Family
Heartfelt updates about family milestones and everyday moments. From taking Mazie to college and annual visits to the Renaissance Festival to Swedish‑pancake breakfasts and VR outings with the kids, this category celebrates togetherness.
- Italian Opera
- Love ❤️
We had Tyler’s birthday dinner at his favorite restaurant, Lion’s Tap! It was our first time dining inside there since the pandemic started. The burgers were extra good tonight. Tammy was really excited! 🍔
We returned to Mess Hall Art Experiences to have some fun with paint! Tyler wanted to go as part of his birthday. We had a great time as always. Tyler got into the the messy part! I did an interpretation of the FC Bayern logo.
Tonight’s board game was Photosynthesis. Mazie’s pick, and she won with a good lead! 🌳
Tyler got started on his Christmas LEGO, building Old Trafford - Manchester United stadium! ⚽️ This is going to be amazing to see finished!
Mazie started her Christmas LEGO today too, the Roller Coaster! 🎢 She has already complete the Carousel 🎠 and Ferris Wheel 🎡 and this will complete that set. We may need to create a motorized display for these.
Land of Things Christmas Puzzle
Today Tammy put together this years custom Christmas Puzzle that we made for her and it came out really well. It was definitely the hardest puzzle we have created yet. We titled it “Land of Things”.
And here it is put together in 18x24" 500 piece jigsaw puzzle.
We took a unique approach this year. Tyler and I have been having fun with Townscaper so I asked Tyler to create the overall base of the puzzle using Townscaper. He used the iPad and spent a while creating various islands and buildings. We thematically tied each location to houses and neighborhoods we have lived in. We also included our cabin as an island that you had to get to by boat.
After we had the scene in Townscaper I loaded the city on the desktop version of Townscaper in Steam because it could render it larger and export a higher quality image. Using a screenshot on the iPad wasn’t high enough resolution.
I took that image and then we loaded it into Procreate and Mazie went to work drawing on top of it. We added grass, various scenes, decorated some things, a big sea dragon, etc. The details were really great.
Notice the GEM Tomatoes stand that was so awesome in our old neighborhood.
Our old neighborhood in Minnetonka with the Rock’s next door having rocks in their yard.
Lucky is hanging out in the back yard playing with a tennis ball.
I love the lighthouse with people hanging out on it, and the ice cream shop with people waiting in line.
We could have spent so much more time adding special details but we had to finish, we took well over our deadline as it is. It is incredible how much time a good jigsaw puzzle takes to design!
We are already thinking about 2022’s Christmas Puzzle! 🧩
Tyler and I played as a team and came in 2nd in Ticket to Ride Japan. It is a fun variant with the community bullet train encouraging some cooperative play.
The two most important ingredients when making lasagna are:
Mazie and I made this pan with plenty of love, and the Three Tenors accompanying us!
Creativity on Shoes with Kicasso
On our final evening in Indianapolis we did a completely new thing — we painted shoes! Kicasso is a one of a kind experience where you take a plain, white pair of sneakers and express your creativity with them. We had a blast and it was a great experience for us all.
We all took very different paths. I made what may go down as the geekiest shoes ever commemorating the 200th issue of the Weekly Thing. Tammy hit on her favorite color, green, and kept it simple and awesome. Mazie tends to take a lot of time, she likes to be a perfectionist. She created a great multi-color pair with light touches of color and glitter. Tyler went all over with the color and was the only one that decided to paint the whitewall of the soles as well, which he sort of wanted to undo but its paint! 🎨
Overall it was a fabulous 2.5 hours and we had a great time expressing our creativity with our shoes! The folks behind Kicasso aren’t aware of anyone else doing this, so if you are in Indianapolis this should be on your must do list!
