I looked out my window....

and what did we see, my littlest girls being terrified by this BIG BEE!

Not my photo...couldn't catch a good one in time.

The amazing visitor was a Bumblebee Moth.

Wingspan of at least two inches just grabbing a little nectar from our garden phlox by the front window. Once Paige realized that it couldn't get her, and she could be less than a foot away from it while still being on my lap, she was mesmerized.

Fifteen years....

Priceless aren't they? Honey, thanks for fifteen entertaining years.

The hills are alive...

Kate and Sydney just finished their most recent theatrical event..."The Sound of Music." I have a confession to make. I have NEVER watched "The Sound of Music" with my daughters. I'm not talking on stage I mean NEVER, EVER, EVER, at ANYPLACE or ANYTIME. Mostly this lapse in Theatrical education is out of respect for John. He has always been 110% supportive of Kate and now Sydney being in shows. He'll tolerate months on end of soundtracks and DVDs but just NOT "The Sound of Music". WELLLLLL, that's all over with now...we even watched it TV the other night, (John was not home!) staying up until 11pm to see the amazing Julie Andrews sing her heart out. We didn't have a lot of practices since the girls were in supporting rolls, Kate as a novice and leader of a line of goat children....Sydney as one of the goats in Kate's line. Miss Jone' was the Mother Abbess and our favorite Miss Ashley as Liesl below. I didn't take tons of photos...Paige is not conducive to taking photos in a very dark theatre! Which I wish I had because the actors were really good, worked very hard, and made me cry. Yeah don't really know what's up with that. Apparently I was tired from daily rehearsals for two weeks. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Just for the record...
Fun Fact #1 - The Maumee Center for Performing Arts is AMAZING. The stage is ginormous...we actually had a backstage not a back corner. The dance studio, dressing room, and makeup rooms all super nice, it was a clean, safe and efficient workspace. The theatre seats 800, has a super nice tech crew/director area up above the seating, a comfortable, large lobby, a real box office and concession stand. (Theatre Kidz rents the theatre for the week of the show only.)
Fun Fact #2 - All of our music was LIVE...an all student pit from Toledo School for the Arts and the co-music director was a TSA graduate returning from BGSU to lead the gang. During intermission people would go up to the wall around the sunken pit and peer in at the poor unsuspecting musicians. Every adult looked a little shell shocked when they saw that there were real live "students" playing for the entire show.
Fun Fact #3 - Kate's been having a dream about the hills actually coming ALIVE! Leave it to Kate to make me laugh.

Felt flower barrettes...

These are the barrettes I made for all of the Rapplings for Easter. I had a request to post them and so here they are. I was inspired by an Etsy artist, whose shop I forgot to save, so I don't have a link. Then I cut out some random oval/circle shapes, stitched them to each other and a barrette and added beads. Instant cuteness!

My gift for my swap buddy...

These are the goodies I sent to my May basket exchange partner. I covered the little basket with flowers and buttons. Then I stuffed the basket with creative goodness...ribbon, papers, little people, a handmade scarf, a new album I designed, cupcake embellishments, and a stack of John's photos. This is the amazing blogger that put together "A year in color"....a artsy blog full of fun crafty ideas and challenges.

Custom album that I cut the paper and sandwiched between clear acetate. With a special thanks going to Miss Debbie for giving me a free supply of acetate. Have fun being creative!!!