Then I uploaded these photos to Flickr and…

…and it dawned on me why Flickr by itself is NOT going to work for me. When there is no blogging, like last month, I don’t upload any photos. They sit untouched on my computer. Look at this set of all the pictures I took of Isabelle for month 76. There are four. F.O.U.R! I definitely took more than four pictures. I think I took more than four pictures. See, with no blogging, I have no clue. And no pictures to look at? I will definitely miss pictures.

So…so…I’m not going to stop blogging. In fact, there will be blogging! You might even get some pictures from the Christmas season on here because…F.O.U.R. pictures!! But as to how I’m going to do it? I don’t know. But at least now, I know I want to.

Oh and I completely forgot. These pictures. I didn’t say a thing about them. These are our monthly photos. Isabelle is now six years four months. Nathan is two years four months. I particularly love the zombie shots of the kids. I don’t know what it is with my kids and zombies. The other day Nathan was in the car singing a little song to himself…about zombies. ZOMBIES!!

And that tongue picture? Nathan has been doing that lately unexpectedly for pictures. So funny.

Maybe I’m a morning person, after all, and the kids staying up late for months and less sun has knocked me for a loop. I don’t know. I haven’t felt like doing much of anything. I feel like I’m drowning in day to day living, the days are too short and I can’t get anything done.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with this space here of mine and I honestly don’t have an answer anymore. Yes, I’ve actually thought about not blogging anymore seeing as how I haven’t been doing much of it.

Would I be missed if I stopped writing here? I’ve always said that I write for myself. I’ve always thought of this as a journal that I can go back and look at whenever or wherever I have an internet connection. A journal strangers and family can look at. I am talking to my future self. But now? I don’t have anything to say to myself. I am royally stuck. I think I need to change gears.

So, I decided to just stop and put it up since I’m focusing on the wrong things. Done. New banner.

And coincidentally enough I have little Batmans in my March banner this year. But I have a good reason. I have Batman brain.

Ok, that makes no sense. Let me start over. On Saturday we were at Target for a Dr. Seuss story time. As Alan sat with the kids listening I wandered around looking for clothes for Nathan. He seems to be outgrowing his clothes. (Or I need to fold more laundry since I cannot seem to ever find anything that fits)

As I was scouring the aisles trying to find something larger than 12 months old for boys (for some reason they have tons of girl clothes) I came upon a little Batman outfit on sale for $4, $12 off the original price. Whoo hoo! I love a deal.

So, I snapped that up but then it wasn’t such a bargain when I bought one for Isabelle too, not on sale. Oh well. She loves it.

And the reason probably has to do with the removable velcro capes that are attached to the back.

She wore it on Sunday and Monday. I’m surprised she didn’t ask for it every day since. So, then of course I had Batman shirts on the brain and that’s why my banner came out the way it did. Batman brain.

And on a completely different subject, look how big Nathan has gotten. Below is the same motorcycle at the park a little over a year ago.

And back to Batman. We should have gotten a Robin one instead for Nathan. Then they’d be running around, my little Batman and Robin. But the Batman was on sale for $4!! I couldn’t say no to that. Batmans everywhere! Alan should have gotten one too. I think we’ll have to look for one for him.

Alan suggested I make a gingerbread house behind us. But I didn’t really want to spend gobs of time on it. And he originally liked the first background I had, with us cookies standing outside in the snow with snowflakes all around. But that’s even more poo like…doggy poo…outside. I could have added some steam lines to us.

I think my favorite of Alan’s suggestions was this:

Bwa ha ha!! Twisted.

*Update: I added an outline so we’re not so poopy anymore.

You may have noticed, I turned off comments a week ago. I decided to give it a try after running across a couple of blogs that didn’t have any comments. I thought: What an interesting idea. You don’t have to worry about spam then! But do you guys miss it? Is it totally anti-social? Have any comments on that?

Then I kept up mad scientisting my site: I changed my banner today and my twitter background picture. And now I have an idea about my “I Heart” section.

Have you noticed my “I Heart” section in my sidebar? I copied the idea from Secret Agent Josephine’s “Eye spy with my little eye”. Well anyhoo, my idea is that I’m going to start drawing the “I Heart” section to get my draw on. So, instead of grabbing a picture of what I’m loving I’ll draw it. I’m having drawing withdrawal I guess.

It’s been almost 6 months since I had this I MUST draw urge. Blame Secret Agent Josephine again. She’s started to draw daily and it got my yearning for it up and going again.

What else can I go mad scientist on?! Well, I think I’m done with my site for now so moving onto the real world and a GRAND EXPERIMENT.

