So, it's been awhile.  I have plenty no excuses for my absence.  I can say that I watch someone else's kids during the day and that has proved to be more work that I thought it would be!  They are not super young (9 and 11).  They are very well behaved.  They love to craft.  So, why is it more work?  I'm not sure!  Maybe it's because I'm so used to ignoring paying my undivided attention to ice princess all day long I just haven't figured out how to split my time with 3 kids.  It's nice having friends here to play with ice princess, being that she's an only child.  So, that being said I have no time for face book (gasp) or blogging (double gasp) until the evenings where I've found are being taking up by me cleaning the house.  HA!  Cleaning the house.  You didn't actually believe that one did you??  I'm really reading all the blogs I follow, therefore not having time to write in my own blog.

I've also realized that before blogging I used to do things in life and think "wow, what a great blog topic".  Now that I actually blog I can't ever think of anything to blog about...strange.

I'm also feeling a little sad that I only have 5 wonderful followers (if they didn't leave me in my absence).  It sure would be nice to have even 6.  Heck, 7 would put me on cloud nine!  If I ever reach 10 I might even think of more things to blog about because that would be DOUBLE what I have now!

So, anyway, I'm off to read this yummy blog to see what yummy things I can bake....I mean...I'm off to clean the house...yea, that's it...

Pest...er...umm...pets

I love animals.  Well, most animals.  I have 4 dogs (large ones), 3 guinea pigs and a fish.  The dogs rule the house and the pigs take up the majority of my kitchen.  That's how much I love animals.  Ice princess rescues insects daily.  Just the other day we had to have a funeral for 2 caterpillars.  It was a sad day.  The next day ice princess dug up said caterpillars to find that the ants had eaten part of one of them.  She was horrified.  Insert circle of life story here.  After said story she was worried that the caterpillars couldn't go to heaven if they weren't whole.  We then had to have another story about souls going to heaven.  Now the caterpillars are happily playing in heaven while their bodies are secure in a zip loc bag buried in our insect cemetery.  Her love for insects does NOT come from me, however, her big heart for all living beings DOES come from me.

Anyway, I loathe two of my neighbors pets. 

On one side of me I have something that reminds me of someone trying to kill a bird.  Only to find it's not really a bird.  It's a chihuahua.  It NEVER shuts up.  I don't even think it can be considered barking.  It just sounds like they are trying to kill it over and over and over again.  It has to be in it's genes, my in-laws own a chihuahua and it does the same thing.  Chihuahua's should be banned.

The other side of me is a rooster.  Yep a real live rooster.  Normally this wouldn't bother me.  He does his cock-a-doodle-do thing bright and early in the morning when I can't hear him because of all the white noise I have while I sleep.  I wouldn't even know there was a rooster there, if he were normal.  He's not.  He cock-a-doodle-dos ALL the time.  I'm pretty sure he's talking to the chihuahua on the other side of me.

The neighbors with the chihuahua live in a rental house.  I usually have new neighbors every month or two.  We are going on month two so I've decided I can do one of two things.

1.  Introduce the rooster to the chihuahua 

2.  Introduce my great danes to both the chihuahua and the rooster

As I said above, I love animals.  I think I would love to see who would win...the chihuahua or the rooster.  Any bets?

Image borrowed from Google

Fun or NO fun?

Sprinklers.  My kid loves them.  What kid doesn't?  Sprinklers now a days seem way lamer than when I was a kid.  Maybe it's just because I'm an adult and I don't really care much about them anymore.  We've bought so many sprinklers over the last 5 years you would think that we have a daycare.  Not the case.  They all stink.  One doesn't spin because our water pressure stinks, another one because it was cheaply made, another because it has a hole in it and another because my kid even thinks it's lame.  Whatever the reason I'd almost given up on sprinklers.  The lame sprinklers is the whole reason we bought the giant water bowl.

Then, it happened.  I was surfing the net and I saw THIS.  As soon as I saw it I just knew I had to try and build it.  It just had to be as cool as it looked.  As soon as ice dad came home from work I told him I had another project I wanted to do.  He was less than excited to hear about it.  So excited, in fact, that we promptly went to the store and bought all of the supplies listed.  I had all of the decorative stuff here so we just purchased the PVC stuff.  It cost $32.00 for everything...not bad at all!

Ice dad cut and drilled holes in the PVC while ice princess and I worked on the decorative stuff.  We all assembled it in about 20 minutes.  Now, the part I was worried about.  Turning on the water.  Would we have enough pressure to make this thing work??  It was much larger than what the picture looks.  I could hear the water running through the hose.  Then, I could hear it in the PVC but nothing was happening.  We all stood there.  Waiting.  Then, like a miracle, it WORKED!  It really worked!  Ice princess had the brilliant idea of putting the slip-n-slide under it.

This looked like so much fun even I wanted to try.  Did I?  Lets just say if I did I would be blogging from the hospital...

Rainy day = crafty day

Ever get bored?  I do.  Not sure how I get bored with all the things I could be doing.  I think I make time for boredom.  I obsessively sit and read blogs.  Food blogs and crafting blogs mainly.  While reading a blog for an entire day I was directed to this blog.  What a great site!!  I decided that today was the day to make the ribbon topiary mentioned on her site.  Why today?  It's raining and cold (again) so why not?  I had almost all the supplies on hand so the cost was going to be minimal...which is always a good thing!

