Shrinky dinks

The light in my oven burnt out.  I got a new bulb only to discover that something is wrong with the sensor or switch that turns the light off.  It now stays on all the time, so I took the light bulb out.  And because I have no light in the oven, it's been a while since I've done anything with shrink plastic.  I got some new stamps recently and I really wanted to try them out on shrinky dinks.  It really does not require a light in the oven, but I am particular sometimes.
I love this angel stamp I got at the thrift store by my house for only a dollar. 


And this beautiful stamp of a pretty woman with clock gears for hair was calling my name at Joann's Fabrics. 

Of course I had to crochet a lace around them and add some beads.  I think that's the only reason I make shrink dinks.

She makes my heart

I tell my daughter that she melts my heart.  And sometime she reminds me of it by saying: 'Mom I make your heart'.  When 'melt' comes out as 'make'.........yeah she does make my heart.

Friends in the park

It's seldom that we see someone we know at the park.  Sad in a way since it is a neighborhood park.  But my kids call every kid they see in the park a 'friend'.  Today we had the park to ourselves for some time, until some kids came and Patrick and Maggie pointed in excitement: 'mom, look friends'.

Patrick as usual tried to make a conversation.
"I am Patrick, nice to meet you.  This Maggie, and this mommy."
I am glad that he doesn't let his speech delay get in a way of making friends and interacting with people.  Most of the time kids sort of give up on trying to understand what he is trying to say, but today the conversation was quite funny.  One of the girls, who I'd say was about 9-10 tried to listen and understand Patrick, and after a few minutes she turned to me and asked me: "are you British?".  I tried not to laugh and politely answered:" no I am from Macedonia." 
She said she didn't know where that was, but her friend that she was with was quick to say: "oh I know where it is, I've been there, it's really a cool place."
"It's in Europe, next to Greece", I explained to the first girl, but by this time they were off the swings and running around with my kids.

Alien invasion

Sometimes my phone camera takes the most unusual pictures.  I have a app on my phone called Retro Camera and it has 6 different cameras to choose from.  I've learned to experiment with them by watching my professional photographer husband.  Here are a couple of photos from my flying saucer series. 

Hail?

When you live in a place like Phoenix, that gets some 330+ sunny days, you forget about weather.  Kind of sad, I miss out on all those conversation about the weather I could have when people don't know what to say to me.  Here in Phoenix the sun is shining every day.  Occasionally some clouds drift by and they can really look cool, especially if they are fluffy and big.  In the summer you get the monsoon storms come along and they can bring big dust storms, fast and heavy hit of rain, but not for long.  And when all of that is over, the mess they leave it's nothing compared to the heavy snow falls in the midwest, or the tornadoes, or the hurricanes.  Or maybe I only have that impression because I don't have a pool, so I don't have to clean all of the debris and dust that falls into it.
I guess I am trying to say that I am pretty lucky to live in a heaven of a desert.  So when something out of the ordinary comes along, I enjoy it.  Like this past Sunday, we got some rain that came in from California, and some pretty cold temperatures that helped this rain freeze and come down as hail.  That white dust you see it's not citrus blossom falling, it's pebbles of hail.

 
It's was pretty strange to see it, even though I have seen hail before.

The only unfortunate part was that I had to leave in the midst of this storm to go to work, so I couldn't sit by the window and enjoy it.

A bit of pink and lace

I've been working on more pins.  My friend Maggie explained to me why I should use clips instead of pins.  And it made perfect sense.  She said that putting in a clip instead of a pin gives it more versatility.  Since I already have a collection of these at Pink Zebra Boutique, I have to think about reaching a wider base of customers.  Not many people wear pins (I am old fashioned, so I do).  So if a product can be a pin for your collar, yet still can be a pin for your hair, and yet again attached on anything that can serve as necklace, it can then also be a pendant.

She is absolutely right.  


I added these clips on the back of them, and it was actually easier because I glued them instead of stitching the pins. 


I have a fresh new batch of these 'pin-clips'.  And I used fabric markers to add a bit of color on the images I stamped. 




So what do you think?

Why I call my daughter a 'little bird'

My daughter was born just shy of 6lbs.  A tiny little thing. She never wanted to be swaddled, and when she'd lay next to me and breastfeed she'd spread out her arms and legs and she looked like a little newborn bird in a nest being fed.  I thought of her as a little bird.  In my native country calling someone a little bird is a term of endearment.  So I've been calling her little bird, sometime in English, sometime in Macedonian.  'Malo pile'.

I recently introduced my little bird to sunflower seeds.  I love sunflower seeds.  I especially like to have a bag on a long road trip.  It keeps me awake if I a am the one driving.  Today on our way to the park I realized I had a half eaten bag in the glove compartment of my car.  I brought them out and was eating them, sitting in a bench in the park while the kids were playing.

Maggie kept running to me and asking for some.  I was shelling them for her, but she'd also try to eat them with shells on it and then she'd try to spit.  I tried to teach her how to take the shell out and eat the seed inside.

And so my little bird and I were eating sunflower seeds, sitting under the shade of a tree in the park down on Knox Street.

A date with my son at the museum

So a date with my son...it doesn't happen often that I have one child and my husband has the other.  It's usually me and both kids, or him and both kids, or all of us on the rare occasion that our days off match.  I had to take my son to the dentist, and afterwards I took him to the Arizona Southwest Museum.

He likes dinosaurs and this museum has a few of them.

 The dinosaurs are part of their permanent collection, but this time they also had an exhibit on prehistoric birds.





He preferred the dinosaurs, and I think we went back to that section at least 3 times.
 
And he had to build the dinosaurs puzzle.

At the end we panned for some gold, but all we got was sand and water.   Ah it's ok who needs gold when you have a boy like Patrick and a girl like Maggie.

Sreken 8mi Mart

How many of you know that March 8 is International Women's Day?  This day is widely celebrated by women of all ages through out the world.  But for some reason, it's not celebrated too much in the USA.  It's quite puzzling why in a country where there is a holiday almost every month (mostly for marketing reasons), the marketing brigade has let this one slide by.

Folk dancing

One thing that I sometimes find difficult as the only Macedonian around is teaching my kids the customs and traditions of my native country.  I don't speak my language with them as often as I should, mainly because my son has a speech delay and some other delays.  The holidays always escape me, because there is nothing and nobody around to remind me of them.  But one thing that I try to do as much as I can is take my kids to traditional Eastern European Folk Dancing.  I used to do this every Thursday night, but my work schedule has been in conflict with this.
But yesterday, the Phoenix Folk Dance group put together a festival.  So we went.

I was happy to see a group of Romanian dancers.  They are from the Romanian Orthodox Church in Phoenix.  I didn't even know there was one.  I was even happier to see that these were young people, in their teens and 20s.  This always make me smile because I am always afraid that in this melting pot, us foreign born people are supposed to bring the cultural differences and enrich the society, but I also often see that we abandon our cultures and traditions and we try too hard to fit in a society where we don't fit.  We just simply forget that we shouldn't try to fit, we should just be and play our part of being who we are.  That's how we fit.


I didn't have the best view and if I moved, my troupe (son and daughter) would have followed me across the dance floor and possibly trip the dancers.  So I stayed put and did what I could to take some pictures.


I was delighted to also see my friend Lora show up with her kids and husband.  Lora is from Bulgaria, a neighbor of my native Macedonia.  Lora and I used to go dancing every Thursday night, before we got in the business of being moms.  One of her daughters, Lucia is close in age with my kids, and my kids love Lucia, and Lucia loves my kids. 

And here there are dancing 'kolo'.

And even my Capetan America can do these dances.