Showing posts with label Christmas cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas cards. Show all posts

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Black Friday Sale!!!! Doors open Saturday.

(Something's wrong there....^)
Yes, my friends, that is a true statement. I saw it on a Sears commercial last Saturday. I just thought it was odd...
Okay, so I'm working on a Christmassy tag. I'm not sure why it's Christmassy, but it has to do with "The Sound of Music," which is always played around Christmas (I'm not sure why), so it must be Christmassy.
I've been painting non-stop for the past four days, and now have three and a half Christmas cards to show for it! One of them is completely unlike any painting I've done before, yet it turned out (if I may say so) awesome!! So some of you will be getting that from us before too long, and the rest of you will have to wait until all our cards have gone out to get a glimpse of it on here. :) Actually, Most of you will get them in the mail.

Grandma and Grandpa said I should put my Christmas List on here, so here's a partial one. Maybe I'll stick the full thing on my sidebar. (* marks the ones I want, @ marks the ones I need, and # marks the ones I want so bad that I almost need them. :)
  • @Paint brushes (Mom has a set that I like. It's Loew-Cornell brand, and it has 10 brushes in it. The reason I like her set is because the bristles are stiffer than the set I own. I guess just about any watercolor brushes would be great, especially if they're rather stiff.)
  • @paint palette (porcelain or plastic, either one works well for me! 
  • @watercolor pad (I'm half-way through the last page in mine! I love the way this one looks, or one of these three books would be nice. Except I don't care whether or not it's wind-powered paper.)
  • *knee socks!! (How can you NOT like knee socks?!?!? They're so much fun! And if you get one pair of every color and pattern, you'll have one pair for every outfit you own.)
  • *Diary from Walden Books. (I was there the other day and found this super-cute diary there! I wanted to buy it, but I was already buying another book for myself. Wish there was a picture online, but Walden/Borders apparently 'doesn't have' diaries. >:P Maybe I'll take a picture of it to put on here sometime.)
  • #fluffy fleece bathrobe (Sis has one, and I want it! Mine was pale pink [and not fleece], but now it's kinda dirty pink, and no amount of washing is going to get all the little fuzzies off!)
  • *#@volleyball 
  • *Emily Climbs and Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery. (I found Emily of New Moon at Goodwill the other day and read it in 36 hours. Now I want the other two in the series!)
  • *pretty much any interesting books
  • #waterproof pens for my pen watercolor work
  • *jewelry
  • **Downhere cds: "How Many Kings?" "So Much for Substitutes" "Thunder After Lightning" 
  • **Jason Gray cds: "Everything Sad is Coming Untrue" and "All the Lovely Losers"
  • **Daniel Kirkley cd: "Let Love Win" (only $5.00 in his online store! :D)
  • *Kutless cd? "It is Well" and possibly "To Know That You're Alive" (ya, they weird looking, but he has a good voice!)
  • @@@snazzy new car (It has to be large enough for me and at least 3 friends, it has to be able to drive on the road legally, and it has to look cool. I specify the first two because, knowing my relatives, they'd think it funny to give me one of THESE.)
  • @@@laptop computer (identical to this one, only with a better temperament.)
  • #diamond earrings.
  • **bandannas and scarves!
  • #gloves
  • @@@dishwasher (electric. to put in my kitchen and wash all them dishes for me!)
  • **##@@Bermuda. The whole island. 
Okay, that's most of it. I'm sure I could think of some more, but, given the time, I'll quit now. :D For some of those things there's a very fine line between wanting and needing them (Bermuda. Laptop. Dishwasher.). 
what are some of the things that are on your Christmas lists, all you readers?? Let me know. :D
Ta-ta
~Kiwi~
p.s. the background on here is going to change again on December 21st, just to give y'all a warning!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

50TH POST!!!!

I wanted to say something before I forgot it, but am now beginning to think that it's too paltry a post for this honored position. Fifty posts. And since I've been on since Wednesday, June 11th, 2008. That makes fifty posts in 167 days. Averaging .2994 posts per day, about 2.08 per week. While Soul Skittles, for example, manages to churn out a lot more in the same amount of time.
Of course, all that was typed last Wednesday, so now my average has dropped even more. :'( I need to post more.
So, when was the last time I posted? Ah, yes, Saturday, the 22nd. What has happened since then?

