Happy Friday!

Friday was our day to tour as much as possible while we were in D.C. Thanks to very helpful people from the event we attended Thursday night, we started the day by waking up early to make it to Ken Calvert’s office (our state rep) to see about getting a tour of the U.S. Capital. We actually beat everyone to his office and waited for out contact to arrive. Then we needed to wait for the interns, so we headed down to the cafeteria for a pretty yummy breakfast. I wish I had a cafeteria like that set up at home! I’d eat good every morning! LOL!

When we were finished, and no longer starving, we went back up to Mr. Calvert’s office and were all set to go on a personal tour of the Capital by Ethan, one of the interns. It was really enjoyable since it was only the three of us. It was nice to linger when we wanted to and speed up as we pleased. We got to take the tunnel from the representative offices to the Capital, which is lined with art work from High Schools all over the U.S.

I mostly took pictures of statues and some architecture, but instead of swamping the post with all of them I’m going to share two of my favorites.

This chandelier has a neat story. It was offered to be included in the Capital building when it’s original home (I think it was a cathedral or a church) needed to get rid of it. The fun fact on this was that it takes two men nine hours to clean it by hand. Can you imagine? It is rather large and I also loved the ceiling surrounding it.

I loved this ceiling. Completely forgot the name of the room it is in. I blame it on my brain being on the East Coast when it is still thinking of West Coast time. I actually had Don lay on the floor, of the rather busy room, for this shot and he did a pretty good job! The painting shows the gods passing wisdom along to our Founding Fathers.

Here are some of the better close ups Don took:

Two things I learned after this day.

1. I really need to take a class or something on my camera. There’s still lots I need to learn so I increase my number of “good” pictures.

2. I should probably study American history once in a while.

Don’t tell my Dad I said that last one.

With today being Veteran’s Day, I wanted to share with you what was the most emotional part of our trip to D.C. for me.

As we were walking to the Vietnam Memorial, Don was relating to me his experience when he walked the length of the wall for the first time a few years ago.

I knew it was going to be emotional.

I found myself wishing that it was clear of other visitors so that I could spend more time reading the names as I walked by, instead of feeling like I had to keep moving.

There was chatter, but it was quiet enough for me to let the experience soak in.

I spent a lot of time thinking of a boss that I had many years ago. He was one of the best people I’d ever have the pleasure of knowing. He fought in Vietnam.

He didn’t like to share many of his stories.

I thought of my Grandpa who served in WWII. Not many have been able to get stories out of him.

Thankfully Don has a knack, and was able to get him to share some stories my Dad had never heard several years ago.

I thought of my friends whose husbands currently serve. They sacrifice a lot to be away from their families.

And the families sacrifice a lot to stand by their husbands/fathers as they serve.

I am proud of these people and thankful.

Very thankful.

On a walk down past the embassies, we spotting this awesome panda. I don’t remember what building he was outside of but he was too pretty to not take a picture of.

More D.C. pictures coming this week.

This year I did a lot of sewing for the boys’ costumes. And thanks to my procrastination they got to change who they wanted to be at the last minute.

Meet Ash Ketchum:

This costume was really fun to put together and I was thankful that Perrin picked somebody who only required a jacket and hat to be made. In the beginning I thought it was a vest and was all set to sew it up when I did one last Google for images and noticed that it was indeed a jacket, like Perrin had been telling me all morning! D’oh! But seeing as I did his costume second, I was already comfortable with adding sleeves and a collar, so it wasn’t too much more stress. (heh) I used a pajama top pattern from Simplicity 3935 and altered it to have short sleeves, a collar, a zipper, and white blanket binding around the bottom.

The hat was really getting me worried since I couldn’t find a red baseball cap anywhere. Then at our last stop at Michaels we found a blank red cap! Score! I used Liquid Stitches to attach the black fleece to the front of the cap and for the blue fleece to create the symbol. I love how the hat turned out! It really completed the costume. The final detail was the fingerless gloves. Bought the bargain two-pack for $1.00 at Target (came with one black and one blue - exactly what I needed), cut the fingers off and used Fray Check to keep it from unraveling.

Perrin had a lot of fun with his costume and was recognized by a few people, which he thought was fun.

Meet Dan Kuso:

This one took a lot of work, but Owen loves it so much, it was worth it. After a lot of Google image searches and absolutely NO red sweats to be found anywhere, I ended up making his costume by using the pajama bottom pattern from Simplicity 3935 and the soldier top pattern from Simplicity 0533. Patches were added to the pajama pants - a note on this: I sewed the patches on after completing the pants which made it a little bit of a chore to fit the leg holes around the arm of my sewing machine, but in hindsight I think it was the right move for me. If I had sewed the patches on as an additional step during the process before sewing the legs closed, I would have had a harder time lining them up. The jacket used a little more alteration. I added pockets that would close to match Dan’s jacket more accurately, along with the black blanket binding - using the images as a guide, and cutting the collar to have double points instead of one so it would stand up correctly.

