Just Jen

Skillshare Portrait Class

Have you discovered Skillshare yet? It is my latest obsession. So many great classes and so affordable! The last class that I completed was Start Drawing: Techniques for Pencil Portraits by Gabrielle DeCesaris, Portrait Artist. Pencil drawing has always been my favorite, but drawing people - especially faces - has always been intimidating. Gabrielle's class was packed with great info. By following the techniques she demonstrated in her videos, I was able to draw both my kiddos and...they actually recognized themselves. I'd call that a success!! :)

I started with some reference photos:

I drew my daughter first. I have always loved this pic of her. Such a pretty little subject, no? :) Her hair was my favorite part to draw with all those fun little flyaways.

  

Once I finished with Andie's, Jack asked if I would draw him too. I was having too much fun to be through, and who could turn down that sweet little face, anyway? :) The challenge with him was capturing the way he smiles with his eyes which lights up his whole face. That little smile brings me joy every single day. I'm not sure I would ever be able to fully reproduce it. I don't even think the camera does it justice. But I sure had fun trying. :)

I really loved this process, and though they aren't perfect, I am pretty happy with this first attempt and can't wait to get some more practice in. :)

 

Andie's Ice Cream Party

First of all, I can't believe my baby is already 2. Nope. Can't be.
That's all I have to say about that. :)

I knew that I wanted to do an ice cream party for Andie's 2nd birthday while I was still in the planning stages of her 1st birthday party. (I'm a little obsessive like that. I've even had some ideas about party #3, but she will probably have an opinion about it by then, so we will see.)

When I'm planning the kids' parties, I always start with the invite, since that usually determines the feel of the whole party. I knew I wanted to find a way to make it 3D or interactive in some way. I toyed with the idea of a pop up card of some sort, and after lots and lots of sketching and thinking - and thinking some more, I finally came up with a flat invite that could be rolled into an ice cream cone shape  by the recipient. 

It needed to fit into an envelope to mail flat, and had to be easy enough to assemble. I was really excited with the way they turned out! I even heard that a couple of Andie's sweet friends actually tried to lick/eat it. I love that. :) 

The party was mostly centered around a ridiculous spread of ice cream and sprinkles and toppings and sauces. I did make a big batch of plain ol' salty popcorn just to balance out the sugar overload. The ice cream was Blue Bell, of course, because we are in Texas, after all. God bless Blue Bell. And Texas. :)

There were cupcakes too, of course, because it is a birthday party, and there wasn't enough sugar already, you know?

This common saying is actually quite special to me. My grandmother used to always say this as she served us little cups of ice cream after a big family meal. It was my little way of including her in Andie's special day, though I am pretty sure she was looking on anyway. :)

I covered the kids' play table in some plain newsprint and set a bowl out with crayons. It was quite a piece of artwork by the end of the party!

I was inspired by this tutorial for making cute crayon wrappers, and followed it to make these. They turned out great! And Sparkle Mod Podge is now my new favorite thing.

Andie didn't really care for being sung to by a room full of people, so I handed her the cupcake (after I got plenty of good pics :), which immediately made it all better. 

Andie loves her "eh-bows", so I had to make her a special one for the day. It's made from felt with seed beads hand-stitched on. The cherry is a red pompom with a piece of red cotton yarn glued to the center. If I can find some time (someday...), I'll try to get together a little tutorial. :)

And her party shoes totally made the outfit. Just like Dorothy's, only better.

The letters behind us on the table were inspired by this project, but instead of using flowers, I glued in little pieces of tissue paper. 

The favors included a few of Andie's favorite things: ice cream shaped bubbles, ice cream shaped marshmallows, a sparkly bracelet (hot wheels for the boys), and a polka dotted hair bow. 

My niece handmade this card for Andie, and I loved it so much I wanted to share it here. It was such a fun day with family and friends!

Jack's Superhero 4th Birthday

A few days ago, my little guy turned 4. I am still having trouble grasping that, but here we are anyway! This is the first year he had an opinion on his party theme, and he most definitely wanted an Iron Man party. Now, I LOVE planning the kids' parties and have dreaded the day when I would have to do a generic party based on a licensed character. I narrowly escaped that this year though since I was able to talk him into a general superhero theme with lots of heroes included. After all, we couldn't have Hulk and Thor and Captain America get their feelings hurt by being left out, right?


