krrish, at the Indy Pop Con last weekend:

Matt went in regular clothes, but with Sharpie tally marks up and down his arms as one who fights the Silence, and the children cosplayed as their OCs, The Awesomes.

There are a ton of things to do at a fan convention. Some people like to meet celebrities and get photos and autographs. Some people like to buy rare collectibles. Some people like to photograph the other cosplayers. Some people like to meet up with their friends who they usually only interact with online. The kids like to shop for vintage toys and, for Will, dragons and sharp pointy things. Syd likes anything My Little Pony. Matt likes to watch live gaming (at this con, we sat in on a Halo championship that was being livestreamed on Twitch--very cool). I like to browse the fan art for sale in the exhibit hall, all of which is created by super-talented indie crafters and artists, check out brand-new indie comic books and video games, and attend the workshops and panels.

I really like celebrity panels, because I'm always interested in the process of creation, and I always like to hear about a writer or actor's experiences. At this con, for instance, I insisted that we all get up bright and early so that we could be sitting in our seats in the third row of the main hall in time for the first panel of the day, a Q&A with Sam Jones, star of Flash Gordon:

Although Jones is now back in filmmaking, he has apparently spent much of his time since Flash Gordon running a security and extraction services business aimed at high-profile businesspeople traveling to Mexico.

Jones spoke a lot about his experiences making Flash Gordon, of course, but also about his cameos on Ted and Ted 2, and since these are his only film credits, and there's so much time separating them, I was curious about his thoughts on the evolution of filmmaking during that time. I mean, just animating that talking teddy bear in Ted uses technology way beyond all the tech involved in making all the effects in the special effects-heavy, sci-fi Flash Gordon.

As I'm standing with the microphone, however, asking this question, I go off on a little tangent (of course) about how much I'd loved Flash Gordon as a kid, and how one scene in particular--the one in which they're sticking their arms into the woodbeast's lair, when at any moment it could bite their hand off--had scared the stuffing out of me, even though it had required no special effects at all, and I said that I'd watched Flash Gordon "a lot."

"How many times?" Jones asked me.

Well, when Flash Gordon is asking you how many times you've seen his movie, you've got to tell the truth, so I replied with the approximate number, and this number was so large that even the other fanboys/fangirls in the audience with me audibly gasped.

And in case you're curious, the acting in that woodbeast scene was so good, Jones says, because it was an open set, and the lair was actually elaborately constructed as an actual lair, and the actors were actually concerned that little animals could actually have sneaked inside it at some point and could actually be waiting to bite them when they stuck their arms in.

John de Lancie, at his Q&A, had a lot more ground to cover, because he has been in TONS of stuff:

It was interesting, however, to see the way that he thinks of his career. Whereas Edward James Olmos, who I'll tell you about in a minute, had some very powerful things to say about why he chooses only projects that are personally meaningful to him, and how he treats his acting as art, de Lancie portrayed himself as much more of a career actor who chooses his roles based on time and money. For instance, he says that by the time My Little Pony became a hit and people began to contact him about his role as Dischord in the series, he had completely forgotten about having done it. He'd accepted the part, prepared for the role, voiced all his scenes over three days in the audio booth, and then gone about his business, leaving it all behind him.

He therefore had more interesting things to say about the technical aspect of acting, how to fabricate a side story to save a poorly-written scene, how to work with other actors, how to prepare your voice for the recording studio (never eat chocolate when you're going to be doing voice work!).

So he was interesting. And Sam Jones was interesting. But Edward James Olmos?

He was freaking AWESOME!

I'm mostly familiar with his work in Battlestar Galactica and Dexter (I know he's also on Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, but I'm not up to date with that series yet, so don't spoil me!), so I already knew that he was a great actor, but the stories that he told about his work, and the way that he cogently explained how  he decided to take the projects that he did, were incredible. He was really sharing what it was like to be a gifted artist and how to make meaningful contributions to society using his gift.

For instance, his role on Miami Vice? He was offered that part while he was still a relatively new actor, and one would think that he would still be interested in taking roles for the money, right? Lots of actors do that their entire careers, and do just fine. But Olmos described getting the call, with an offer that was more money than his father had earned in his entire life.

And he turned it down.

