#best family vacations

[theadoredhome]

Top Summer Events and Vacations of 2013

Yesterday, I missed posting Money Monday here on the blog because I spent the day with my soon-to-be college girl and my sweet grandson at the zoo! You know I am a money saver, and each year, our zoo holds a $2 admission day! Is it hot…Yes! Is there a lot of people….Yes! But do I love making the memories & getting such a discount…..Yes! So in a way, I was actually saving on a Money Monday instead…

[ventique18]

I like to think that when Mini Mal the son becomes a kid (like 6 yrs old) he gets so good at magic that no one can track him anymore except for dad. Uncles Silver and Sebek would always have their hands full searching for him with zero luck. Malleus is always on top of exactly where his son is though, but when Silver and Sebek beg him to tell them where the little prince is, he'd only chuckle quietly and say "Hm, I wonder."

That's because he knows that his son's hobby is following and getting a kick out of his uncles desperately searching for him.

So when Silver and Sebek approach their master again to beg for coordinates, Malleus hands them a map with an encircled location and simply says "Have fun," with a smile. The pair rush to the specified place with the boy secretly in tow.

It's a little village currently holding a festival. Popcorns, cotton candies, ferris wheels, roller coasters. Magic. With sparkling eyes and mouth agape, the little boy finally appeared between his uncles to excitedly drag them around the festivities.

Their kindly king had asked them to take a break.

[sirtotallynotatimetraveler]

Plush Pep's travel in Europe (more photos below the cut)

I wish I could have took more pictures with him but I was a little too socially anxious to haha. Maybe next time!

(I posted some of these photos like a month or two ago on reddit, so don't mind if you've seen the pisa tower pics before)

[boydholbrook-fan]

New photo of Boyd! ❤️

August, 2024

Tatiana posted to her IG story few minutes ago!

Thank you so much, Tatiana, for sharing this photo with us! ❤️

[paigemathews]

Okay, but why did they write Sheila like that? Like she gets next to no screen time, despite viewing the girls as family, and then suddenly doesn't want Darryl covering for them anymore (which don't get me wrong, she's valid for it but it's a 180 reversal of the like one personality we had going for her) and like. The sisters needed friends, and Sandra Prosper is on the show for nine episodes but they just. stick her in the background, give her a line or two, and that's it. And I mean, Darryl is a main character for seven seasons, and she's his wife. Even though he wasn't one of the main main characters, you'd think they'd do literally anything with her like c'mon.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

i love my family so much. @actuallylukedanes had plans to go with their spouse to the state fair yesterday, and i planned to use my alone time to work on projects. but when i idly mentioned that i wished i could go to the fair too, because smaller local fairs were an essential and literally-every-year part of my life growing up, my best friend said there was no reason i couldn't--and their spouse's reaction to the idea was to be enthusiastically in support.

these two people, my own chosen family, not only gave me a ride so i could enjoy the day, but spent as much of it with me as possible just because we could all have fun together. and they never once made it seem like i was crashing their couple time, and when i chose to try and walk the grounds rather than using a mobility device (like i do during zoo visits that make leander happy) they never once treated me like i couldn't handle it and enforce my own limits or like i was dragging everything down by needing breaks.

so this is just an appreciation post for my people, who were happy to invite me at the last minute for a day of sun and strangers and entertainment and curly fries and testing my limits. it was nice to be reminded that i'm capable of more than my everyday routine, and also to be reminded of the way i used to live, that i miss. spontaneous plans, and trading spoons for experiences without regretting it, and not assuming that i need to stay home while everyone else does things (or assuming that i should avoid being around two people who don't get a lot of time together, cuz i don't want to bother them).

yesterday was a really good day.

[verflares]

oh i caught covid btw. hashtag Yay

[brown-little-robin]

hi robin :] very random but im watching craft videos while i eat dinner and it got me thinking about ur ceramics. giving u permission to ramble about the ceramics process (or literally anything abt ceramics), if you want to <3 idk anything abt ceramics like not a clue but im very curious and every time u talk abt them i stare at u w sparkly eyes (also i've recently developed a HUGE respect for all 3d arts bc holy shit making it look right at all angles ?????literally how)

