Natalie at Art Camp

During the last week of June, Natalie spent the week at an art camp. A friend of hers from dance was doing the same camp, after taking it last year, and with how much Natalie loves arts & crafts, drawing, etc, I thought this was a great activity for her to do!

Of course, there's not many photos from the art camp, but as Natalie was the first person there on the first day, I was able to get this photo of her starting off her week of creativity.

Unfortunately, we signed up for the week before we knew for sure what our summer travel plans would be, and then we ended up going out of town on the last day of the camp week. This meant we missed the big reveal on the final day where the kids could show off all of their creations. Instead, we took everything home on Thursday, and I photographed it there. Here are some of the best things she made. The theme was "Wizard & Fairie fantasy camp", so all of the creations were based on that idea.

Wand and house "medallions" - Natalie made one each for her and Henry. They're all made out of clay and then painted.

 This is my favorite thing she made (and is currently sitting on our mantel) - a candle! They got to put all kinds of interesting things inside, and it smells SO good.

 Dragons eggs! These were just styrofoam painted and covered in glitter. They looked lovely, but did not stay in my house for very long.

 Fairy house! This has been sitting outside on our front porch since she brought it home.

There was even a whole day of Harry Potter based creations.

 This was the house shield (and motto) that she created. Apparently we like winter in our family?

Finally, she made this lovely painting of a house in the woods; I really liked it!

The camp was at The Art Class in Leesburg, and I would definitely do one there again!

Flower arranging

My friend Molly posted a couple of months ago that she was hosting a flower arranging class at her house, free of charge. Sign me up! It sounded like fun, and I've always wanted to learn more about how to arrange flowers.

So, we sat around Molly's dining room table with our glasses of wine and learned how to arrange roses! Molly has a friend who is starting a business, where you would sign up to get flowers delivered to you each month, possibly with a vase, definitely with all of the accessories you would need to make your flowers look beautiful. A cool idea that I would be interested in!

But for now, the first flower arranging lesson. Note that I completely forget the names of all of the leaves and other plants we used - sorry about that! We started with instructions, clippers, and an empty vase.

Every lady got a bunch of roses in different colors. Our arrangement for today would consist of 9 roses. Mine were this lovely peach/pink color.

Our first step was to soak the green foam in water, then wrap it in a large leaf and place it in the vase. This hides the foam (mostly) and provides a good solid base for the flowers and leaves.

Next we clipped the 9 roses, fairly short, and placed them in rows of 3 in the top of the foam. We then used these dark green leaves, stuck into the sides of the foam, to hide the entire top.

Filled in spaces with these lovely green berries.

and got to this point.

We then filled in the corners with these pretty white-green leaves, and..

 

Here's my finished product! I got to take it home, and ended up bringing the vase with flowers to my office for the week. By adding more water to the foam each day, I was able to get the flowers to live for over 7 days! Not too shabby, and I learned a skill. Definitely a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

A night at the carnival

I found out over the weekend that there was a carnival at One Loudoun again. We didn't go when it was there in June, as the general consensus from people I spoke with was that it was fun, but expensive, and maybe not fully worth it. However, being the last week of summer before school starts up in one week, I decided it would be fun to take the kids there this evening. Evan had a meeting, so I thought it would be something fun to do, just me and the kids.

I decided to not bring my camera so that I could better focus on the kids and not be too distracted (despite knowing there would be some great photo ops). I was happy with this decision.

We got to the carnival, and the kids were so excited. Natalie a bit more than Henry, who was a little nervous/worried about the rides, but still excited. I reached into my purse to get my phone out...and I didn't have my phone.

No camera. No phone. No way to take any pictures of my whole night with the kids. No way to record those memories to show Evan later on. No way to scratch my photography itch.

I briefly considered driving the 15 minutes home to get it, and realized I was being ridiculous (plus, there would have been rioting from the kids if we left).

Instead, we headed into the carnival...and I had one of the best nights I've ever had with the kids.

I was fully in the moment. Never distracted by the phone. When the kids were riding kid rides alone, just the two of them, I wasn't checking Facebook. I was watching their faces and grinning like an idiot at the joy on their faces. And, I'm not ashamed to admit, I fully teared up at one point just thinking of how happy I was, simply sitting on a bench and watching them have the time of their lives.

I spent almost three hours with just Natalie and Henry. No distractions. We talked about the rides (I'd gotten us the unlimited ride wrist bands so we could go on rides as many times as we wanted). We talked about the next ride we wanted to go on. We talked about the rides we were definitely NOT going on (anything that flipped upside down!).

Henry had some anxiety over a couple of rides, and those ended up being his absolute favorites. The Tilt-A-Whirl. The Scrambler. Even the Ferris Wheel! He did them all, with us, and loved them. We rode on the swings at least 4 times. There was a slide that was a definite favorite; we climbed about 3 stories up a see-through metal set of stairs to then slide down on burlap sacks, and oh my was it fun. The kids did it well over half a dozen times, and I did it with them at least 4 times.

They loved squishing me on the Scrambler; we did that twice. The Tilt-A-Whirl turned out to be both of their favorite; we rode that 3 times. We went on the bumper cars twice.

