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Glanvillia, Saint John, Dominica
i am a mom/wife/textile designer gone haywire. I love to sing(music/arts AA degree), craft, exercise, and be goofy. Just living life outside the norm. And the norm thanks me for it. Oh yeah, and I like me some haikus. . . . . . . . . . What are we up to currently? Aaron recently started medical school at Ross University on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean, and the kids and I are along for the crazy ride :)

Garden Tour

Saturday, February 28, 2009

I decided to make this garden tour a post of it's own instead of adding it to the last post. That's so it will show up as a change on my blog and people will actually come and check it out :o). I just need to apologize for how annoying I am in this video. sorry. Listen to the way i say peppers- what the heck kind of accent is that? Also, I turn the vid on it's side at times but it eventually turns back, so just bear with me!




Since then.....
My tomato and pepper plants are twice as big as they are in the movie and it's only a week later!

My mixed greens have grown and I cleaned up all the dead leaves- looks a little more appetizing, eh?When you saw my brussel sprout plant in the video, were you wondering where the actual sprouts were?

Here they are! On the top of each branch next to the trunk of the plant are small darker green balls- one per branch. Those will grow in to the brussel sprouts. Aren't plants interesting??Here are the carrots we picked today! Nice and big! We are picking them a little at a time so that they don't go to waste. We shared this yummy carrot today- it was a little bitter near the bottom, but as the carrot got bigger it got sweeter and yummier.Right Megan?

lately...

Friday, February 20, 2009

Nothing exciting here, just have a boring video of Matthew playing boom blox and a pic of Megan's hairdo on Sunday, and a...dun dun dun! GARDEN TOUR! Mostly stuff for the grandparents :o) Aaron and I went to our favorite family dentist, Alex Matheson DDS and got another installment of mouth work done (I had a temporary filling that we replaced with something a bit more untemporary :o) Ummmm..what else? Oh, the Tanners are in town and so is Aaron's daddio (he's been in Montana for the last two months) and we are excited to see them! Today is mom Shumway's birthday- Happy Birthday, Mom! Here are the promised additions:


Like all the papers on the couch? I had just finished cleaning out my young women's folder and hadn't thrown away the garbage!!

Garden tour

Ragdoll

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I've wanted to try this ragdoll pattern I found on line for a while now, and I finally did last week. I'm not going to give you the link to the pattern because it wasn't very good. I had to alter a lot (and still there are things I'd like to have changed- arms were too skinny and too long for the body and the legs are too skinny, but hey, I'm a first timer), so I decided that when I get time I'm going to make a pattern and tutorial for all of you who want to try this very easy thing. The heart patterned fabric was from a pair of pajama pants I've had for a while and were starting to fall apart and getting ragged at the hems- the rest was just scrap fabric from previous projects- the hair is made of braided strips of scrap fabric. It was supposed to be made of yarn, but I didn't have any at home so I improvised. I kind of like this look. It's even more raggedy, which was the desired effect. I just barely finished it (I let it sit a few days) and here are the results:





Please excuse Megan's outfit. She stayed home from school sick today and I told her she could wear whatever she wanted. This is what she picked. Megan named the doll Amelia, by the way. We decided that Amelia needs shoes, so I'm going to get some fabric paint and put mary janes on her.

The wind began to switch, the house to pitch, and suddenly the hinges started to unhitch.....

Monday, February 9, 2009


Oh man is it windy today! I was talking to my friend on the phone and heard the kids go outside to play. About 15 minutes later, the kids came in with rubber gloves on and told me that they were "helping mother earth." i went back outside with them and saw that they had been gathering the tumbleweeds that had been rolling by. they would catch one and then put it by the side of the road (what I usually do once the storm stops so that the gardening guys can pick them up to dispose of them) Of course, since the wind was still giving us dry swirlies, this didn't have the desired effect, as the weeds wouldn't stay in their spot for more than 2 seconds. They were having a ball. I'm guessing it's more fun when it's windy. Otherwise it'd be like helping mom clean up. LOL
I had to add this one- like Megan's glove? it's on the wrong hand. Plus Matthew looks so cute in it.
If you click on the above photo you can see poor little Matthew's forehead and the bump with a small crater in it. Yesterday he ran out to the car and tripped on the carport and hit his head hard on the cement. He was crying about it and touching his owie forehead. I mosied on out to help him and realized it was a little more serious than I originally thought. he had a little rock embedded in his forehead. it wasn't bleeding cause the rock was sealing it off. I had to get Aaron to hold him while I picked it out. It wasn't easy. it ended up being deeper than I thought, maybe 1/3 of an inch. poor kid. It bled pretty good once the seal was broken LOL. I'm sure it didn't help him that I was trying hard not to laugh the whole time. It was all i could do to only have a wide smile on my face as I helped him.


Oh I guess I should tell you all about the road rash Matthew got two weeks ago. It looked pretty bad but as you can tell by the previous pics of him that it's almost completely better now. He was riding in his friend's power wheels car and the friend decided to shove him out while it was going. Matthew landed on his face and scraped his left eye up pretty good. His eye was swollen shut the next day. Here is a picture right after it happened. Please excuse the dirty face :oP ugg.





