Zoe Says...

I'm different from most 15 -year-old kids.  First of all, I'm a bookworm.  I will read anything I can get my hands on.  Often I will read one book in an afternoon!

Recently, I read a fiction book about the RMS Titanic.  When I read a good book, I usually make paper dolls of the characters and then make clothing for them out of scrap pieces of cloth.  For the characters in the Titanic book, I made tiny adorable dresses, sweaters and hats.  I love the Titanic theme so much that I have decorated my bedroom to look like a bedroom suite on the Titanic’s White Star Line!  I created everything from the red and white fleece carpeting to the white-star-line-embroidered pillows on the beds.  I make everything!  My closet is well-stocked with red felt and white material next to the three shoeboxes on the floor. Mom and Dad joke that they won't have to buy me lots of birthday presents because the boxes they come in are presents themselves – soon to be created into something creative!

Another thing I enjoy doing is knitting.  I started knitting in January of 2013.  I am still working on my first knitting project, a six-foot-long shawl! Since then, though, I also have completed many other knitting projects, including scarves, shawls and even my first winter hat knitted with soft baby alpaca yarn.

Also, I'm a really good artist and crafter.  Usually, when our family is learning about something, I turn to art to express the topic.

So now you know a little about me.  For our business I do the Art Tip, and generally all of the art stuff.  Things like painting, chalk and felt.  Between all these things, I like playing with Zach, writing and most of all, being with my family.

Zach says… 

One of my favorite things to do is to write.  I'm usually writing a book, writing down facts or researching something.  I'm usually researching something about an exotic country far away, or maybe something about an animal.  whatever it is, I enjoy it! 

Zoë and I have been making a mystery book series called Ned Mysteries since 2011.  They started off simple, with each book being about 14 pages long with illustrations, but the books we have written recently are excellent, with each book being about 90 pages long with illustrations!  The book series is about a person named Ned who starts off solving mysteries by himself, and eventually gets married, has two kids and joins his friends on great adventures. 

My hobbies include playing and watching baseball. Baseball is my favorite sport, and I enjoy pitching tennis balls into my pitch-back in the backyard (actual baseballs are hard)!  I have a great knuckleball and fast ball!  One thing that makes me different from other nine-year old boys is that I like to knit.  I like knitting scarves and hats, and I like to pick out beautiful yarn.  I also love animals. 

My favorite animals are great blue herons, king eiders (an arctic duck), llamas, spider monkeys and bowhead whales.  My favorite color is light blue.  My favorite area in the world is Scandinavia, and my favorite country is Denmark.  I also love to cook, especially food from around the world, like Denmark. So far we made 2 Danish recipes – smorrebrod (pronounced smirbrid), an open-faced sandwich, and brunede kartofler, sugar-browned potatoes.  I also do long division to figure out a baseball player's batting average.  It makes math more fun, much better than just doing a bunch of long division problems lined up and when you solve them you don't get anything out of it!

So that's me!  That's what I like to do!