Owen had a lot of fun with his accessories. He picked up a Bakugan kit from Toys R Us that had the belt and Bakugan holder/clip. As you can tell by the photos, he had the Dan pose down! LOL! His gloves are the second pair from the $1.00 bargain with the same alterations - cut fingers off and use Fray Check.

I don’t think any recognized who he was, but he was a good sport about telling everyone who he was - along with everything else in his Trick-or-Treat bag, especially the Skelanimal gummies from Uncle Levi. LOL!! He’s also on day three of wearing his costume.

We ended up Trick-or-Treating around my parents’ neighborhood, where I grew up. It’s fun to take them around the same streets my Grandma used to take us.

When we were finished, Grandpa (my Dad) had brought out the telescope so we could look at Jupiter and the Moon. I remember he did this last year and the boys really enjoy looking thru the telescope.

We took some silly pictures as we waited for our turns:

Then we headed home.

As a side note, Sammy had fun on Halloween, too.

Here he is in his crate in the van as we were getting ready to drive to my parents’ home. He did not have a costume but enjoyed getting petted by various Trick-or-Treaters and had fun meeting new doggie friends during his night time walk.

Maybe next year he’ll have a costume ….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iypUpv9xelg

 Wishing you all a fun and safe Halloween! I still <3 Oingo Boingo. I can’t have Halloween without listening to them!I have to hit the sewing machine and finish up some costumes. 

Sorry about the rotten pictures. It was late, I had just finished making 54 of them and still had to pack for an early flight to spend a few days in D.C. (more on that later).

This year, because of year-round school, I needed to get the Halloween treats for the boys to pass out to classmates done a week earlier since we’re off-track and not in school this week.

Once I decided on what set to use, these went together rather quickly! And I used everything that I had on-hand. Didn’t have to purchase anything extra to make the treat bags! It always makes me feel good to use up what I already have stashed away.

The white sacks I bought at Smart and Final several years ago and they are the perfect size for classroom treats. I used the PaperTrey set Spooky Sweets. I love the way their sets are designed. It was so easy to get the pumpkin stamped in three colors because of the two-step stamping set up found in most of their stamp sets. And that pumpkin image is just lovely!

I wanted to make the most out of my paper, so I opted for ATC sized focal images. I cut the white to 2″ x 3″ and stamped the images. I used Palette black for the face and sentiment, Versa Magic Pumpkin Spice for the pumpkin, and Versa Magic Tea Leaves for the stem. Then I cut the black to 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ for the matt. This gave me 10 per page. You can find a great template for cutting your paper here: Mirkwood Designs.

I needed to somehow easily ground the white bag, so I dug thru my 12×12 papers and found that cute orange polka-dot print. I cut 1″ x 4 1/4″ strips and adhered them to the bag, trimming when necessary.

Then the bags were stuffed with SpongeBob Halloween Fruit Snacks, a Halloween Kazoo and Halloween bubbles. The top was folded down, then folded in half again because the flap was too big and I didn’t want to trim the bags.

Gingham ribbon was attached with a staple then the focal image was stapled to the bag.

All done!

Because I’ve learned in my 12 years of being a Gunnell, that in some language it translates to “takes pictures of birds.”

At least I haven’t gone completely over the edge. My sanity thrives on not actually knowing what bird this is. I leave that up to my husband, Father-in-Law, and Brothers-in-Law.

I only know this is a bird of prey because of the shape of the beak, and that’s where I draw the line.

Last Saturday I started my two day Beginning Quilting class at a local fabric shop.

It’s fun!

I learned a lot in that first class and I’m really looking forward to the second class this Saturday.

So this week I am cutting, subcutting and piecing my stars together. Then we’re going to learn how to do the sashing and combine the rows to complete the quilt top.

I can’t wait to have this finished, the fabrics are so delicious! I picked tones that go with our home and added some pink in there for me!

I’m outnumbered over here, ya know!

Yesterday, during a homework recess, the boys we out back and blew bubbles. It became more entertaining once Sammy joined in and I grabbed my camera to catch the fun.

When I was going thru the pictures today they made me laaaaaaaugh! I love his determination to jump and pop the bubble. He’s actually quite good at getting them before they pop.

We got lots of funny shots. I like to call this one “the shark”.

I like his eyes in this one. On his way to pop one bubble and looking for the one that’s going to get it next.

Can you imagine how much fun he must have thought this one was? All those bubbles coming at him at once?

Ah, the life of a dog.