I Like #268

 Welcome to another week of things to like.  I got to spend this weekend with my sister and her husband and the kids which was fantastic.  I hadn't seen them in a while and was missing them.  It was miserably hot and humid in Dallas, but that's summer for you.

It was my nephew Alex's 9th birthday, and he wanted a Nerf themed party.  My sister and the family went to Sams to get tons of cardboard boxes to make forts out of for the Nerf capture the flag.  the kids had fun making and organizing the forts with lots of doors and flaps and windows.

Then my sister got small nerf guns and aprons for each kid so everyone would be on the same playing field (no massive nerf guns allowed), and we all decorated our aprons by dipping the nerf darts in paint and shooting them at the aprons!

She and Alex also made a nerf dart pinata.  Everyone had an absolute blast playing capture the flag and water balloons (it's August after all).  She really does the best backyard birthday parties ever.

We also saw wild (feral?) peacocks in the street-- apparently there's a population of them that just live loose in Flower Mound!  Don't worry, Becky was driving when I took the picture.

Other things to like this week include this lovely dahlia-  most of the dahlias are just limping along, but this bloom was pretty perfect.

The pups went with me to Dallas, and on the way back Blue decided he didn't want to stay in the way-back so he hopped over the seat.  He didn't try to crawl into my lab, just curled up on the backseat.  

I got to do a little sewing this week which was nice;  I added a casing around the brim of my outdoor hiking hat with a small piece of plastic tubing inside; the brim was really floppy and driving me bananas but I didn't want to buy a new hat because it otherwise fits very nicely.  Although TBH I can't imagine what prompted me to buy it in the most boring color possible.  

I also rigged up an impromptu system to hold up the weight of my quilt around my sewing machine.  It was just made up of things I had lying around and I expect there are improvements, but already it's helping a ton with the amount of thread breaks I'm having.  

LeeAnna's prompt this week was about what school supplies we looked forward to as a child and which ones we still love as an adult.  I for one just love school supplies in general.  Especially anything colored (highlighters/pens/markers) and fun notebooks.  I try to resist buying things unless I need them, but every year I let myself buy one new fun plastic folder.  I use these for my active courses at work, and reuse them semester after semester since they're pretty sturdy.  This year my new addition was the dinosaurs.

As a kid I loved school supplies too, although after fourth grade I don't remember specifically shopping for new ones (we were home schooled after that), although I'm sure we did.  What I really remember loving and coveting was a Trapper Keeper.  I was in elementary school in the Trapper Keeper heyday in the 80s (for anyone who doesn't know they were a sort of fancy binder), and I remember every year being sad that they weren't on the school supply list.  But then in about fourth grade my mom agreed to buy me one, and I was so excited.  I actually still have it in my studio.  It's in surprisingly good shape for being over 35 years old.  

What were your favorite school supplies?  Click on over to Lee Anna's for more things to like!