A crazy photo shoot

I have really been wanting to get a few good group shots of the kids lately and am thinking I might just have to get help. Doing this alone and of course when I should have been making supper wasn't really the best idea. I do tend to do things like this just because I think of it in a fleeting moment and go for it and of course I never planned it properly or anything. Why should I be surprised when it doesn't turn out how I planned? Ha!

So, I haven't got one good group shot. Instead I ended up getting interesting single shots by rather creative children.

Here goes.

Yup. Not what I saw in my mind but I am ok with it for now. I think I will try and catch them all together on a morning after they have eaten, the equipment is set up and of course Dave is home!

Lake house plans

Ah, here are the final plans for the lake house with all the dimensions down to the tee. Except the island, I cannot figure out how to make the counter lip out so I can put stools on one side, but that is the real plan!

You can click on the image above to see it larger but it is just one large picture of smaller ones that I pulled together when I was editing.

And here is the stage we are at in the reno.

Well, I should say were at or Dave is at or was at. By the end of today the whole front of the house will be gone!

Ah, a lake-ish view!

And here it is framed for the windows that we ordered yesterday!

My husband is amazing!

Ukrainian, psanky eggs

Wow I am going back in time to get this stuff out!

I really want to give you a big lake house update...it is amazing what Dave has been up to out there and I really want to show you but I need to get past the past already!

So how about the eggs we did last month?

Every spring I think of Psanky eggs and the last few years have done a batch with the kids.

Here is what we did this year.

First you start drawing on the egg with the melted wax. You cover what you want to stay white and then dip it on the first bath of dye.

Then you cover whatever you want to stay that color and dip it into the next color of dye. Lightest to darkest. The big challenge is to see what you want in your head and know how to get there by covering what you need to in what order.

The longer you leave it in the dye the more intense the color becomes.

You continue the process of covering with wax and dipping until you have all the colors you need on the egg. Then the exciting part!

You then hold the egg over a small flame and melt the wax in small patches and rub it off to expose the art created underneath.

In this case I only did two colors but you can do so many!

We ended up stretching the egg project over a few days since the kids had so much fun.

My mom came one day with a friend. Mom stole snuggles as we created.

Ethan loved melting wax and globbing it on.

He was just so thrilled to be so close to a fire and I was all hovery and paranoid.

They were fine though and made some cute eggs even though they didn't get many dye baths done before they just wanted to see their eggs completed.

Another egg doodled up.

Emily got in on it one day too.

And of course there were a few casualties.

but in the end we had a carton of colorful eggs and a fun lesson in color dying and layering.

If you ever want to make these just hit up your local Ukrainian co-op and they will have everything you need to get started!

And then the faces of...

... a certain boy in our family.

A little more predictable and a little less animated.

But all boy. "No kiss me mom!!"

The many faces of...

A certain precious growing girl of ours.

Just cause.