Of course he did take the part, after several more negotiations, and for reasons that went beyond the money. And then he told us a bunch of stories about how miserable it was to work with Don Johnson, who was an utter prima donna, and how their contentious relationship off-camera affected their scenes together, evidence of which you can see in the scenes.

It was really cool.

He offered the same kinds of fascinating insights about all his roles, bringing depth and context to the way that I'll watch Battlestar Galactica and Dexter and Agents of SHIELD from now on. And he's gotten me thinking about how American films portray Hispanic culture.

The other major guests at the con included these super-famous Youtube gamers, Markiplier and Jack Septiceye. Matt and I aren't way into them, but there is a huge fan culture that is WAY into them. Seriously, the line to meet them was hours long--no, it was days long, because when we were all sitting in the main hall waiting for the Edward James Olmos panel to begin at 1:00, they made an announcement that the people who were waiting in line to get in line to meet them were not going to be able to meet them that day, as the line was already full up to the end of the day, and they were given tickets to come back the next day to get in the line.

Here's a little video from the meet-and-greet. What you see here is probably .01% of the fans who came to see them:

When this was filmed, I was waaaaay across the exhibit hall, checking out fan art smack at the other end, and I could still hear the singing.

I bought a couple of great art prints--a My Little Pony castle scene for the kids' bedroom, and a Hermione Granger, surrounded by books, for myself (from this guy)--and saw a ton more great examples of the genre, but a bunch of these types of artists aren't really online. Copyright, you know. Or this isn't their full-time gig. Or they do enough business in person that it's simply not necessary. So now I'm kicking myself for also not buying anything from the artist who creates her own My Little Pony designs based on mythical creatures, or the artist who makes Rorschach prints that look like superheroes, OR the artist who makes furry critters who will sit on your shoulder and can actually move their heads, because who knows when I'll see them again?

Sigh...

Here are some of the awesome artists who ARE online, however:

• Raven Designs--Frankenstein-like character stuffies
• Loveworn--clothes from upcycled T-shirts
• Twisted Wire--wire sculptures
• Icypanther--Syd SUPER wanted a My Little Pony sculpture!
• Chris & Gin--two of the coolest comics EVER. Seriously, Dexter's Digs and Presidents of the United Space are both basically perfect.
• ChaosxCreations--Syd LOVES Perler bead art.
• Willy Chyr--Will play-tested Relativity, and it was REALLY cool.

So that was the con! We saw some cool stuff, we learned some interesting things, and we had a great day together as a family.

And the kids didn't even think it was weird to spend the entire day at a fan convention, so I win!

Work Plans for the Week of March 9, 2015: Science and Superheros

Our curriculum is especially science-heavy this week, with Science Fair prep and Science Club and zoology, but that's what the kids are into right now. History and Literature and Art and Civics will all still be waiting when the Science Fair is over and the zoology curriculum has been completed and Science Club is adjourned for the semester.

The kids' dailies this week consist of Chinese language practice (mostly using videos from Learn Chinese with Emma), keyboard practice (based on their Hoffman Academy lessons), typing practice (still using Dance Mat Typing, although I think the children have maxed out that program and need me to find them a new one), cursive practice (I've got them copying stanzas from "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," in preparation for a cute project that I have in mind), and the book of the day, which this week includes Chinese vocab and mythology, a Mongolian short story, horse books, and some grammar--basically whatever I've got on the library shelf for them but don't have any other immediate plans for.

MONDAY: We have big plans for Pi Day! Most of our plans for March 14 involve making lots of pie for an evening Feast of Pi(e), but I've got some enrichment activities planned to prepare for the big day. Later today, the kids are going to get out the tape measures and rulers and many circular things, and I'm going to see if they can discover the principle of pi on their own.

We've got our regular volunteer gig at the food pantry today, and the kids have another Hoffman Academy lesson, with its accompanying worksheets. Chinese class will be on hiatus for the next two weeks so that the children's instructors can go on Spring Break, but the children do have homework, so the first of my promised enrichment lessons for Chinese will be spent completing that.

Last week, I had the kids prepare these Girl Scout badge checklists, and I encouraged them to look through each checklist, note activities that they've completed this school year, and write them down. I think this will make it easier for the kids to see when they've already completed two or three out of the five activities for a particular badge, and therefore encourage them to complete the remaining activities to finish it up. They'll be using their checklists to figure out what Girl Scout badge they'd like to work on this week.

