An up and coming project. A pair of angry ducks, with arms, made out of tin foil. Don't worry, these creatures should look a lot better when they are done.

Nacho Cheese in a #10 can. This is a blog for Kim. I could probably hack into her blog and post it there, but she only gave me permission to do that once, and I won't betray that trust.

Last night Kim brought up the topic of really big cans of Nacho Cheese sauce. You know the kind that's only one molecule away from being plastic. She said our brother was willing to go in on a can, but they needed one more participant to be willing to eat the stuff so that it got eaten before it turned into toxic waste. I enthusiastically agreed. Sometimes, I buy the little cans, but that's not a cost effective way to chisel years off a healthy life span.

When Kim brought up this blessed topic, my husband asked something along the lines of "You mean the stuff that has a freezing point, and hardens at about 80 degrees?" And I answered "Yup, and it turns to a gas at approximately 98.6 degrees..."

Now you might think this topic has no place on my blog, it doesn't follow my theme, but you are wrong. It just so happens that Kim had come over to help me with one of my projects. It's a secret one so I can't tell you what it is, until it is done. Lets just say that it's punctuation and sentence structure will be much more correct than my blog.

In my house we have priorities. Lego's come first. And you don't bother "Mom" while she is playing with them.

Usually we just have the big Lego's out, that way we don't have to worry about the little carpet cleaner getting them in her mouth. But the other day the older brother asked, "Mom, can I help you clean the whole house so that we can get the little Lego's out?" To this I heartily agreed, thinking it would be nice to have help and motivation to clean the whole house, I guess I didn't remember that he was only 4 and he was done cleaning with me after about 5 minutes. The whole house didn't get clean, just the play room, and we did get the little Lego's out.

So that is what I have been doing for the last 2 days. Playing Lego's and fishing them out of the baby's mouth. Talk about idle projects...

Remember that spandex blanket that I said I was going to make a while back, well I have finished it. I spent way more time on it than I meant to, and I am not happy with the results. I had been looking for affordable spandex for quite some time and finally found two pieces that would work at DI (Deseret Industries). One of them was pretty small so it limited the size of the blanket to baby size, which is good because it would have taken me a life time to finish it if it had been a large blanket. For a couple of days my kitchen table was the meeting place for polystyrene beads and bread crumbs. The rest of the house had it's share of those little static charged clingy white balls. The baby crawled around with them stuck to her bottom, we shied them away from our dinner and I even pulled one out from between my teeth one night as I was flossing. I tried my hardest to finish this project quickly and completely so that my marriage might be spared.

Here it is, don't laugh...



In this picture you can see better how it's made up of lotsa bumpy cells.



Some people like to ask what the black dots are. If you are one of those people the answer is simply, black dots. Or you can pretend that they are nuclei.

This is one of those things that I don't want to keep around the house, but I can't just go throw it in the trash. It would make an excellent White Elephant gift, maybe I'll throw a white elephant party just to get rid of it.

This is my husbands Pinewood Derby car. I made all the little items to go on top. It's just like in real life. He provides the car and I pack it full of junk. I especially liked the little igloo ice chest on back. Needless to say, he didn't win any of the races, too many potty stops at each and every rest stop along the way.

This is what I did this morning. I was having a bit of trouble with Mary's face, as you can most likely tell, and I gave up in frustration leaving it a muddy mess. I'm pretending like I meant for it to look that way, so don't make fun of her.

On another note, I have realized that Kim is out of the country and won't be posting any blogs for a while. Thus, she has diverted all her traffic to me. I hope, that by the time she returns, I will have brainwashed you all into believing that Kim never even existed. You will be all mine, mine, mine!

...o.k., o.k., we all know this isn't going to happen, we all love Kim and I am just no substitute ...sigh... (this pity thing is one of my brainwashing techniques) Poor me...

I accomplished another project!

I was contacted this morning with a request to make a campaign ad for my favorite senatorial candidate. The ad was past due in order to get it into the paper on Monday, so it was a rush order. I got the baby fed and down for a nap, locked the older one in his room for the morning and then got busy...




...I didn't actually lock him in his room all morning, just until he stopped crying about something silly. Then he happily played Monopoly by himself and ate Halloween candy. The baby, on the other hand, woke up and made things difficult.

If I had more time I would have solved the problem of that funny dark blue box with the white letters. It's kinda ugly and cumbersome. Oh well, there wasn't time.

I don't know how this is going to look printed on newsprint. You can find out for yourself if you subscribe to the Salt Lake Tribune, or the Deseret News.

