Forts and Such

At the beginning of Summer I found this fort building kit at my local book store.  It was a cute idea but at fifty bucks was out of my price range.  A few weeks later, I found it online for more than half off so I jumped on it and had it shipped to the house.  The mail lady looked annoyed because they shipped it through the Post Office and the box was too large to fit in the parcel box so she had to deliver it to the door.  Hubby took one look at it and laughed.  That was followed up with a "when I was a kid...we didn't need a kit to build a fort" speech.

Now we have done the massive forts, the couch forts, the let us see how many blankets we can fit in the living room rainy day forts.  So we are no stranger to forts.  I even have spare parachord and a hook in my wall for forts.  So my goal with the kits was more of a design and implement lesson.  Clover would be able to build with the poles attach the balls to design and create a fort.  I'm not going to post the name of the product because in about two seconds you are going to see what I don't like about the kit.

Here is the structure poles and balls to connect everything together.  I helped a little bit.

And here is the fort with the blanket included with the kit.  

Are you kidding me?  

It's not even large enough to cover the roof!  

Our solution was to use a king size jersey knit fitted sheet.

The elastic in the fitted sheet grabs the bottom and holds on.  

The sheet even makes a nice little cubby hole door.  

The kit is nice because it gives us something to do when the weather is too hot to play outside but I think that the company could have put a little more thought into it.  If I would have paid original price for this I would have taken it back.  That blanket that comes with it is just silly.

For now it gives Clover somewhere to camp out and hide.  I think her favorite part is setting up the inside with pillows and her flashlight.  

Took a Chance

This weekend we took a vacation.  It's been awhile since we just went and chilled out somewhere, just the three of us.  We had plans to go to Big Sur and go hiking but Hubby fell in love with the lodge that we stayed at that we just hung out after visiting the beach.  Which was okay with the rest of us.

The picture of the sunset over the mountain.

Lots of fun was to be had!

Not exactly sand.

Everything was lovely.  We took a chance on the hotel we wanted to stay at.  We have never stayed in Cambria.  We usually do Morro Bay.  We ended up lucking out because the room was awesome!  We drove down Main Street and got a bite to eat and just spent time hanging out and enjoying each other's company.  It was a very much needed vacation.  We loved it so much that none of us wanted to come home.  We were all pouty as we drove back over the mountain.

We had to come back though, we had an excellent surprise to home too.  The house was cleaner than when we had left it!  And our secret cleaner elf found the remote!

All around...best weekend ever!  

All The Dresses

I like to start brainstorming for All Hallow's Eve early because if I am going to whip up an outfit it's going to take some time.  Clover has already decided that she was going to be Merida this year.  So I decided that I wanted to dress up too.  So I will be playing the part of Elinor, Merida's mother.  I found some ideas from various websites.  One of them is a quick overview of the costume.   I found a few websites that would make the dress but the prices where way out of the price range I would pay to wear it for one night.  So did some more internet searching and found a pattern that I felt came pretty close to what I was looking for.

bottom right corner?

 
I was pretty excited when I got the pattern in the mail.  Clover asked me what it was so I explained that it has instructions to tell me how to make these dresses.  Her eyes grew three sizes and she exclaimed

"Wait?!?  You mean YOU CAN MAKE DRESSES?"

Even though she has seen me make several things she never thought I could make dresses since we bought them.  The dress up ones usually came in the mail because I found some killer deals online.  It took her awhile to form her mind around the fact that I could whip up costumes.

I'm not sure this is a good thing.

A master list has been created.  She has been asking me to whip up every dress she sees.  We watched Enchanted for the first time this week and every dress Gisele was in, she now wants.  I told her that we should probably make a list since the list keeps growing.  So she sat down this morning and wrote one out for me.

Her cursive writing.

The top one is "the white dress, the blue dress and the pink dress that Gisele has"  and the second line is "A Belle dress that is NOT scratchy".  Followed up with "A witches dress like the ones that Winny, Mary, or Sarah wears".  She asked me when we were going to go fabric shopping and get started on all of her dresses.  I had to stall her by telling her we had to find patterns and that takes awhile.

I need a team of mice and birds to help me get sewing all the dresses.  Anyone know where I can find some sewing furry woodland creatures?  Singing is optional.

Recipe Testing - Appetizer

Last night we went out for a date night and I ordered some Deviled Eggs as an appetizer and loved them.  The only problem was that they brought me three halves.  Three?!?  This doesn't even make any sort of sense to me.  So somewhere another half of my egg is wondering around the restaurant.  So today I wanted eggs.  I found this recipe at Kalyn's Kitchen for Sriracha Deviled Eggs.  Rooster sauce!  Yum!

