Celebrating

We've been doing a lot of celebrating in the deRosier house recently!

Steve hit the 2 year mark with his current job! This is huge after all the layoffs he's experienced over the years and the nature of his industry (embedded software engineering). He likes his job and it's going very well. And speaking of Steve's job, we had the pleasure of hosting his boss, Andy (who lives near London), during his first-ever trip to northern California this past week. We had great fun showing Andy around San Francisco, UC Davis (our alma mater and Trevor's future school, if our brainwashing continues to be as successful as it has been so far), and everywhere in between.

Trevor hit the 2 million word mark in Accelerated Reader this week, another cause for celebration. Last year, he reached 2 million words right at the end of the school year. He'd been about 20,000 words short (one decent-sized chapter book) from finishing in time to have his name listed as 2 million on the t-shirt. That was his goal for 3rd grade. He's made the t-shirt list with about 5 weeks to spare, so it'll be fun to see his final word count for the year. I love that he's such an avid reader.

I have my own occasion for celebrating, as my blog just turned four! I've been blogging 5 days a week, 51 weeks a year, for four years... and I still love it as much as ever. I continue to be amazed at the blessings blogging has brought to me. I've met wonderful people and had some amazing opportunities because of this blog.

My blog has grown quite a bit from its humble beginnings in April 2011. My first blog post was titled Craft Withdrawal and fewer than 10 people read it.

My most popular post, The World's Best Classroom Birthday Treat, has around 70,000 pageviews and gets hits every single day.

Other very popular posts include my Giraffe Cake...

My Snowman Gift Tags....

My Bunny Donuts...

and my Name Skeletons.

People ask me all the time about my favorite posts. That's a really tough question and it gets harder al the time as I add more and more posts. But a few do stand out. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order:

• I Might Not Have Been Trendy Before...
• A Year of 40 Things
• Mindy Derosfir, at your service
• Exactly Five Years Ago
• The deRosier Project Runway
• A Day in the Life of Trouble deRosier
• Dear Entrant
• My Film Debut
• 'Finding' Time to Craft
• If I Were In Charge of the Chopped Baskets
• An Amazing Photo

 To all my readers- thank you. I am so grateful for your support. For the handful of you who have read all 1088 posts, a special thank you!  I'm really excited about what the future holds for me and My Creative Life.

43 New-to-Me... #8 Mamey Sapote

When I started this latest birthday project, I knew that a big part of making it successful would be sharing my experiences with friends and family. So I chose a day when Trevor was at school and Steve was away on a business trip and invited my coworkers from back in my teaching days to join me in trying 7 new-to-me foods. It was the same group of friends (minus two) who joined me to try Miracle Berries as part of my 40th birthday celebration.

The first new-to-me food we tried was mamey sapote. I found it at the same Asian market where I discovered the galangal.

It smelled nice, subtle but fruity, and it was such a pretty shade of peachy orange. The taste was very hard to describe. Mild, vaguely fruity, and a bit squash-like. But the most notable thing about it was the strange mouth feel, which one friend described as 'cottony.' I didn't have as negative a reaction to it as a few of the others did. I gave it a 5. The others graded it 5, 1, 3 and 3.

Let the Birthday Preparations Begin!

Trevor turns nine at the beginning of June, so we've started working on his party. He's known since about 10 minutes after last year's party ended that he wanted a "How to Train Your Dragon" theme for age 9. Location was a bit trickier.

Trevor thought a lot about different locations. He ruled out having his party at home; he wanted to go somewhere. He considered the pros and cons of a free location (like a park) where he could invite pretty much everyone he knows, versus inviting fewer people to a place where we have to pay by the child. After great consideration, he decided that he wanted to have a skating party and invite just a few friends. He's done both roller skating and ice skating lessons recently, so he looked at both locations as possibilities before deciding that ice skating was the better choice. It's considerably closer to home, much less expensive, and available on his actual birthday.

The skating rink offers three levels of party options and Trevor surprised me by insisting on the least expensive one. He was adamant that he didn't want a party hostess, a private party room, nor their included (and thus, not adequately themed) cupcakes. Fine by me. With the date, time, location and theme set, it was time to make a guest list and create our invitations.

Trevor found a picture of Toothless that he liked and asked me to sketch it. When I was happy with my sketch and Trevor had approved it, I cut it and traced it onto black cardstock. Then I cut that.

Trevor went through every single piece of green cardstock I own to find just the right shade for Toothless' eyes. I cut the eye shapes and glued them in place. Trevor was thrilled. We scanned the image on a white background.

Trevor had his heart set on exactly replicating the font that Toothless uses to speak in the books. We tried, but couldn't find a perfect match. He finally settled for good enough. He wanted the date, time and place in white on Toothless' tummy and the other information in black on the white background. We added a green border digitally. We ordered them as prints and are backing them with black cardstock. The completed invitations look like this:

We haven't firmed up any other details. I'm almost afraid to ask what kind of cake or cupcakes he's envisioning...

Goose Puzzle

I didn't do a lot of woodworking as a kid, despite the fact that my dad is an expert. I made some small things with him over the years, but my sister is the one who created beautiful furniture and other major pieces. In addition to little things I made at home, I did one year of woodworking through 4-H (with classes taught by my friend Colleen's dad). One of the 4-H projects I was most proud of was my first (and, so far, only) jigsaw puzzle. I was 12 when I made it.

I drew my design on a piece of wood, then used the jigsaw to cut it into four pieces. I glued the original piece of wood to a second piece of wood that was the same size, then sanded and painted the pieces of the goose, then treated the whole thing to a beautiful, glossy finish. I thought it was super cute and would do really well at the fair.

It didn't.

I got high marks for quality of worksmanship, but was graded way, way down for the usability of the puzzle. I was confused at first. The puzzle pieces fit perfectly with no gaps! They stayed in place. What else do you expect from a puzzle?! 

Well, it turns out that puzzles with only four pieces are usually intended for young children. And those four pieces should not be small enough for a young child to swallow. Nor should they be sharp and pointy, like the tail and the neck pieces. Oops.

Now that I'm a mom, it's obvious to me that this puzzle is completely inappropriate for a toddler. I found it recently when I was going through my childhood closet. After taking photos, I put it into the trash. Maybe someday I'll make a more child-friendly puzzle. Or perhaps I'll leave the woodworking to the experts.

Fun with Sun Prints

One of Trevor's Cub Scout electives this year was to make nature-inspired sun prints. Fun! We took the supplies into the backyard and started selecting promising leaves, flowers, and other elements for the prints. I showed Trevor how to do his composition in the shade and then move it to the sun for exposure. For his first design, he used two leaves and a flower.

Trevor made a few more nature-inspired prints, then he headed indoors to look for other interesting things to try. Here is a Lego spike strip and two Minecraft characters.

Here are three of his favorite minifigs, separated into all their parts. These dimensional items added interesting shadows to the sun prints that the flattened leaves and flowers did not.

Of course, it is impossible for me to be around any type of crafting without joining in, so I made a few prints of my own. My favorite was a grouping of seven small flowers. When the print was dry, I added a rub-on, drew stems with a white pen, and attached it to a card base.

To make your own sun prints, you need a special paper (cyanotype). It's easy to find in craft stores or science museum gift shops packaged as a sunprint kit. It's around $10 for 15-20 papers. Here's an affiliate link to one (of many) brands sold through Amazon: Super Sunprint Kit.