After looking around online, I found there was still a lot of room for creativity with this theme. Lots of fun, cute stuff. We have always had the kids' parties at home, but this year with all the friends he has made at school and church, the guest list had grown to the point that we couldn't accommodate all the kids+parents+family in our little space. And we certainly couldn’t count on the weather to be nice enough to have it outside, so we decided to have it at one of Jack's favorite places: Main Event.  (He has even on occasion thanked Jesus in his bedtime prayers for this place. Such a sweet kid.)

My husband had a great idea for the invite, and I'm glad he talked me into it. He took all the pics for the invite and photoshopped them together, and I did the rest of the layout and finished off the tubes. These were ridiculously expensive to mail because of the odd shape, but luckily we were able to hand deliver most of them. They went over really well!

By having the party outside the house, I knew I was going to have to let go of my usual over-the-top decorations because of the limitations of the space we were going to be in. Instead I focused on the things I could control - the cake and the favors.

I had played with fondant once before for Andie's party with decent success and thought I was ready to graduate to something a little more involved. I found these adorable cupcake toppers online and decided to do my own version of them. I was really pleased with the way they came out, but I do think I can cross cake decorating off my list of back up careers… Fondant is HARD and I am officially in awe of anyone that can master it! Jack loved them, though (which is all I really cared about) and repeatedly told me what a great job I was doing. Once I even heard, "You are so wonderful for making those, Mommy." Totally worth all the effort just for that. I bought the cupcakes and icing (because I had long ago crossed baking off my list of back up careers) and plopped these on top. Done.

I had enough fondant and icing left to make Jack a special cake (blue, of course - his favorite color) with his own superhero logo.

For the favors, I thought it would be cute to make capes for the kids wear while they bowled and played games at the party. I found a couple of good t-shirt cape tutorials on Pinterest and decided that would be easy and cheap. It's not necessary to hem them, but I did turn the raw edges under with a zigzag stitch to give them a more finished look. I drew the symbols for each of the superheroes and printed them on the back of each cape like we do our personalized tees. The kids looked so cute!

I knew there would be balloons in the room, so I made masks and brought them to the party to tape on. Then I scattered a few comic book looking word burst graphics on the tables with some ribbon and called it done.

The party was a blast, and he had a great time, but we are definitely partied out. Well, almost…I may or may not already be gathering ideas for a sweet little girl's birthday coming up in August. :) I just can't help myself.

A ruffly scarf to go with the hat

A while back I posted about this hat that I had crocheted for Andie to wear this winter. Well, recently I decided she needed a scarf to go with it. I used the same yarn from the hat, and used this free pattern from Lion Brand Yarn. I had to size it down, of course. I chained only 100 in the beginning row and skipped the 3rd row altogether. I alternated colors for each row.

Since it was so small, I was able to work it up pretty quickly, just in time for a tree lighting last Friday night. She also had her first picture with a Santa that wasn't daddy:

I think it's safe to say she's not a fan. And the look on Jack's face was like, "What's wrong with her?!" I love the pic; I only regret not having a better camera handy. I didn't know we were going to be sitting on Santa's lap for pics, so I was unprepared. Still golden.

I'm back.

I knew it had been a while since I had posted, but I didn't realize it had been almost 2 months. Yikes. I promise it's not a case of blog abandonment, but more a of "shove it to the back burner" type thing. We have been some busy little bees! This will be the first in a short series of "catch up" posts. I know we've all moved on from Halloween to Thanksgiving and Christmas, but bear with me while I revisit it for a minute. Because the costumes were awesome and worth the look back - mostly because I worked so hard to make them, and I'm not willing to skip posting about it.

Meet Luke and his sister, Princess Leia.

Luke Skywalker
Jack had no idea who Luke was when we decided on their costumes, but he was a total Star Wars fan by the time Halloween arrived. I figure this is the last year I get to pick his costume, so I wanted to make it count. I sewed his shirt and glued torn strips of fabric to a cheap pair of Target khakis (while he was wearing them – he was SO nice and patient!) and also onto his shoes to make the boots (the shoes were disgusting from playing all summer and he was about to outgrow them anyway). I made his belt from upholstery vinyl and a silvery vinyl fabric. Light saber was from Toys R Us. FYI – this is the BEST fabric glue I have used EVER.