Sunday (23): Nuthin. Church, as usual. I can't think of anything else.

Monday (24th): Instead of school, we cleaned some, then went to the library. I got a really stupid book that had a deceiving cover. It's called In the Shadow of the Ark, and it's about this girl, Re Jana, who travels to where Noah is building the ark. She falls in love with Ham (That sounds so funny. "Oh, I'm in love with Ham! *sigh*"), who loves her back, but he has to marry this other lady, Neeleta, because of her financial status. Re Jana's mother dies (actually, she knows she's dieing so she has her husband burn her alive to get it over with), so Re Jana's father builds her a reed gondola, as is their people's custom because they used to live by the sea and put the dead bodies in the gondola, then set fire to it and let it float out. But the mother refuses to be put in the gondola, so it just stays there. Then, after a whole lotta stuff happens, the flood starts, Re Jana's adopted brother, Put, is secreted onto the ark by Neeleta, and Ham sneaks Re Jana on, also. So long, complicated story short, Japheth's wife finds Re Jana and forces her to sacrifice some of the animals (including Noah's dove) to the old gods, hoping that then the waters will go down. No one notices that half the quail are missing, or some of the other birds. And then, it ends up that Re Jana, Put, and even their father (who floated in the gondola all that time) survive, even though they were not the Chosen People. It didn't make any sense to me, and I don't recommend it.

Tuesday (25th): Ummmmm... I made the scalloped corn for Thanksgiving dinner and stuck it in the freezer. I also discovered that I hate this kitchen. It's nice and large, yes, but the cabinets come down too low, and the counter isn't wide enough. And there's no counter next to the stove (that fact will play a role in my next adventure), so I had to keep scooting back and forth between the counter and the stove.
For supper, Mom made 'Cheesy Ham Potatoes'. The pan was sitting on the stove with a dish of corn beside it, and I was dishing up my food with my plate in one hand and the spoon in the other. Suddenly, the pan decided to scoot, and it burned my hand! Thankfully, Mom saw right away and was able to move it quickly. If there had been a counter by the stove, I could have set my plate down and avoided that mishap. >:-[

Wednesday (26th): I made a Cherry Pie for Thanksgiving. We went to our church's Thanksgiving Eve service. Oh, and I finished Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas card. Here's the front:
It's actually a bit brighter than it appears to be here. Inside, in the same font and color as the 'peace', is 'Peace on earth and goodwill to men.' That earned me $20, minus the $3.50 Mom and Dad charged me for paper and ink. $16.50. Sweet.

Thursday (Thanksgiving, the 27th): We drove three hours back to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Iowa for Thanksgiving. I LOVE the smell of turkey! And I love Thanksgiving meals. And we had PIE, four kinds of it. Cherry, Pumpkin, Apple, and Pecan. I'm sorely tempted to re-post my PIE post, but instead I'll just put that link up.
We watched about six and a half hours of Newhart. WGN was playing a marathon of it. I like Newhart! My sister said that afterwards, I was starting to sound like Stephanie! I think that's bad....

Friday (28th): We left Grandma and Grandpa's house after lunch, and stopped by Borders book store so Rapunzel could get a book. I had hoped to run into a friend or two there, but nope. Then, Dad drove until we crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois, and then he pulled over and (here's the good part) they let me drive!!! It went well. I had to pass a tractor *shiver* and only one person passed me. I need to work on my turns a bit more, because the other two drivers in the car who kept telling me what to do and distracting me, so I couldn't concentrate. I will name no names, but they're my parents. I like driving. :) I drove all the way from the Iowa/Illinois border to an unnamed little town near the Illinois/Cheeseland border--about two hours of driving. :) Driving is fun.

Saturday (29th): We carried, dragged, lugged, and hauled boxes into the basement from the garage. Big whoop. Quite entertaining.
After lunch, TOO (my new nickname for my twelve-year-old brother. The Odd One.) informed me that some friends had been walking by on the street behind the empty lot behind our house, and invited us to go explore the woods by the park with them. TOO left about five minutes before I could, and it was agreed that we'd meet at the park. I arrived, but no TOO, no friends, nobody. Long story short, they weren't at the friends' house, where I checked next, so I went back to the park and found them then. While we were back in the woods, we started construction on a 'fort' or 'hideout' or whatever you want to call it. I think I'll suggest calling it 'The Stronghold' or 'The Keep' (the safest part of a castle) instead of 'The Fort'. The Fort sounds more like some little hideout a kid would build, while The Stronghold sounds better to me. It's sort of a hexagonal structure. Starting at the west corner and going counter-clockwise, it's pine tree, tall-skinny-unknown tree, tall-skinny-unknown tree, pine tree again, another unknown forked tree, another unknown forked tree, then back to the first pine tree.

