We decided to spend Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend kayaking at Munden Point Park in Virginia Beach. The weather said 10% chance of showers, but it drizzled for most of the time we were out. We put in at the canoe dock and paddled to the right. Cece finally decided to be more than just a passenger - such concentration.

We paddled in and out of cypress filled inlets much like Horn Point. It was very nice and very quiet. There were wild irises blooming all along the waterline.

We also saw some yellow primrose. I love that it grows in the smallest amount of dirt just nestled between the tree roots.

This turtle let us get so close. I know turtles aren't that unique, but to see creatures in their natural habitat feels like you are being let in on a secret that no one else takes the time to notice.

A kayak update. It's framed - twice. For a more detatiled update check MyKayakDiary.

Now when someone asks me what I do for a living - I can say boat builder. Well that might be an exaggeration, but I did start the construction of a skin on frame kayak. My husband found offset tables and tons of photos on Yostwerks, all for free.

I did have some difficulty finding someone with painfully explicit instructions, everyone just assumes you know what you're doing. So I thought I would document how a beginner did it without a kit or any real solid, step-by-step instructions. You can find all my mistakes at MyKayakDiary if you're interested.

I have drawn and cut out my cross sections and my husband has already found a mistake. One of the cut outs for the gunwhale on cross section 5 is too big. Luckily I walked into the garage and found my husband had glued a block in and now it's fixed.

My daughter's school has an auction every year to raise money for extras. This year they decided each grade should donate a basket to the event. Most grades pooled their money and purchased a big ticket item like a camera or a game boy, first grade did not. People just sent in random gift certificates with no particular theme in mind. Mostly, parents sent in restaurant gift cards so the only common thread was go out and have a good time. Here's the finished basket.

I love it. I know it's not really a basket, but it's just so cute. An entire paper kitchen, even down to the milk in the refrigerator. My daughter loved it, here are her Calico Critters enjoying breakfast. Very interesting that the groom is reading while the bride is having a conversation.

It wasn't very hard to make the kitchen, just very time consuming. Each item had to be cut out, scored, folded, and then glued - but it was so worth it. I sandwiched shirt cardboard between the inside and outside walls and the floor for a better structure and I decided to leave the roof off because there wasn't enough light in the room.


This kitchen was a free pdf from this great website Paper Museum with all these different paper items to print out and put together. The website is in Japanese, but the pictures are pretty self-explanatory. There are so many rooms to print out and if you click on the icons in the left menu, like the fork or the bus, there are even more things to print out and put together! Very exciting if you are me.

This weekend we decided to go back to Horn Point because we had such a good time last weekend. We didn't see fish jumping everywhere, we saw a few - but nothing like last week. We chose to paddle left and up through Muddy Creek.

Dirk's parents were in town for the weekend and they came with us.

It was so completely different than all the inlets around Big Bend. Instead of tall grasses and reeds with muddy banks, we were surrounded by huge cypress trees. It was amazing that the landscape changed so much.

The cypress tree roots grew out of the water like drip sand castles.

We even saw little turles warming themselves in the sun.