100th day of school

step 1. wait 99 days

step 2. buy a shirt

step 3. find a tally mark you like

step 4. cut them out

step 4a. with your silhouette if you're lucky or

step 4b. with scissors if you're crazy

step 5. iron the tallys on

lily reported that she got to stand in the front of the class and point to herself while the class counted by 5's and 10's to 100.

**edited**
been getting a ton of emails since I didn't write this as a tutorial and the instructions are a bit vague.

I used the silhouette brand heat transfer material that already comes colored.
http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/shop/materials/heat-transfer/item-group/flocked-heat-transfer
http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/shop/materials/heat-transfer/item-group/smooth-heat-transfer

I used a mix of fuzzy and smooth since that was just what I already had. They may sell it in stores somewhere but I don't really know.

You'll have to use the silhouette software to trace around the image as well. I would just google how to do that since I'm sure there are already numerous tutorials.

If you didn't want to use the iron on transfer it seems like you could also use the machine to just cut out a stencil for you, and then use fabric paint. Even easier: find something you can use to stamp a line and then use paint to stamp our your own tally marks. Good luck!!

remember christmas?

forgive me if you can't stand thinking back that far

around then I was just starting to figure out the video use on my regular camera (d7000).

this video demonstrates everything I've mastered so far:

wobbling around. remembering that people don't like more than a few seconds of the same thing (though I think the christmas morning scene goes for slightly longer...just wait until you see max realize that there are presents for him as well). changing focus from one thing to another thing. lining up taylor dancing with the dancing part of the song. awwww yeah. and magically lining up the end of the music with the end of the video. I'm practically a pro.

this one's embedded from where I stored the full hd version (I think) so go on ahead and full-screen us.

p.s. if it doesn't show up in your reader here's an easy link for you. consider it a really late christmas gift.

how to open a present in 10 easy steps

1. hmmm. opening this box seems like a lot of work.

2. though opening boxes has always paid off in the past...

3. what? there's a box inside of this box. i love boxes!

4. pause for the card. let's get it open-WHOAH!-

5. look at this! can you believe it?

6. they even wrote stuff on the inside! i sure do have talented aunties and artist fartist uncles.

7. i can almost taste it.

8. come on come on COME ON! almost there

9. come to max. i'm ready to play

10. yes! success! sweet! (though I think what he really wanted was for me to put the camera down and get out the batteries. we did right after this. don't worry)

the gift, if you're interested. it's become quite popular round here.

december 2011

this month seemed to be all about making stuff.

making something fun to play inside:

making christmas presents:

making sparkly christmas magic:

making a fancy background for our christmas display:

making playdoh creations with diggers and bulldozers:

making graham cracker gingerbread houses:

making a before+after shot: (should say copying)

then this. this is not our house. not our fantastic ice sculpture. but we were making ourselves giggle by driving by after school a few times:

making our elf be a little naughty:

enough of the making. this was our church nativity. bale of hay+a silly cow+his pal the sheep=a flurry of hay being thrown in the air during the whole thing.

sledding day.

the day after christmas we took our little family to see the temple lights, buy some treats, use our christmas gift cards and go to dinner. lily's had a tooth come loose the night before partly due to being almost 7 and also that's what happens when you're chewing on a plastic mermaid tail in the bathtub and your brother yanks it out of your mouth. aaaaaanyway, during dinner it got to the point of twisting all the way around backward and just dangling. momma did a little napkin magic that she didn't even feel. her FIRST lost tooth! the waitress was about crying to be able witness such a special little moment. lily was a little emotional because she gets embarrassed with any amount of attention on her from people she doesn't know. I felt like crying that she so suddenly made some sort of jump to being an even bigger kid when I can still remember so well when that tooth came in. wow. also we ate spaghetti. ALSO I almost forgot! we got to sit INSIDE the trolley in the trolley square spaghetti factory.

then derek thought he had a good idea (oh just wait). for christmas my grandpa had given a 50 dollar bill to both the kids. only he handed them to derek so Lily didn't really have it in her possession or notice it. so we were at dinner after the lost tooth talking about the tooth fairy and how I thought she usually brought 1 or 5 or maybe even 10 dollars. daddy said that he thought the very first tooth was worth 50. so she got the grandpa/tooth fairy 50 along with some fairy dust. first thing she said, "now I have 50 from that tooth fairy AND 50 from grandpa! that makes ONE HUNDRED!!" oops.

also big sorry to everyone that she proceeded to tell the next week who also thinks their first tooth should be worth 50. hopefully they forget.

lastly, dirty-face max with his christmas dino-baby :)

november 2011

my friend finally had her baby! and I was lucky enough to meet her and her cheeks on day 1.

after that november sort of became the month of portraits in the laundry room. I made myself a pvc paper roll stand and wanted to try it out. our laundry room has the window facing the right direction so that's where we squished in for these.

if you came over, you pretty much got your picture taken.

cupcake break.

then the cute cheek baby had a special blessing day so our maxbuddy had to get all spiffied up for the occasion.

thanksgiving! delicious and enjoyable. we love our family.

max isn't quite in the big boy class at church yet. still mostly gets to play and have snacks and sing about 5 little monkeys doing various things. but once in a while he comes to visit for a bit.

a real live steamie came through town!

and decorating our tree. those little kid branches are my favorite. those little kids are my favorite, too.

v

october 2011

more napping. more swinging.

nice little family drive to see the leaves. through sundance and over the hill. I don't know what it's called but it was sure pretty.

baby shower party time. we put the guests to work making decorations for the nursery.

and here it is! only now it's filled with lots of cute pictures of a cute babe.

did you know max has a gray tooth. I'm sad about it. only like 3 1/2 more years to go.

double rainbow! we were all excited and amazed but not quite as much as this guy :)

trip to laramie with the girls.

late night tennis court rocket shooting. ya, we are awesome.

it was homecoming. we got into it.

max's FAVorite. he's a marching band boy.

apple picking in utah.

cardboard box photo booth. my kids are adorbs.

halloween is my FAVorite. our new friend jack the martha stewart skeleton. put up 8000 bats (like on made) and then never took a good picture of them.

preschool make up day. the prettiest day of the year.

then we had a halloween party. because I have a hard time not having a halloween party. decorations and food are surely important but lots of activities make the party. though I think I didn't upload 3/4 of the party pics so you don't get to see those ha ha. our first activity though was this photo booth. I had a spooky sign up about how vampires and ghosts sometimes don't show up in photographs. I took the kids' pictures and then quickly changed the screen on my camera over to either a ghostly picture or a blank picture from where they were just standing and hesitantly showed them. we got em good :)

a couple barbies had to be sacrificed for our decor.

my costume was to dress as Lily.

my friend's family has turned their home into hogwarts on halloween for a long time. we'd been a couple times but this year my sister and cousin dressed up with the cast as lavender brown and parvati patil and I came a long to take pictures.

then our own little halloween photoshoot. once again, adorbs.

and trick or treating.