The rush in our stomachs as we spun around; the excitement on their faces as they came around a curve on the kid's roller coaster...I may not have those images to look at again, but I have a feeling those images, and the feelings I had, will stay in my head for a very, very long time.

New landscaping!

I've shown these photos to a few of you, and others have been over and seen it in person, but for everyone else: in July we redid the landscaping in the front of our house! We'd been talking about it for a little while; I spent the last couple of springs slowly making the front of the house look more like I wanted: I pulled out ground cover, small bushes, and other things that I didn't want. I'd planted some lilies, a hydrangea, and generally cleaned it up. Then...I reached about the limits of what I could do. I don't have a very big green thumb, so when it comes to having a vision of how to redo it, I really wasn't sure what to do. I knew what I didn't like, but not what I do like. So, it was time to turn to a professional!

I hired the same landscaping company we'd used to change the front of our old house (before selling), as they did a great job. The landscape architect made some great suggestions, and even helped us with a better option for the stairs (which we had to redo as they were no longer in code).

These first few shots are the "before" pics. You can see how closed and crowded everything looks. The Japanese maple (big bush in front), the plum tree, the bushes next to the stairs, the crepe myrtle peeking in the back next to the porch...it's just all too much for the size of our front yard.

I had cleared out everything that used to be in the mulch (there were a number of small bushes). All I left were the lilies I'd planted, and my very small (but plucky!) hydrangea.

The project took a total of 3 days; day 1 consisted of clearing out everything except for my lilies and hydrangea (which we were keeping), and jackhammering out our stairs and walkway. It was definitely strange to come home to this!

Oh, and the crepe myrtle was cut halfway down, to be removed fully on the final day.

Day 2 was exclusively for putting in our new stairs and walkway! We had planned originally to just get new concrete stairs that were up to code, but it turned out that we could get nice paving stones for the same price! And more than that, they color coordinate with our door and shutters (see what landscape architects help you notice that you'd never notice yourself?).

I took these photos with the full sun, and once the sun was gone, so you can see them in different lights. The colors are great together (door and stones).

Finally, day 3 - planting day! Evansent me this pic of the prep at the start of the day. All of those bushes were soon to be ours, along with new sod for in front of the walkway.

And here is the final product! Look how much more open the front of our house is. I absolutely love it.

We got newly built-up flower beds, my lilies are spread throughout the front yard instead of in just one place (those are the tiny little stems you see in bunches).

I don't even remember what all of these plants are called, but they look great! The colors are lovely, and the spacing and layout is far better than I ever would have done myself.

If you're ever in the need for landscaping in the NoVa area, check out BlueSky Landscaping - they do a great job at a great price!

A walk in the rain

I'm stuck working in a hotel room today, and feeling a little lonely, so I'm going to post this super fun thing that I did with Natalie earlier this month. On a Sunday afternoon, a light rain started. I still needed to get some steps in for the day, so I asked the kids to join me on a walk in the rain. I grabbed my waterproof camera, and out we went!

After the initial picture, Henry didn't want any part of being out in the rain, so he headed back inside while Natalie and I continued around the pond.

Look how tall the cattails are! Natalie liked how fuzzy they are.

And here we are at the end of our walk. My shirt is a whole shade darker due to the rain, but man we had a nice time!

Fun time with the Carlsons!

Just after the school year, my kiddos spent a couple of very fun days with their friends Lily and Garret. My friend Stephanie offered to take my kids with hers on a couple of adventures, and they ended up having such a great time! I definitely wished I'd been with them instead of at work. Stephanie sent me pictures of their adventures, so I can share them here!

On their first day of fun, they were planning on going to the pool but unfortunately rain prevented that from happening. So instead, they went out to the children's museum in Winchester. I'd heard good things about that museum, and the kids said they had a blast! Here they are exploring the "digestive system"...apparently it's quite fun to crawl out of an anus lol.

 

Then they did some food preparation, with Henry as the buffet table!

 

This picture cracks me up every. single. time.

And look how worn out the boys were afterwards!! Natalie was a trooper letting them both sleep on her.

A few days later they went to Udvar-Hazy Museum and had fun exploring there!

And later that day, after I picked up Henry, Natalie got to stay the night in a sleepover with Lily. Stephanie had told the girls she would show them how to sew something (she has some excellent sewing skills!), and took the girls to pick out fabric for a skirt. She showed them how to sew a simple pattern, and here are their resulting skirts! The girls did so great. Maybe one day Natalie can teach me lol :)

Random fun in June

I have a few random photos from outdoor events we went to in June, and thought I'd throw them into a single post here. First up, on the weekend after school ended, I took the kids to our friends Pete & Alison's; while there, I took headshots of a friend at the party, so I had my good camera with me. Henry was sitting outside with us, being super cute, and so I couldn't resist getting some good photos of him too...

Could this kid look more like his dad? I really see it in these pictures.

When we got home, I recorded this awesome singing moment <3 p="">

As I already posted, the following weekend I had a photo shoot that the kids tagged along to. We were messing around a bit before my clients arrived, and so I grabbed some shots of them (while getting my settings properly set).

 

Then later that day we joined Evan at a backyard event a friend of ours threw for him and his campaign. I only had my phone with me, but I grabbed a few shots of the kids having fun on the swings.