I pulled out our kiddie pool from storage. It’s been on the shelf for so long that it pulled up the paint from the shelf! We have access to a nice pool but sometimes having your own pool to kick back in is nice too. My only regret is that I left it under a tree over night and TONS of bugs and leaves and junk fell in it and left red mildew stains on the bottom of it. Anyone know how to get red mildew stains off of vinyl? I haven’t tried my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser yet… hmmm. I’ll try that in the morning. That’s for the suggestion. ;)

Isn’t that an awesome pirate ship? Evan got that from his Auntie Rose last Christmas. It comes apart and snaps together into lots of different combinations and size ships. And comes with it’s own giant octopus too! I think I liked it more then Evan did for a while. This was after I watched all 3 Pirates of the Caribbean in a week. Oh Johnny, oh Orlando. :) And Keira, I envy your talent and looks and your leading men.  hahaha

Well, anyway, I’ll post again soon. I went with a friend to Fantasy Kids Resort, just a few train stops away in Ebina. Who knew that kid heaven was SO close?! It’s at the top of our list with DisneySea for sure.

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This was cute… As we were walking out of the park, Evan held my hand and said “Mommy, thank you for taking us to DisneySea.” Wow, he must have had a really good time if he said that without anyone coaching him. :) A thank you like that will probably buy him a ticket to Tokyo Disneyland next time.

Here are the pics!

Tokyo Disney Sea 2010

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We LOVE our ward (church) here. I mean, even though most people don’t speak much English, they still try their best to still show they care and say “Hi, how are you?” A few members don’t have cars, and would take the train out of the way to come drop off meals, or help clean my house, or play with the kids to give me a break. They are such great examples of patience and good parenting too. Quite a few families have 6 kids. In Japan, that’s amazing! We’ve thought about extending our stay in Japan just because of the wonderful people in our ward. It will be hard to leave.

ellee baby blessing

I love this baby blessing dress. I designed it and my wonderful mom sewed it. She’s amazing like that. It’s made of gorgeous textured silk and has beautiful embellished lace. Careese was blessed in it and now Ellee. Definitely an heirloom.

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So let me report on my trip…

I charged up my camera and grabbed an empty 4Gig SD card thinking I would be taking SO many pics and vids of the event, but was so crushed when as I walked in and there’s a big “no photos” sign. dah! Kamura batsu! :(

So, what did I do? I pulled out my iphone and walked around with it like I was expecting a call and took photos covertly. You see the things I’ll do for you, blog?

At the last min I had to bring my baby Ellee with me, because Mark had to do church stuff and could only take the two older kids. So thankfully Ellee was my golden baby that day and sat contently in the stroller and let me look at art and demos, and even sit down and make jewelry. But definitely next year I will go alone because it was crowded and made pushing a stroller a little tough at times.

There was so much to see and from all kinds of mediums. Quilting, scrap-booking, sewing, fabric dying, book making, jewelry, felting, hair accessories, fine art supplies, scissors & blades & tweezers, sewing machines, jig saws, pressed flowers, clay, cake decorating, fingernail bedazzling, cell phone bedazzling, leather crafts, decorative fruit cutting from Thailand, glass etching, on and on and on. There’s 350 vendors so there’s something for everyone. I was surprised that even Microsoft was there doing demos on how to build a CPU, and pushing Windows 7 and photo editing software.

This is the bracelet I made for Ellee because she was so good all day and slept in the stroller while I made it. I hammered in the lettering and the texture on to a sliver plate and attached it to the chain. I need to find some tiny needle nose pliers to shorten it for her. It’s so darling on her!

I made this for me. A color-wheel necklace! It was so easy. They give you a metal plate in the shape you want. You glue on the little colored glass pieces. Then they fire it in their mini kiln and you come back to pick it up. Such a cool, quick project. And it’s beautiful wearable art.

Tokyo Big Site Convention Center! Can’t miss it.

Sorry the next few pics are all from my iPhone and were taken without me looking so they aren’t the best. I wish I could have taken more cause there was SO much to see.

Felt. In all colors and forms. Love the colors.

I forgot to go back to buy a kit.

I wanted to sit down and join them in their glass etching! But I didn’t think it would be easy with Elle in a stroller with me. Its a new product that looks like a mini hand held sander that you use to etch images onto glass.

Found quite a few booths selling American craft supplies and quilting fabric at outrageous prices. But I guess they can do that here and people will pay it.

A display of jewelry kits you can purchase at wholesale prices.

Cakes made of clay!

More desserts made of clay. They look so real.

Booth that had TONS of trimmings.

I was trying to get a picture of all the trims they had with skulls on them. hahaha

This was a beautiful color display of a company that sells just ribbon. Hundreds of ribbon. I think they just opened a store in NY.

