Phipps Conservatory

Britton's Daisy troop is in the middle of their Garden Journey, and they were ready for a field trip.  So we went to the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh! I've never been there before, and I was blown away by how beautiful it is.  There were a ton of gardens to explore - a Japanese garden, roof top garden, sunken garden (with orchids), butterfly garden, the Congo rain forest, and more.  

The girls loved exploring the gardens, and certainly had the energy to do so!  Us adults, not so much - we were just trying to keep up.

I love this chair of succulents!  It's a real armchair too.

The troop (and one little brother!) had fun on this last field trip of the year.    Britton loved doing the crafts, and came home with a spider plant!

ryan's quilt

When Britton attended her daycare for kindergarten, she had a best buddy named Lila.  Lila and her family moved to Florida last year, and we've kept in touch.  When they came to Pittsburgh to visit family last summer, we got together and the girls had a blast.  Lila's parents started the long and arduous process of adoption long before they moved, and in January they adopted Ryan, their son.

Ryan isn't a little baby, he's 1 1/2 years old, but he's their baby.  And a toddler still needs a quilt, for cuddling, building forts, having picnics, and generally dragging around behind him.  I wanted to make something fun, and I found the backing first, oddly enough!  Normally I make the quilt, then pick the backing.  But in this case, I picked out this backing way before I was planning to make a quilt. I just liked it.  So when I received Ryan's arrival announcement, I knew the backing could be my inspiration for the quilt colors.  I decided on isosceles triangles, because I love the simplicity and the random mixing of colors.  

I gathered navy, golden yellow, dark grey, light grey, turquoise, mint, and white (mostly scraps!), and set to work.  This is my first triangle quilt where the points came together well!  I straight-line stitched on either side of the triangle with very light turquoise thread and the binding is dark grey.

The backing that started it all

Lila's parents love the quilt!  I love making quilts, but nothing beats making a special quilt to celebrate, and new babies might be the best reason.   Congrats on the arrival of Ryan!

expand yo mouth

At Britton' s dentist appointment at the end of February, I pointed out how the teeth on either side of the upper front teeth hadn't come in yet.  She lost these teeth a while back, and there just didn't seem to be enough room for them to come in.  Her dentist said that there were two schools of thought - either let the teeth do what they will do and fix it with braces later, or intervene orthodontically now.  He suggested we look into options now, and after speaking with the orthodontist, I'm so glad we did.

It turns out that Britton has a cross bite, and on top of that she has crowding.  Those teeth (officially #7 and #10) will not come in well on their own, and would result in expansion surgery when she's older.  By getting an expander now (to wear for the next three months), Britton will only have to wear braces for a year or so when she's 11 or 12.  A no-brainer, and luckily Britton was very excited about getting an expander!

Excited until that day actually came (Friday).  Britton has been battling a horrible cold and ear infection all week, and having the hygienist tell you to "just breathe through your nose" doesn't help you out when you physically can't do that.  She toughed it out and even the orthodontist complimented her on being a fantastic patient!  

The expander is in now, and I have to adjust it every night.  It was relatively painless to put in (other than the fact that they had to dry off her teeth to put on the adhesive which put her into coughing fits), and Britton had the usual drooling and difficulty talking.  But what was fine to deal with yesterday is wearing on her today.  It will take days for her to adjust to the expander and learn to speak more clearly.  She's worn down by the cold and the expander and all the changes that came with it, and she tearfully admitted to me tonight that she wishes she never had it put in.  Time has different meaning to a child, and telling her everything will be fine in a few days doesn't really make her feel better now.  So I told her that every day would be better than the day before, and she seemed better.

I'm ridiculously proud of how she's handling all of this, and I know this relatively short inconvenience and uncomfortableness will be well worth it in the end.  The daughter of a lady I work with just had her third expansion surgery and she told me how incredibly difficult the recovery is.  Knowing that we can prevent that, and shorten Britton's time in braces, makes this worth it, even if Britton doesn't know that now.

barrett: 35 months old

Guess who is one month away from turning three years old?!  Yep, I can't believe it either!  Barrett is growing by leaps and bounds - not only is he ridiculously tall but he's counting and telling me letters and talking in full-on paragraphs.  Barrett loves when I sing him songs, which is a total change.  I used to try and sing to him and he'd say, "No Mommy, no singing!"  Now we sing songs and he loves it (it has to be the songs because it is certainly not my voice!).

Barrett's current favorite activity is going on walks.  I only wish that we could get some consistent decent weather, as Barrett would spend all day every day outside if he could.  He still rides in his Cozy Coupe, though he outgrew it long ago - it's comical to see him squeezed in there!