Leia
I had seen a couple of versions of the crocheted hat with buns online and decided to make up my own. I LOVE the way it came out, and the fact that she did not mind it being on her head. I've decided it will be her winter hat since it has built in ear muffs and all. And I'd love to get some more use out if it! Her dress was a simple peasant dress pattern using a white knit. I lengthened the sleeves some, but wish I had lengthened them a bit more, along with increasing the overall length of the dress. But by the time I figured that out it was done, and I was over it. I made her belt following this awesome tutorial. Simple white tights and shoes, and she was complete.

It's sort of tradition that the kids come up for a visit to my office so I can show them off in their costumes. They drew quite a crowd - notice my zombie friends lurking behind the wall of the cube. They were so nice to keep their distance so as not to scare them. :)

Yip Yips

I work at a place where Halloween is a BIG deal and people really get into it. My group worked together to make 10 of these Yip Yip costumes. And we totally blew away the competition in the group costume contest. It almost wasn't fair. We followed this tutorial to make them but substituted 4 yds of regular fleece for the blanket and left an opening in the black mesh in the mouth so we could expose our heads without having to take the whole thing off. I will say the anonymity was the best part. We interrupted every meeting we came across that day! In case you are interested, I am the dark purple Yip. Self portrait, and current facebook profie pic, below:

A matter of trust

I just read a friend's post on her blog, and it immediately touched on something deep inside me. Something I deal with every day. She asks, how do you trust God to take care of that which is most precious in your life? To keep them safe when you can't? Because none of us are guaranteed safety for ourselves or our children. We are not guaranteed even one more day without sickness, pain, separation from each other or even death. In an instant our lives can be turned upside down. Just because I am a believer doesn't make me immune to any of these horrible things. So how do I trust God to take care of them – to keep them safe – when I know that might not happen? Every morning when I leave for work, I touch both of my sleeping children. Stroke their hair, their cheeks. Kiss them goodbye. Soak them up. I take my time because even as I beg God to bring us all back together in that same spot at the end of the day, I know deep down that might not happen. Most likely it will, but still, it might not. So I try to make every goodbye count. To remember what they feel like.

I can't even bear the thought of my children being taken from me by an accident or illness - or by any other definition, which is a nightmare all it's own. Yet, I do not believe God means for us to live in fear. Neither do I think that He means for us to take even one precious day together for granted. I know in my heart that if they departed this earth, they would instantaneously be in the arms of Jesus, and there is no safer place.

But they wouldn't be with me.

So every day I ask for God's protection for our family and plead for His mercy - mercy that will actually bring that protection. I know it exists because I have already experienced it numerous times with my children. Times when I know He was the only thing that stood in the gap between them and something horrible. What about other mothers – friends – who have begged for this same mercy without receiving it? When will it be my turn?

The other day I was talking to my own mother and asked her when you get to stop worrying about your children. I already knew the answer. Never. Not when they're young and vulnerable. Not when they're older and driving and out late with friends. Certainly not when they're off at college, and not when they're grown and have their own families. Never. It's the curse of being a mother. How do I give that to God? How do I muster the strength to give them over to Him every single day? To entrust them to Him even when I know that doesn't guarantee they'll always be safe? My mother told me when we leave their house, she prays for God to send angels to protect us and envisions them covering every inch of our car and clearing a safe path ahead of it. She still prays for me. Now she also prays for my children.

I am a person of faith. I have faith that God knows what is to come - today, tomorrow, for the rest of our lives. He knows everything that will happen to us, and what will finally end our lives and when. Nothing surprises Him. And He has only the best for me and the ones I love most. Nothing is going to happen to me or my precious family that He does not allow. There is comfort in that somehow. Also in knowing that when the horrible happens, we aren't left to try to pick up the pieces alone. And that ultimately something good will come from it. Something of eternal significance and greater purpose - one that I might not get to understand.

It's dawned on me as I write this that these children belong to God more than they belong to me. They are my flesh and blood, but they are His creation. And I'm also reminded that He once watched His own child being beaten and nailed to a cross – a horrifying, painful, slow death.

And Jesus' mother was there too.
What did her cries for mercy sound like?

Andie's Honey Bee Birthday

I can hardly believe my baby girl is already a year old! I had decided months ago to do a honey bee theme for her party, so I had plenty of time to work out the details in my head. I have to say, I was really happy with the way it turned out!

I designed her invitation and used this envelope from Paper-Source in a lovely shimmery gold - just like honey!

