Happy Father's Day

Mom and Dad left this morning at o-dark-thirty, but we were able to celebrate Father's Day yesterday for both my Dad and David. My Mom cooked a fab dinner last night, of steaks, veg, garlic bread, and fruit salad. Real man food.

Dad has been anxious to go home, and Mom's back has been worse, so it was time to go home and see their doctor tomorrow morning. Dad is showing more and more signs of dementia or some other neuro effect of PD, to the point at which I e-mailed his doctor to ask questions and alert them. Hopefully the doctor and his PA will be able to give my Mom, sister and I some advice as to how to proceed.

Dayton Art Institute

Today we FINALLY got out of the house and took everyone to the Dayton Art Institute.

It was there that I decided what my new dream job is. When you walk in the door the information desk ladies introduced us to their free kids program. They have a program that after a brief registration they provide each child/teen with a packet that is color coded. Today we did the "green" pack. The kids packets include close up images of a portion of an artwork that the kids have to "find." Once the kids find the work of art (there are museum maps on the back of the packets and the artwork is very easy to find) there are questions on the back of each artwork's card that the kids must answer. For example one of the early Renaissance paintings had a hidden picture of a king in the landscape. The card went on to talk about symbols and hidden pictures in paintings.

My kids (8 and 11) were absolutely enthralled with the scavenger hunt.

The museum general admission is free (only the special exhibits have an entrance fee) and it would take 4 visits to complete each of the scavenger hunt packets. You receive a punch on your kids club card each time you com Once you complete all four each child receives a REALLY nice art kit in a snazzy plastic carrying case. The art kit included a wonderful set of pastels, watercolors, etc. Very nice, NOT cheap.

In addition to the 4 scavenger hunts the museum also had a great childrens section in the lower level. It was hands on with puppet show supplies and lots of interactive things in the center, but around the perimeter of the room there was a collection of (real)artwork that went from A to Z. Each letter had an activity or blurb to read and explain things to kids. Here is H with the H is for Horizon section.








Hannah was instructed to draw a 5 second horizon line.

I was for imagination. Next to this painting by Miro was a card reading I is for imagination. Artists use their imagination to create works, use your imagination to describe what you see in this picture.

So my dream job? Designing all these interesting children's activites and brochures. I have always wanted to write a book about weird and interesting facts about different paintings and sculptures, the stuff I learned in art school. Maybe I will write a coffee table book about facts like...in the painting American Gothic, Grant Wood's models were his dentist and his sister.

I LOVE this kind of stuff.

We hear the DAI now too. Only 19 miles from our house...and the kids begged to go back next week so they could do another scavenger hunt.

Felt Food For Owie

I finished the felt food for Owie sometime last week, but I have been dragging my feet regarding posting this because the package is in route to my sister. She should get it tomorrow, so hopefully she won't read my blog before then.

For Owen's birthday this year I decided that my felt gift would be a picnic. Sandwiches for Owen and his Mimi (my sister) and a bag of chips to share, apple slices (which I forgot to mail), and a carrot from my sister's garden to take to the horses across the street (Owen's favorite thing to do since he is a cowboy and all.)

Every time I am on the phone with my sister Owen is telling her he is hungry or wants to cook. I thought this would be something fun to keep at Mimi's so Owie could work on something in the kitchen too.

First the bread. I saw lots of ideas posted about bread and decided

to do it this way because it was easy. I bought a piece of 1/2" foam from the fabric store and sandwiched it between two free form cut pieces of tan felt (whole wheat bread). I sewed the edges and painted the crust on with some darker brown acrylic paint mixed with a fabric paint medium.





The sandwich ingredients...tomatoes, meats, cheeses, lettuce and pickles. The tomatoes I cut free hand orange shapes and red wedges and zigzag stitched around the darker wedges. After the wedges were done I sewed the two pieces of orange felt together. (All the pieces in the sandwich were basically two pieces of felt.)








Lettuce. I sewed two pieces of green felt together in the shape of a leaf of lettuce, then scrunched them a bit in the middle to make it a little more realistic.










Turkey. Or maybe the mayo. Just spiral sticked the two pieces together.







Cheese. I made two kinds, but this piece of swiss is more interesting than the cheddar. All I did was free stitch circles and a crazy outline and cut the holes when I was done.











Bologna. I used shrunken wool felt to give it the weird bumpy texture.









The carrot was all by the seat of my pants. I cut some 1.5" strips and tapered one end. I sewed them all together making a point at one end....








I turned the carrot inside out and sewed up the last seem not even bothering to tuck the final seam inside itself, but first I stuck a strip of fringed green felt in the top (see next picture).















Chips. I can't decide if I should have just made stitched lines in two pieces of felt THEN cut the chip shapes out or cut the shapes out like the picture, then made the stitching lines. I whipped these out, then cut all the threads later. They were a little more labor intense cutting first. It was a ton of snipping.