TUESDAY: In Math Mammoth this week, Syd is studying division, and Will is finishing up decimals before starting a long computation review next week. I've also got them, just for fun, watching the BrainPop movie on pi and reviewing a song they memorized last year--it's the first 25 digits of pi!

In Mandarin class, the children have been learning vocabulary for family members, which is kind of complicated in Mandarin, as paternal and maternal grandparents have different names, as do older and younger siblings, etc. I discovered, during this, that the kids can't automatically recall who is a maternal and who is a paternal relative, so I'm going to start them on a family tree project. I plan to have them use photos of family members, calling or writing for a photo when necessary, and I'll ask them to lay them out in family tree format, and then label them in the languages that we've studied recently, so Latin, Spanish, Mandarin, and, of course, English. For projects like these, I tend to let them work together on one (it makes the whole project seem less important and useful if you know you're making duplicates, don't you think?), but that one project must end up looking pretty darn nice.

The kids are really excited about Science Club on this night--they'll be doing the ubiquitous Egg Drop Experiment!

WEDNESDAY: We've got First Language Lessons on this day, but I actually have some functional grammar that I want to teach--paragraphs, the capitalization of "I", the fact that you don't capitalize the word that comes after a comma--so I'll probably be ditching or supplementing FLL beginning next week.

Speaking of paragraphs... Syd dictated the longest book report in the world to me a few weeks ago (seriously, I was nodding off at the keyboard while typing!), and there was not a single paragraph break in that whole damn report. Believe you me, she'll be putting in some paragraph breaks on this day! Will has horseback riding class on this afternoon, with the resultant homework to complete beforehand.

I love that most of the activities in Zoology for Kids can be completed independently by the children, AND the book is written directly to them, too, so I'm happily able to simply hand it off and let them get on with it. I've flipped through it, however, and have notes on what activities I want to require them to do; they've always chosen to complete additional activities just for fun, which is the sign of a great textbook, if you ask me.

Watching a video of the Sleeping Beauty ballet fell utterly flat last week--both children nodded off, and napped comfortably curled up together on the couch for the duration of the program. I think now that my plans to take them to a production of the actual ballet this month are off. Nevertheless, we'll have a lovely time listening to the music of the ballet, simply because I'll bring out the coloring books!

THURSDAY: This will be an easy ending to our school week, as we've got Gym Day, a talk about our community center's history as a segregated school, and Syd has gymnastics. I'm hoping that we'll have time, nevertheless, to try pysanky, as I've been looking forward to it, and yet have had to continually put it off for a couple of weeks now. If not then, then perhaps during the weekend.

Syd completed the City of Rocks Junior Ranger badge book a while ago, but it got lost in my paperwork--oops! I discovered it this weekend, and figured that if I was going to send in one badge book, I might as well send in two, so Will can complete hers on this day while Syd is at gymnastics.

FRIDAY: Free Day!!! We'll be going on an all-day field trip on this day to the Indianapolis Comic Con; I'll have my face painted to look like my favorite superhero, Krrish, and I'm not ashamed to tell you that I am PAYING the children--five bucks and one Snickers bar each--to wear their Awesomes costumes. There are some panels that I want to attend that may seem a little dry to the children (how many lectures on gender in comic books/superhero films/manga can two kids sit through?), but we'll compromise with plenty of time in the board game room, kids' craft room, exhibition hall, and movie rooms.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Thanks to our local university's Spring Break, we surprisingly have NOTHING scheduled this weekend! Also, the weather should be gorgeous. Hiking, perhaps, then. Pysanky eggs. Yardwork.

And, on Saturday, pi(e) for dinner!

Comic Book Pinbacks for Pumpkin+Bear Etsy

Back when I did craft fairs, I looooooved making pinbacks from comic books. The superheroes and the sound effects all made good buttons, but my favorite task was to find interesting bits of dialogue to punch out, especially if they said something completely different when taken out of context.

It takes a lot of work to photograph and write an etsy listing, so I've balked at listing these comic book pinbacks individually in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop... until now. For a little while, at least. Call it an experiment. Or call it a discovery of tons of comic book pinbacks as I was packing, and a realization that I probably should neither completely blanket my backpack in them nor give them away as Christmas presents for the next five years.

Or call it procrastination, because unpacking SUCKS!