Sunday (30th): I woke up around seven-thirty and it was unnaturally dark. Looking out my window, I found the problem. Snow. Probably about an inch and a half? I don't know. Then while we were in church, it all melted. It was snowing hard most of the way through the service but not sticking. Then we came home, ate, cleaned, and a new friend (who just happens to live about five minutes away) came over and we watched Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in The Road to Morocco. We were going to watch The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but that VHS tape wouldn't work. The library needs to start replacing VHSs with DVDs. We made hot chocolate (hint: add dried coffee creamer to the chocolate mix. Hazelnut is good. Or, if you put milk in it also, replace some of the milk with coffee creamer. It makes it even better.), and as we watched the movie about three inches of snow fell.

Monday (1st): I did my school work, which involved watching Amazing Grace for history. I really like that movie! We saw it in the theater either the day it came out, or soon after.
I finished a scarf I have been knitting since late October. It's taller than Monkey by quite a bit, and almost as tall as TOO, who's just over five feet. It's long enough for me to wrap around my neck twice and above my eyes 1 1/2 times! Sort of like the scarf Randy Parker's mom put on him in A Christmas Story. Then, we called up our friends and went out into the woods again. You would not believe (okay, maybe some of you would....Dagmar and Matt) how different the woods look when they're covered in snow! Two of the pine trees we had used as landmarks were unrecognizable, as they were bent over with snow--all the way over! We got more work done on the Stronghold. Saw deer tracks. Heard voices in the woods. Saw strange footprints in the snow. Heard something that sounded like a cross between yip-yap dogs, birds, and a group of wild indians. Picked up two trees. (they're about twelve-twenty feet in length, and they're the tall, skinny ones without many branches. The trees fall over, sit there on the ground for who knows how long, then we pick them up and prop them against things.) So far, all the walls have framework, now what we need to do is weave other sticks in with the big branches and logs.

Tuesday (today, 2nd): I finished my work quickly, except my STUPID LITERATURE where they ask me DUMB QUESTIONS that I don't have answers for. Dad gave us ice cream after lunch. I started serious work on our Christmas card for the year. No picture of that yet, not until it has already been sent out.

I'm planning on going tramping again today. There's not really much else to do. Read, computer, television, paint, wait impatiently for the Fourteenth of December. I need more exercise. Oh, that's something to do! I'll look up the My-ville ice skating arena and see when they let us mortals who are not prodigies at skating in. Perchance after Christmas we can go skating.
Now, I have a tag to do, but I'm going to save that until tomorrow. If I post it now, I won't have anything to post tomorrow, will I?
Goodbye. I'll try not to freeze.
~Kiwi da Fruit

P.S. I sat down and figured out that I have only recieved ummm.... three letters here at this address. I have about ten friends who promised they would write to me, and still have not. It makes me very unhappy, very unhappy indeed. Please write to me, Dagmar, Avalon, Catfreak, Miranda, Abbie, Rachel, Avalonandcatfreakssisters! I miss you! Write soon!!

By der way, Thanks for the comment, Rachel!

Monday, August 11, 2008

There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place...


Well, I'm home again, after that long, grueling-yet-incredibly-fun-filled week of VBS. Sorry it took so long to post again. This past week has been full of nothing. Has it already been more than a week?? Almost two weeks??? How time flies. This is a quick overview of what happened:


The theme (I don't know if I mentioned this already or not) was sort of 'tropical island-ish', with lots of flowers, leis, and surfboards. Mike, Justin, and I led the 3rd & 4th graders together for the week. Most of the kids were fairly easy to control, except for a pair of brothers and one kid I'll call James. James tried to eat part of his plastic lei, his name tag, two pieces of paper, and his Styrofoam cup. Mom says we should have just let him do so, a bit of paper wouldn't hurt him, but it was distracting the other kids, especially the part with the lei. One little boy tried to eat the school glue, but I got it away from him in time.

