Sir Knight

Dash & I were inspired by all of the medieval & knightly awesomeness at Legoland last weekend. Not inspired enough to drop $25 on some crappy polyester knight costume, but inspired enough to come home & make our own. Once you factor in materials & my time, these probably cost about $150 each. So. You know.

Haughty little fucker


Lion version


Dash had an assfull of these after day two, so I gave up on trying to get him to model them. Here's the dragon version. I used the peacock fabric I had left over from the Viking pillow for the crest.


Cape!


In conclusion

Lizeggo Lizand

Stacking


Nobody loves a bad guy the way the Engels love a bad guy. (Seriously, there was a Rebel Pilot 10 feet away & I'm pretty sure Josh & Dash flipped him off as they walked past to embrace Boba Fett).


Win's namesake


Be warned: Dash will fuck you up if you come at him with a sword.


But he's not too much of a bad ass to do a little Vogueing on the back of a mechanical horse.


No joke, the kid won his own Spongebob on the first try, totally schooling the three teenagers that had been trying for, like, 15 minutes. Look how happy Josh is!


This time we actually knew to bring trunks for the water play area.


As far as I'm concerned, the water area is worth the price of admission alone.


If only because you can do stuff like this to them (watch the bucket at the top left).








!


Then, after the water, there was some of this.


And some of this (FYI, I was waiting for Josh & Dash to finish a ride when I took this picture. Of myself. Wearing a pirate hat. Saying, "aaargh.")


Some of this.


And this.


And this.


And then, Dash spoke for all of us when, before we were out of the parking lot, he did this.

Summer Last Hurrah

We hit up San Diego (why don't we just marry it if we love it so much?) yet again for our last "fercation," as Dash calls it, of the Summer. Ostensibly we were there to watch Josh dominate in his second full triathlon, but since Dash & I aren't above co-opting all of Josh's endeavors for our own amusement, we made it mostly about us.

We got there in the afternoon on Friday & headed over to the Oceanside Harbor. The harbor was a bust (super picturesque from afar, but kind of a dump up close), but the beach was nearby & the sand was glittery & there was a rock jetty to climb, so we made our own fun.

And, why yes, he is wearing his Thor costume again. Because he is awesome.

Tri Tri Again

Yup. He did another one. I can not even begin to imagine how swimming in the fucking OCEAN, then getting on a bike for 20 miles & then running for no reason other than to run (I have a strict, "only when being chased" policy my own self) is anyone's idea of a good time. But hey--at least it's not hookers & eight-balls.

If Josh ever doubts our love & dedication, he should remind himself that we dragged our asses out of bed at 5:30am on a Saturday to watch him compete in this madness. Also: Port-A-Potties.


Josh is in there, somewhere.


At the last triathlon I was so sadly unprepared it was embarrassing. I literally had one sticky, old lollipop in my purse to keep Dash amused for three hours. This time I came prepared. Picnic blanket, dvd player, books, card games, paper for coloring, snacks & drinks. Know what I didn't bring? Jackets. At 6am. At the beach. Luckily, we were able to put Josh's swag shirt into service. Dash was cool with it.


There's a lot of waiting around at these things, so we took this opportunity to work on Dash's writing skillz. His Aunty showed us how to practice rhyming words, trying to get him to recognize patterns. He wasn't that into it at first--until we hit upon bribing him with Skittles. Parenting win! (Shut up)


Here they are all lined up to start the swim. See that giant white wave? They had to swim past that. See that ambulance in the foreground? That says to me, "Hey, Sane Person, how about you head back to the hotel for donuts & tv?" Know what it says to Josh & his ilk? Nothing! They just jumped right in the water! Like crazy people! Because they are crazy!

>
Here he comes!


There he went!


Dash & I killed some time between events by wandering around the base.


And procuring the world's coolest, most elaborate balloon creature.


And now we're starting the run! He's laughing because he just dumped water all over his head & busted Dash up. He also hasn't realized yet that he's going to be running for the next 40 minutes. Without being chased.


Moments away from the finish line. Not so smiley now, are we?


Dash ran the last 50 yards with his dad to cross the finish line. Right?


Number One is right! We joke, but seriously--we couldn't be prouder of you, Zaz. You are an inspiration every day.