👀✨‼️

Hi thank you so much!! staring at you with the same sparkly eyes,,, watching craft videos while you eat that's so cool,,, Also, weirdly enough, I have the same "how???" thoughts about doing 2d art. I have trouble conceptualizing making something look right from only 1 angle; that seems like a lot of pressure. with a sculpture, if something doesn't look right from one angle, I know there's probably some structural problem, and I turn the sculpture around a little bit and usually figure out that the problem is deeper than what I thought. I'm thinking of ears, specifically—how, often, my problem with the outlines of my ears (seen from the front) is that the back of the ear isn't full enough, I need to add clay, and just nudging the clay to fix the outline wouldn't Work. and I wouldn't have known if I couldn't turn the sculpture around. the respect and awe goes both ways

longgg ramble about the ceramics process below the cut :]

okay SO. the ceramics process, huh? Well, I mean, I'm really in love with the sculpting part, where you take wet clay and make it into an Animal with Bones And Muscles. I just love the animal form—I think in a similar way to how you love the human form and the way clothing folds. I do wheel-throwing too (I make cups, bowls, that sort of thing), but I've been sculpting since I was like 8 years old and I'm way better at sculpture. it's one of a few things in my life that I take genuine pride in. I love teaching people about sculpting, too!! nothing better than seeing someone instantly grasp the insight I spent years developing <333 ANYWAY

one thing that often surprises people about clay is that it's very... flexible, water-content-wise. clay is basically made of a bunch of small "plates" of dry material with water in between. the water makes the entire structure flexible, which is why clay shrinks and goes brittle when it dries. and clay is always drying out. small sculptures like the ones I make, especially ones with thin limbs (more surface area for the air to leech moisture out of) dry out within half an hour. I have to add water to the thin parts every so often the whole time I'm sculpting. but of course the clay has to be firm enough to hold the creature's overall shape, so it's a balance. it's always a race against time. it's super exciting. To Me, anyway

it takes a day or two for a sculpture to dry. After the sculpture dries out, that's when I paint it with my special pigments. (pigments that survive 2,000+ degrees of heat!!) Like this:

these are the same sculpture. the first picture was from right after I sculpted the wet clay; the second picture is after it got painted.

Then once a sculpture is made, it sits and dries, right? the water leaves the clay. but not ALL the water. that's why you "fire" the sculpture: you put it in a kiln and heat it up to ~1800°F. EIGHTEEN HUNDRED DEGREES. at that point, all the water boils out and the clay CHEMICALLY CHANGES. the "plates" begin to bond to each other. But they don't bond all the way in the first firing, because you want the clay to still be porous / hydrophilic. you want it to SUCK IN WATER. this is because you want GLAZE to attach to the clay.

Glaze—at least the kind of glaze that I use—is basically DIY glass. It's a lot of very fine silica (sand) with other stuff (like powdered metals) in it to give color. The sand-metal-powder is suspended in water to make it usable, and I stir up the glaze in its liquid form and dip my sculpture in it, and the super dry clay goes YAY WATERRR I'M SO THIRSTY and GRABS the glaze, and the powdery part is left on the surface of the sculpture while the water goes into the clay. it feels funny on your skin when you hold a sculpture in the glaze; you can actually feel the dry clay accepting the water. it feels like... have you ever dropped water on a bone-dry wooden board and seen the water spread out in the direction of the wood's grain? it feels like that.

the sculpture is left looking white and powdery and generally not very attractive. unfired glaze is just... thick white chalk.

THEN I fire the clay a SECOND time. The heat varies, but I always fire to at least 2,244° F. >:D >:D >:D and the sandy glaze actually MELTS INTO GLASS. and I open the kiln, which has the products of about a year or two of work in it, and I WEEP IN JOY because everything has COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED. firing is always risky. some of the sculptures always fail somehow—they break in firing for various reasons, or the glaze runs onto the shelf, or the glaze color turns out different than I thought. but some of them always come out BETTER than I imagined. and it's always a process of discovery, slowly unloading the kiln, layer by layer... the objects still warm from the heat of their firey transformation... hot enough to burn, if you're unloading before they've cooled enough, which I usually do because it's just so exciting...

and my glaze shrinks slightly more than the clay does. imagine that: a thin layer of glass shrinking more than it can take. you can actually hear it breaking. little quiet "plink! plink! plink!" as the glass shatters just a little under the stress. we call it "crazing" and it leaves little cracks in the glaze, like so:

you can also see tiny bubbles in the glaze on the rabbit's inner ear!

