Costume Evolution

Used to be, I wouldn’t ask Caitlyn what she wanted to be for Halloween, I just put bunny ears on her. In more recent years, we’d have conversations, usually in late summer, about costume options (although I’m fairly certain she didn’t request the fairy princess costume, I just wanted to make it), settling on a tiger or a pioneer girl. Last year’s FireCat was a collaboration. This year, it was all Caitlyn. She started planning back in early September. Her dragon costume went through a lot of mental permutations before taking shape, with big black wings (from her dress up …

The Next Big Thing

Growing up, I didn’t like school much. Which is too bad, I suppose, since I was so good at it. The academic part, I mean. (When I received a “B” in college, I believe the general response was, “Thank the Lord! She’s human!”) It was dull and slow most of the time; I read novels during spelling tests, I invented extra layers to projects to make them interesting and challenging, I demanded extreme levels of perfection of myself (a habit that’s not serving me so well in the rest of life). I spent a lot of time hanging around my …

Summer Journal: Wandering in Canada

Back in July, we took a two week road trip to break in Caitlyn’s passport. I mean, Canada is right there. How is it that we hadn’t gone yet??? So we raided the library, mixed up some gorp/trail mix, loaded the car and embarked on a trip that turned out to be mostly about boats, trees, and swimming in everything possible. Here are a few highlights: Caitlyn sights Canada. We enjoyed an afternoon tea at Butchart Gardens. Food and setting were lovely. I felt underdressed (but then anything short of Lady Grantham would have left me feeling underdressed). Our smallest …

Tango with the White Cat

Back at the beginning of June (yesterday, right?) Caitlyn’s participated in Spectrum‘s All-School Demonstration performance. Her Ballet 1 class danced to tango music. All the other pictures have other kids in them, so you’ll have to enjoy just this one. Sadly you can’t see the sequins all over the front of her leotard, the detail she loved best about the performance. After her class, in the weeks leading up to the performance, this was the detail she’d talk about the most: the sparkly red leotards, the shiny red satin shirt for the one boy in the class, the red flower …

Summer Retrospective: Geysers and Glaciers

There’s that cliche about folks and their slideshows of their vacations, inviting the neighbors over and boring everyone to tears with the endless photos, the snippets of stories that don’t quite make sense. Does this still happen? Or do we all just put our vacation photos online somewhere, assuming that somewhere there’s a person or two who cares? That’s a bit harsh. I know there are a couple of people who will at least not be too bored seeing these. Besides, I’m putting these up for myself. I don’t scrapbook, haven’t for years, although I like the idea, the carefully …

Summer Retrospective: Sword-Play

Corrugated cardboard. Glue gun. Spray paint. Bling. Caitlyn and I have been (slowly) working our way through Craftsy‘s Costume Box class. I always seem to think we’ll have more time over the summer than we actually do. Fortunately, Craftsy’s classes don’t come with specific time limitations so we can watch the class lessons whenever we have time. At the rate we’re going, we’ll maybe get one more project done before Halloween. Starting with the sword was Caitlyn’s choice. Of course, she also wants wings, crowns, cloaks, wands, a fairy skirt, armor and boot covers. I expect she’ll try to wear …