Ow! My butt!

I've spent the weekend in Oregon getting my dose of sister time. This weekend in particular was Little-Little's 29th birthday (remember, the one I swallowed pennies with? She's the hottie all the way on the right side of the picture) so Sunday was mostly all about her. We went roller skating and to bingo and then we talked her into seeing the new Star Trek movie.

Let me just say that the last time I went roller skating was this same sister's 10th or 11th birthday. So, no, I'm not good at it. In fact, ouch! I have muscles hurting that I didn't know I had but do you know what's even worse? Where it hurts. My butt from falling and my upper arms from windmilling while trying not to fall. Ah well... still fun.

The rest of the weekend was spent shopping at the Saturday Market and walking in the park and sitting around the counter in the kitchen talking. Now I'm home and I can't wait for them to come visit in July!

Expressions

Today Shutter Sisters is asking "What makes your day?". These photos, other than a little cropping, are SOOC (Straight out of camera).

I'm going to have to say that it's the funny expressions my children make that make my day. It's the face that when you look at the picture later you just have to wonder "what were they thinking at THAT moment?". Hmmm.

Cameras and harvest festivals

When I was little my parents were both scenic photographers. We had a house in Oregon but we spent a lot of time at Harvest Festivals and other shows where my parents sold their photographs and even more time on the road while they were taking those photographs. By the time I was 6 I'd been to half of the states in the US. When I was around 5 years old my parents gave me my first camera. It was made by Fisher-Price and Kodak and used 110 film. Of course I was always begging for more film and for them to have my film processed. And for more flashes since it had a top flash that plugged in (right below where it says Fisher-Price) that was good for about 10 flashes. I'm so glad I'll be able to give my kids digital cameras as it will probably save me hundreds.

I think they gave me the camera so I'd stop complaining about how long they took while they were photographing. Places like the Grand Canyon get boring pretty quick when you stand in one spot for hours "waiting for the right light".

Harvest Festivals were fun, though. My parents had a booth for their photos and they couldn't have all 6 kids hanging around since there had to be room for the customers so we were usually kicked out. My little sister Lee and I were often sent off together with instructions not to seperate. I remember doing this when we were as young as 4 and 5. If we were lucky we might even get sent off with a dollar or two to spend on popcorn or something. If we were less lucky we might get 10 pennies each which didn't buy anything, though penny swallowing contests were pretty entertaining. As in, which one of us could swallow more. Yup, we really did that. My personal best was 6. Did you know that stomach acid makes very shiny pennies?

Lee and I would wander around for hours at look at booths and watch the entertainers. This was especially fun at Christmas with singers like Elmo and Patsy (Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer) performing. Sometimes we'd find odd jobs at another booth and earn a dollar to spend elsewhere. A lot of people at the shows became like extended family that we saw over and over at all of the shows. At the end of the shows when the booths were being broken up and taken down the kids ran all over trying to find treasures (discards and broken stuff) left behind before the other kids found it.

Another artist that spent a lot of time at the craft shows was Judy Bergsma. We had a print of hers hanging in my mother's house that said "There are two things we can give our children. One is roots, the other wings." Everyday of my childhood, at least once a day, I read that phrase and I believe it became ingrained in my subconcious. My other favorite is a refrigerator magnet I have by her that says "Some days the dragon wins."

PVC pipe fort/playhouse

I wanted to build my kids a fort but because I'm in a rental right now it couldn't be a permanent installation. Also, if they were going to have it indoors it had to be able to store somehow when we weren't using it. So I decided to make it out of PVC pipe and fabric. This ended up costing me under $75 since I used $1.50/yard fabric. And the kids LOVE it. Though they were a little upset that I wouldn't let them sleep in there tonight (hey, it's a school night!)



You need 8 1" side out joints (see pictures below). There is such thing as a joint that is 1" in all 3 directions but my local Home Depot doesn't carry them. So I used a 1" with a 1/2" side out and then bought 1/2" to 3/4" converters. If you also have to use the two pieces remember to buy 8 of each. You will also need one straight join piece (1") and 2 T shaped pieces (also 1") to make the doorway.

In addition you will need to buy the actual PVC pipe. If you have to do the modification that I did you will need 2 10' pipes in 3/4" and 4 10' pipes in 1". If you are lucky enough to find the joint with all 1" openings then you will need 6 10' pipes in 1" (in which case treat the red and black lines in the color chart below as all 1").





The picture below is color coded by pipe length and width.

The black lines are 4' in 1" pipe (6 total).
The red lines are 4' in 3/4" pipe (4 total).
The green lines are 1.5' in 1" pipe (2 total).
The blue lines are 2.5' in 1" pipe (2 total).
The yellow lines are 2' in 1" pipe (2 total).

The 8 side out joints go at each corner of the cube. The 2 T pieces go at the top and bottom of the door and the 1 straight join goes in the middle of the 2 2' pieces (yellow) of the door. You can use a 4' piece for the door instead and omit the straight join but this will require you to buy another length of pipe instead of using left over pieces.

You will need 6 colors of 45" fabric (if you want the walls to be different colors). I bought 2 yards each of 5 of them and one yard for the color in the door way. This gives me a little extra fabric left over that I'm going to sew into a bag to hold the pieces when it's broken down for storage. Of each color you need 12 tabs (3 for each edge) except for the door color which will only need 4 tabs at the top. Cut the main piece to fit the width, minus a couple inches on each side, so about 45-ish inches wide. This doesn't have to be exactly any width since the tabs can be adjusted to add or take up slack. Use some of the remaining fabric to make the 12 strips of each color about 2" wide (only 4 for the door color) for the tabs. Hem the edges of the walls and tabs.

Assemble the PVC cube and pin the tabs onto the fabric around each wall. By putting it on the frame as you pin this will ensure that your walls are a close fit. Once the 4 walls, the door and the roof are all pinned you can pull apart the PVC frame a piece at a time to remove it from the fabric tabs. After you've sewn the tabs into place on the walls you can put the frame back together with the fabric. *Tip* On the upright pieces, where tabs from different walls will be interspersed, note what order they're in. This will make reassembly easier later.

The finished playhouse quite comfortably fits my 3 munchkins.

Computer games

I'm a software engineer by trade. Last week, while going through CDs of old homework, I found some games I had created many years ago. Our class assignment was to write a number guessing program (pick a number between 1 and 100) that would say "To Low", "To High", or "You Win". After I finished that I wanted to keep going so I started writing other games.

Today my son Joseph (8 years old) discovered them on my computer and he's obsessively playing Concentration. When I wrote the games several years ago it hadn't occured to me that someday my children would play them. I'm so pleased that someone (other than me) wants to play these games. Yeah!

*update* while annoyed that they're fighting I'm also tickled that all of my kids want to play.