Halloween

It's a little spooky how little time I have for things right now. I know that everyone says, don't blog about how long it's been since you posted last. I even have this awesome book from my sister-in-law No One Cares What You Had For Lunch that has 100 ideas for what to blog about. Very inspiring. If I only had the time.
I am up way past my bedtime tonight to catch up a little on my blogs. Will I really make any head way? Of course not. The list of ideas I have wanted to write about is still long and very stale. I am getting so deprived of my creative, selfish outlets that two areas of my life are merging in unhealthy ways. When my daughter had a runny nose and I referred to it as "snotsy" I had this crazy idea to write a dark, satiric spoof with a Nazi theme. But really, how could I write something even remotely humorous about a part of history that was so horrific? To tell the truth, it was my hubby's guiding light that made me realize the error of mine thinking. That's when I realized that my creative, childish side (the one that creates preschool lessons/songs/activities/games and uses silly puns and plays-on-words all the time) was taking over my more rational, adult creative side (the one that blogs and sews for example). Those two parts should not intertwine!

This was before I realized the depth of my doughy error.

So now I am finally getting to Halloween. A time of year that has the potential to be spookier than snotsies gathering up all the germs and concentrating them in tissue camps. (ugh.) And dinner was relatively spooky. Mummy pies- nutritious and hauntingly delicious. Mommy tantrum-frightening in it's onset and depressing in it's wake.  The mummy strips on the pies were too thick by themselves and layered together, completely inapporpriate for the baking time and situation. The bottom layers didn't cook!  So I huffed and whined and threw a tantrum before putting them under the broiler, temporarily relieved that there was a solution, and then forgetting them! So I huffed, whined and threw another tantrum and stomped upstairs to cool off when my solution turned the strips into partially scorched dead zones with still-chewy bottoms.  Meanwhile, my family filled their pie holes and were unfazed by the doughy consistency and blackened portions of the crust. My sheepish apology and recognition of my childish behavior was waved away with a "Mommy just wants to have a perfect halloween," from my hubby. So true. But see why my two sides should not mix?! Oy.

Family picture coming soon.

Beyond the "ruined" dinner Halloween was great.  My daughters looked cute, scary, and just right in their costumes (which I made with my own creative hands thank you very much). I took my older daughter's suggestion to by a mommy mummy to heart and wrapped myself in one very long strip of old sheet. I added some black eye liner and voila. I was worthy of candy at several houses, much to my enjoyment and Emma's consternation. (She wanted all the candy!)

Green streaks

        My high school mascot was the Blue Streaks. Thankfully I only had to witness scrawny high school boys painted blue and running naked across the football field a couple times. Okay, it was hilarious. The streaking and the skinny, limp nakedness.  If you can't laugh at yourself then it is painful to endure taunting from high schoolers with not-so-lame mascots and ugly colors. "That's so lame. Are you like the blue smurfs or something? Heehee!"  Well, uh, at least I look good in blue.  "What?!"   I would only prove their point on the lame factor scale by admitting anything, especially something as inconsequential as the color.
         If the consequence of streaking gets raised to the do-it-and-you're-expelled level, what else is there to do to honor the ridiculousness of the mascot and laugh at ourselves?  Nothing. Over the years I spent there, no one came up with anything better. I can't even think of anyone even trying.  Our floats and decorations always contained lightning bolts and Woodstock (the famous Schultz Peanuts character) was the bird on the scene in place of a naked, skinny boy.  Did I mention that Woodstock  was the name of the town and the high school?  Woodstock blue streaks.  Am I imagining that I regularly witnessed a giant yellow bird brandishing a blue lightning bolt at home games or is that just the likely generic image anyone would get?
      This post is a streak. A brown streak!  I didn't even intend to dive back into the pit of my high school years.  I was thinking that I would pontificate about hair dyeing and my favorite color and the environmental impacts, but that might actually be more depressing than remembering the pubescent males of my past. So for now, just enjoy the picture.

Make a wish, Annika!

Check out my shirt and fun hairdo.

Pinwheel party time is over but the pinwheels are still spinning around the house. We had such a lovely time!
 Here is Annika in the shirt and headband I made. Already stained with berry juice and pizza! Annika loved all of the attention at her party and made the rounds sitting with just about everyone.

Aunt Susan made the cake. There are three layers forming a Neapolitan cake. I made the pinwheels and the pennant banner name. I love that cake!  We all loved eating it with Neapolitan ice cream (well, separate half gallons of each flavor).

Did I mention that I spent a late night plus some extra hours creating a pinwheel photo-op structure?  We had an extra large piece of cardboard lying around so it was an easy paint-up job. This is Annika with Maddison and Audrey.

The games were fun. Apparently Audrey and Maddison spent some time talking with their mom before bed about the fun they had. "All the games had pinwheels!"  Talk about your greasy heart- that's mine- all happy and greasy. :)  Annika did pull out a few of the strings on the pinata and then she watched the older kids swing the bat around. It didn't take long to bust it!

The pull-string failed but the baseball bat got the job done!

Morning after rainbow fruit (with no raspberries).