Barrett loves animals so much - he's constantly chasing the poor dog and cat!  When we went with Memaw and PawPaw to buy their baby chickens, he held his hand out and said, "I want to hold them!!!"  He's tickled by these chickens!

Likes:  Sadie and Nella, the chicks, playing in dirt, cookies, strawberries, being outdoors

Dislikes: being smaller and slower than Britton - he just wants to keep up with her constantly!

80 months old

Yep, I'm two days late this time!  I'll blame it on not really believing we're already in April!  How fast did March just fly by?  I know using months to count Britton's age is utterly ridiculous at this point, but it's cleaner than saying "6 years and 8 months."  So, I'll stick with the months, even though the math no doubt hurts my head!

Britton received her report card today and is doing well!  Her teacher is proud of her hard work, and so are we.  I do love how much Britton enjoys school, especially reading, art, science, and music.  She says P.E. isn't her favorite, but with our cold weather I can't really blame her.  

Not really something we want to commemorate, but today was Britton's first school evacuation!  Someone wrote a threat in the boy's bathroom, which caused the school to evacuate and send the kids to the upper parking lot.  It was so late in the day that they sent the kids home on the bus from the lot, and they couldn't re-enter the school for backpacks.  Britton said that the "bad boy" who did this is most certainly "going to get sent to the principal's office and be in big trouble."  Yes, yes he is!

Likes:  Rainbow Magic Fairies books, anything to do with mermaids (including some Australian show called "H2O" or something like that!), putting on elaborate imaginative games with the neighborhood kids (fairies versus mermaids and the like), karate, Memaw and PawPaw's new chickens!

Dislikes: when Barrett is "too loud," coming inside to eat dinner and take a bath when she's out playing with the neighbors

a little birdie told me to make a wall quilt

I've started staging Britton's room, which included painting all the pink walls a gender-neutral green ("Romaine" by Sherwin-Williams).  She used to have a canopy over her bed, but we removed it since it had turned into a dust-covered mess!  She needed something over her bed, and I happened to be flipping through quilt posts and saw an old review of "Sweet Tweets" - a quilting book.  I fell in love with these birds, and the technique of "thread sketching" - going around the outside of the appliqué multiple times in overlapping stitches.  It should look like you've sketched the design out in pencil.  I figured I'd give it a try - worst case scenario, if it didn't work out, I could throw it in the trash and buy a print from Home Goods instead!

I merged two designs from the book, because I really liked the heart "leaves" on the trees from one quilt, and the two birds with a quilt from another.  I quilted the quilt before adding it to the big quilt, so it would feel fluffy.  

I couldn't resist a little heart and arrow with "B"!  Originally I had planned to leave the trees empty, but it felt so bare.  So I added "sketches" of tree bark to fill it in.

I did my loopy free motion quilting on the background in a pale blue, then added this beautiful paisley as the border.  I finished the quilt up with purple gingham binding cut on the bias, and attached a quilt sleeve.  Then I just put a dowel through the quilt sleeve, tied some white ribbon on either side, and hung it up.  This is my first wall quilt ever, and I admit that it turned out very sweet, plus Britton gets a kick out of the tiny quilt.  I'd definitely try thread sketching again - what a fun technique!

happy easter!

The kids woke up this morning to find their Easter baskets waiting, full of breakfast candy!  Ok, sure, the candy wasn't really for breakfast, but it's what they ended up wanting to eat so we went with it.  

While in Houston we found these confetti eggs, which we seem to only find in Texas.  We picked some up and snuck them into the Easter baskets.  Britton loved making them explode all over her, and Barrett didn't seem so sure that he should be breaking the eggs.  He got over that quickly when he saw all of the confetti!

When Memaw and PawPaw came over we started the Easter egg hunt.  Britton and Barrett were on it!  They found every egg, and Britton led Barrett to a few straggler eggs, since her basket was full.

Then it was time for dyeing eggs!  Memaw saw a new technique for making hard-boiled eggs, which involves baking them instead of boiling them. We tried it out and it worked!  I knew we would be having deviled eggs with Easter dinner, so Britton dyed those eggs.  She loved mixing up the colors!

Poor Barrett didn't make any photos because he was outside with the hubs and PawPaw while us ladies were inside baking (oh, that sounds so 1950s!).  Britton and Memaw make a bunny cake every year - it's their tradition, and they both love it.  So they had another success this year, and even switched it up a little by using Peeps as the ears.  And it was delicious!