More bargins

Every once in awhile I feel the need to brag about the amazing deals I find. Tonight is one of those nights.

Since Travis is going to be spending most of the weekend working on the house, I decided to take some "me" time tonight and hit Goodwill which is conveinently near Office Depot so I had an excuse since I needed color ink. Little did I know that it was Friday Moonlight Madness and Goodwill was open until 10pm and all clothes were 50% off. The bargins just find me, they really do.

I had asked Travis if he needed anything and he said he could use some more short-sleeved, colared shirts for work. I think I did well. I got 7 shirts for a total of $15.50. Yep, seven shirts all for under $20. I would have spent more for any one of those new. And they are all in really good shape, nothing wrong with them. One has long sleeves, but I knew he had just had to get rid of a similar one he really liked, and $2.50 for a J. Crew shirt, really, how could I *not* get it?

Here's a pic to fully display my thriftiness.



I didn't recognize all the brands, but among them are J. Crew, Calvin Klein, Old Navy, and Mossimo.



Not bad. Definately things we'd buy off the rack. And this way we are not feeding into the materialistic, cosumer-driven, throw-away society culture. Ok, that last part was just for the sake of hippy Calfornia, I really just like saving money.

And I'm sure you are wondering if I got anything for myself. Well, duh, of course I did. Did I need anything? No, so I really tried to refrain myself from going too crazy. I got two skirts, two shirts, one sweater, and one hoodie for a total of about $15 as well.

Those "free-gans" on Oprah got nothing on me!

Starsky Jr.

I'm not sending Olivia out to get the bad guys, I just knit her a sweater with a pattern by that name. I guess it's a reference to the long sweater/coats that they wore on that show. Here she is showing it off!



We went shopping today together to pick out buttons. I think we compared every button in the store, and it was really fun. She chose pretty butterfly ones that are probably not what I would have chose, but go really cute with it and fit her well.



(Note, ignore this paragraph if you don't knit.) The pattern panels, one on each front piece and three on the back, is called banana tree. I've never done anything quite like it and it grew on me. It calls for lots of tiny cables on both the front and back side in all combinations of knit and purl stitches. I really had to pay attention to the pattern, but I enjoyed watching it develop as I went along. Here is a close-up of the pattern and the three pattern panels on the back.





And finally, Olivia is done with all the picture taking!



I'm pretty happy that I actually finished the project and it's cute enough to wear, at least for Olivia, anything looks cute on her!

New Arrival

We just received our piano today, a hand-me down from my parents for retiring in a smaller house. Thanks guys!

The kids were pretty excited at first and played around awhile until they thought up a more fun game with all the packing paper that came with it. We're going to have to work on Noah's technique a little bit.



Olivia wasn't really interested in learning the notes quite yet, but she had fun reading the words while playing whatever her fingers hit. Can you believe that she is looking at Smurf sheet music that I had when I was a kid!



Please ignore the fact that it is dinner time, she is in her jammies still, a swim vest in the middle of winter, and her hair is in her face. There are reasonably good explanations for all, really, it's just not relavent to this post. ;)

Olivia the Who Girl

This is what we came up with for Olivia's Who Girl costume for Suessical the Musical. The instructions were vague, quirky and whimsical, bold patterns, muted fruit loop colors. Hmmmm But she is just playing a classroom Who Girl with all the other K/1st graders, so nothing terribly exotic to come up with like the bird girls and fish and circus and jungle animals did.

In any case, here it is. A striped shirt and skirt from a thrift store layerd on a heart t-shirt and pink pants we already had. I painted a pair of her shoes two different shades of pink and crocheted some purple flowers to stick on the shoes and pink hat. Personally, I think she is adorable!



Hopefully she'll do as good as she looks. :)

Olivia's first violin lesson

Daddy took Olivia today to her first violin lesson. I will try my best not to be a braggy mom who thinks her child is the most talented person on eath, but according to what I heard, she did AMAZING!

So, first she learned the 4 whole notes that the 4 strings on the violin makes. (It took me a bunch of questions of daddy to even understand what this means.) The teacher told Olivia that the 4 strings makes the notes G, D, A, and E. Then the teacher told Travis to call out notes for Olivia to play. He started calling them out in different order like "A, E, D, G, E, A, D..." and she could play them exactly right the first time! After only being taught them once! The teacher actually said, "That's not something I see every day." Wow, right?

Then the teacher started drawing the staff and 5 line thing and said "This is the kinda advanced for the first lesson, but you seem to be doing well," and taught her that stuff. (It gets a little above my head here, can you tell?) On the way home Olivia started drawing the staff and lines and putting those 4 notes in the right place on the staff! Wow, right?

On the way home daddy was telling her how proud he was and asked how she learned everything so quickly. She replied, "This brain might look small, but it has a lot of room." She is such a cut-up!

At home she showed me how she could pluck those 4 notes, and also play them with the bow. Needless to say, I'm super proud of her! Not that it's up to orchastra quality, of course, but overall I'm pretty sure that is impressive for a 6-year-old in her first 30 minutes violin lesson.

While I was sitting typing this blog, I kept asking her and daddy "which are the 4 notes again?" and such questions to get the info above correct. So, on her own, she drew me a picture "to help mommy learn," the 4 whole notes the 4 violin string play, correctly placed on the staff. Did I mention with no help. By herself. That she just learned today. Look at how the G is even two little lines below. Wow, right?



So, we're going to be in the poor house paying to rent a violin and private lessons, but maybe it will someday earn her a college scholarship or something. Even if it doesn't, it's totally worth it!