where ya been?

Hello all....it's been a while...hasn't it? Did you miss us? Hope so:)

Since all of you in the lower  48 have had spring and sunshine for a long time already, you may not be super excited about sunshine. But, let me tell you, when the sun comes out up here, we Alaskans are r.e.a.d.y. to go out and play. So where have we been?

Playing of course!

Last Sunday, Nathania, Storman, Aria, Andy, Lucy and I went on a hike to the saddle of a mountain nearby called Mt. Magnificent. It was a beautiful day. Full of sunshine and thus making it warm. Like 55-60 degrees warm. Just what you want after a winter that broke more than one record!

This is the view from the top of the saddle. Although you still see snow...it was warm..warm enough for the snow to melt so we post-holed almost the whole way. We had snow shoes, but they don't do much when you're headed down the mountain.

Aria and "Ooshy"

Aria is obsessed with Lucy. No joke. Apparently she wakes up saying her name and whenever I see her the first thing that comes out of her mouth is not "hi" but rather "Ooshy"

Its quite funny because she's still doesn't want to get too close to Lucy...but giggles and giggles when she gets licked!

See I told you it was warm!

It was a fantastic Sunday. I want to do the hike again after all the snow is gone, so we don't have to post-hole the whole time.

Now, switching gears...to dinner. Beef is whats for dinner.

Steak to be exact. It's grilling time again so we enjoyed this wonderful healthy dinner tonight.

I have no skills when it comes to buying steak. I don't know what to get. But then again neither does Andy, so whatever I buy we eat. I don't know what kind of steak this is, it just had the least amount of fat on it. I don't like fat on my meat. It's gross and it usually makes me not want to eat steak.

When I was younger I would sit through dinner, carefully picking out the fat. No joke. My steak has to be cooked all the way through too. No pink for me....which drove my brothers crazy. They like their steak still mooing. Wow, that was long winded and I'm not sure anyone cares to know...but I'm sharing, so there you have it.

I marinated the steak in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, S&P, some big grain mustard, and some parsley. Nothing measured...just thrown in. It ended up being pretty darn tasty.

We also grilled the veggies on the grill in a pan. It was delicious!

Now, if this post wasn't random enough...

look at this rose Andy brought me yesterday. Perfect right? And it smells sooo good. It made my night.

Oh and it's currently 9:02 PM...this is the view from our house. The sun is still up.

Who wouldn't love that?

We promise not to leave for so long again!

sarah

Make Do March Day 1: Draw me a picture

Yay! It's begun....we're so excited and hope you are too!

My daughter Aria is just getting into coloring and loves to peel the paper off and break them in half! I decided it was time to use the 99 cent bag of crayons and molds I had purchased awhile ago and make her some more crayons.  I baked them at 265 for about 10mins. I checked on them frequently and pulled them out when the crayons have just melted and you can't see the shape.

These tall ones are fun and I can see Aria snapping them in pieces in seconds, oh well! The other ones will be tougher to break!

What are you Make Doing?

Nathania

Linked to: natural mothers

ready, set, random!!!

Whose up for a ridiculously random post? Well guess what? That's what this is going to be...RANDOM!!!

Why random? Because I have little projects going all the time...so this may turn into a weekly post.

1. We're making dog toys!!! What?!! Dog toys? Yup...my s-i-l sent us a fleece toy for Lucy for Christmas...and she absolutely loves it. So it got me thinking...why not make dog toys out of the extra fleece we have? We always have strips of fleece that aren't big enough for mitten parts, so in our frugal way, we made something useful out of them. Isn't my model cute?

2. We were able to hang up the hoops that I had made for Arias room yesterday...but the best place to put them were on the yellow wall in her room....and I had made a yellow hoop...that if it was hung up you wouldn't be able to see...it was the exact shade of the walls. So I'm going to change it up and put in some blue.

3. I made my way into the realm of dying this past week. We've been doing some painting in our downstairs bathroom, and I had this teal shower curtain that just wasn't matching....I wanted it to turn into more of a pea green...so I first put it in a bath of yellow...

...and this is what I got...Fluorescent green.

I did try dying it again with a tan...which got it much closer to the color I wanted, but somehow the dye didn't all dissolve and I have some bright red splotches on it now...boo! I'm going to try to make it a darker brown so you can't see the spots. I will update with a better picture later. But in the meantime, does anyone know how to prevent the splotches? I'm almost positive everything was dissolved in boiling water first!

So hows that for random? Dog Toys, Camouflage Hoops, and botched dying....

Now the real question is...what have you been working on?

Happy Day!

sarah

P.S. Nathania and I are working on a series for March....it's gonna be a good one. SO stay tuned!

misscellaneous

Its been a crazy couple of weeks here...and not a lot of big projects done, but some small happenings...

I scored on some new sweaters for our stash...gotta love the 50% off days at Value Village:) Lots of blues and stripes, yay!

I finished a small project for Aria's room...I've been seeing a a lot of these hoops at VV and thought would be a cute collage in her room...if you want pictures from when they are put up...harass Nathania:)  I made her initial out of white buttons and put her b-day underneath with embroidery floss.

I've also been working on painting this UGLY bathroom...it's almost done being painted...one more coat of an accent wall to paint, and the poop brown is gone. WooHoo! I will be posting more pictures of the before and after soon...so stay tuned:)

So hows that for a random post? What have you been working on?

Happy Day!

Sarah

Fit for a Queen...

My daughter recently got a cute dress from Hawaii from her grandparents but it was too small so I decided to try my hand at redoing it to fit her for our upcoming trip to Hawaii. I ripped both side seams out and made a black strip for each side to widen it.  Not too fancy but they worked, not perfectly as my measurments were a little off (I have to work on that ) but it turned out well and Aria looks super cute.  

Aloha, Nathania

Crafty Bonanza Day 28....hair you doing?(title by Nathania!)

Late post today...oops! But Nathania and I made a few more headbands today! Most of these are either special order, or late Christmas presents. We decided to put them on the more traditional headband, per request of the recipients. We really like how they turned out!

What do you think?

You see the natural light...oh yeah, the pictures were taken at 2:30 pm...and it was so nice and light!

We've decided that we're going to make both types of headbands for next year/etsy.

 This was our attempt at getting a picture with the headbands on Aria...she doesn't really like having things in her hair so it was tricky getting her picture!

See Nathania creeping behind Aria?

Hope you all are having a wonderful day!

Sarah and Nathania

Crafty Bonanza Day 27....blanket and quilt for Mr. Bear

I have been looking for a cradle for Aria...Nathania's daughter...for a long, long, long, time. The Dutch in me doesn't want to pay too much for it so I have been patiently watching craigslist and the thrift stores. Well yesterday I went to Value Village and found a cradle!!! It was however, not as big as I wanted, but then I realized that it would be perfect for this bear she carries around EVERYWHERE! Nathania actually has three of them so that she can wash a dirty one and Aria can always have one:)

So, the cradle is not done...it needs some cleaning up yet, but I thought I would show the bedding that I made. First I made a little mattress out of some muslin and scraps of batting that I had on hand.

I then proceeded to make a little quilt.

I did some funky stitching to actually quilt it but I think it turned out pretty cute...still have to stitch the binding on the back:)

It's a little big for the cradle, but it will be perfect for the bear and when it's folded in half it fits just right:)

Not, wanting Aria to have only one blanket I made a little crochet blanket!

Not sure if I'm gonna keep the cradle a wood color or paint it....what do you think I should do?

Happy Sewing!

Sarah