Spoonful of Imagination

Add it to a Family for Something Beautiful

I Love You to Infinity and Beyond

By 1 Comment

To infinity Beyond (banner)

The Toy Story movies have always been some of our favorites.  My boys went through the Buzz Lightyear phase.  Caleb did especially.  He wanted to be the “real” BuzzLightyear when he grew up.  I have countless pictures of him drawing Buzz, and they are some of my favorite pieces of his work.  I think we have had a total of four Buzz Lightyear birthday parties between the two boys.

drawing of buzz lightyear

Sadly, they have moved on.  Although they will happily still watch the movies, their new obsession is with Transformers.  They are now talking Autobots and Decepticons and planning their own Transformer birthdays.

They may have moved on but my little Reagan is now in the Buzz Lightyear, Woody, and Jessie obsession.  I adore it.  She does not care about princesses or dolls the way she loves her Buzz Lightyear and Jessie the Cowgirl.  Jessie ALWAYS has to have her hat or it’s a five alarm emergency around here. When she talks about Buzz she calls him, “Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue.” I can’t help but smile from ear to ear.  She is a complete joy.

love of toy story

From the first time I watched Toy Story with Caleb, I adapted Buzz’s famous line to tell my kids “I love you to infinity and beyond.”  It has become our common phrase in our house like  “I love you to the moon and back” or “I eat you up, I love you so.”

Yesterday, I decided I needed a small piece of art to hang in our house and reflect this special phrase.  I made this little print.

Toy Story Quote Printable

To demonstrate this great love of Toy Story, check out who was our dinner guest last night… She is a regular around here.  🙂

little girl eating dinner

If you would like to have this small print too, you can!  I am offering it up today to my readers.  To download the Pink version, click here. For the Blue version, click here. Enjoy!

To infinity Beyond (blue)

To infinity Beyond (pink)

I hope you have a great weekend!   If you are new around here, please see why we are moving, check out a tour of our house, and see what I did the day my house went up for sale.

 

signature

 

 

to infinity and beyond!

By Leave a Comment

This week I was asked to make a superhero cape for a friend.  I said “yes!” and thought it would be a good Friday Project Spotlight item.

I love superhero capes and all the imagination and dreaming that they encourage!  As I watch my boys in their capes run and climb trees, I see this phrase in their eyes…

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”~Jesse Jackson

I love what a simple cape can encourage and build into the young ones that are our future.  They are a reminder to me.  Let them be little, and let them dream.

My cute model was not feeling his “fierceness” during our photo shoot.  I asked for an awesome superhero face and I got this…

I’m not sure if he was blowing out candles or holding his breath :).  I love this boy!

Thank you so much for looking at my Friday Project Spotlight item!  I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

If you would like to learn more about how I can create a cape for you through my little business, Dancing Zebras, you can click on the button below to be taken to my store!

Photobucket

I think I may have misled you (part 2)

By 5 Comments

Ever since I made Reagan’s baby quilt over a year ago, Caleb has been asking for me to make him a quilt.  So, I thought his birthday was a good time to do it.

He went with me to pick out the fabric, and you know he had a blast with it!  He got so excited with every fabric.  There is two toy story fabrics in the mix.  One pattern I thought was “too big” for my size squares, so I was trying to encourage him away from it.  He had to have it because it had ONLY Buzz on it.  Buzz needed his own fabric.  I understand. 🙂  This quilt is definitely my Caleb’s, and I love it for how he loves it.

I had never made a rag quilt before.  I have sewn other quilts but never this style.  After “pinning” several quilts on pinterest and seeing one a friend did…it pushed me over the line to try a new technique.  I LOVE it!  This style of quilting is SO much easier!  It hides all your flaws!  If you want to see a quick tutorial of a quilt sample I scanned before starting mine look at Imperfect Homemaking.

 

Caleb saw that I had cut all three layers of my squares (the front fabric, the stuffing, and the back fabric-shown in picture 1).  It took forever.  I didn’t get why it took so long since my friend, who made one of these said it was no big deal.  Turns out my quilt was huge and I had no idea!  I then had to sew an “X” across the middle of each set of the three layers of fabric (picture 2).  I think I watched a Mandy Moore movie during this step.

At this step is where I would like to say my husband was out-of-town for six days prior to Caleb’s birthday, and in there I hosted a playgroup party with a few of Caleb’s buddies at our house. We had been busy!  At 8:00pm the night before his birthday, I had still not finished cutting and sewing all the squares together.  I was tired and not sure if this thing was gonna come together in time.  I decided I would at least try or make it through one movie while sewing.

The hardest step for me was sewing the squares into strips (picture 3).  I like order and patterns, but I thought this quilt would be even cooler all random, so I stretched myself.  Ha maybe that is one reason why I’m proud of it.  It’s so unlike me!  Once the rows were sewn together (picture 4) I than laid them all out to sew together (picture 5).  At this point, I had to stay up and finish it!  I am proud to say at 2:10am I sewed the last stitch (picture 6).  I was exhausted and wanted to curl up with the thing! Ha it’s still not done.  I’m suppose to go back and fringe the seems with scissors and then wash and dry it, so it fringes more.  Caleb doesn’t notice that,  so we are both happy with it for now!

THE REVEAL:  On Caleb’s birthday (more pics coming soon), I let him open one present before school, but the rest we were waiting till after school and “rest” time so Matt would be home.  While Caleb was in school, I went to the airport to pick up Matt.  After getting Caleb from school and going to a special lunch, we came home and all had to crash.  Matt had worked till 2:00am the night before as well and then caught a 6:00am flight home to be able to be home by the time Caleb got out of school.  On our way to our beds for naps/rest time Caleb squeals “mommy!!  My quilt!!!  Can I open that one before?!  I need it!”  It made my heart pretty much leap from my chest.

My boy had faith in me…even when I did not.  Such innocence or trust in his mommy to know I would have that thing done for him.  I love that!  He was thrilled by it!!  He kept hugging it and telling me how much he loved it…and me.  I was thinking it was a blanket.  Oh no!  He ripped his comforter off his bed and said he didn’t need it anymore.  It is his new bedspread.

Have I told you how much I love this kid?!  He is awesome and brings my heart so much joy!  So, although I made the quilt for him, the real gift is all he did for me by allowing me to love him in this way.  Life is good!