Pretty Little Present

Emily’s dance studio was asked to march in the annual Pitman Christmas Parade held last night.  Unfortunately, this weekend I am suffering from the annual “Torrence Thanksgiving Stomach Flu” (hits at least one of us every year – one year, it took out our whole family AND the entire Meehan family too), so I wasn’t able to go.

But I did manage to take a photo of Emily in her costume before she left.  They asked for the girls to dress up as reindeer, Christmas trees or presents…so I decided to do a little recycling of her Halloween costume:

I removed the puppies and covered the box with wrapping paper (that just so happened to be about the same color as her coat) and some ribbon.  I replaced the rope with the same ribbon and added a tag that reads, “To:  Mommy/From:  Santa”.   The tag was going to read “To: Emily”, but my six-year-old pointed out to me that made no sense.  “Mommy, how can the present be TO me when I AM the present?”  I couldn’t argue with that.

Thanksgiving With Family

We spent Thanksgiving yesterday with Mike’s family in Elizabethtown, PA.  Even the dogs came along, dressed for the occasion:

It was nice to see Mike’s family again – especially his grandmother, Nan.  Here she is with Mike, his brother Mark and sister Terri (Mike’s brothers Don and Fred couldn’t make it yesterday):

And here’s the Torrence gang from NJ:

It was also nice to see some cousins too.  Matt and his cousin Devin were born just days apart – here’s Nan and Devin with his mom and dad (Mark and Sue from Littitz, PA):

It was a long day – we had a two hour drive each way – but everyone enjoyed spending time together.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy 10th wedding anniversary to my dear husband, Michael!  It was 10 years ago yesterday that we were married on a lovely day on the beautiful island of St. Thomas.

Thanks for the most wonderful 10 years of my life – here’s to many, many more happy years together.  I love you!

Cool! An article on our new AK system…

Here’s a new article posted on the FAA website with a nice description of the project that I’m working on at my job (and some pictures, too)…

Happy (belated) Halloween!

This past weekend was Halloween and I’d like to show you Matt and Emily’s finished costumes.

I decided to re-do the box for Emily’s puppy costume – the first box was way too heavy for her to carry on her shoulders.  So I used a smaller box and some lighter puppies that I found at the Target Dollar Spot:

Matt’s costume had a bit of a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ during his parade at school – the double-stick carpet tape was just not holding the cape onto the alien head.  I took it home at lunch and made a few modifications – I ended up using hot glue which was just what was needed to re-attach the cape:

Here they are at our local town’s Halloween Parade, waiting for candy:

Matt really got into his alien costume (as you can see by the eyes rolling into the back of his head).  In fact, he managed to scare a little girl (about 2 years old) to tears at the parade.  It seems that she thought the alien was really carrying him away – now THAT’S a successful costume!

Emily received a lot of compliments on her costume as well – in fact, her teacher decided to use the same idea for her daughter next year.

By the way, congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies on their World Series win this year! 

As soon as that final pitch was thrown in the last game (after the very strange 2-day rain delay), we could hear cheering on our entire block followed by fireworks in our street.  Andrew’s school canceled all classes for the day so that the students could attend the Phillies parade on Halloween day.  He’s too old for trick-or-treating anyway…

A Milestone at Work

We’ve finally reached a milestone at work – the specification that we’ve been working on the for the last 9 months (kind of like our own little baby) has been posted on the Internet for review and comments from industry.  For those who keep asking me exactly what it is that I do at work (especially my son Andrew) – this is what I have been doing…

Here’s a link to the posting on the FAA Contract Opportunities website.

If you’re looking for some ‘light’ reading (sarcasm intended) or need some help falling asleep at night, feel free to read through the attachment at the bottom – all 300-or-so pages of it.

Or if you’re a software developer looking for a government contract, maybe it will be a bit more interesting to you…

Day at the Beach

We spent a gorgeous day at the beach in Ocean City today! 

While we were there, I thought to grab my camera and take a snapshot of the kids to use in our Christmas photo.  Here’s one of my favorites:

Unfortunately, the kids weren’t wearing clothing that works well in for a Christmas picture…

So I’m going to try to take the image and play with it in Photoshop until I get something I like. 

Here’s the same image cropped in a simple black and white:

Or here’s a neat ‘glow’ effect that gives it a dreamy quality and takes the focus off what they’re wearing:

Or here’s an effect called ‘poster edges’ – kind of a interesting result:

Or a chalk and charcoal image?

A watercolor image?

Or how about something really funky like a rubber stamp image?

Hmm…what do you think?

Matt’s Halloween Costume (continued)

The alien costume is coming along…I had Matt try it on for size this afternoon:

A few minor modifications, and it should be done soon…

Constructing Halloween Costumes

When I asked Matt and Emily what they wanted to be for Halloween this year, they of course answered that they wanted me to make them costumes (no simple costumes from Target or Party City for my kids this year!).  I do enjoy making their costumes…it’s just that this is my first year back to work and I don’t have nearly as much time as in previous years.  But I thought I’d start early and give it a shot.

One of my favorite sites for Halloween costume ideas is Family Fun – they have tons of ideas and most are fairly simple and inexpensive to create.

After much discussion and debate, Emily decided to try the Pick of the Litter costume:

We started with a white hooded sweatshirt and then added some ‘spots’ made from cut pieces of faux fur (if you try this, let me warn you that cutting faux fur is VERY messy – the fur was certainly flying as we cut it).  We attached the fur with double-sided carpet tape.  We also cut out ears and a tail (stuffed leg of an old pair of tights) and pinned them on.  The directions from Family Fun have you making your own dog collar – I just bought a real dog collar that I’ll use on Daisy or Geddy when Halloween is over.

So Emily will wear that doggie outfit while carrying this box over her shoulders:

I took a cardboard box and used pipe cleaners to attach some stuffed dogs to the edges (a-la those irritating twist ties in toy packaging that drives all parents nuts on Christmas morning – these dogs certainly aren’t going anywhere).  I also added some strips of newspaper to make it look even more like a box full of newborn puppies.  There are some pieces of rope that will go over her shoulders – the box started to get a little heavy, so I had to watch how many puppies I used (there is also one in the back to help to counterbalance the weight of the three in the front). 

I still want to make her a little doggie tag to hang from the collar, but for the most part, her costume is done.

Matt’s costume on the other hand…

He chose the Alien Encounter costume from Family Fun.  I’ve wanted to try this costume before, so even though it’s a bit complicated, I figured this year I’d give it a try. 

So far, I’ve only had time to create the paper mache alien head using a balloon, newspaper and a strong cardboard tube (I used one from a wrapping paper roll).  The glue is created with flour and water and then you are supposed to add 3-4 layers of newspaper on top of the balloon.  What they don’t tell you is that each layer takes about 24 hours to dry!  So here’s our costume so far (after working on it since Friday):

Does it look like an alien head?  Maybe after I paint it?  I’ll let you know how it goes…

Andrew’s First Homecoming Dance

Yesterday Andrew attended his first high school homecoming dance – here he is with his lovely date:

They had a nice time – and I think they were surprised as to what a big deal it was and how much was involved.  It wasn’t just your average Friday night middle school dance by any means.

And I still can’t believe I’m old enough to have a teenage son going to HOMECOMING!!!!  Sigh…