Ryan's Mustache

Monday, February 2, 2015

Ryan and I made plans way in advance that I would cut my hair for our anniversary and he would save his face beard and mustache. His shaving would just be a way of looking like we did on our wedding day again and in a way be a gift to me. I understand why he can’t be clean shaven all the time; especially after what he had to go through being a byu student. He has one of those beards that just wants to grow and grow fast. But, it’s nice to have that special day to look forward to him being clean shaven and seeing his whole face again.

So, knowing that was the plan, I decided to get him an early anniversary gift. I got him some Woodsman wax, so he could have some fun waxing his mustache for a week or so before he shaved. He really liked this gift and had to try it out right away. He had talked a few times in the past about how fun it would be to twist his mustache, so I’m glad he finally got to try it out now.

Blow Dart Guns

Monday, February 2, 2015

Ryan keeps pretty busy with different projects, when he’s home. Some are not so much by choice, like when something breaks down and he has to go through the work and research of how to fix or replace it. Some are of his own ambition, and he passionately works on it until the project’s to his satisfaction.

 More than once he’s taken on a commission from someone at work to make something particular for them. Basically someone will show him something or say they want something, and he’ll say “hey, I can do that,” and soon a price is settled on and he’s making it. This time it was these pvc pipe blow dart guns.

 Ryan saw something online about how to make them and then went out and got all the supplies. To make them, he trimmed the pvc, wrapped it in duct tape (for looks), and used some of our extra pipe insulation for a place to store the ammo.

This is for carrying extra darts.

The ammo he also made out of #16 nails, post-its, and hot glue. It was actually kind of cool, but dangerous. Ryan figures if he makes any for us they’ll be the same, but without the nails. He also put a laser pointer on top for aiming and tested it out a bit to make sure it was placed right.

When he felt like it was complete, he first tried it out with marshmallows. Then he went into the garage with goggles, balloons, and wood slabs and tried out the actual darts. He hit the balloon in one shot. Next he found that the nail would just bounce off the wood. So, he went straight to cardboard. That was pretty cool!

He had some fun shooting a few darts into the cardboard, then he took it to work the next day. I think it turned out great and his friend at work really liked it. J

New Camera

January - February 2015

Ryan and I both had cameras that we each got years ago. They still worked, but with traveling and all the other memory making occasions, big and small, we were starting to feel like those memories could be kept in a little better quality. So we finally got ourselves a new, nicer camera for our family Christmas present. We decided to open our camera for our Christmas Eve present so we could know how to use it in time for our Christmas Day pictures. 

Our new camera had a lot of fun features that our old cameras didn’t so I was looking forward to trying them all out in the following weeks. These are some of the pictures I took. Taking pictures is especially fun when you have two cute little boys around. Jared was an especially good subject. Whenever he noticed I’d taken a picture of him, he’d say, “Let me see!”

These two of Jared are just using the different color-pops.

When I found out my camera could do this sparkle-thing, one of my first thoughts was that it'd be funny if I could get a picture of my teeth sparkling. It was worth a try. So, it didn't work, there were other brighter spots in the picture that the camera preferred to sparkle.

This is what life feels like sometimes, when you have a three-year-old! Jared LOVES this picture. He thinks it's so funny! This is what a panoramic looks like with a Canon camera. It's more choppy, but you can manage these types of paradoxical pictures if you want.

This picture of Jared is taken with the soft setting.

This is the type of panoramic you get with a Nikon camera. Karl's at one end and Jared's at the other. It's much better at making a uniform picture. Those are just some of our fun pictures trying out the new camera!

Pencils and Brushes

December 2014 - May 2015

I feel like I've been slacking on my hobbies since becoming a mother, or rather replacing them with new ones (i.e. child care, baking, blogging). But, I've been trying to get back into some of those things I'm really starting to miss. One of them being art. I've found as I've started again that I think it's fun to bounce around between the different forms of media and I also like to get my family involved if I possibly can. 

For Christmas for we did one gift where we drew/painted three bird's with different forms of media. I drew this mountain bluebird with watercolor pencils and Jared painted it for his piece of the collection.

For my piece I drew this painted bunting with chalk pastels. For Ryan's piece I drew him a baltimore oriole and he colored it in with colored pencils. Ryan's turned out really nice, I just didn't get a chance to get a picture of it before we needed to have it in the mail.

It was a fun family project to get me going again. I very soon there after got some charcoal and pastel pencil sets. Both forms of  media were fairly new to me and I was so excited to try them out. The charcoals also came with a pad that I could do a bunch of random sketching in to get used to the pencils.

Jared figuring out how messy/fun to play with charcoal sticks are.

For Mother's Day we didn't have a lot of money, but we did have a bit of time, so once again we turned to art for our gifts. Mother's day makes be think of flowers, so I picked out the flowers that made me think of our two moms.

Heart-shaped Daisy.

  I was figuring out more how to use watercolor paint and pencils, so I decided to try them out together. For these I drew their outline in watercolor pencil and painted them in with watercolor paint; then touched up at the end with pencil if I needed to. It was rather experimental, but I think they turned out okay.

Mother's Day Rose.

I love working with paper, pencil, and paint. There's just something so fun and unique about it each time, even if my work's not amazing afterwards. It's a least not a boring blank paper anymore. ;) I really look forward to getting more of an education someday, but for now, it's nice knowing a have a small handful of fans who always seem to appreciate my work!

Key Lime and Lemon Pies

January 2015

I only got to make a few pies during the month of January, but they were some good ones. The first was this Lemon Cream Pie. This was the first I had ever made it. I wasn't sure that Ryan would like it because lemon pies aren't usually what he goes for, but he really liked it. I love lemon pies any way, so I also really liked this one. Not only was it really light, creamy and lemony, it was also really easy to make. The only baking that needed to be done was ten minutes for the crust. The filled was whipped and then refrigerated to set. So, I think this will easily become one of our family favorites.

Lemon Cream Pie

Another one of the pies I made was this White Chocolate Key Lime Pie. I've made this a few times before and it never gets old. I made it for a night we were having the missionaries over for dinner. When we had had them over previously I had let them pick what pie they would want the next time they came. One elder had picked key lime, so I suggested this pie so they could try something new. They seemed to really like it. 

White Chocolate Key Lime Pie

Wrestling and Cuddling

January 2015

These are a few of our favorite pictures and a video for the boys this winter. Karl is basically to the age where he can play with Jared without Jared accidentally being too rough because of how small Karl is. This is also the exciting time that Karl is actually making an effort to walk more than crawl.

The boys sitting together while waiting for breakfast.

They love to do a lot of things together. Some of their favorite things to do together are drawing, climbing in the stuffed animal tent, tease Mommy or Daddy, wrestle Alfie, playing outside, and sitting and watching cartoons.

This is Karl having a great time climbing and playing on our little Elmo couch. He's so silly!

Jared falling asleep cuddling with Daddy.

Something Daddy has distilled in both of them is the love of wrestling. When Daddy gets home they’ve learned that it’s time to tease and play. At other times Karl will smile and start swatting at Daddy to encourage him to stop what he’s doing and get down and wrestle with him. He can be very persuasive with his cute little smiles. Jared loves to wrestle when Daddy gets home too, but his way of teasing is to run and hide when Dad comes through the door, so he has to find him first. Who knows, maybe someday these boys will do wrestling in school.

Jared playing with a brussel sprout stalk, like a sword.