I have acctually finished a project! Or at least I am calling it finished. If I gave into my perfectionist tendencies I would start all over and redo the whole thing from the beginning, or put it away in a box and figure I'll fix it later. Fortunately I am not giving in (this is why I am not really a perfectionist, I rarely give in.) I am calling this project done. And I am even finished way before my deadline.

For the past week my kitchen table has looked like this:




My kitchen table still looks like that. Some day when I can afford it I am going to stop renting out my basement and use that for these kinds of messes so that I don't have to share project space with peanut butter, enchiladas and cookie crumbs. (Don't ask me for the recipe, it's an old family secret.)

This is what came out of the mess:






It was not my intention that this dragon costume look so mean and evil. Hopefully my son doesn't have nightmares about himself dressed as a dragon coming to eat himself. There is a really adorable dragon costume being sold for mega bucks by Pottery Barn. Lets just say that if I was aiming to copy that costume, I really missed my mark. Oh well, its done, and my son really likes it, he asks if he can wear it all the time. I think I'm going to have to make him one to wear just for fun since this one isn't easily washable.


Here is one kid slaying the other kid with his dagger (note: it is not a sword, the kid with the sharp implement has been correcting me all day when ever I mistakenly call it a sword, it is most definitely a dagger.)




And here is the kid who is the littlest dragon slayer. She knows of a little striped dragon that lives in a lair under her castle. Come Halloween that little dragon better watch out!



It seems as though there are dragons popping up all over the place around here. Those dragon slayers had better sharpen their daggers and keep on the lookout.

Here is something I made a long time ago for a contest. It is a time machine. I didn't win the contest.

Just so you'all don't think I really am that idle and that I acctually do accomplish important things in my life I wanted to post this little bugger:




And here is what my young'n made (In case you can't tell, it's a compost pile):



This little activity with modeling clay has inspired many more ideas for more projects with modeling clay, one involves a really fun website that is going to make me and Kim and my brother Brent a lot of money...that is, if we ever do it.

If you are here, you probably know that the name of my blog is different than it used to be. Of course you may not have ever known that the old name ever existed, and that is okay, you'll live. Or maybe you won't, but don't blame me.

One night I lay in bed trying to come up with a name and I thought up "Project-aisle" or "Project-isle" I later found that these names, or words together, have already been used by someone on the internet, so I didn't want to claim them for my own. I mentioned the name to Kim and she thought I said Project-idle, which is a much more fitting name than the other spellings. That's what this blog is all about...projects that I'm not acctually doing. So now all I have to do is find a way to incorporate projectiles into my post so that the name can truly fit, maybe it's time that I started shooting the bow my husband got me for my birthday a long long time ago. In order to do this I'll have to start working out because the reason I haven't used my bow previously is because I'm not even strong enough to pull it back...I'm a wimp. My baby isn't helping either, she's way to scrawny, I think I'm getting weaker everytime I pick her up. If I start working out then I won't have time to blog, which was the whole reason to start shooting the bow in the first place. Man it's amazing how complicated life is.

A funny thing just happpened. First I was thinking, I should post something to my blog, so I clicked on the create a new post button, and then I sat there for a minute not knowing what I wanted to say. And then I remembered I want to change the name of my blog. A few certain someones have pointed out it's closeness in spelling to a term I don't wish to have any association with. So I went to get my trusty dictionary off the shelf so that I could come up with some ideas for a new name. On my way into the other room to pick up my dictionary I passed the unfinished white quilt and thought about the next project I was going to work on. I realized it was Labor day and Jo-Annes craft and fabric store would probably be having a sale. I thought, "Maybe that one kind of fabric I need for that one blanket I wanna make is an affordable price..." I couldn't remember what the fabric was called, for some reason I can never remember the name of that fabric. Maybe it is because I used to wear flourescent pink bikershorts with a black stripe down the sides, made out of this fabric, to school in the fifth grade, and I am trying to blot out that period of my life. After getting the dictionary and deciding that I'll go to Jo-Annes today I sat down again in front of the computer and randomly opened the dictionary to the section where all the words happen to start with the letter S. My eyes scanned the pages... sozzled -not a good word to know, it wouldn't be good in scrabble... a bunch of words starting with space, including a picture of a space shuttle... spancel-a noosed rope with which to hobble an animal... spandex... (insert vinyl record scratching sound) WHAT? That is the name of the fabric! I have taken this as a sign that this is truly the next project I should work on. That's right, a spandex blanket!

There is a little more to it than just spandex, the details will come out when I acctually start making it. In the mean time, I'm going to continue trying to come up with a new name for my blog. If you have any suggestions feel free to make them, but keep in mind that I don't think anyones ideas are good, except for my own.

