A sign up sheet went around on Sunday at church that requested for people to share their talents. I'm assuming it is for an upcoming talent show or something. A few weeks ago I had ordered some sheet music for the Shirley Temple Song "On The Good Ship Lollipop" and have been trying to teach myself to play it and Gwen to sing it. So I signed us up.

But it reminded me of the last talent show I preformed in. Sam convinced me to do my old floor routine for a talent show we had at church when we were newlyweds. It was a lot of fun to do.

All the memories gave me enough of the gymnastics bug to dig out my old stuff. I played a VHS tape of a performance from my Senior year. While watching the videos I got out my camera and took some videos on it so we could have the performance in a digital format, however rough it might be.

Here is my bar routine. I have always LOVED bars and it was my best event.

My next favorite was floor and I did fine with that too.

Here is my vault. I do a front handspring, then a 1/2 on 1/2 off that actually looks like a 1/4 on 1/4 off. :) oops!

I was SO bad at beam, but we only had 8 girls on our team, so we all had to be all arounds. It terrified me every time I got up there. As you can see, I'm not so good at staying on. :S

I post them here on my project page because gymnastics was a great project of my youth. It shaped me into who I am through the lessons I learned in the gym. Also, if I find some time to practice and things look hopeful, I might consider signing up to do a watered down floor routine at the upcoming talent show.

Today Gwen and I practiced some skills in the backyard. It was fun, but the grass was itchy.

Baby girl afghan:
I've been trying to learn how to crochet for YEARS! Probably since I was a preteen. I've started many projects and quit most of then 1/2 way through because of all the mistakes and lack of patience. I've had many teachers, including: My Mother, my grandma, my grandma's sisters, my friend Aimee, and a TV show on public television called Knit And Crochet Today. I think I have finally combined all the things that each of them taught me to create a project I will actually finish. It is a project of my own creation because I decided that I just am not capable of following a pattern. I have about 1/2 of the blocks done and when I put the blocks together I will post a picture of the completed afghan.

Here is another hair do:
I knew it would take some bobby pins, so I did it on Saturday so Gwen could take it out if she wanted to and I wouldn't get mad. I need to dig through my hair things and find some of my cute clips since there is one clip that is visible for the hair that swoops from the front to the side.

Styling tips for me:
To do this I parted the hair at the front first making the "bang" swoop. I clipped that down so it would dry smooth instead of curly. Then I made a part from one ear to the other ear and clipped it down. To do the braid I had Gwen get down on her hands and knees and I gave her some books to look at. Next time I think I would just pull out the portable DVD player and let her watch a movie because she was still moving a bit to turn the pages of her books. Once I reached the end of the braid I ponytailed it with the hair I clipped earlier. I wrapped some of the longer hairs around the ponytail base and then bobby pined the rest of the curls in place. Finally I positioned the bang swoop and clipped it into position.

French Crown:
On Sundays we don't have church until 1, so I normally have plenty of time to give the girls a bath and do Gwen's hair. Sometimes I like to experiment with Gwen's hair, Today I came up with this updo. I thought it was cool and realized that it looked very appropriate for a flower girl for a wedding. (Hint hint to Uncles and Aunts, we are ready when you are ;) So I thought I would post it and offer up my hair styling skills to anyone who is interested. Right now I am not interested in making money off of it, I just enjoy doing it and would love to help.

I let Gwen watch an episode of Diego while I did it and the show was over about 10 minutes before I finished her hair. So it probably took me about 30 minutes to do the whole thing. But I would say that if I was doing this for someone the appointment would need to be a full hour, because I like to work with the hair when it is wet, so we'd have to wash the hair, style it and then if the hair is not curly like Gwen's, we'd need to curl it.

Styling notes:

I separated the hair into 5 sections. one long one across the top, one across the side and two across the bottom, leaving the fifth section in the middle. I clipped each section loosely with some crappy barrettes so I barely had to touch them to pull the Barrette out. (I didn't want them to be too tight because I needed to keep one hand on the braid at all times meaning I needed to remove the barrettes with only one hand.) I also did not completely braid the last section because it would have made the curly part off center, instead I french braided it only until I reached the center of the head and then I pony tailed it.