Just a quick summary: twelve kids in one day (our record) was hard to handle. A total of fifteen kids showed up, but not all on the same day. One bag of ice was used (headache), three band aids (all on the same kid), three broken flip-flops (one broken on purpose by James), four worn-out leaders (by the end of the first day!), five craft projects left behind and never claimed, six songs and their motions to memorize in five days, ten towels left behind for leaders to remember (after water games on the second and fourth days), and about twenty billion papers, crafts, and other things for the kids to forget and the leaders to remember (we finally came up with a solution; put all papers and craft projects in the 'homeroom' for the kids to pick up when their parents come and get them.)! But would I do it all over again? Of course! The only thing I would have rather done that week is move. Yes, I would have done a few things differently, but I would love to go do that again.



So what's new with my life now, you ask. I'll try to boil down the answer to one word, but I don't know how well that will work. Here goes!

Nothing.

Well, that was easier than I expected! But it's true, nothing much is happening now. Last Friday, we all went to our friends' house for lunch and to spend the afternoon. We went bike riding together with three bikes. There were four of us. Rapunzel and Hotshot (we all have nicknames) each rode a bike, and then Cobra and I rode the third. It is new and has pegs on the back so a second person can ride. First I tried pedaling while Cobra rode on the back, but the seat was too low and the handlebars too high for me to ride comfortably. So we switched places, which worked really well. However, she got tired of pedaling after a while. She stopped the bike and I tried to dismount. It didn't work--well. I did get off, but, let's just say it wasn't very graceful. Have you ever been walking along, when all of a sudden your foot turns? Like, instead of stepping on the bottom of your foot, you suddenly step on the side of your foot, and in doing so, trip? That's what happens to me all the time, and that's what happened then. I was wearing flip-flops, so two of my toes got half the skin scraped off, and I had to wear an ankle brace for the next three days. But it's almost back to normal now. :-)



PAINTING NEWS:

I'm working on a Christmas card idea which involves a pine tree with two cardinals in it, in front of a snowing, dark grey-blue sky, with snow on the ground, and a wide border around it. But it needs something more. I'm not sure what, but it needs something. And I need to decide on a color for the border. I tried red, but that distracts too much. And the painting itself needs more detail work. With more detail, I might be able to get away with a red border, w/out it distracting. Suggestions, anyone? I'll put a pic of it on here once I get a satisfactory practice one done.



Here are the results of the poll on Chicken Little characters: Kirby (the little alien) was the favorite with four votes. Chicken Little, Fish Out of Water, Runt, and None of the Above tied for second place with three votes a piece. In third (with two votes) are Abby Duck, Turkey Lurkey, and Morcupine Porcupine. Buck Cluck only landed one vote, and Foxy Loxy and Melvin (Kirby's dad) completely lost. I liked Chicken Little (of course), Fish Out of Water, Kirby, and Morcupine Porcupine best.



Okay, that's all for now, folks! Adios!

~Kiwifruit

Friday, July 25, 2008

Card ideas/VBS next week!

Hello, all you people out there somewhere! What are you doing today? Other than reading my blog, of course. :)

I don't really have anything 'specially interesting planned for today. Probably just more sitting around reading, playing on the computer, and watching TV.

Last night at about 10:30 I was lying there in my bed, trying to sleep, when an interesting Christmas card idea popped into my head. So I, naturally, had to get up and draw it out so I don't lose it in the night and be out of one good card. I fumbled around until I found some paper and a pen, then sat on the corner of my sister's bed and sketched it by the dim light of an across-the-street street lamp. I think that with a bit of polishing up, I could make it into a really good card. And then, if I find at least one more idea that would go with it, I could sell a nice, hand painted set of cards. And then I need to come up with some more to go with the snowman one I did for our family's card last year. What could I do that would go with a snowman? Or should I do four similar snowman cards? The snowman I've got done already is in front of a dark, dark, dark, dusky, grey-blue sky with snowflakes falling. He has a red and green scarf on, and a matching hat. On the snow beside him is a little cardinal. Around it all is a thick golden border.


