I'm Going Bananas ... ?

It's the week of Monster Mash, the high school Halloween dance. It's girls' choice. After laying down very clear ground rules, we've decided to let #1 go. She's not allowed to date until she's 16, so we're making it an "un-date". So tonight, after a few days of the normal teenage boy-girl drama ... she asked him. It was really cute too. She laid a big poster on his front porch that said, "I'd go bananas if you'd go to Monster Mash with me!" and scattered bananas all around it. Then, she put a smaller sign that said, "Don't monkey around and answer me quick" on his front door surrounded by monkey faces made from brown latex balloons. So. Cute.

We made tape rolls in the car and hustled to get everything set up, but while I was trying to get a picture his dog starts barking behind the door. We both took off and ran down the stairs to the car and pulled away. Hilarious. We parked a couple houses down and she dialed his number. When he answered, she yelled, "YOUR FRONT DOOR! YOUR FRONT DOOR!" What a great bonding moment.

Now, comes the fun part for me. I get to make her costume. I love making Halloween costumes; in fact, she has never had a store-bought one ... ever. We found some gorgeous purple fabric last night and I sketched the pattern pieces today. Do you like how I use up my old Christmas paper? More photos later as it comes together.

Photofunia

OK. So I just needed a few minutes this morning to feel important on a different level. Parenting teenagers can really put you 'in your place' some days .... way down at the bottom of their totem pole. I know that they love me and need me and respect me - on some level. I just needed a boost today and this was a fun and silly way to get it.Starting to feel better.Ooh, that's nice.Aaah! OK. I'm fixed for the day. Go play around with your own pictures at Photofunia and have some fun with it.

Let's Rasterbate! (It's Not What You Think)

If you haven't seen this yet ... you're in for a treat. I found this great site a while ago and forgot all about it until I was working on my art journal for Kara's class. It's called ... The Rasterbator (not nasty I promise) and it will change the way you look at pictures forever. This is a super cool free online tool where you can upload a photo from your personal collection and have it output as a raster (dot) image. You can crop, choose the paper size and how many pages you want it to go across in the preview mode.When it's done rasterizing, you get a handy PDF file to print and output yourself. Regular printer paper is great if you don't have too much black area, but they also look slick on photo paper. We made one of my youngest son when my father in law was in the hospital. It was 5 pages across and 4 pages long ... the nurses were floored; it was so cool and really cheered up his room.*These images are all from the Rasterbator Gallery. Go make your own and add it to the collection.*