Hey all, I’m sure you had a great 4th of July weekend celebrating the Independence of these United States by grilling and blowing stuff up. We had a pretty low key weekend… but when the 4th is on a Thursday and it’s a four day weekend, by Sunday, you kinda forget it’s still the 4th of July weekend!
Ansen had Thursday and Friday off, but he was busy working on freelancing stuff, so it was like he was working anyways. So I spent my time (during Avie’s naptime) working on this!
Thanks to this lovely little tutorial from Merrick’s Art. I fully intend to use some of the tricks (like the neck hem and arm bands) to make another, slightly different slouchy shirt like this. The problem I have with this one in particular is that the bottom narrows, which means it rides up on me. Maybe I’m just weird… but it bothers me to have to keep tugging at my clothes. I’m going to go for a slightly more fitted (around the middle), longer shirt with a looser bottom shirt I could feel comfortable wearing with skinnies. (Also, maybe I’m weird for that, but I feel unbalanced or too exposed wearing skinnies without a shirt that at least hits my hip socket.)
Back to the 4th… ’cause that’s what I’m writing about, right? We didn’t really do much. I bought a couple of fountains and some sparklers… then I realized that our city has a strict “no fireworks in the city limits” policy. Not even fountains. Or sparklers. Ansen checked out the front door many times to see if any of our neighbors were breaking the rules and not a one. (However, much later in the evening… when we were getting ready to sleep, all the rule-breakers came out. Go figure.) So… we improvised. We did sparklers in the backyard.
I wish I had a picture, but we poked a hole in the bottom of a plastic cup to put the sparkler through so Avie could hold it without fear of getting burned. Don’t worry, she didn’t hold it by herself. She was mildly amused. I guess.
Then I really wanted to use our fountains… but Ansen was concerned that the patio was too close to the house and we didn’t have any idea how high these fountains would really go. So I thought, how about in the kiddie pool, so it wouldn’t catch the grass on fire. But, of course, I didn’t want to burn a hole in the pool either, so I decided we could leave the inch or so of water in it and put something in it for the fountain to sit on. But what? I found a tera cota pot and we tried putting it upside down in the water with the fountain on the bottom… but that one ended up in the water. Sad day. I found a bigger pot and that one worked just fine! Avie kept saying, “up in da up.” I guess she doesn’t know “sky” yet.
We didn’t decide to go to the city fire works… and the non-decision meant the decision to stay home, hoping to see them over our back fence. The municiple air port where they’re fired from is about 2 miles from our house. We had a decent shot at them, but they were barely above the tree line. Avie was just about to go to bed when I heard them start, so she did get to see them as she and I stood on a chair looking over the fence. And then off to bed.
One illegal fountain, 6 illegal sparklers, one long-distance view of the “Fire in the Sky”… not too bad. Next year, I think we’ll just go.
And I’ll leave you with this sweet picture of my loves.
