Butterfly Gardens

 On Monday, Miss C and I took a spur of the moment trip to the Natural History Museum. Despite it being spur of the moment I was pretty well prepared. I dressed us nice and warm, packed water and snacks, carried a nice sensible back pack, and I brought my camera along so I could take nice, blog worthy photos, of my kid staring in amazement at just how big dinosaurs really are. It was all really perfect, except I left my memory card in my computer at home. Other than that the trip was wonderful, and I got a lot of really fun phone pictures of the trip. Maybe not having the camera was ok, it gave me more of a chance to relax and just take it all in.

 

So, these photos are not from that trip. I promised Cordelia we could go back, so hopefully later I'll be able to share photos from the museum. However, this give me the opportunity to share photos from another adventure we went on. We had soo much fun, and I had been meaning to post the pictures but never got around to it. Now looking at them she looks positively tiny- kids grow way too fast don't you think?

  Back in April (give or take a month or so) we went to Brookside Gardens to see their yearly butterfly exhibit. We also went the year before, but Cordelia wasn't really old enough to really understand the magic, so this trip was much more fun. It only costs a couple of dollars to get in, so this will be on our yearly "to do" list for quite a while. 

Cordelia went dressed in her signature look of the time- I had to hide this tinker bell costume when she finally grew out of it. All the people thought she was soo funny because she had dressed like "a butterfly to see the butterflies"

    Try my best, I could not get her to look at me- but in all fairness I don't think I would look at me when there were butterflies to check out.

 

 

I really like the variety of butterflies Brookside has, however from our trip to The Natural History Museum (Where we also saw butterflies) I have determined that I really like moths- is that weird? For the record I don't like the boring plain moths that fly around your security light at night, I like the fancy ones they keep in museums- I guess I am a moth snob. . . The museum includes several variety of moths in their exhibit along with the butterflies. 

One last photo for you before I say good night. I hope you are all keeping warm during these crazy cold days!

Hello 2014, M is for Mushroom

So, I've been a little absent- winter is hard for me, and the last two months of 2013 kicked my butt. So now it's time to realign my focus- that's what January is for, right? I feel like I spent all of 2013 "finding myself" but you know what- really I always knew who I was-I'm just bad at making it work. I stink at goals and resolutions, I normally set too many- or I make them so huge I give up and loose hope in myself. This year I have one goal- I want to be more purposeful, more intentional. I want to teach myself to put the dirty plate in the dishwasher instead of in the sink- I want to teach myself to be aware of myself, be aware of my actions. I want to be more intentional about doing things that make me smile. 

I have great hope and great determination that I can, in fact, do this.

So to start the year off I decided I needed to make something fun! A blogger I just started following (and whom I'm obsessed with on Instagram) No Big Dill is doing a project called sew all 26- sewing for each letter of the alphabet. It's been a LOT of fun to watch, she picks super creative things, her style is amazing, and her pattern matching is a thing of  true beauty. This week was M and for some reason that just clicked in my brain and it became my mission to do an "M week project. 

I had the perfect mushroom fabric laying around, which I trimmed out with a bit of brown cotton and vintage lace. I'm going to have to tack the lace bow at the neck a little better because it's just not stiff enough to hold up to her jumping around! 

She enjoyed jumping around a lot during our little "Photo-shoot"

I let her pick the buttons and she decided that they had to be pink- and I think that it works because they match the light pink in some of the mushrooms. I would have preferred using the little pearl buttons I picked out-BUT I try to make it a point that if I give her an option, I actually listen to her and use what she picks! 

I'm pretty happy with it, and Cordelia giggled with happiness when she put it on (then she gave me a big hug and said "oh thank you mommy!" which made my heart melt). So here is to 2014 being an awesome year- with much more sewing!