Here's my first listing, Proceed with Caution:

I'll be adding more comic book pinbacks over the next few days, and every time you see a new one appear in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, you'll know that there's some crucial house chore that I REALLY should be doing instead.

A Liberal Trying to Liberate More than the Law Allows

The kids are VERY into comic books and graphic novels of all kinds. Our public library has a large collection of juvenile graphic novels in the children's department, and since the graphic novel section is also where we station ourselves when we spend time there (big round table, relatively more quiet than the part of the department that has the play room and train table and board books, near the door to the program room so we can easily see when it's time to go to whatever we've signed up for), the kids early on discovered the joys of browsing and reading and checking out the graphic novels.

Now that both kids are such voracious readers, I also don't do as thorough of a job checking out their reading material as I used to do--now I mostly skim something or read a page or two of one of their books as I'm picking up after them. The other day, Syd had gotten a bunch of Archie comics from the library, then left them lying around after reading them. As I was picking them up to put them away, I flipped open one of them to check out a random page:

Um.... yeah. Archie comics probably aren't appropriate reading material for the seven-year-old.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Vintage Doorknobs and Comic Books

tutorial for jewelry holders made from vintage doorknobs

and a tutorial for building blocks decoupaged with comic books

This latter project, in particular, turned out AMAZING, and quickly led to even more comic book building blocks, which led to more comic book building blocks, which led to putting yet another trip to our local comic book shop (and its super-discounted old comic book bins) in the planner. 

Eventually, I had to pretty much make myself stop making these so that I could work on, you know, the giant etsy orders that are paying for Christmas. 

After Christmas, though...

There may not be a building block left un-comic booked.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Comic Book Wallpaper and Felt Wizard Hats and Pumpkin Projects and My Bra

As a testament to how busy we've been over the past couple of weeks, I've been totally forgetting to show off to you what I've been up to with my other writing gig, so here's the catch-up:

I used comic books as wallpaper

I collected Thanksgiving-friendly ideas for leftover Halloween pumpkins

My kid and I made her a witch hat out of felt

And I altered my bra to fit better

I'm particularly proud of that last project, since a great-fitting bra is VERY important to me, and also very hard to keep up with during my slow but steady weight loss. This alteration should keep this particular bra working well for a while longer, although I am eventually going to need to buy a bra with a smaller cup size.

Poor Matt is horrified.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Scrabble Tile Pendants and Recycled Cardboard Numbers

a tutorial for making Scrabble tile jewelry pendants

This Thor is for Sydney, a big fan.

and a tutorial for making math manipulatives out of cardboard

Somehow we lost ONE of the hundred plastic numbers we used to use. Cardboard to the rescue!

 I have a running joke with my CAGW co-workers that I can create some eco-friendly crafting posts that are entitled to use the VERY SEO happy keywords "cool math games." I am totally doing it, so stay tuned!

Matt's Anniversary Present: A Smash Book

It's been fifteen years since I, a sophisticated junior at TCU, looked at that cute but goofy freshman at Mike McCaffrey's Anti-Valentine's Day party and thought, "Hmmm...I think I'm going to trick that boy into thinking that it's his idea to go out with me."

And the rest is history, the history of kids and cats and cross-country moves and used cars and visits to the beach and drinking margaritas and watching way too much sci-fi together.

To celebrate fifteen years together, I defaced a vintage children's book, because nothing says "Happy Anniversary!" quite like graffiti and hot glue:

a Before picture: I found a coloring page from "The Last Unicorn" for Syd to color. It's an inside joke that all I did as a child was watch a bunch of weird, dark cartoons, and inappropriate 80s-era comedies that were on HBO, and it's my mission to introduce Matt to all of them

for a while at IU, until they changed their budgetary policies to both boot me out of my associate instructor position (and thus, indirectly, out of grad school) and forbid Matt to work any additional jobs in the university at all other than his current one, he and I did a comic together for the student newspaper. Our friends all appeared, and our parents, and our cats. It's one of my all-time favorite things that I've ever done

The year before we got pregnant with Willow, Matt and went on this CRAZY road trip across three-quarters of the United States. Seriously, we were gone practically a month! We almost got arrested on a beach literally five minutes after getting there, and we kept having to sleep in the car, and we'd eat in these freaky buffets all the time because then we could be full enough to not have to have another meal that day, and I brought along all these travel memoirs of couples that we could read to each other as we drove, but in every single memoir the experience of travel basically destroyed each couple's marriage, and we saw everything in the entire world, it felt like