I just. (physically shaking) I just love ceramics so much. The sculpting part feels almost like meditation. it's almost a form of worship, for me, it's religious, it's a little version of creation, a way to look at bodies and try to express how they work. For the simple sculpture, I just make them from memory, but I work from references for my difficult sculptures—for instance, here's the little pile of images I collected to make my recent tiger:

the painting part is just plain fun, putting cool designs and stuff on a 3-d object in a low-pressure way. and then the two firings are pure magic. pure delayed gratification. it's incredible. you're telling me this thing I shaped with my mortal human fingers survives TWO THOUSAND DEGREES OF HEAT? you're telling me I get to MAKE COLORED GLASS? out of SAND and METAL? you're telling me after all that, I get to open up the kiln which has put these things through immense heat and see these beautiful objects and go I made those?????

YEAH. SCREAMS.

thanks for reading, I hope you had fun <333

[soullessjack]

one of my favorite jack posts of all time is this one from 2018 that’s just a compilation of people’s first impressions of him because it’s literally just so fucking funny

tag yourself im cries a lot and buddy the elf

[compaculaaa]

What are the the babies/ sparklings favorite vacation spots? Where do they like to go to have fun and play with their creators? Something like that.

Their creators are constantly busy with politics n shit so the sparklings rarely go on vaca, when they do tho every moment is precious.

Starting with the prime siblings, Sentinel loves feeling rich and important so he loves going to expensive hotels and such. He just loves to have the feeling of power wherever he goes even on vacation, little prince 😅 Optimus is a very simple sparkling, as long as he is in his creators arms no matter where he goes he will be happy. Though he is especially fond of going to the beach, he enjoys making sandcastles with Elita or just sitting by the shade with Alpha as they both watch Ultra swing Sentinel around on his hammer. Elita the spoilt child she is loves a spa holiday, the spa resort Alpha and his gir- *slap* colleagues usually go to has a special package deal for little sparklings like Elita and she loves it.

Ninja sparklings now, Jazz always dreamt of going to a concert specifically one by an interstellar DJ duo, unfortunately his creators wouldn’t allow is since he’s literally a baby and being around such an environment could damage his audio receptors. So Jazz will have to wait until he’s abit older to have the time of his life. Prowlie is always in awe whenever Yoketron takes him to the cybercrystal caves hidden in the deep mountains of cybertron, the formation of crystals and the intricacies of the stalagmites and stalactites never fail to drop the jaw of this little organic enthusiast. He will always find these natural phenomenons fascinating. Drift is of course a weird one, while he does love the gorgoes and serene energon falls in the outskirts of Iacon, he never has the excited look on his face compared to going to the medical unit and seeing his favourite doctor, THE doctor of course. Yoketron and Dai are starting to feel uncomfortable with their sparklings obsession with Dr Ratchet…

[taldigi]

were there any pre canon concepts for adrien's/felix's room? i hate the canon one so much the layout confuses me

Afraid not. I think the closest we have is the information that Felix/ Adrian's family owned a hotel (this is before he was made into the villain's son.) A lot of early and even current ladybug is pretty focused around Marinette. Nathan-Felix-Adrien as a character is shockingly inconsequential to the narrative as a whole. (Which is probably why he was so easily edited throughout development whereas Marinette stayed pretty consistent.... And is also apparently still the case from what I've heard of the recent season.)

You can actually really see a lot of the inspiration that it transferred to the agreste mansion... But it also lost a lot of style and flair. Richard had a lot of art deco inspiration in the buildings associated with his character. And you can kind of see that in the hotel piece here. It's all connected, at least I believe it is.

It makes sense that the current one is frustrating. It's a mix between " oh this is what a fabulously wealthy teen boy would like" being full of video games and literal arcade machines, but still having like no personality? Like it's big. Because Adrian is rich. And it's like... Largely undecorated because Gabriel is like a minimalist or whatever... Except for all of the stuff that Adrian has because he's rich. And that's literally the end of it.

Edit: If I were to fathom a... A room that does line up with that hotel era then I would do something like this, except with more whites and golds rather than blue... Or just tailor it to however the cat's relationship to his father is.

[skinetom]

Pluto ~ The Hills Have Eyes ~ 1977

[anaalnathrakhs]

i <3 feeling like i'm literally always making the wrong choice

[partynthem]

anyway. it’s been a rough week

[maulfucker]

[guy who is always complaining about drawing backgrounds] well what if I

[mrindannette1122]

The ying in my yang 🪩