"Mozeltoff, to the Happy Couple(s)"

Thamani (precious)

Of Almost Finishing

Despite all of my good intentions for finishing my term paper early, it will be completed tomorrow...which is the deadline. And I've had months! Yesterday I finished taking notes, wrote the introduction and the outline. Today I spent 7 hours at the computer writing 3 of the 4 sections.

This is my inspiration: (it's going on my title page)
I'm doing my paper on Donaldina Cameron, a woman who rescued thousands of Chinese slave girls brought into San Francisco's Chinatown in the late 1800's to early 1900's. Tomorrow I'm DONE!!! It will be lovely...

The Window's New Friend

Anna has been wanting to rearrange our room for the past 3 months, so last week I gave in. After putting everything in a different spot, vacuuming things that hadn't seen the light of day in a year, and organizing, we looked around. It was still not enough. What was missing? Ah, I know, the windows looked sad. Sort of bare and lonely. They needed curtains of some kind, and so we took pity on them and settled on valances. I've been wanting to do valances for a long time, but didn't know what kind or what color they should be. The solution: our scrap bin. Anna and I went through it and picked out shades of blue and green which are our main colors in the room, and then for fun some yellow and brown.

Actually, we never did find a yellow in the scrap bin. And since no one would let me take some of their yellow clothes (heartless people) and cut them up into 4" pieces, I searched around until I found an old shirt of mine in the pre-dusting-scrap pile. I didn't realize then that t-shirts are a different material then "normal" cloth, but we persevered through the stretchiness, although it was a bit annoying.

We have two windows, so Anna took charge of one valance, and I the other. We cut, we arranged, we sewed, ironed, and sewed again, until it was...

Complete!

We had planned on them being long enough to scrunch, but they ended up being just long enough to cover the rod! It all worked out though, and now we just sit hours at a time, gazing at our happy windows...

Pajama Pants

Painting of an Amaryllis

Pencil Drawing

In art we are doing pencil drawings from pictures. I did a term paper on Rachel Scott for the history class I'm in, so decided to do a picture of her for the front of it. This is what I started out with. The outline is one of the scariest things you will ever set eyes on. Now if that won't give you nightmares, I don't know what will. And drawing her eyes so they looked like cat eyes didn't help either.
This is what I ended up with:

At times I hated it, at times it looked horrid, but I'm really happy with the outcome.

I finally finished!

About four years ago (give or take a year) I got this paint-by-number called 'Music by Candlelight'. Well, today I just finished it! Yeah, it's been awhile, but I would paint for a few weeks and then get sick of it and put it away for a year, and then get it out, and you can kind of see where I'm going. So for the last couple of weeks I've been painting the violin and books, and finished up the piano. Now I need to get a frame for it. I kind of like it. :)

Bead-dazzled

For a birthday celebration for a friend of ours, we went to a jewelry place called All Wired and Bead-Dazzled to make jewelry! It was really fun. At the beginning the lady was talking about jewelry and how it's made, and she asked how many years we thought it took to make this little pearl. No one spoke up, so I said 2 years, and it was right! I was rather impressed with myself, even though it was a total guess.
Mom and Anna both made necklesses, and I made earrings. Three people got their names drawn to win their choice of earrings, a bracelet, or a bead magazine, and I was one of them. I got earrings, but there was so many to choose from! After a long and painful process, I finally picked out a pair. :)
The one's I made are on the right, and the other pair are the one's I won. Mom's neckless is the bigger one, and Anna's the smaller.

Painting the Loft

My friend Natalie had me over to help her paint the 'loft' above their garage. So with about five mostly used paint cans, we set out. This is just the first coat.
The 'before' picture, Natalie mixing the paint.
The very amazing painters.
It was amazing how long it took just to do the part we did! And it wasn't even half of it, and it will have to be done all over again because it was only the first coat. It took about three hours, and by the time we were done I had a very sore throat. And it wasn't really from the painting, I had felt a little funny that morning, but it just got bad right then. At least we got that much done. :)
While I was lying on the couch being miserable waiting for Mom to pick me up, Natalie very kindly took some pictures of the finished product.
It looks really cool with the white paint. The two end walls will be painted a different color, Nat hasn't decided yet. I can't wait to see what it looks like after it's all done!

Pear Paintings

We finished up our art lessons this morning, and this is our ending project:
Anna's
Mine.
And Emily's

It was so much fun taking art this year! This was my first year in a long time that I took lessons. And it was a fun project to end on.

Basket Workshop

Today Anja came over to our house to do a basket workshop (Mrs. B helped out alot too). I was the very last one to finish...ha! It was really fun though.
And the work begins...
Anna and Anneke. (Mom and Anneke were our babysitters while we did the workshop)
Emily and Sarah D.
Both Emily and I picked the same colors for our baskets, this is hers.
We made a lovely mess on the floor.

Kim, Mrs. G, Mrs. B, Anna, Laura, Emily B, and me with our finished baskets.

Art Show

Emily, Anna and I had taken an art class up in Syracuse every week from October-March. Last night the teacher had an art show where all her students had their art displayed. Her are some pictures from there.

Believe it or not it took about a month to finish this! This is my favorite piece I did, we used real leaves and just copied them using tempera paints. It was really fun, I had never really painted before.

This is Anna's leaf piece, and no she didn't use real leaves. :P

Anna made an elephant out of paper mache, it was awesome!

Emily with her heart painting. We used textured gels, and acrylic paints. I made one too, but there's not a picture of it.

My snowman.

Anna did a positive/negative using a sun.

Me and Em with her leaf painting

We used printmaking to make these. Emily's is on the left and mine is on the right.

Anna and Chelsea (my cousin) looking at the art.

Of Art Class and Vacations

• Today we had art class! It was really fun. We all took pictures of our favorite outfits and then we had someone else draw it and make it better! I had Emily.
• Talking about Emily! She is going on vaca with mom! I am so jealous! She is leaving tomorrow!
• My other sister is leaving tomorrow too! She is going somewhere else.
• So only Ab, Me, my other sister, and Dad are gonna be home! It is gonna be so much fun!

Nature Inspirations

Last Thursday in art class we were designing clothes that came from nature. I picked a leopard. It was really interesting, trying to take an animal and turn it into an outfit. It was really fun.

Emily did a fox, it is really cool!

Abigail did a broad-billed tody, which is a tropical bird.

Pastels

(Anna's) (Abigail's)
(Emily's)

our oil pastel crayon drawings. this was probably my favorite finished product. :)