I made a paper mache beehive with a balloon then layered cut strips of tissue paper on the outside using double stick tape. It could have been a pinata, but since all our guests were such wee ones, we skipped that. I wanted to hang it above her cake, but it didn't make sense to just have it suspended in mid air. It really needed to be hanging from something...like a tree branch...just like on her invite. I should get extra credit for consistency, right? :)

So I made her a tree! "Andie's Birthday Tree" as Jack calls it. It took an entire 30 ft. roll of craft paper and a whole day, but it was definitely worth the effort! (I probably could have used another 10 ft. or so to beef up the trunk at the bottom, though). I had a lot of moral support during the process - Jack kept telling me what a great job I was doing. That and the Olympics kept me well entertained. I twisted and wrinkled the paper to look like branches and hot glued leaves cut from scrapbook paper. I hung the entire thing with fishing line tied to the railing around our loft above, so attaching it to the wall wasn't necessary. The bees were made from yarn and threaded with fishing line, swarming around the hive and flying all around the room above our guests' heads. At the last minute, I decided to attach her monthly chalkboard pics down the trunk with little clothespins.

Now, I have come to the realization that I am not a baker. But I wanted to decorate her cupcakes myself, so I had Market Street bake them plain with the icing on the side. I was inspired by these cupcakes on Pinterest, and with a little YouTube research, I figured out how to make petals with icing using Wilton decorating tip #103. So easy and fun with the oreo centers! The fondant bees were a little time consuming (I made 40 of them), but not difficult at all! It's kind of like working with really soft clay.

I wanted something special for Andie's cake, so I took a chance and baked it in my giant cupcake pan. I figured it it didn't come out perfect, it's not like she was going to tell anyone. :) I kind of over-filled the bottom so it would be taller. Once it cooled, I flipped it upside down and used the domed part of the cupcake on top, shaping it with a knife to create a beehive shape.

It was definitely an experiment, and I was a little nervous about how it was going to turn out. I was very happy with it, though and she was too! She made a pretty good dent in it and wasn't showing any signs of slowing down when we finally had to take it away. :)

I made her little queen bee headband along with matching bee headbands for all her little friends to wear. I honestly didn't expect them to be worn much as little ones tend to be fickle about having things on their heads, but they all kept them on for most of the party, and they were TOO CUTE.

Jack kept with the bee theme, but in the most manly way with his Transformers Bumblebee tee. Yes, that is cupcake icing on his shirt. :)

The other food consisted of lemonade and 2 snack mixes - one for the babies and one for the big people. The baby snack mix was made up of Multi Grain Cheerios, Gerber Graduates Puffs, and Gerber Graduates Yogurt Melts. The other mix was honey roasted peanuts, golden raisins, Butter Snaps Pretzels, and Honeycomb Cereal coated with white chocolate and peanut butter. Yummy!

The favors were honey sticks from Desert Creek Honey.

It was pouring rain the day of her party, but it was sunny and happy inside! I had so much fun putting it together for my sweet girl. Special thanks to my patient husband who I kind of maybe flipped out on about 15 minutes before the party was supposed to start because the carpet still needed to be vacuumed... He always saves the day. And thanks to my sister for staying over the night before to help me put the finishing touches in place (and distract the kids). And of course, thanks to all our special guests! We are so happy you came!!

You can find my entire party inspiration board on Pinterest here. There's a lot of great stuff there that I didn't get to use!

More painting

Jack LOVES to draw and paint, and the artist in me LOVES that he loves it. The other day while I was at work, Bret set up an easel and a canvas and let him pick out some paint. This was the result:

And the best part? He said he painted it for mommy, not daddy. This is a big deal, because this boy ADORES his daddy - as he should.

But this one's all mine.

I'll be hanging it on our wall, of course so everyone can enjoy it - including daddy. ;)

A masterpiece for the garden

Yesterday Jack painted this lovely pot for my garden. He was almost as proud of it as I was. And I'm pretty sure he got almost as much paint on himself as he did on the pot.

I'm thinking of putting him to work painting pots during the upcoming holiday rush. I should have time to refine his lettering skills by then, no? :)

The most glorious shade of blue...

...and the prettiest girl.

But I'm biased on both counts, of course, being Texan...and that being my little Texan sittin' there in those beautiful Bluebonnets. And in case you're not from here, it's practically state law that you take pictures of your kids in the Bluebonnets. Well, at least it should be. :)