Yes I know the basketball is weirdly proportioned in my drawing. But it’s not a real basketball. It’s a giant blow up one. That, yes, Isabelle pounces on.

I wanted to make cookies and cupcakes for Halloween. I decided to start early so I wouldn’t run out of time. And I thought I was being smart when I gave the left over flour to distract Isabelle while I whipped up the cookie dough.

Well the distraction part worked but what a mess! Isabelle thought it was fun though. She pretended the flour was snow.

But wouldn’t you know it, on Halloween I ran out of time and didn’t make any cookies or cupcakes. So what did we do this weekend? Bake, bake, and bake.

We made cookies and I tried icing a few of them, my first time ever. And wow, that’s hard work, what with Isabelle wanting to eat them all before I can even get to them. Maybe that explains why I don’t have any pictures of finished cookies. They’re all in our belly.

And we made dark chocolate cupcakes! Those I do have a picture of. It took a lot of, “wait Isabelle! Don’t touch yet! Wait, wait, wait!!”

As you can see, I went Halloween crazy. I bought Halloween cupcake liners (with pumpkins, ghosts, and cats on them, which you can’t even tell damn it) and Halloween cupcake candy topper thingermabobbers.

I’m proud to say it was my first time successfully frosting a cupcake with a pastry bag. Well sort of. I couldn’t figure out how to make the pastry bag work with the tip thing. So, I gave up and used a sandwich bag with the tip thing. But you know, sandwich bags aren’t very big. They don’t hold a lot.

Maybe that explains why I had frosting coming out on top and bottom.

I’ve been drawing a part of our visit with Secret Agent Josephine so I thought, today, I’d talk about that part of our trip. If you read SAJ you probably already saw her post about our visit.

So yes, we met up with SAJ. And since Alan has already outed my amazing dorkiness to SAJ herself, I might as well admit it here as well. When I found out we were going to meet them I did a little dance in our hotel room, ran around a little, and jumped up and down in excitement. Yes, yes I did. I am a goober. But really that’s how happy I was.

And we had so much fun! I wonder if that came across? Because at the time I was feeling tongue tied, like I had stage fright, and my brain felt so slow. I guess that’s a good thing or I would have probably talked her ear off. I would have probably happily sat next to her in her office box asking to see her illustrations. And I could have asked her a ton more questions about freelancing…ok let me just stop before I sound even more crazy.

So yeah, me, that day, slow. That probably explains why I didn’t think of taking a picture WITH SAJ. Boo, bad blogger. Such a bad blogger, I didn’t even take pictures using my own camera. Alan reminded me how I broke my lens before at the beach with all the sand. So all the beach pictures were using SAJ’s camera, which by the way was pretty awesome. It’s freaking waterproof!

So yeah, we had fun. We hung out at the beach digging holes and building castles. Bug and Isabelle were so cute together. It was adorable watching the two of them following Alan down to the water’s edge and sharing food.

Yes, sharing food. See, that’s what I illustrated:

Did you get that? Here let me show you a close up of the relevant pane.

Yes, bug shared candy corn with Isabelle. From her mouth.

We’re leaving for Disneyland in less than eight hours. We aren’t packed, we haven’t even started.

And I’m tired. I didn’t get my nap today. And Alan is tired.

He’s not making sense.

Uh oh, looks like it’s going to be a repeat of last time.

When I was pregnant with Isabelle, we, me and Alan had certain expectations. For example, we thought babies were only breastfed for about 6 months. Imagine our surprise at a prenatal class where the teacher told us it was best to breastfeed at least a year.

We’re going on three years.

Then there was the expectation that Isabelle would be sleeping in a crib. Alan almost threw a fit when the crib we purchased was broken and the part was backordered 6-8 weeks. He was frantic knowing that Isabelle would be born before the backordered piece would arrive.

Isabelle has never slept a night in her crib.

There was also the expectation of Isabelle sleeping in her own room. Ha!

She sleeps next to me.

Well, one of these days, I’m sure too soon for me, she’ll want to be in her own room. But until then I’ll cherish the sweet moments with her snuggled up next to me. And the silly ones too.

Sometimes I’m silly. I don’t think. Like there was this one time (at band camp. sorry I always think that with those words), I was in the mood for a donut, so we went to get me one. And seeing them all there, all those delicious yummy donuts, I didn’t think. I had visions of donuts dancing in my head.

Yep, I ordered a dozen. For ME and oh yeah…ME.

That probably explains why I now have a new old sewing machine.

There were several sitting in the reptile store we go to. And every time we went, I saw them sitting there, and thought: how cool, old sewing machines. The owner likes collecting antiques, that’s why they were there. He was trying to find a nice one. And it was sort of hit and miss so he had a pile of them. Well one day I asked about them and found out they were for sale.

So without doing any research or even really looking at them, I bought one. The owner threw in extra drawers with it.

How did I make my choice? Not really with any sense. Alan later said, “why didn’t you choose one that was in better shape?” and some other very smart questions that I cannot remember. Which I did not have answers to.

My reasoning was: I liked the drawers.

Now what am I going to do with it?!? I would like to fix it up but I don’t have a clue. And where am I going to put it? Right now it’s just in the garage. Well at least I’ve done some research. It’s a Singer D series, made between 1908-1909. Silly me, with a 100 year old sewing machine that I don’t know what in the world I’m going to do with. At least I didn’t buy a dozen.