summer concerts

it's been a while since i've been to a concert, and this summer i ended up going to 2 in one week!
i found out last minute that the gypsy kings were coming to salt lake, to play at the red butte garden.  i LOVE that place... scott and i have been there before, to a diana  krall concert a couple of years ago.  come to think of it, that was the last concert we attended.  :)

so when i heard the gypsy kings were coming there i was ecstatic!  the story behind my infatuation for the  gypsy kings is that when i was about 13 years old i wanted to learn how to dance so i wouldn't embarrass myself at church dances.  but we had limited resources, and my parents couldn't afford to put me in dance lessons.  instead, they bought me a gypsy kinds LP.  i fell in love with their flamenco guitars the second i heard them play bamboleo for the first time.   they sound amazing!!!  the complementing harmony of their guitars blew my mind.  i liked them so much i even rented a video cassette of one of their live shows in London, and i dreamed back then of going to see them live some day, but artists like the gypsy kings never toured in south america.  oh well.  so i would enjoy what i could, practiced dancing with my brother, and we became so good we actually won a couple of stake dance championships.  :)

fast forward more than 20 years later, i heard they were going to be in town and i freaked out.  :)  i told scott about why i cared to go see them, and i even found discount tickets for the event.  i told my sister about them... their concert happen to be on her birthday!  long story short, in a matter of 2 days we had all purchased the tickets and were going to the concert together.

it.  was.  awesome!  :)

Scott and I at the Gypsy Kings concert

then a few days later was Adele's concert.  i was planning on going, but watching it from a building across the street, since her concert was also at a park.  so - yay! - free concert!  :)  honestly, as far as vocals go, she has been the most amazing live perfomer i've ever seen - tied with paul mccartney and placido domingo.  well, different styles, but she's right up there with the best of the bests.  she sounds just as good live as she does on the radio.  maybe even better, because she has so much control of her incredible pipes, and she loves to show off to her audience.  amazing, amazing, amazing talent.  her performance of rolling in the deep was nothing short of electrifying!  and the girl is only 23!  she'll be one of those legends, and i'll be able to tell my grandkids i went to see an Adele concert - for free! :)

with my partner in crime, Michelli, leaving Adele's concert in downtown Salt Lake

here's a video clip of Adele's performance that evening.  Rolling in the Deep:

her rendition of Lovesong (originally by The Cure) is amazing:

Another favorite, To Make You Feel My Love:

the Up house

a quick note to share what we've been up to...
so, did anyone hear about the Up house? yes, i'm talking about a replica of the house you see in the movie Up, from Pixar. a local builder decided to build a house just like the one in the movie, and after getting the approval from Disney they were able to build an exact replica, inside and out, balloons and all! and they allowed visitors to come through and check it out. but to make the experience even more real, they also had Carl and Russell out on the porch, welcoming the visitors. way, way fun. :)

a neat little detail... i know the person who architectured the house.  she's actually in my ward! :)

us, goofing off in Carl & Ellie's bathroom

Liv by the painting of Paradise Falls in the front room 

Liv outside the Up house

the mural in the nursery

jonah's fireworks

this post is outdated, but i needed to share it here, nonetheless.  jonah loves loves loves to record videos of himself "painting" on the computer screen.  then he decided to get creative with his drawings, and one day this is what he came up with.   it gets really good at right about 1:15 min.

ancient egypt 101

gotta love 6th grade.  my daughter just started the school year, and she's learning about ancient egypt.  her first home project was to build a sarcophagus.  the teacher suggested they use an old shoe box, but livia has to go all out on everything she does.  so she talked me into making a close to life size sarcophagus.  i'm officially a sucker.

but then i thought i might turn this post into a tutorial, just in case there's another sucker mom out there, lost, trying to figure out how to build a sarcophagus.  here we go...

the most important part, obviously, is to have a large cardboard box.  i was fortunate enough that we had a box that was perfect for this project.  we just recently purchased a sleep number bed, and one of the boxes the bed came in was just the right length and width for this.  that's what we used.  however, i bet if you go into a moving supply store they would have something in a similar size as the box we used.