And the title of this post is Mad Scientists because the GRAND EXPERIMENT involves Isabelle.

Ok that sounds so mysterious and exciting. But it’s not really. Do you remember what it was? It was us trying to grow things. Ooooohhhh!

It failed miserably last time and I’ve been wanting to try again so we bought a whole bunch of new seeds.

And this time we’re serious. We even bought planting gear!

That’s right. Gardening world, watch out, we’re well equipped here! We planted a seed, a single seed of corn, a week ago. (We learned this time and didn’t go all crazy planting a gazillion seeds.)

And lo and behold, it groweth. A plant thing sprouteth yesterday.

Ok so I’m not down with the gardening terminology. A plant grew. Is that what you say? A plant sprouted. A seed has…oh whatever.

We are mad scientists and mad scientists don’t need to talk properly. They can use crazy words. They’re mad! Bwa ha ha!!

And to prove our awesome powers, LOOK:

We have the power to mutate helium. This balloon has been up since Isabelle’s birthday back in September. It’s mutant helium. All cower at our mad sciencing. Bwa ha ha!

Ok, I obviously need to go to bed now. But seriously, Isabelle’s balloon…Craaaazzzzy!

But anyways, back to the monsters. Each person has their own avatar generated for them. It’s always the same I guess. If you have a Gravatar, like I do, then that shows up instead.

Since I don’t know what my monster would look like, I drew one. You know, as if my hands weren’t hurting.

And if you want to look at what your monster looks like, comment and it’ll show up.

Oh I should add: I don’t know how long they’ll be up. Usually I find stuff like this fun for a while then I remove them. But for now there are monsters.

On Thursday night my friend, Olinda, noticed my website was down. It happens sometimes. It’s the second time, that I know of, this year. It happened a handful of times last year. And a handful of times before that. It’s sort of frustrating. So I changed web hosts. Everything moved over without a glitch (I think).

Then on the weekends we’re usually out and about so posting is rare.

But the big monkey wrench in posting came when I was reading Mary at Confessions of a Craft Addict. She was saying her site had issues on Internet Explorer. So I opened up IE to take a look. And then being curious, I checked my site. CRAP. I knew my site wasn’t “up to code”. I just never fixed it before . But for some reason, now, I was determined to get it right. So that’s what I’ve been doing for days. DAYS! I’ve been looking at code so much, my head hurts. But I was determined to have it fixed. I couldn’t stop. Not even for a silly old thing like my head exploding.

But now it’s all fixed and it even validates! Well everything except the galleries. But I’ll fix that some other time.

So what’s that have to do with the picture of the shirt? That shirt is a prime example of how stubborn I can get when I’m determined to do something.

It was supposed to be a gift for my nephew. I bought organic fabric specifically for him. And I bought fabric paint. I had grand ideas for trying out freezer paper stenciling. But right away I knew I was on the wrong track and I should have stopped. But I didn’t, even with the obstacles in my way, I just barreled on through.

First of all the fabric is too stiff. I should have used a knit because the pattern is basically a t-shirt, except for where the snaps at the shoulder should be. But knowing this, I didn’t stop. I just kept going along.

And then I noticed I cut two fronts out instead of a front and a back. But…I kept going.

Then I thought the size seemed awfully small. But march, march, march. Must not stop now. I just figured, it was all screwed up, so why not just see how it comes out.

But I stopped at the snaps. I didn’t want to waste snaps on a hopeless shirt.

I then washed it a couple of times hoping that would soften it up and I don’t know…magically make the front piece into a back piece? I don’t know what I was thinking.

Project Notes
Pattern: shirt 5 from Japanese craft book ISBN 4418051244
Fabric: stiff as a board organic cotton
Size: 100cm

Oh and let me end with a random video of Isabelle because I know Olinda is missing Isabelle.

The video is from a couple of weekends ago. My friend, Lorraine, came down from Oregon and we went out to dinner. A whole bunch of us girls and Alan. There was live music and Isabelle was dancing and clapping. I couldn’t get any of the clapping on video but I did get a little dancing.

Which reminds me. I want to get a small teeny camera that does video as well (for when I always forget my big heavy camera). I’ve been looking at some super inexpensive ones that are 6 and 7 MP. Does anyone have any experience on how good the quality of the video looks like on those things?

Oh and I’ve turned off comments on this post. I don’t want to lose any comments when I pick up and move. And I’d turn it off everywhere if I could but I don’t know how. Yikes I’m scared. Seriously. Fingers crossed and toes too. Don’t want to lose four years of this sucker.

*UPDATE* I think I’ve got it figured out!!