On Sunday, Rapunzel and I are going up to a friend's house in L---, IL to help out with our old church's VBS program (we moved from there five years ago). It'll be our fourth year in a row helping with VBS. It's been neat watching the kids grow up. The first year I helped with the preschoolers, then spent the last two years with the 1st and 2nd graders, and this year my friend (her name is Miranda) signed me up to work with the 3rd & 4th graders. In 2006 I was run ragged, chasing after the kids. One's middle name must have been Trouble, he was so trying. On the next-to-last day, right at the end while we were standing in the sanctuary singing, I turned around and didn't see Mr. Trouble anywhere, so two of the other leaders and I were searching all over the place trying to find him. It turned out that his mom had come and gotten him, but nobody figured that out until we had been searching for quite a while. There needs to be some kind of check-out system to check out all the kids from 4th grade and down. Last year two of the boys didn't want to wear name tags, and the problem with that was that they look so much alike that it was hard to tell them apart. I have one of their tags, and it's torn, dirty, chewed a little bit, and mutilated! Oh well, I still love doing it! This year I might bring a magic marker and just write the names right on the little boys' foreheads! Hey, that is a good idea....
Does anyone have tips on how to keep name tags on little boys without writing them on their foreheads or threatening them? JK! I don't threaten them unless it's to tell them to 'behave or I'll separate' them.


I'll post again tomorrow or Sunday (if I have the time), and maybe during the week. It depends on things. See y'all later! (wait, X that. Write y'all later!)

~Kiwifruit

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

New Paint

Today we went out, since it was so hot and sticky and boring sitting around the house all day, and looked for a couple of letterboxes. We found the first in a pretty park overlooking the Mississippi river and Buffalo Bill Cody's childhood home site. It would have been a very nice place for a picnic; cross that out, it is a good place for a picnic, just not on a hot, sticky, buggish day like this was. Then we looked for another one at a welcome center, but it was no-where to be found. The instructions said that it was "under the porch behind the lattice on the south-west corner of the porch. The instructions lied.
Afterwards I tried to convince Mom to take us to the courthouse in the county I was born in (wouldn't you love to know where it is!) so we could get my birth certificate so that next time we're in C______ I can take the test and get my permit. She didn't want to go there, so who knows when I'll actually get my driver's permit! Instead, we went to an office products store and I got fiver new colors of paint. The store is more of an art supply place than an office supplier, but that's what they call it. Anywho, I got Winsor & Newton's Cotman Water Colours in Burnt Umber (my last tube has some sort of mold or something in it and leaves little black flecks in the paint), Lamp Black, Cobalt Blue (my tube of that is also diseased), Prussian Blue, and Permanent Rose. At least four, if not all five, of those colors are to be used in my butterfly project. I'll leave y'all to figure out which ones. Mom was quite shocked at the expense of paint. Just those five little .27 ounce tubes cost just over $18! No wonder you hear about 'starving artists'! It's not because they can't sell their art, it's because they have to spend so much of the proceeds on buying more paint! And that also explains why good paintings are soooo expensive.
Actually, after I finish my butterflies, I might fix up some Christmas card ideas I have and find a way to sell cards. Last year I designed and painted our family Christmas card.
Today we went to Hobby Lobby so Mom could look at pictures to possibly put in the kitchen. I browsed through some of the posters they have, and have designed a room around them. It's to have a sand colored floor (or maybe actual sand poured on there, although that would be really hard on the wood) and a beach-themed mural (painted by Yours Truly, Moi) on one wall. The other three will be light brown, or better yet, bamboo painted on! The windows will have light, billowy white curtains and shades that, when pulled down, show water and sky and possibly another of those huts that you see in commercials for the Bahamas. And last, but not least, the bamboo walls will have the pictures hung on them. Pictures of beaches and beach chairs and surfers. Paintings of palm trees and sailboats. *long sigh* Once I get a chance to use my oil paints I'll try a palm tree or two.
Sorry for the long fantasy, it just looks so nice in my mind. It would be really cool if I could actually do that.
"Anything else?" She asks Herself.
"Not that I can think of. Can you think of anything else?" Herself asks She.
She replies with "Nope!"
"Then we're done here. See y'all later!" Herself finishes.
I'll write again later, after I've gotten at least one of the three butterflies finished. See ya later!
~Kiwifruit