here are the other materials we used:
acrylic paint in the colors red, green, blue, black, white and silver
paint brushes (from very small sized, to wide brushes)
decoupage sealer (can be substituted by using 2 parts glue 1 part water)
2 gold spray paint cans
magic clay
acrylic gems
plastic face mask

i put the girls to work!  this was a team project, so i had livia's friend come over and help out.  the first thing we did was prep the box.  we used the decoupage sealer to get the box ready for spray painting.  without this step the color wouldn't have stuck and the cardboard would've sucked up all the gold off the surface.

meanwhile, i worked prepping the face mask.  i used the magic clay to cover up the eyes, nostrils, and i modeled a king cobra to decorate the forehead.  i just looked up pictures of the cobra to have it as a guide, and i winged it.  it turned out okay, though! :)  it is important to mention that i did glue the magic clay on.  magic clay won't stick to the plastic this mask is made of, so i reinforced it by using tacky glue so nothing would fall off.

after this was done we were ready to spray! i took the box outside, and supervised livia.  we used a handy little tool, not sure what it's called, but it attaches to the nozzle of your spray bottle and you pull the trigger to get a continuous spray without hurting your fingers.  it worked out great.  

i had her place the mask where we would affix it later on, but i did not have her glue it in place just yet.  i did it that way so we could add details to the mask after it dried up.  

adding details to the mask... eye makeup, eyebrows, jewels for eyes, then painting the cobra.

the rest of the design was a matter of preference.  i wanted to have it look as legit as a 6th grade project can, but it had to be designs that my daughter could work on (even though i ended up doing 90% of it).  so i started out by researching egyptian symbols and common design trends on egyptian art, especially when depicting the pharao and his powers.  i found a ton of different design ideas, and had to sift through them.  in the end we opted for bold and trademark symbols (seeing eye, the egyptian cross, the sun, the spread eagle).  

the colors chosen were also the same colors commonly used to decorate a sarcophagus.  we even found out their meaning:

gold: pertaining to the divine.  godlike, with god powers

black: death

red: power

green: prosperity to the kingdom

blue: of royal origin.

white: purity

(i used the silver mixed in, to add sparkle to the blue and green)

after i came up with the basic design i kept taking pictures of the project to see if it looked "rich" enough.  pictures have a way of capturing what the eye sometimes won't, especially if you've been staring at this project for so long.  so as i took pictures and noticed it still looked "bare" i kept on building on and adding little details that, in the end, made a huge difference - like adding more jewels to make a bolder bib for the pharao, for instance.  we also wanted to add hieroglyphs, and we actually spelled something out!  "egyptian sarcophagus  project".  livia was pretty thrilled. :)

and after hours and hours of research and work, here's our finished sarcophagus!  totally worth it.  one of livia's friends from school actually fit into the box.  so they wrapped her up with toilet paper, and she came out of the sarcophagus, pretending to be a mummy.  apparently it was the highlight of the day.  :)
yes, i'm a sucker, but i'm also a recipient of "coolest mom" award.  :)

sarcophagus engineering 101

so my daughter has been learning about ancient egypt, and she has to do some homework on the topics they're going over.  one of the things the teacher suggested the kids could do to learn more about ancient egypt is to build a sarcophagus.  (?!?)  i know, i've asked myself the same question... how does building a sarcophagus help anyone learn about ancient egypt?  but i'm in for the fun, and we've been doing some research online on how to build this fancy box.

i personally enjoy artsy projects, but i know there are other moms out there who wouldn't have a clue where to begin with a project like this, so i decided to share what we did.  maybe it'll help someone out there.

this has cost us about $32 total, and here's the list of materials we got (some we already had):

a long cardboard box - free, from the leftover boxes from our new sleep number bed
all purpose glue (1 large tube)
water
brushes
acrylic paint, in the following colors:
blue (2 tubes)
silver (1 tube)
red (1 small tube)
green (1 small tube)
black
white
- we chose those colors because they are the colors used in egyptian art (we researched that)

2 spray cans of golden paint
1 plastic mask - full face
magic clay (1 small bag)
acrylic gems (just for fun, egyptian art usually was gem-free)