fire and flowers

Thanks to Fire Station 25 for making one 6 year old the star of the day! The kids had a blast checking out the fire station, exploring the truck and eating lunch with the coolest firefighters in San Diego. Here’s a picture of all the kids in their new shirts hanging out with their new heros.

I have been loving all of the rain we are getting. Today, as I was working on a few projects, I could hear that the rain coming down harder. When I looked outside I realized it was hailing. So of course, since we rarely see hail, I pulled out the camera to take a picture of our front yard.

When I picked up the kids from school, it started to hail again. They were thrilled to watch their play area slowly turn white, and then as quickly as it came it was gone. Many of the kids in Matt’s Kindergarten class had never seen hail before. What a crazy weather week for San Diego, I love it!

Matty Boy’s Fire Station birthday party is Saturday, and we are all pretty excited. This is Matt’s first birthday party with school friends. I’ve had the idea for awhile to make each of the kids a fire truck shirt for their party favor. It was great timing to make these as Michael’s has shirts on sale for $2 each. Here’s a quick tutorial of how to make one yourself.

Find a stencil image or design one of your own. I used the same design that I put on the invitations. Print out your design to the finished size.

Next trace your image onto the rough side of freezer paper. You can buy a large roll of freezer paper at the grocery store, or ask your local butcher for some.

Now you can cut out the stencil with an exacto knife. Make sure to cut out the small details first as you need the surrounding paper intact for stability. Once your image is cut out, iron it onto your fabric with the smooth side down.

Using fabric paint, completly cover your stencil (I used Speedball’s screen printing ink from Blick Art Supply). I like to use a foam brush as it gives even coverage and it makes for easy cleanup. Use a dabbing motion when painting to avoid lifting up any corners of your stencil.

Let your ink dry completely, or help it along with a blow dryer. Now you can gently peel back your stencil. Take caution when peeling your stencil off especially if you want to reuse it. I was extremely careful with the little details as I need to get 9 shirts out of this. And, here is the final product. Make sure to heat set your ink per the manufacture’s recommendations so it won’t come off in the washing machine. If you are going to reuse your stencil, place a piece of paper over the painted freezer paper when ironing it onto your next project.

I can’t wait to get a pictures of all of the kids wearing their new shirts. Check back next week for an update of the day!

Sam is a big guy, he has grown 4″ in length and 4 lbs. in weight since birth. He is smiling and cooing now, and he brings so much life to all of those around him. Paige said it best on Christmas morning when she said, “this is the best Christmas ever, as our family is now complete with Sam.”

There is no tooth fairy in our house, nor is there a Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Yes, we may be cruel parents squelching the imagination of our children, and they might be in therapy for this someday. But all in all, they are still fairly balanced kids, and I don’t think this will scar them for life.

Why do I bring up the tooth fairy? Last night Paige lost a tooth in the middle of dinner, it’s been loose for 2 months, and it finally fell out. She put her tooth on a napkin on the counter while we finished up dinner (spicy black bean soup and cornbread, recipe coming soon) with friends. After we were done everyone pitched in to clean up, and at the end of the night Paige and I noticed the napkin and tooth were gone. I’m pretty sure it was thrown away by mistake, it really did look like trash. So today I dug through the trash, twice. Gross, our trash was full of nasty vegetables, I’m not sure why they weren’t in the compost, dryer lint, and dead stinky crickets. Crickets are really nasty, but they are the only thing that Matt’s lizard will eat. And after all that I still couldn’t find the darn thing.

Then I got thinking, since we don’t do the tooth fairy thing, the trash is probably the best place for the tooth anyways. What are you supposed to do with these things? I stumbled upon this the other day, probably the most foul pieces of jewelry I’ve ever seen. Who buys this stuff?