Matt's introduced me to every awesome graphic novel ever written, except I stopped reading this particular one below when it got really rapey

 Fifteen years is kind of hilarious, because when I look back at those photos from when we were dating, we look like babies

Like this photo of us with our friends. We're babies! We're in my first apartment, which I first shared with this guy friend of mine who later went kind of schizo, accused me of slamming my car door into his every time we were parked next to each other (which I didn't do) AND of replacing his gigantic bottle of Pert Plus with a giant bottle of hand lotion (which I also didn't do) AND sent this threatening letter to my parents telling them that he was going to sue me if I didn't pay him back $250 for all the D&D books that he'd left in the apartment when he finally moved out AND he put a password on our telephone account in secret before he moved so that he could switch the account for free and I had to pay to set up a new account AND he stole that old gold velvet and horsehair couch that we bought together without even asking for it. I loved that couch!!!

I asked the girls to draw pictures of all of us, and to write down some reasons why they love their Daddy. The reasons for both girls generally revolved around activities such as wrestling and treat-buying

I had to look the word "occasion" up in the dictionary, because all of a sudden I couldn't remember how to spell it 

 paint, glue colored with acrylics, text printed onto photo paper, a fussy-cut piece of vintage wallpaper, and LOTS of glitter

more text on photo paper, and vintage sheet music with a few applicable phrases circled in Prismacolor marker

and the cover, which is just a glory of random stuff--paint, stencils, paper doilies, die-cuts, twine, Sharpie, and a few images from the ill-fated original book left uncovered

It was so pleasant to put this book together that I finally understand why some crafters spend so much time scrapbooking rather than performing more reasonable activities like, you know, making skirts out of pillowcases or finding weird ways to dye play dough. The physical present was for Matt, sure, but the real treat was for me, spending weeks reliving all the happy memories of our fifteen years together, suddenly making realizations along the lines of "Hey, Matt has NEVER done his share of the dishes!"

He's always been good at presents, though (except for that fake opal ring in San Antonio business--who the hell gives his girlfriend of three years a fake opal ring on the trip that they're taking to San Antonio to celebrate being together for three years? Don't you think that when you've been dating for three years, and you're on a special anniversary trip, on VALENTINE'S DAY for Pete's sake, and you hand a girl a ring box, and inside it is a fake opal ring, and it's not even a fake opal engagement ring, just a generic fake opal ring, that she might not react with pleasure and gratitude?!?). This year for our anniversary Matt bought ME a panini press, because he knows I'm a big nerd who wants to make paninis all the time.

Seriously, don't you want to come over for breakfast today? I'm making cream cheese, chocolate chip, and banana paninis, and if you stay for lunch I'll even make you a turkey bologna and mozzarella panini. For dinner it's pulled pork and avocado paninis, with strawberry, cream cheese, and powdered sugar paninis for dessert.

A Colored Pencil Roll with Superpowers

I'm entering a whole new target audience of kid-crafting. Will's attending the sixth birthday party of a little guy friend this weekend, and for a little while, I was stymied about his present.

He's a little too old for play dough, at least as a birthday present.
Same for a superhero cape.
I doubt he'd appreciate a patchwork quilt.
Same for a dress.
How would I go about constructing a Beyblades carrier?

Fortunately, the little dude likes comic books (don't we all?), and I do happen to have this particular thrifted fabric just waiting for me in my stash:

This old fabric is slightly lame, because it's from that period of time when they killed off Superman in the comics (gasp!) and tried to replace him with a couple of dorky alterna-superheroes, but still, Superman's on the fabric, and I love its retro look.

While I sewed this particular colored pencil roll, I took some photos for an upcoming pdf tutorial, because I think that I finally have this pattern ironed out and it's ready for Matt to design and make into a pdf package for my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

 
 
 
 I'm in love with the final product, a retro comic book colored pencil roll with superpowers:

 
 
I've already got a few more cut out and hemmed, which I'll put in my pumpkinbear etsy shop when they're finished, but I still do have some leftover fabric...

I'm thinking this could be my new traveling Sharpie roll.