I couldn’t resist taking a pic of this lady in her green hair and crazy head piece. Craft dye hard. :)

Booths displaying watercolor supplies.

It was just 5 mins past closing time, and the workers were already taking down the signage!

I was more interested in seeing what’s new in the craft world. And I found this. Paper with dye on it that you can iron on to polyester fabric. In 40 sec you have permanent color that is ready to wash. Amazing stuff. Not cheap.

You can cut the paper to shapes you want or you can place pressed leaves and iron the paper over it to get a silhouette. Then flip the leaf over and iron the leaf to get a imprint of the leaf. I’m excited to try this out.

I found this amazing new product. Make your own photo books, with glossy covers too. You can print or draw your own cover and then with the laminate they include you laminate it to your book.

It comes with everything you need to make your cover and bind your book. You can print your own photo pages or just make a plain book with the blank pages included in the kit. Very though out process and as long as you follow the directions it looks fool proof. The finished product looks stunning too. I think places like Shutterfly and Snapfish have some photobook competition in the future.

So that’s my recap of the 34th Japan Hobby Show! I didn’t buy as much as I thought I would, but I really was just looking for inspiration and what was new in the craft world. And the Japan Hobby Show did just that. Until next year.

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Here’s the problem: I can’t leave the house to go get art supplies, because dragging three little kids in the cold rain is no fun. And how to spend extra pent up energy so they will go to bed on time?

The solution: Get busy with what we’ve got around the house, especially with what’s in the recycle bin!
On a side note: The Japanese are SO good at recycling, it’s amazing. They will pick through and separate their garbage with a fine tooth comb. And they make all kinds of kids toys and crafts with plastic food trays, bottles, papers, scraps of fabric, newspaper, bottle tops, milk cartons, you name it. I got to see this first hand when I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Children’s Hall. It’s a 5 story government run institution dedicated to enriching children’s lives for free. Well, near free. They do charge for some art supplies. There’s a entire floor just for making crafts with recycling. There were stations to making little toy sushi bento boxes out of cardboard, bubble wrap, and scraps of paper. Another station to make paper mache creatures with newspaper and scraps of fabric. Great stuff!

Different stations set up with step by step examples.

Look at Careese coloring! She actually colored the whole picture in with tons of color. I’m amazed cause Evan has only started to do this recently.

Food stand, aquarium, and tray of sushi made of recycled stuff.

Not only creative, but SO organized. For how many kids were running around making stuff, I was amazed at how organized the place stayed.

cute kids crafts

Here’s what we attempted to do at home to keep busy indoors:

hopscotch with Japanese painter’s tape. I didn’t measure right and we ran out of room. Oops. But it was good to keep Evan busy while burning off energy. Oh and the bean bags are made from Mark’s old button up shirt and filled with rice by the kids.

I don’t know what to call this… there’s probably a name for it. I just can’t think of it right now. Too tired. But it’s cardboard tubes cut and decorated and attached with magnets and stuck to a white board. Then the goal is to get a marble from the start tube to the end tube. The fun is trying out new patterns and adjusting it just right. Evan loves it. It kept him busy for hours.

I think this was plastic packaging from a set of kids underpants. hahaha. I saw it and thought it would look good as a fish tank. So Evan and Careese helped pick out what fish and to put in it, I’d cut it out and then they’d tape it in. So cute and easy to care for fish. :)

I found a book at a used book store that is full of kids crafts made from recycled material. Evan and I have been collecting “junk” to make some of the projects in the book. Evan’s gone as far as pulling garbage out of public trashcans to get “junk” for our projects. I need to teach him there are limits for where we get our art supplies.

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the end.

;P

Easter

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Our friends the Kaneyuki’s where in town a couple weeks ago. And by me posting late is in no way related to how memorable it was. No, I can’t tell you how nice it was to have a friend around to have a grown up chat with. And it was nice that Evan and Careese had friends to play with. Evan and Elias are a lot alike in personality and got along very well. They could play Wii together for hours if we let them. And Careese and Ephraim had their cute moments together. Like holding hands in their car seats.

We spent a night in Tokyo, went to Ueno Park, Michelle and I went fabric crazy in Nippori Textile Town (thanks to our wonderful dear husbands that put up with the crying kids in the car all the way home in traffic), went to stay a night in Hakone to Yunessun Spa, and took the kids to a petting zoo.

So great to catch up with old friends. We hope we’ll go visit them in Okinawa very soon!

Fun with Kaneyuki’s

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2010-04-01 Kansai Cherry Blossom Rally Day 4 – Nagoya

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2010-03-31 Kansai Cherry Blossom Day 3 – Kyoto

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