Last Week of Summer

This was our last week of official summer, Jared starts back to year-round school on Monday, so we tried to make the most of it.

Parade Preview

We try to make it to the Days of 47 parade preview every year to see what amazing and creative floats people have made.  We weren't disappointed.

This T-Rex pulling a handcart float was one of our favorites.  It had amazing articulation!  The body moved up and down, pivoting at the back feet, and then the neck moved back and forth  and up and down. The jaws opened and shut.

This ship was my favorite.  It was huge and had amazing details.  It rocked back and forth and the water was also animated around it.  The collapsible masts were over 20 feet tall.

Pioneer Day Adventures

In the sculpture garden at the art museum.

Thursday was Pioneer Day, which is a big state holiday here.  We started by going to a local art exhibit of movie costumes.   Poor Jared was very bored, but Kaitlin, Ruth and I fangirled and oohed and ahhed over every stitch.  We saw costumes worn by Voldimort, Maggie Smith, Sandra Bollock, Kate Winslet, Johnny Deep and many more.

Since there was a Krispy Kreme close by, we stopped in with the kids report cards.  They give one free doughnut for every 'A' up to 6 free.  So we walked out with 1 1/2 dozen doughnuts. (Thanks for the tip, Amy) Kaitlin also had an old Jamba Juice gift card, so we stopped there as well.  That night our neighbors invited us over for hamburgers and we had a good time visiting and then watching the amazing areal fireworks displays being shot off all around our neighborhood.

Astrid Costume

Ruth has been working on a costume for Comic Con for the last couple of weeks and I've been helping her with the basic patterns and designs.  She finally finished it, and  Kaitlin offered to take her out do do a photo shoot.  She is pretty happy with the results

Ruth already had the perfect hair and very similar jaw line to the original character.

Ruth looking like she could jump off the cover of a magazine.

The fur for the hood, cuffs and boot trim was a fur coat I bought at a garage sale for $1.00.  It was perfect for this. Ruth made all the sculls and spikes out of salt dough.  All in all, this costume cost us less than $10.00 to make.

The hood was the main part I made.  It's not just an ordinary hood, but it lies in a very specific way over the shoulders. I made three different full sized patterns out of paper, and then sewed a mock-up out of an old bed sheet before getting it exactly how I wanted.

The shoulder armor was another unique challenge because of their shape.  We made many different mock ups that didn't quite work.  Finally we found a bowl that was about the right shape, covered it with plastic wrap and then duck tape.  That gave us a pattern that we then cut apart to give us pattern pieces for the foam.  We then hot glued the little "u" like shapes together.  Googly eyes are the perfect shape for rivets.  Ruth hand sanded every one so they would take spray paint. After painting the whole thing silver she rubbed them down with black shoe polish to age them. A final coat of Modge Podge sealed it all.