Cartersville Egg Drop

Around Easter, for the last few years, our church has been hosting a giant "Egg Drop" at the local park. It's basically our bizarre version of an Easter egg hunt that goes a little something like this....

All of the kids are divided up by age between four different fields. Thousands of eggs are spread on each field, and then wait! What's that? The Easter bunny flies by in a helicopter to drop even more eggs.





The kids are then lined up along the edge of the field until everyone is in place. After the countdown they storm the field.





Then the eggs are all traded in for candy. Technically, it doesn't matter how many eggs you the kids managed to grab ~ everyone gets a big handful of candy for their basket. The kids don't seem to mind, and hey, it's all free!



And then it is all repeated later in the day for a 2nd drop on all four fields! We don't know yet how many people came this year, but they were expecting about 8,000. Insane!

Justin & I were in charge of the volunteers handing out candy to the 10-12 year olds, but I also managed to stop by the 2-4 year old's field for some photo fun. Here's what the running action looks like on the only field where a parent is allowed.





I added a few extra photos to my Flickr page, so stop by for more cute kid action!

It's coming together....

Last weekend we found out that the church that runs Justin's school has a large annual consignment sale for baby & kids clothing, furniture, & other supplies. And even better ~ if you pay $5 you can get in the night before the sale officially opens! Luckily, Justin's graduate class was canceled that night (Spring Break), so we pulled $100 out of the bank & headed over.

Score! We found a great crib, changing table, and stroller for $100 total! It did take a screwdriver & two car trips to get everything home in our tiny Kia Rio, but it was worth it. The furniture is in great shape, but does has a few chips in the paint, so we'll be re-painting them the week after next when Justin is off work for a week (again, Spring Break). Here is a preview of the crib ~



And the almost-matching changing table ~



Apparently if you put 10 items in the sale you get in an hour earlier without paying, so we will definitely be doing that next year. These women were serious shoppers ~ almost everyone came prepared with a plastic laundry bin from home to tote around their haul.

While I'm in the room snapping pictures, check out our growing heap of baby clothes (piled atop the car seat) ~



The changing table has two sets of shelves underneath, and I can't wait to get it painted & put back together so that I can fold some of that up & get it out of the way. Especially since my mom will soon be bringing over the pile of clothing she's been gathering together herself!

But what color of paint? I've been searching high & low for some decent curtains for the room with no luck. I really wanted to find something with a fun pattern & a lot of color to break up the white-white of our apartment walls a little, but everything was so plain! I started searching through sheets, blankets, shower curtains, fabric, anything that I could turn into a curtain, and I finally found this cute robot print ~



Last night I bought up the last 7 yards from this shop, but you can find the "Bots N Robots" print on several other sites (though it is $2+ pricier everywhere else!). I'm not going to worry about picking out a color for the furniture until I've got the fabric in my hands for a little color-matching, but for now I'm thinking yellow or green ~ Justin vetoed my idea of light gray. We'll see!

Ambigram Drop

"Live True" & "Love Life" Ambigram	"Strength" & "Serenity" Ambigram
"Knit" & "Purl" Ambigram	"Ethan" & "Keira" Ambigram
"Fidulo" Ambigram	"MNM" Ambigram
"Sheyna" & "Brock" Ambigram	"Time" & "Space" Ambigram

Tiny Boat Sighting at Dellinger Park

Justin's 'Science Explorations' class built propeller driven boats to use up a collection of styrofoam & took them to the local park to test them out. The boats had to carry a small weight for a few meters and were attached to a string to make sure they wouldn't float off to the middle of the pond. I met the class at the park with pizza, chips, & soda, and also played class photographer for the day.

Butterfly Box

A local woman recently found me on Etsy through their "Shop Local" search & ordered a custom quilled butterfly for her friend's new baby. She sent me photos of the nursery & the bedding and I debated over the colors for a while, but I think we will end up with a pretty good match! I used the last of the shadowboxes for this one, and it looks like they are no longer in stock, so I don't see much quilling in my near future, but it was a fun project to work on.



She came to pick it up yesterday with her two small sons. The toddler, who she said is normally shy, felt right at home in our apartment & was bound & determined to check out every inch of it! It was quite amusing to watch ~ my favorite part was when he pointed to the paused movie on my TV and cried "Broken!". He seemed very concerned! Indy also seemed pretty concerned, dodging the toddler & slinking over to cautiously sniff at the baby's foot (which moved & frightened him, of course). But I think he handled it pretty well.

Little Typo

I cracked up when I saw this typo in the camera catalog. Can you spot it, or am I the only nerd around here?

Hearts

Heart designs have been popular lately ~

"Lena" Heart Design	"Kiera", "Elijah", & "Caleb" Heart Design
"Mark" Heart Design	"CLA" Heart Design
"Reagan" & "Chase" Heart Design	"AGMC" Heart Design

And something new ~ heart shaped ambigrams!

"Jitterbug" Heart Ambigram



"India" Heart Ambigram

5 months

I took this photo at the 5 month mark, which was... yikes, nearly a week ago?
Oh well, I've about given up on trying to be *too* punctual with my posts!!



Right now I'm in the middle of the 23rd week and not much is going on.
The belly is giant, and getting kicked often, but other than that life is pretty normal!

We are still not sure what all Justin's brother has for us in terms of furniture/supplies (and it sounded like they have two of everything & are eager to get rid of it), or what clothing & things we might get from showers, so I feel like I can't really research/buy/make/register for anything until after all of that. And I *am* the type to read reviews, plan things, & make list upon list, so waiting around with no plan is making me a little antsy! It's not like I want to rush out & put together a nursery now, but I'd like to be able to leisurely pick things up along the way instead of running around at the last minute, you know?

Camera Cat

I love this camera!
Here are a couple of my first shots ~



And I took a few photos while he was playing in the hallway...
Which was unlit. And at night. And with no flash!



For the sake of comparison, I pulled out the PowerShot and took a similar shot of him playing in the hallway. The pictures came out nearly solid black. After bumping up the light a ton on the picture, you can finally make out a cat shape (amidst a horrible pixelated mess) ~



(Admittedly, I did bump up the light on the Rebel's hallway shot too, but others I took at the same time were nearly as light as that without any editing.)

Now I need to start figuring out the white balance, ISO levels, focus & such, but I'm pretty amazed at the results I'm already getting in auto modes!

Ambigram Drop

"Halle" & "Wren" Ambigram	"Fate" Ambigram
"Literati" Ambigram	"Riley" Ambigram
"Karma" & "Context" Ambigram	"Aaron" & "Adam" Ambigram
"Erlin Reyes" Ambigram	"Golston" Ambigram

Brown Basket, re-visited

The last of the leftover PowerShot photos...

I got a few shots of the brown basket before I delivered it as a late-Christmas gift. I don't know why these were so hard to photo!





And it looks like I got a new camera just in time! The last few weeks the LCD on the PowerShot keeps flickering with green stripes (though it doesn't seem to affect the photos). It looks like the end is near. But, considering it's gone through 7 years of pretty intense use, I'd say it has held up well.

I've been clicking away with the new Rebel, and everything looks great on the LCD so far! But I still need to install the camera drivers (tonight) before I can upload them on the computer and check them out for real. I'm sure we've all had photos that looked great on a tiny camera display, only to find them too dark, distorted, or blurry on your computer monitor! I'm sure even the giant 3" screen on this camera can lie.

More food from long ago...

A few more photos of recipes I never got around to typing up. Maybe one day...

Thai Basil Curry with Shrimp ~


Flat Pasta with Bacon & Peas Soup ~


Twice Baked Potatoes ~


Sausage, Lentil, & Kale Stew ~
(based pretty closely on this Rachael Ray recipe)