Radishes. simply put.

Wordless Monday..................

Christmas a bit delayed

Friday, February 6, 2009

Hey friends and family- I thought February would be a good time to post about our christmas... he he. sorry it's taken so long!

Well, I guess I should take this chronologically......
First, the christmas tree. The poor poor christmas tree....

First of all, I can't complain because we got this twig of a tree for free from someone on freecycle last year, but it's seen better days. When it came to decorating this thing, we couldn't find our christmas box with all of our ornaments (I think maybe it got thrown out on accident- either that or burried too deep in our storage closet to ever make it out). Anywho, we didn't want to go and buy new ornaments since we were a little short on the moolah, so i sat down with a pair of skizzers and cut all these bad boys out---
here are a few that I liked

now you might ask, what is a mallet doing on your tree??? well, if it's got one of these, it got hung by the kids no matter what. I laughed histerically for a few minutes after I found it hanging on here!

On Christmas eve I realized that we had no stockings to hang since they were in the same box as the ornaments, so I real quick (a little too quickly) sewed some stockings for us and the kids. Unfortunately I wasn't very careful when cutting them out with the rotary cutter and sliced a bit of my fingertip off (on the right). not too big a chunk, but it didn't feel too hot....


Christmas Morning- lots of fun presents and we had fun fishing with the santa fishermen stocking stuffers
The aftermath....Later we went to Grandma and Grandpa Shumway's house for presents and then family brunch-
Grandma Shumway made a Dorothy outfit for Megan's American Girl Doll- It matches her halloween costume- in fact it was made out of the left over fabric :o)
Matthew got a fur-real friend puppy dog that barks and wags it's tail. He thought it was for Megan and tried to give it to her when he opened it (she's got 2 other fur-real friend pets so he thought it was a girly toy). Megan ended up crying about it and Matthew was still confused by the whole thing. They've resolved the whole thing. Here they are with their pets:
Aaron's aunt Susie made some cute confections for the brunch. Here is my favorite- it's a christmas mouse which consists of a chocolate covered cherry stuck to a hershey kiss with peanut ears, heart sprinkle eyes and nonpareil nose all held together with chocolate "glue." It was so cute I HAD to take a picture with my NEW CAMERA!
Karen ended up getting the same camera that Aaron got me so we had lots of fun trying out the cool features on our new toys.... here are a few silly "art" pictures I took. Everyone was laughing at us as we posed different center pieaces or salt and pepper shakers to photograph. Now I'm wishing I had taken more group pictures of family. oh well.

I think that my favorite picture of the day was this one of Matthew posing in front of the rainbow as we were leaving.
All in all a good Christmas.....
Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!




dun dun dun...........DENTIST! (that was supposed to sound scary... )

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Both Megan and Matthew visited the dentist in January and YAY! no cavities!!! They got stickers and coupons for a free ice cream cones from Chick-fil-A (who came up with that spelling anyway? It's an insult to our intelligence to think we wouldn't pronouce fillet correctly, isn't it?)




Happy Birthday dear Matthew...... Happy Birthday to you!

Matthew on the morning of his 4th birthday- he wanted to wear the crown Megan got at school on her birthday so here he is with it on. What a sweet boy :o)Here's Matthew on late ron that night at Grandma and Grandpa's house- the car was from the top of the cake- he couldn't help but take it off to hold in his hand... Here is Matthew's friend party in the park. We had a great time with these crazies!


Miss Megan and her Pink Pulchritudinous Glasses

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Megan Elizabeth Shumway. She was sweet and smart and everyone liked her very much. One day in her kindergarten class they had a vision screening and when she completed her test they told her that she needed to go with her mommy to the optometrist (that's a fancy name for eye doctor). Megan's mommy took her to the Dr, who told them that Megan's left eye wasn't trying very hard to see. It was a lazy eye that wanted to let the right eye do all the work. Her optometrist told her that her condition was called Amblyopia (that's a fancy word for lazy eye) and she would need to wear glasses to help her lazy little eye want to work harder and get stronger. Megan was so excited to pick out some pulchritudinous (thats a fancy word for pretty) glasses. They were pink and Megan LOVES the color pink. She could barely stand to wait the week before the glasses were ready to pick up. Now Megan wears her pink pulchritudinous glasses every day and loves them!



Commercial Voice-Over for Goodman and Partrigde OB/GYN

Hey friends- not long ago, our friend Nick emailed me and asked me to look at some video clips he was going to purchase for use in a commercial for Dr's Goodman and Partridge after I gave him my feedback on the video clips and proposed script, he said "Ok, now how do you feel about being the voice on the commercial?" I told him I didn't really want to do it cause i didn't like my speaking voice. Aaron came home that night and told me i was crazy and that I needed to call and tell Nick I'd do it. short story long, i did it and it was fun! Aaron's sister Val did it too and she's on the end of the second video- it was a pretty cool experience and way easy! Take a listen :o)


Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

We love this internet short- it's directed by Joss Whedon
If the video doesn't work here is the link on HULU
http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog
BTW- Captain Hammer gets a little crude in the laundromat in act II just in case you want to skip that part...