I didn't add as much mustard because I don't really like my eggs tangy.  The addition of yogurt was a little weird to me but I did like how they made the yolk filling nice and light and creamy.  Hubby on the other hand was not a fan.  He like the flavor but prefers more of a dense egg.  Clover ran off with a bunch of egg whites after they where peeled.

Overall very yummy!    

The Wager

The challenge has been thrown down.

The wager was made.

The terms have been accepted.

The other night I was searching for motivation.  I've been struggling more than a little lately with getting back on the health wagon.  While I'm on it, I do pretty well until stress knocks me off and I find myself falling on my butt waiting to find the motivation to get back on.  Trying to get Hubby to participate with me is even more of a challenge.  The other night he came up with a little wager.  We have a small amount of money saved and which ever one of us loses the most weight by Christmas gets the pot.  Although at this point it's more bragging rights.  We both can get kind of competitive.  In the end we will both be a bit healthier and one of us will have a little more cash in their pocket.  I don't really see a down side to this situation, unless I lose.  And then I'm going to be a bit grumpy.  But I don't plan on losing.  I plan on winning.

It is so on!      

Let's Dare Mighty Things Together

We originally wanted to go to Pasadena for the Curiosity landing.  I thought it would be cool.  It sounded fun to watch the landing with lots of other people who are passionate about space.  My other motive was to meet Bill Nye.  You know the Science guy?

Our plans got scrapped.  Hubby came down with a cold last weekend and we thought it was just your run of the mill summer cold that makes you miserable because it's triple digits outside and all you want to do is curl up and drink hot tea.  Well not only was it that but it was also Bronchitis.  So we have been sidelined for a week.

Lucky for us NASA had lots of coverage of the event.  We were able to follow the twitter feed while watching the simulation software on a laptop while watching the live streamed event on the TV.  It seemed we waited forever for the rover to touch down.  I can't begin to imagine how anxious these guys where to see years of their work make it to it's destination.  It was nerve wracking for me because I don't like suspense.  I am the type that will fast forward to the end of the movie to see what happens then go back to the middle.  I also read the last two chapters of Harry Potter first before I finished the last book.  So I was already on pins and needles waiting for this thing.  It was such a heart warming moment when it touched down and the room went crazy.  I got a little teary eyed when the guy in back started crying.  Here is a vid from the stream of the control room during touchdown.

 
Clover didn't make it to the touchdown and I already figured she wouldn't be awake that long so we had our own celebration during the day.  We watched the Planets episode of Bill Nye the Science guy and made Red Planet cupcakes.

We added some stuff to a Vanilla box mix like pudding and some red food coloring.

Then we added a drop on top and swirled it around a bit.

I had to try one...you know for science!  

I'm not sure what making cupcakes had to do with anything other than it was just an excuse to make cupcakes.

Is it just me or does the Curiosity kind of look like Wall-e?

Okay maybe if Wall-e had a few more legs and his body was a rectangle and not a square.  Good luck Curiosity on your two year mission!   

Day Trip

Sunday we packed up and headed over to the Gilroy Garlic Festival.  We have always heard about it but somehow ended up missing it every year.  This year I have tried to be better at planning out vacations.  It's always fun to get up and go but planning it out gives me more options.  We left early in hopes of avoiding the crowds.  Which we were successful at until about 1 o'clock and then it just seemed like there where people everywhere.

We all decided that if we were to do one thing...Garlic Ice Cream.

I'm not going to bash the event.  The planners seemed like they tried to cover all of their basis.  They had busses to shuttle you from the parking lot which was nice.  It didn't seem like it lived up to all the hype. We had a good time but didn't actually buy anything other than food.  It was pretty funny watching everyone taste the garlic ice cream.
 

That's not a tan line it's dirt.

When I got home and slipped my flip flops off I noticed the feet where two different colors.  I thought it was weird that I had a tan line when I slathered the sun screen on.  I did miss a few spots so I have a couple of red spots.  Then there is my tribute to the Curiosity pedicure.  I was reading up on the next Mars landing last week via The Planetary Society and decided to add some red to my toes.  Each toe is a different shade of red with one toe a bronze.  I thought it was funny how my sandals made little Star Trek insignias on my feet.  We were kicking around the idea of going to Planetfest but Hubby is not feeling well and it looks as if another cold is making it's rounds.  So I think that lots of rest and relaxation is on the menu for this weekend.