More More More

Guys. It has been a frenzy. A FRENZY, I say! Poor Josh just kinda looks at me making the next insane thing & sighs. He doesn't even ask what I'm doing anymore. Because he knows the answer would involve cackling and probably a request that he run out to Michaels for me.

So anyway, it all started because Heather Ross released her new Far Far Away II fabric and my heart was heavy as I only have a son & no daughters. But! I am personally acquainted with three countem' three beautiful girls who might enjoy something made from those incredibly lovely fabrics. So, that explains three of the four quilts I mentioned in my last post. The fourth quilt just kinda happened. Don't ask.

OK. I don't even know why I started with the quilts because I have nothing to show here. They're not done and some of those girls' mommas might be lurking about so I wouldn't post them, anyway. But they did set off in me this almost physical need to make things with bows and princesses and flowers on them.

So I did. Everything's been tucked away for these beautiful girls' birthday & Christmas gifts. If you have a daughter who opens one of these gifts from us sometime soon, please feign total surprise, will you?

The first order of business was these little bow clips. They're sewed onto non-slip clips are are so freaking cute. I made Dash try them on for scale & I nearly ovulated right there & then.


Then, these. They're little flowers I crocheted out of wool & attached onto headbands. It's kinda hard to see what's going on in this picture, but that's three bands stacked up. Each headband has three flowers. I want to lick them.

(Danielle, look away!)


I actually made three of these, but the first one has already been given to its little owner. These two are waiting for a couple of very special little girls' birthdays later this year.


They each have a little princess staring out the window, waiting to hear if they got into their first or second-choice college. What, you thought they were waiting around for some dumb prince?


These are actually gender-neutral, I think, and they'll be going to some of our favorite girls & boys this Christmas. They're story blocks (inspired by these).


I made them from 1" wooden cubes that I Modge Podge'd with images from vintage kids books.


The idea is you roll the dice and use the images that come up as a story starter. The kids can either play alone to create the entire story, or the family can take turns rolling & continuing one another's stories. Cutest ever, right? I packaged them up in drawstring bags with a pencil & little notebook.

Another Quilt

Yep. I made another one. I'd say it'll be the last one for a while, but I have four more in varying stages of completion in my sewing basket, so...

This is for Dash's big boy loft bed that we haven't even purchased yet. But the minute I saw Lizzy House's Castle Peeps fabric line I lost my mind.

The pattern was loosely interpreted (read: I am too lazy to actually follow a pattern) from this one that Lizzy shared for free.

I backed it with half of a twin-sized duvet from Ikea & bound it with a red & white striped fabric which is actually my favorite part of the whole quilt.

Doesn't it look like Dash is all loving on it in that middle picture? In reality he couldn't give less of a fuck about it if he tried.

Thor

When Dash's school announced that they were having a "dress as your favorite superhero" day, well. You can imagine.

Only problem was that Dash has outgrown many of his superhero costumes, and those that still fit are way too hot and bulky to wear during the day in August in SoCal. We kinda screwed around with the idea of sending him in his Batman jammies, but I think we can all guess what happened instead:

It's HAMMER TIME! (Well, except that we couldn't really send Dash to school with a hammer, so I guess it's SHIELD TIME! Doesn't quite have the same ring).

I swung by Joann last night after work & picked up some supplies--including my new very favorite thing in the universe: gold pleather. $18 later, we were in business.

Because it was around 7pm when I got started & he needed it this morning, we went almost completely no-sew. The cape is like a microfibery-fake-suedey thing that doesn't fray, so I just cut out the cape shape, attached Velcro to the neck & called it good. I freeballed the lightning shape (pretend you're surprised) & ironed it on with fusible webbing.

I picked up a too-big black t-shirt so that it would hang more like a tunic. I just cut off the sleeves & attached the blue circles with more fusible webbing (I used a small dish to trace the circle shapes since the lightning bolt taught me the hard lesson of what happens when I try to draw freehand). His "tights" are jammy bottoms & we already had the shield & helmet (of course we did).

I used the gold pleather for his belt and ankle & wrist cuffs. They're attached with more velcro that I sewed on this morning after finding out that there is not glue in the universe that works on gold pleather.

And that's it! Easy-peasy. It is the only thing I have ever made for Dash that he's been excited about. When he opened his eyes this morning he did a little sleepy jig because it was "Thor day."

Since he seems to honestly like the getup, I'm going to go back & sew down everything I fused, just to make it more sturdy.

Yay for me!