My Theme

I've decide to give my blog a theme. And it's NOT going to be about Kim. I just said that in the first post to trick everyone into coming to my blog again. Of course it won't be Kim-free by any means. Even though Kim is my arch enemy when it comes to the attention game, I still love her, thus it's impossible to have a blog without giving her a little bit of attention. Lets just say, if my blog were a parade, Kim gets to ride on a float and smile and wave and throw candy. Danna, she gets to ride the elephant.

So getting closer to getting to the point. My blog is also not going to be about my children. I really like my kids, and they do funny things, and terrible things, like holding their baby sisters upside down by the legs when they think I'm not watching (I'm not sure if that was a funny thing or a terrible thing, but somone spent a lot of time in their room for doing it.) If I was on my first kid, this blog would be devoted entirely to that subject, but now that I'm on number two I don't want to spend my free time thinking about them, if they do anything noteworthy you'll hear about it, but that's all they get, like Kim, a float in the parade.

Now I'll try to get to the point and tell you what my parade...I mean, my blog is acctually about instead of what it isn't about. You probably already guessed it since I mentioned there was going to be an elephant in it. This blog will be about all my projects, the ones I only dream up and the ones I acctually start, but don't finish. This will give me an extra outlet to divert the effort I could be using to work on one of these, so called, projects. Usually I blame my kids, now I can say "My blog made me do it." Yup, my blog is going to get boring real fast. But this is a good thing. If I make a blog that nobody really wants to go to then I don't have to post anything very often.

The project I am mostly working on right now is a white baby quilt with little pink flowers in the corners. (I say "mostly" because I always have lots of projects that are being worked on at one time. The majority of them happen to be stuck in corners of the spare room or packed away in boxes out of sight. This quilt is acctually sitting around on the coffee table in the living room where I see it everyday and think "I sure wish I could get that finished.") I tried to finish this quilt before the Cache County Fair so that I could enter it and win first prize, I tried really hard to complete it by the deadline, but I couldn't and now I have stopped working on it because I don't have a deadline. I am a deadline oriented person. Unfortunately at this time in my life I have to choose my own deadlines and that means they are all deadlines that dangles from a stick, duct taped to a hat that I am wearing so that when I move forward to reach the deadline it moves with me and I can just go on chasing the deadline and never finish my project.

This quilt is a whole cloth quilt all white, except for the little appliqued three dimensional pink flowers and leaves in each of the corners. I have quilted it very tightly with lots of roses and arcs and borders. While sitting around quilting I have sometimes fancied myself as my pioneer ancestors. But then I take a look around and realize that I'm not making this quilt for survival. It's a silly frivolous showy quilt that no one that was enduring the hardships of the pioneers would take the time to make. It is only something that a rich aristocratic lady would do while sitting on a plump apholstered setee waiting for her servants to prepare tea. It's much more relaxing to quilt with the thought, that my servants are hard at work, than thinking about which hen I'm going to butcher for supper and wondering if Dan is going to be able to get a roof on our cabin before winter. It's even more relaxing to quilt while knowing that I acctually live in modern times, and when I need to, I can walk down my hallway to use my nice flushing toilet. Quilting is great.

There is a growing trend out there in the blogging world that I have become increasingly more interested in. I have decided to, finally, take the leap and join in. This trend is known as, Blogging for Kim. It's where everyone who knows Kim, charitably, writes about the things they do with Kim. That way Kim can just link to other peoples blogs on her blogsite and not have to waste time doing it for herself. Of course, if Kim chooses to do something, by herself, or without a fellow blogger, she will have to blog about it for herself. I think I might be able to use this to my advantage in order to get Kim to spend more time with me. For example, if I ask her to go on a walk with me and she says she doesn't want to, I can use my blog as leverage by saying "If you go on a walk with me, I'll blog about it for you." Or, I can get her to do my dishes by saying "If you do my dishes I'll make up a really cool blog about you saving an entire family of, endangered, orphan, blue-tailed-quolls from a volcano." My kitchen will be clean, kim will become a hero, and google will have an overwhelming increase in the number of searches for blue-tailed-quolls.

Okay, so the real reason I started a blog was because I was feeling left out. I have been reading everyones blogs more often than they post. But no one knows I'm there. Once I posted an annonymous comment on Kims blog, back then I was scared to show myself, but now I'm ready to bask in the light of your full fledged attention. I'm ready to fly on the wings of uninteresting events described in detail and posted on the internet. And while I soar through the blue skys of the world wide web, you can all point at me saying "It's a bird, it's a plane...IT'S PAM!...oh and look, here is a blog about Kim."

So, Kim and I made relish the other day. Or I should say days. It took us a couple of days to do it. We didn't follow the recipies as exactly as we should have so we probably bottled 13 pint jars of botulism. You will all be getting one for Christmas.