I Broke My Streak (NOT for the easily grossed out)

Yesterday I found myself in the Doctor's office. AGAIN. 6th time in two weeks for our family. I had an UTI. I got antibotics. I took one about 2 p.m.

Long about 8:30 the GI Issues began. For twelve + straight hours. Long about 1:00 a.m. the vomiting began. All because of these dumb pills. Let me just say that I weighed myself that morning, and sometime during the night out of curiosity I weighed myself again and there was a -6 pound difference. It was THAT bad.

BTW, thanks a lot Rhonda for introducing the barfing subject in your blog yesterday. Can I just say while I was naseuous and barfing I kept thinking to myself poor Rhonda. Lord, please help Rhonda get thru this.

Vomit. My brother and I have a running tally on vomit incidents. We always argue that we haven't vomited in years and have almost a competition. Honestly, I can count the times I have vomited on 4 fingers, technically 3. #1. Road trip to Ocean Shores over Labor Day weekend when I was 11 or so. I felt queasy before we even left on our trip and I remember my Dad stopping at the 7-11 and buying me anti-puke med's. Right when we reached the gate of Ocean Shores I tossed my cookies all over my white painter pants. It was NOT pretty. #2. Concussion. Some idiot threw a fishing lure off a pier that I was standing on when I was about 16 or 17. It hit me square in the forehead. Instant giant purple bump and gushing blood. I went home and hurled and went to bed. Not very smart. #3. Post-op. After my thyroid surgery I was given anti-puke med's (yes, I learned my lesson) and I spit up into a plastic bucket while in my hospital bed. *Technically this one shouldn't count.* #4. Stupid Antibiotics. Cost me my crown.

This morning when David came in to see how I was feeling (he slept with the kids) I told him I barfed. The first words out of his mouth? "Did you call your brother yet?" So I called Matt. When he picked up and said hello I said, "I ended my streak." He broke out in laughter and knew immediately what I meant. The conversation digressed to past incidents and gross things...

I humbly bow to King Matthew.

Craft things to come soon. I promise.

Sick

Not feeling good. More when I feel better...

First Day of Summer Break

Another picture from yesterday's walk...pardon the un-showered bed-haired motley crew.

Today being the first real day of summer break we decided to start the break off with a bang. Hannah woke up with a raging infection in her ring finger. Not to be too graphic, but there was much puss, throbbing, and swelling. So this landed us in the doctor's office by 9:30 a.m.

We followed the doctor's visit (soaking the finger/antibiotics for 7 days) and trip to the pharmacy with a trip to the library. Hannah finally got her library card, and we checked out her 7th grade honors and English and Reading list books so she could get a head start on next year. (I know, I am a super freak parent.)

We came home and mowed the lawn (I mowed, Hannah edged and Sam weeded), vacuumed (Hannah upstairs, Sam downstairs, I did the stairs), did tons of laundry, folded and exercised the dogs.

All in all it was a good productive day, which I know will all change as soon as my Summer defenses are down.

Excellent Day

We had an EXCELLENT day.
Since we went to Saturday night service last night we had the whole day ahead of us. We decided to take the 2 dogs on an exhausting walk through a local state park right outside of Yellow Springs. We hiked for a few miles and spelunked through rock formations and along the base of a cliff. The dogs were in and out of streams and the river. It was a wonderful few hours in a beautiful park. I (anti-nature girl) even had fun and had minimal bug bites and didn't fall.





Then we went into Yellow Springs for a late lunch. Since the
street fair was yesterday, there were a few vendors left over
lining the streets and we happened upon this vendor in the
parking lot of a gas station. We had to partake.
Once we had our caveman feast we went and sat in the Kings Yard and ate while the dogs panted for ribs.

Unbelievably D gave in and gave them some scraps.

On the way home Bubba and the dogs crashed in the back seat.

Street Fair

I had every intention of bringing my camera to the street fair. But no. I forgot. Lynne and I had a wonderful time, I had looked forward to it all week! Lynne was super nice and really easy to talk to...and showed me all the sights of Yellow Springs.

The fair itself was typical street fair...if you have ever been tot he University District in Seattle's street fair you'd feel right at home. Lots of people to stare at...wonderful ethnic food smells...rows on rows of white pop up tent stalls with everything from homemade rolls and cakes to local NPR literature. There were tons of handmade goods including this BEAUTIFUL purse I bought from an artisan from Bali. The bags are handwoven in Bali, then they smoke them for 6 days to create the wonderful carmel color. The purse smells a bit like smoke if you put it right up to your nose, but that will diminish with time.
I love the draw string cinched top and the
handles are a perfect length.

Lynne and I have a ton in common...both graduated with a BA in Fine Art, both survived a husbands long work and school hours, both have Dad's with Parkinsons, both sew and garden...etc. She has also invited me along on our neighborhood's book club field trip in a week or so to get to meet all the other women in the 'hood. They are going to see "My Sister's Keeper." Woot. More people!