True Story

My daughter is amazingly creative.  She draws. She makes all sorts of things out of duct tape.  She made herself a skirt and even made a jacket for her American Girl doll. WITHOUT A PATTERN. Granted, the lack of stretch meant that it took 45 minutes to get the jacket on the doll, but it fit. And it was cute.  She makes duct tape flowers and duct tape wallets and purses and messenger bags. 
She has made all sorts of Minecraft paraphernalia out of those melty plastic beads: diamond swords and iron swords and bows and even a heart.
Her current obsession is the Rainbow Loom.  If there is a YouTube Video, she can follow the steps and create it.  Hexafish? Nailed it.  Tuxedo?  Nailed it.  Turtle?  Nailed it.  Starburst something-or-other?  Nailed it.
So imagine the head scratching when I pulled this project out of her school papers.  It's a simple, follow-the-directions stitching project.  She cross stitches.  She can follow directions.  She should be able to handle this.  You can see what it is supposed to look like.  Nailed it?  Ummm, no.  Not at all. 



I was seriously shocked.  I just stared at it, trying to figure out what in the world she had done.  I mean those stitches look NOTHING like the project is supposed to.
I shook my head and flipped it over to look at the next paper and then I discovered this:

I had been looking at the back of the project...
Sigh.

Blowing bubbles in Winter

I've had several people share this article with me about gorgeous frozen bubbles and suggest that I give it a try. Since I live in the Land of Lincoln, the land of weather extremes, I knew it was just a matter of time before a nice cold day would come around. 

Enter Winter Storm Ion.  I sent KJ out the the garage last night to bring the bubble mix inside. It was frozen solid. I was really excited by the prospect of super-cool science and photography all mixed together!  Geeked out!

We went out this morning, with the dog.  Winter is fun! Snowstorms are exciting. The dog loved it for five seconds!  Woo hoo!  Snow! Wind! Doggie winter coat! (She secretly hates us.)

After we put the dog back inside, we got the bubbles out and couldn't wait to create gorgeous bubble art (in15°, 20mph wind weather.)  Yay! Frozen bubbles.

More like, "Yay! Frozen bubble solution." Within 5 minutes, I had bubble slushie.

Sure, I was able to blow bubbles, but the 20 mph winds took them away faster than my frozen fingers could get the camera out.  And even if I had been able to get the camera out, there's no way I could have actually found the bubbles in the viewfinder.  Between the gray sky, snow-covered background and swirling snow, I could barely find them with the naked eye before the wind demolished them. Boo.  Stupid Winter Storm Ion.

There was one that froze and then started to pop and drifted about in the the sky like a deflated balloon.  I consider that my victory.  It was awesome.  Can't you just imagine it?

So, those lovely, frosty bubbles, the ones that look like broken glass that the mom in the article managed to capture with such beauty?  Not so much.  Here's my Central Illinois version of gorgeous, frozen, broken-glass bubbles.

See them there, on the stick?

Nailed it.