I think picking the ribbon was the hardest part.  I knew I wanted it for a center piece on my kitchen table.  Problem was I had too many ribbon choices!!  I have a ribbon addiction.  I should.  I make hair bows.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  These are the ribbons I decided on:

There's about 400 pieces of ribbon sitting there!  Sounds crazy, doesn't it?  It was actually a lot of fun to make.  The tutorial was pretty easy to follow.  I decided that I wanted to loop all of my ribbon before I started putting any on the Styrofoam ball.  Which looked like this:

Then the fun began!  I learned that I'm not the type of person that can just stick these anywhere on the ball.  I actually had to think about where to put them.  For that reason this probably took me twice as long as it should have.  I also used 3 different sized ribbons in mine.  Not that it mattered, but that's why mine looks different than the one from the tutorial.  I just love how it turned out!  Now, if I had a table cloth to match...

Feel free to lay on your side to see this picture...I don't know how to make it the right way

Here's a close up of the top of it:

Imagine the colors you could do with these.  Baby showers, birthday parties and holidays to name a few.  I wanted to do one for Independence Day, but don't have any cool parties to go too (hint. hint).  Yes, my kitchen is done in traditional Mickey Mouse colors.  Did you have any doubt?

Smile

A solid white piece of fabric.  That's how my day started today.  Plain.  Boring.  White.  Throw in a staple gun and some paint and you get an instant canvas!

Who wouldn't want to spend the first day of sunshine in 5 days outside painting a fun picture?  Me.  However,  ice princess LOVED the idea!  I'm not a major fan of being outside when it's windy or when there are bugs or if it's too hot.  Basically I only like it when it's sunny and about 80 degrees.  However, I force suggest ice princess go outside anytime the sun is out...or even if it's not out.  Heck, as long as there is no lightening and the thunder is distant she goes outside.  

I wish I was a kid again.  I wish I could spend hours outside without a care in the world.  I wish I had the imagination of ice princess.  She can make anything come to life!  She talked to her painting the whole time she was painting it.  She talks to everything as if it is alive.  She has pet rocks and will cry if anything happens to them.  Wait.  I see a pattern here.  She might need therapy sometime in the near future if she keeps talking to things that aren't real!  Either way, I wish I was a kid again.

This is what ice princess created.  She makes me smile.

Mother Nature

It's COLD outside.  It's the end of June and I'm contemplating turning the heat on.  Seriously.  It's currently 56 degrees outside and has been raining for 5 days straight.  I'm contemplating taking the big water bowl and turning it into an ark.  At this point I would get more use out of it.  I'm wondering what I did to mother nature to tick her off so bad?  We still had snow at the beginning of May and now it's the end of June and 56 degrees outside. Seriously?!

I think that someone offed mother nature and now they are trying to hide it by doing her job for her.  They seriously suck.

Maybe mother nature and father time got into an argument.  Mother nature being a woman and all is trying to prove a point to father time and this weather is the result.

Mother nature has a sick sense of humor and this is the result.  If I was at her comedy show I would be booing her off the stage right now.

Mother nature was involved it some freak time warp accident and she is now in a coma.  Sad.  I wish her a speedy recovery.

Mother nature's wand is broke and in the shop.  With the economy the way it is she is saving her money to pay for the repairs.  We are in trouble if that's the case!

Maybe this weather has nothing to do with mother nature.  Maybe someone knocked me out and drove me to a house similar to mine but in a different part of the world.  Yep.  That's it.  Click. Click. Click.  There's no place like home...there's no place like home...there's no place like home...

Watcher

I am a people watcher.  There.  I said it.  WHEW, that feels much better!  I could watch people for years days and be completely happy.  Have you ever done it?  No?  Try it, it's fun.  It's a stress reliever.  It might even make you smile.  It's something you can do by yourself or with friends.  Wait.  I'm still talking about people watching, what did you think I was talking about?

There are 4 categories of people:

PJ people

These are the people that live in their PJ's.  They love them so much that they even wear them to the store.  I'm not entirely sure if they actually change out of the PJ's they slept in (providing they sleep in PJ's...umm...ewe) or if they just think that changing clothes is over-rated and they wear the ones they slept in. These people have been known to accessorize their PJ's with slippers and/or hair curlers.

The over dressed

These are the ones you see wearing slacks and a blouse.  If it's a man there is slacks, dress shirt and suit coat involved.  Sometimes you think you might be in the wrong store when you see these people.  You may even feel out of place and leave the store if too many of this type show up.  These people accessorize with 5 inch heels (ouch), pearls and a coach handbag (if female) and a tie with nice shiny black shoes and maybe even a murse* (if male).

Gym teacher

These are the ones that have some type of track/yoga pant on.  Their hair is either in pony or they have a hat on.  Most of  these people don't even have the time to bother with a purse.  These people don't even have the time to accessorize.  These people are not to be confused with PJ people.  Gym teacher people actually take the time to look this way.

Boring

These are the "normal" people that you see.  They just wear jeans and a t-shirt/sweatshirt.  These people are usually very boring to watch.  Nothing fun to even talk about with this category.

There are probably several other categories of people out there, these are just the main ones.  There is always that lady that had on hot pink Nike's, teal tight fitting jeans and a neon orange colored crossing guard shirt...she is in a category all to herself.


*man purse

All images used from Google