Monthly Archives: October 2009

Halloween costumes

For Miss Aveline, who will go as Pippi Longstocking:
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Ave picked out the buttons, she felt that anchors were perfect for Pippi’s apron since Pippi is a seasoned seagirl aboard her father’s ship the Hoptoad. I concur.
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For Miss June, who will go as Ponyo:
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Here’s a previous post where I encouraged you all, dear readers, to go see Ponyo in the theaters. Watch the trailer again, it’s sure to lighten your spirits.
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These are the pieces of the costumes that I sewed, along with my sketches. Pictures of the complete costumes, on the wearers will be featured later.

Happy Halloween!!

pelican rock

pelicans

Yet another beach visit yielded some pretty photos . . .

. . . which I will share one at a time over the next week or so.
sea glass green
I kept watching the waves break through this scraggy rock window and at just the right moment each wave would illuminate and luminesce its pretty green. I had to capture it. Lucky for me it was not too tricky to do so.

A preview

Pretty soon Sid will have a blog. He will share there his tattoos, his art, his travel schedule and photos from his travels, among other things. Here is a preview of what’s to come!
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As soon as it exists, I’ll be so happy to announce here, the web address of the wonder of the world of Sid.

We live in California for goodness sakes . . .

. . . beach days are not just for Summer.
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 handsome seamanseasiren
I think she’s part mermaid.
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I get caught in her rip current every time I look upon her irresistable cuteness.
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toesies
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pinhole solar viewing box

We learned in our Astronomy course (Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Apologia) that it is not safe to look directly at the sun, but that viewing the sun with a Solar Pinhole Viewing Box is safe! So we constructed one. See the teeny dot on the white paper?

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That’s the sun shining through the pinhole we made in the foil, which was taped over a large square we cut into the opposite side of the box.

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Supposedly, if your hole is big enough, you can sometimes see dark spots on the sun’s reflection on the paper and those are sunspots! We didn’t see any this day, but we’ll do some more solar viewing and try again.

Another day, while studying the sun, we got out the magnifying glass and melted and burned stuff.

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I still am blown away that the sun’s rays can do that from roughly 93,000,000 miles away. How about there being solar flares that dwarf Earth? That makes me feel insignificant and significant at the same time. It’s so cool getting to relearn this stuff with my kids and hear their thoughts on these matters.

hot lava

We just finished up studying Venus. Volcanic Venus sounds crazy and ucky. I am glad that conditions for life include very beautiful things like water, plants and trees that grow food on them, and an airy, blue atmosphere in which whitish, billowy clouds occur. Though if Venus’ features were the ones required to sustain life, and if I was born there, maybe thick, heavy, swirling, sulfuric gas clouds would smell lovely to me and maybe an orange hue cast over everything would be aesthetically pleasing? And maybe I would love to sun in burning hot dirt? And maybe ancient civilizations would have set up holidays surrounding the eruptions of volcanoes and we’d be celebrating all the time and the flying sparks would be our fireworks and ash would be our confetti?

Anyway, we did a project that included a small bowl upside down, a large plate right side up, flour patted into a mound around the bowl and melted butter.

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The flowing butter was meant to illustrate what hot lava does when it flows freely over land. Then when the butter hardened, it was meant to illustrate magma.

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Photo by Jonny

We thought it was pretty cool.