A Japanese Paradise!

Last weekend we went to the Portland Japanese Garden and to the Portland's Rose Gardens. It was our first trip to the Japanese Garden and I was very impressed. The kids had a fun time exploring. I really could have spent a few hours there looking at EVERYTHING.. but we had a 2pm Beaver's baseball game to get to. The Beaver's lost.. oh well.

I've been so busy during the summer I haven't had much time for my crafting. But I have managed to make a few things.

Mini wooden mushrooms!

Sleeping Lamb made with a pattern by http://harugurumi.blogspot.com

Coming soon: Sea critters, classic button eyed bear & more..

Hiro, Crafty Wonderland & the Crazy Snow Week.

A couple months ago I bought a really cute Amigurumi book.. 大好きなあみぐるみ (Handmade Knit Amigurumi ISBN:9784277172240) from the Portland Kinokuniya book store. It's out in Beaverton on Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy inside the Uwajimaya grocery store. I absolutely love this store and could spend hours browsing through it. Anyway.. I finally finished making the first amigurumi from that book. I named him Hiro (yes as in Hiro from Hero's, lol).

Last Sunday was Crafty Wonderland's Super Colossal Holiday Sale at the convention center. 125 tables of crafty goodness. I'd been planning to go to this for months and when the day finally came so did the snow!! It rarely snows here in Portland. The mountains around us usually get all the snow.. but here on the valley snow it only happens a few times a year and then it's normally just a trace. But Sunday it snowed a lot! We had to take the train to avoid driving in it. The line to get in was still pretty short by the time we got there and we even ended up getting goody bags. I was really surprised how much really cool things were in them.. books.. hair goodies.. a sake cup.. yeah it was the bomb. Totally worth the snowy trip to get there and it wasn't as busy as I was expecting. The booths were all really cool and I bought a really cute ceramic coaster with a bunny and squirrel for my computer table.

It kept snowing and melting then freezing all week on and off! The kids didn't have school on Monday, Wednesday or Friday because of the snow and ice. And now the weatherman is forecasting more snow for tomorrow and calling it the biggest storm of the year! The nice thing about it is that tomorrow is my youngest son's 7th birthday and he is really exciting to go sledding!

Happy Halloween! My first "Blogger" post.

Welcome to my new blog on Blogger. I was using the blog on my MySpace account but it was a real pain to work with and I've heard really nice things about Blogger... So I made the switch and here I am!

Yesterday was Halloween! One of my family's favorite holidays.

My youngest son who is 6 years old was a fighter pilot. I found him a vintage child's jacket that had a ton of old war patches at a local thrift shop. Then on eBay I finally found a vintage military hat that matched the coat perfectly. He just lost his bottom 2 front teeth last week! His first tooth fairy visit too. Kids grow up so fast!

My older son who is 11 was Sasori a member of Akatsuki from the Naruto anime series. I made his costume from scratch without a pattern and boy was it tough! I'm not that great with sewing but I'm getting better and I was really surprised how nice it turned out!

My husband wasn't going to dress up at all.. but the day before Halloween his work decided his department had to participate in the annual costume contest. The people in his department ended up choosing Music Stars of the Past for their theme and tried to talk him into being Billy Idol.. I didn't want him to shave off his beard though so I talked him into being George Michael.. Poor guy! He looked really cute.. hehe.
I didn't have time to put a real costume together for myself this year. I spent way too much time on the Sasori costume. So didn't dress up this year.. well I did wear cat ears, lol.