Ballerinas -- then and now

These two ballerinas have been dancing together for a long time.

They're best friends and boon companions -- even though they no longer attend the same school.

Watching them grow up together has been so fun!

Snapshot: and then my head exploded

OK, so why the frick are Fifty Shades of Grey and all its awful sequels and wannabe copycat smutty smut being displayed at my grocery store?

Don't get me wrong-- it's not so much the smut I disapprove of (although this particular species of smut is repulsive to me personally).  It's the crappy, crappy writing that just makes me mad at the whole publishing world.  I mean, publishers are so sniffy and dismissive of fan-fiction authors and people who publish on-line, because those writers refuse to make use of the golden talents of an editor.  Well -- what happened here, editing wunderkinder?  If these book were edited by a "professional," then stock up on your washboards and bags of rice, because the world really has gone to hell and the end of civilization is at hand.

And what is up with Safeway deciding that these dreadful excretions are appropriately displayed exactly in this location -- just above the Disney princesses coloring books and nestled next to the Big Nate storybooks and the Crayola products??  At the eye level of a precocious five-year-old???  This galled me most of all -- I had to come home and read a chapter of Pride and Prejudice to cleanse my mental palate.

Harrumph!

Introducing . . . the small boys!

 So we spent last week at the beach in wonderful Nag's Head, North Carolina.  This annual family get-together is a trip we look forward to for the entire year.  Sometimes we have a full contingent of cousins, aunts, grandfathers, uncles and grandmothers.  Other times a cousin or two has work obligations; last year the tall boy was unable to make the trip, but we were happy that the not-so-tall boy (the soldier's West Point pal) was able to take his place.  This year, although my sister's three oldest urchins all had obligations that kept them away, we were thrilled that SHE was able to be part of our shenanigans for at least part of the week.  Uncle Doctor does his best to stay out of the on-call rotation so he can join us (the nerve of some women!  Daring to go into labor while Uncle Doctor is trying to log jet ski hours!).  My fairy god-sister is always up for a week at the beach, and so are Carolyn and her husband the preacher.

And this year, the newest cousins joined us!  You've met the tall boys -- so now:  meet the small boys!  These pumpkin pies are my sister's new sons!  She and the preacher are in the process of adopting them, and how swell is that?!

 

 

Lucky small boys!  Lucky mom and dad!  Lucky family!

God is good!

Butterfly wings and sparkles: a good look!

 So we went to a big old picnic last weekend, where the tall boy and the sunny girl made a deal:  if she would hit the batting cages with him, he would get his face painted.  Since the sunny girl is more about swing dancing than swinging a bat, the tall boy thought he would escape with a clean face.

He was wrong.

Snapshot: Cousin love!

 

So my sister's youngest girl came along for the ride when it was time to head up to West Point and pick up her brother the soldier.  We were so happy they stopped at our house to break up the trip.

My sunny girl just loves this one!

Gradu-palooza -- the girl version!

So the girl in charge graduated from high school last weekend.  

 I feel old.  I ask you -- does this look like the face of someone who is ready to step out into the wide world? 

No?  OK -- how about this?

I know, right?

 [ The festive bow was after the fact, and I say -- too bad.  ]

While the mortarboard hat does make a definite statement, I think the bow shows way more fashion flair.  Call me crazy.

We partied it up for our girl, with balloons and party platters, and grandparents and aunts and godparents. 

My friend Saskia made this beautiful cake, which tasted even better than it looked, and strictly followed the girl in charge's instructions:  chocolate, with a side of chocolate, filled with chocolate and frosted with chocolate.  Please.

The bestie was there to make the day perfect.  It wouldn't be a celebration without her and her mom -- they make any party more fun!

So, yeah!  My girl in charge is already making her lists and organizing her minions as she prepares to leave for Emory University in the fall, but we're not going to talk about that because I can only absorb so many of these  moments when my life swings on a hinge and everything changes.  I don't really understand how parents make it through life without sobbing every day.

But we do.

This is as crafty as it's going to get.

OK, so I am not a crafter.  I am not crafty at all, because hello -- when you're quilting or learning how to take pictures that are actually in focus or embroidering or re-finishing furniture or scrapping or developing your own film or designing jewelry, you are not reading.

I am a reader.  I am not a crafter.  But I did see some totally cute ideas for graduation gifts on Pinterest.

(Oh, my sweet Aunt Pat.  Pinterest.  I need to fan myself.  And I don't even have an Aunt Pat, but you know what I mean.)

And the crafty tasks looked somewhat do-able, if only because the writers made the [accurate] assumption that I am a crafting moron, so they talked me through the whole thing like they were kindergarten teachers.  Thank the Lord.

Well, so we have a friend who is off to Virginia Tech in the fall -- and she is so happy to be a Hokie which I don't get because  a hokie is a castrated turkey, but whatever.  Go, Hokies.

So I made her this ribbon board for her dorm room (and somewhere right now I just made a Residence Life professional cry into her gin, because they're not dorms.  They're residence halls.  I got a freaking master's degree in Student Affairs, and the one definitive take away I got from all that edifying was that they're not called dorms.  And no.  You can't have a ferret.)

The instructions for how to make the ribbon board came from a great yet demoralizing blog, 7 Layer Studio.  Shelley tricks you into thinking that she's just like you, and dang, isn't crafting hard for all us knuckleheads?  But take a look around her lovely blog, and you'll see that she's an artist.  And not in the hyperbolic way we talk about pretty blogs -- she's an artist artist.   Like, she makes art.  AND she redecorates her entire home for every holiday season.  I'm leaving out the part where she has three young children and she designs and makes all their clothes, and her husband is military, so they moved three times in the two hours that I was hypnotized into her blog.  It's exhausting just to look at the pictures, y'all.  When I got to the post where she laid a new slate and rock terracing system in her back yard -- moving all the stone herself -- I seriously had to decide whether I should just shoot myself because I suck so bad or go get another cup of coffee.  I picked the coffee.

And then I made the damned ribbon board thingy.

 

 

 

 

The other school organizer thingy I made came from Diane Henkler, a clever, clever DIY contributor to Momtastic.  This is a thing I will make again for myself -- and the girl in charge wants one for her dorm residence hall room, too.  It really is clever and just my speed -- because the secret ingredient is duct tape.  It anchors each of the layers of ribbon (as you attach them from the top down).  Brilliant!  I was too tired from reading Shelley's blog to take pictures of this project.  When I make it again I'll capture the moment or maybe not.

But I did torment myself a little bit more by going back to Shelley's 7 Layer Studio to follow this tutorial, which showed me how to make a festive as all get-out frou-frou bow to jazz up the organizer thingy.

 

I won't show you the step-by-step, because you can follow it on Shelley's blog just like I did (I literally sat in front of my computer, squinting anxiously at the screen to make sure I was doing it right).  She's pretty confident that I'm a moron, for which I'm grateful.

Still.  They're cute, aren't they? 

UPDATE:  Hey!  check this post out at: