Holly's Arts and Crafts Corner: Store Bought Fun

I don't know if you're like me or not, but I sort of hate having to come up with stuff to put on the girls' wishlists for birthdays and Christmas. Not that I don't appreciate people wanting to buy the girls' gifts or even that people like to be pointed in a certain direction, but we have so many toys and other things in our house already. And perhaps it's because I am the person who most often ends up picking up all these wonderful things gifted to us. But, I am thrilled when we receive art supply/art kits in lieu of actual toys for gifts! The girls' love doing art projects and it's nice to have a ready supply to pick from for projects.

The girls received a few art project kits for their birthdays. They were so excited to have something new to create with. Here is one kit we received:


The kit contains everything you need and all you have to do is follow the included pictures to create your paper bag puppets. Or go off on your own with your creations. Involves, stickers and gluing.







We've also done the Alex Tissue Art craft kit, which actually didn't go over quite so well because they really weren't patient enough to crumple up the tissue to make the animals. However, I discovered a different use for the tissue paper squares that came with that kit! Please see the next Craft post entitled, "Seasonal Tissue Art".

Maybe the next time your kids have a birthday party to go to and you are looking for a gift, head over to the art supply aisle instead of the toy aisle! I bet their parents will appreciate the child receiving a gift to expand their artistic and creative side!

Summer Randomness: Part One

We had a lot of little random moments throughout the second half of the summer that I think are blogworthy, but do not have enough to post about individually (thankfully because I'd be here all day if they did have their own posts).

Here are a few summer snippets for you:
Andrew made a homemade slip 'n slide for the girls one evening. He just laid out a couple thicker plastic tablecloths we had, added a slide, water from the hose, and girls in swimsuits. Viola! Instant fun!
Andrew flew to Los Angeles to shoot the Open for the Vikings. If you happen to make it to any Vikings home games this year, this might look familiar. Here are a couple fun pics of the shoot:

That is Bryan Harper with Andrew and the Viking. He's the Viking client and a frequent golfing partner of Andrew's.

Lily has a new "friend" nowadays. He goes by the name of "New Bear" or "Squeaky Bear". A couple years ago I tried looking online for a second Bear for Lily because I was so afraid we were going to lose it or something would happen to it. But at the time they were going for $45 USED on Ebay. There was no way I was going to pay $45 for a bear that had been spit up on by someone else before. Well, "Old Bear" (as he's now affectionately referred to) was getting to be pretty fragile after four years of frequent washing and lots of love. So I decided to take a look again at Ebay. And lo and behold, there were MORE Bears available and they were cheaper (gotta love supply and demand!). I got TWO gently used bears (the other people's spit up thing doesn't seem to bother me as much any more for some reason) for a total of $25! I was ecstatic! And Lily doesn't know we actually have TWO new bears. I rotate them as I wash them so they last longer!

Anyway, I wasn't sure how she would react to a new bear. But she has embraced "New Bear" with full force and still loves "Old Bear" just as much. New Bear now accompanies her to school and other places while Old Bear relaxes at home. He's an "inside Bear" now. And he doesn't seem to mind. :-)

Hmm....Can you tell which is Old Bear and which is New Bear? ;-) Oh, and Old Bear can look a tiny bit better than this. He was in desperate need of a bath when this photo was taken.

More on Summer Randomness in the next post...stay tuned. :-)

Oh, How Our Garden Grew

We had sooo much fun with our garden this summer! We are already planning on doing it again next summer, possibly with a few live and learn changes, but we are very pleased with how our first year went!

I found this DELICIOUS recipe online when I did a Google search for "green beans and chicken recipe". If you like lemon this is a great dish! Doesn't it just look sumptuous to you?! My mouth is watering just thinking about it. I altered the recipe a bit the second time around to shorten baking time and keep the green beans from being totally withered at the end. (Quick fix, slice potatoes to 1/2 inch thick instead of quarter and microwave for a bit. Bake the potatoes without the green beans and chicken for about 20 minutes. Then use a store-bought rotisserie chicken instead of raw chicken breasts. I poured the rotisserie chicken juice right in the baking dish too. Cook another 20 minutes or so.)

Uncooked, ready to go in the oven.Right out of the oven (this was the first time I made it just like the recipe calls for).

We also had cucumbers this summer, LOTS of cucumbers. Yummy cucumbers! I can't believe the difference in store produce compared with garden fresh. We made cucumber sandwiches, creamy cucumber dill salad (with cucumber and dill from our garden), a creamy yogurt salad, and cucumber salsa (delish! made with cucumber, dill AND cilantro from our garden). The cucumber salsa was truly yummy! (Changes to the cucumber salsa, I used red and yellow pepper for color instead of green pepper. I used half the tomato because I'm not a fan of tomatoes, and 1/2 of the jalapeno to cut the spice a bit and make it mild. I also used 1/4 teaspoon of salt.)


And here is what Andrew refers to as his State Fair Prize Winning Cucumber. We discovered it hanging from the vine toward the beginning of summer and he left it there just to see how big it would get. Here it is with Ella holding it for you to compare size. We haven't cut into it yet. I'm sort of afraid to. I have a feeling it will just be filled with seeds and no good at all.

Okay, now that I'm starving I'll close this post. Stayed tuned next spring/summer for the return of the Isaacson Garden!

Old Friendships never die!

Several months ago, my friend Sarah Gortenburg wrote me to say she and her family were coming to Minnesota for a visit the end of August and could we get a date on the calendar to get together. I jumped at the chance to visit with her and was so excited to mark a date on the calendar.

The time actually flew by and Sarah, her husband Shawn, and their two kids Collin (4 years) and Thea (2 years) came to our house to play in the pool and have some dinner. Shockingly, I didn't even get my camera out until the end (and Andrew actually took these). So we only have three pictures of our visit. But that's fine! I was too busy visiting with them and catching up.

Sarah and I were suitemates our freshman year at Knox and good friends since then. A large group of us went to her parents house near Washington, DC for spring break freshman year (seriously, how she got them to agree to let 10 college kids come sleep in their basement for a week is beyond me!). We traveled to Jamaica for a little too much fun during Spring Break sophomore year. And we hung out throughout the rest of our time at Knox. Andrew and I traveled to Seattle for Sarah and Shawn's wedding and Sarah was a bridemaid in our wedding.

Actually, Sarah gets a partial credit for Andrew and I being introduced so long ago as freshmen. She and Andrew had Psych 100 together fall trimester of freshman year and somehow she learned he had webbed toes, the idea of which actually kind of freaked her out (I think). :-) And then through those silly ice breaker games, where you reveal get-to-know-you things like "What's your quirkiest trait?" Mine of course was always, "I have webbed toes." She was dumbfounded to meet two people with webbed toes when she'd never heard of such a thing before and felt like we just had to meet.

Unfortunately, I hadn't seen Sarah since our wedding eight YEARS ago. We were always living in different parts of the country, etc. So both Andrew and I were so thrilled to hang out with her again. I loved that it wasn't awkward at all. I feel like we fell right into old patterns of conversation and whatnot. That's when you know you will always be friends with someone even if you don't see them for years at a stretch. And though, I knew her husband Shawn, I didn't really have much chance to hang out with him (as he was an older man, by two years). So it was great fun to hang out with him as well! And their kiddos were soooo adorable! Loved it!

We already get to see each other again at Knox Homecoming in about a month. So at least eight years won't go by before we see each other again! Hope they had as much fun as Andrew and I did.

Friday again!

Here I am on Friday again at JJ's. I think I'm going to really like this new blogging routine! I actually get it done.

I think we left off with the PGA Championship in our blog update. So next would be a trip to Racine for the weekend of August 21-23. Andrew's high school friend Tiffany was getting married in Zion, Illinois and we incorporated a great visit with our friends Matt and Allison Campbell as well. It was so fun to see their daughter Lilah who is two and a half now. We last saw her when she was probably four or five months old. Anyway, I won't go on and on because I have already blogged about this trip here, here, and here. We did have a fun time seeing quite a bit of Andrew's family for pizza and birthday cake too. :-)

And now we're going to jump ahead for just a minute. I wanted to get a belly photo posted for you because if I wait for chronological order, I'll probably have two more photos taken by then.

20 weeks

This was taken the morning of Lily's first day of school and our ultrasound. I'm sure most of this blog's readers either got a phone call, email or read on Facebook that we're having a BOY, but just in case we missed anyone, yep, we're finally having a BOY! I actually didn't think it was truly possible for us to have boy. :-) I just figured we were destined for the world of girls. But going into the ultrasound I sort of had a feeling it might be a boy. I had feelings with both Ella and Lily that they were girls and I was right. I didn't want to put too much stock in my "feeling" that this was a boy because I figured maybe it was just wishful thinking. But, this pregnancy has been totally different than my girl pregnancies. I haven't felt sick at all, barely been tired at all (at least not like the first two). And I'm pretty sure I'm carrying much higher than I did with the girls (probably no comparison photos this time around...I'd have to dig them out of whatever backup drive they are on). Turns out my mother's intuition was correct! And despite seeing some definite boy parts, everything else they look for on the ultrasound looked perfect. The little guy was jumping around like crazy during the ultrasound and we even got to see him yawn! It was the cutest thing ever! Here are some ultrasound photos for you:

Top: Hard to tell what's going on here, but that's the baby's ribs/chest on the left. And head just to the right of that. He's looking at us and his mouth is open--that was when he yawned.
Bottom: Straight on shot of the legs with definite male parts there in the middle.
Top: Profile of baby with leg on left, chest in middle and head still turned toward us, so really all you see is a sort of skeletal looking thing.
Bottom: Baby's little foot with the heel of the other one behind it.

That's it for today's blog update. Off to do another catch-up post....

Where in the World is Andrew this week?

Playing catch with Mike Bibby from the Atlanta Hawks while filming the team's open. Can you see Andrew there in the dark getting ready to catch the ball? ;-)

Ella turns 6!!!

Waaay behind on this post. Ella turned 6 years old on August 5th! We started the day out here at home opening a few gifts from us and people had sent to her.


She's looking for her "big" gift from us....
There it is! I new bike! (So she doesn't look like she's riding a clown bike anymore!!)

Trying it out in the house! And then taking it outside for a spin.

Then we met B-pa at the Pancake House for breakfast. He surprised Ella with a mylar cupcake balloon and the waiter brought her a muffin with a candle in it. :-)


We spent a good part of the day cleaning up the house and getting ready to have four of Ella's school friends and one of Lily's over for a pajama playdate! We decided to have a big joint birthday party for the girls this year for family and neighbor friends we would invite to both parties anyway (that was August 29th). But we wanted to do something to make her actual birthday special and be able to include her school friends. So we invited Jentina, Emma, Riley and Kayla over in the evening to play, do arts and crafts, have pizza, and open presents. We invited Lily's little friend Hannah along too so Lily would have someone her age to play with.

Judging from the decibel noise of the girls everyone had a fantastic time!! At dinner they all sat around the table eating pizza and making up silly little jokes. The giggling was nonstop and infectious. They all brought stuffed animals or dolls with them so we had them make crowns for their little friends. And they also had the opportunity to make beaded jewelry or have their nails painted. We opened presents and had cupcakes, then it was time for the girls go home! All in all, I think Ella had a really great time! She had been asking about sleepovers all year in preschool (not sure where that came from--older siblings maybe) so this was our way for her to have a pajama party, without the sleeping over part.

My homemade version of a cupcake cake for Ella. :-)

Jentina, Riley, Ella, Emma, Kayla, Ella and Hannah!





Ella is turning into such a wonderful little girl (not that she hasn't always been wonderful). She's so thoughtful and nice to others. She plays wonderfully with kids older and younger than her. She is soooo artistic and I LOVE that! She does a great job of taking an art assignment and going beyond the directions to make it her own. I hope she never loses her artistic vision. We will do everything we can to help foster that love of art in her.

She's come along great in soccer too! She knows the rules and gets the positions for the most part. If she could just build up the endurance to get all the way down the field without stopping, she could be a force to be reckoned with!

She LOVES school and was so excited to start kindergarten. She's been talking about kindergarten since last spring! And she could hardly stand to wait the last few weeks of summer for school to start!

All righty, I just had to get a few of the fun things Ella is into recorded here on the blog for posterity. :-)

Where in the World was Andrew last week?

Andrew flew to Atlanta last week to produce the open for the Thrashers. Here you see him spritzing sweat onto Toby Enstrom. Tough job, right? ;-)

Finally Friday...

We made it through (or at least almost since it's still Friday morning) the first full week of our new fall schedule with both Ella and Lily in school. I think everyone is tired today. But we'll all get used to our new schedule.

And part of this new schedule is that Lily is at a Zoboomafoo class at the Outdoor Center on Friday mornings from 10-11:30. I have decided that I am going to use that time to sit here in a new coffee shop (JJ's Coffee and Wine Bar) that just popped up and devote this time to updating this blog. That way if I have a set time each week, at least you're guaranteed some sort of regular update! I'm behind probably about 8 posts already. So we'll be playing catch up for a bit (again) and I'll be spreading out the posts by pre-publishing them. So you may get some that pop-up every few days until I get caught up, if I ever get caught up.

So here we go......

PGA Championship

Over a year ago, Andrew "volunteered" to be a marshal for the PGA Championship hosted in Chaska, MN at Hazeltine National Golf Club. I put volunteer in quotes because you actually have to pay to be a volunteer. But that covers your outfit and your front row seat for the action!

He worked Hole #1 for three days during the tournament week: Tuesday and Wednesday early morning, and Sunday mid-morning to late afternoon. I do believe he had the time of his life! He had front row seats to see all the great golfers tee-off or finish the hole out. He had people come up to him and ask him questions, most often "Where can I find Tiger?" He even had one guy come up to him and simply say, "Where is he?" Andrew, of course, knew he was talking about Tiger.

Andrew had passes for the girls and I to go visit the course for the practice round on Tuesday. We didn't see too many big-name golfers, but did see a few (Vijay Singh and Kenny Perry). We enjoyed shopping in the PGA shop and I think the girls had fun with the experience. Even at almost 4 years and 6 years, they seemed to appreciate it. They've seen enough golf on the television. They know Daddy really REALLY likes golf. They know Tiger Woods by his first and last name. So they kind of get it.

Here's a few pictures from our outing:

That would be Vijay Singh on the first tee (not sure what other golfers are with him).

Aren't they cute?!


Having a little lunch.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but that's Ella with Andrew. Lily of course wasn't feeling so photogenic at that moment.

Ella watching some golfers come up #18.

A photo of me and Ella...just to prove I was actually there that day. ;-)

A look down #18 fairway

And Kenny Perry walking by (in the white striped shirt) with the leader board in the background.