 Oh, if only I had the photos of the food!  I just never got around to it on the day of the party. We hollowed out this gynormous zucchini that we accidentally let get to be too large to eat. Steve wanted to let it make it to the compost pile with dignity but I said no way. We halved it, hollowed it out and then filled it with cut veggies. It looked really cool and almost yin and yang like on the tray. Next to it we had a deep dish pizza pan loaded up with wedges of fruits in a rainbow of colors. Steve forgot to buy blueberries but the effect was still quite awesome. We had leftovers so we enjoyed the rainbow the next day except that raspberries were a favorite with my oldest daighter and her friends so they were missing. But you get the idea!  Pinterest got me hooked on the idea but the pictures I saw were not done in a circle.

Annika's birthday pinwheel cake on her actual birthday.

Check out this site for the recipe for this cake roll. It was fantastic!

Pinwheel party prep

My baby girl turns one on Sunday and I am twirling, whirling, wheeling.  One year? I can't believe it.
I decided on a pinwheel theme with pennant banners, AKA bunting decorations, too. Pinterest became my new best friend throughout that decision process and on into the specifics.

Examples of the invites minus the party specifics.

I made pinwheel invites/announcements that actually spin!  My favorite part.  We want Annika to be swirled in wishes and hopes and dreams and not necessarily mounds of gift. So we asked people to send or bring their wishes; we want to create a pennant banner decoration for her room and eventually turn it into a quilt.  How to make this happen is still plaguing me!

Emma's and Annika's shirts

I followed The Copycat Crafter to make a bday shirt for Annika.  Her instructions link to The Pinwheel Bib on another blog for the instructions on how to make a fabric pinwheel. BUt it also has another idea! A whole bib with a pinwheel. So great I had to do it- all. :)

Finished bib

So I decorated a onesie for Annika, a shirt for Emma (per her request), and made a birthday bib.  The bib has a purple PUL back fabric with a layer of thin cotton batting in the middle since the top fabric was so thin. I used a pattern that came with the PUL book but made it a bit smaller to fit the birthday girl.

A pennant banner name for the cake topper had to be done so I did it using scraps from the stained glass bunting made by following the artful parent site instructions.  Emma helped grate some crayons and made most of the sprinkled creations.  (I did the ironing  and sewing part.). Can't wait to see them in action!

I tried to tear off the wax paper rectangles into roughly the same size sheets. So after folding and ironing they were then about the same size. To make sure I ended up with similar sized triangles I marked one side of each completed sheet at 3 inches and 9 inches (the wax paper is 12 inches wide) along one edge.

Then along the opposite side I made a mark at 6 inches (the center).  With a pencil and a ruler (for a straight-edge) I connected the left corner to the 3 inch mark and from there to the center. Then from the center to the 9 inch mark and then up to the right corner. I cut on the lines and voila!  Due to some variation in the length of wax paper sheets torn off the roll, some triangles were a tad shorter or longer than the average. That just added interest!

SO now I had a huge stack of triangles to create the bunting plus some extra pieces. I sewed two chains of 12 each, one of 13 and one of 17 pennants.  I added the words "happy birthday!" to the 12 pennant chains, centering the letters as best I could. I used the leftover scraps to make a mini-pennant banner for the cake that had Annika spelled out.


I have cut out a lot of squares and made diagonal cuts in order to make pinwheels.  A lot.  We might play "find the matching pinwheels" game.  And color or draw a pinwheel contest.  Sidewalk chalk and triangle stencils are the preference if the weather is nice.  Pinwheel corn hole anyone?
At the last minute my hubby make a corn hole game with some extra plywood we had lying around. I bought some fabric to make bean bags and made some quick pinwheel bags. First I cut rectangles out of the pink and purple (4 each) accounting for a half inch seam on all sides (to end up with a finished square about 4x4 inches). Sorry, no details on measurements. Oops. Anyway, I folded the rectangles right sides together and stitched along two sides and part of the third, leaving an opening for filling the bag with small white beans.

Here you can kind of see the seams and open edge.

I weighed out 5 ounces of beans per bag using our kitchen scale.

Then I sewed the opening closed by top stitching. Since they are only for a game I didn't worry about making the seam pretty with hand stitching it closed to hide the stitches. This way was very fast!

Couton

Couton rhymes with coupon and crouton. It came about completely by mistake this past Sunday when I was clipping a coupon from the slick section.  What is a couton?  Well, it is similar to a coupon in that it reduces the overall cost of something. In this case the cost is calories to ones body.  It is like a crouton in that it is crunchy and you sprinkle it on food such as salad.  Some people are known to eat them just for their crunchy yet oily, tasty flavors. 1 bag of coutons hold the salad.

Or take this example of a typical order a your favorite national chain restaurant:  I'd like the Cobb salad but with no peppers, onions, cucumbers, avocado or tomatoes.  keep all of the luncheon meats, hard boiled eggs, add extra cheese and wirh full-fat ranch dressing on the side.  Oh and please add coutons.

Here is the thought process behind that order: okay, Hmm, what do i want to eat?  i should probably watch what I eat so maybe I will order a salad.  Cobb salad sounds nice. Oh but I can't eat peppers because they give me indigestion. I hope to kiss my significant other later so scratch the onions. It is not cucumber season; ugh, they probably came from somewhere south of the border.  Guess that's true for the tomatoes and avocados. There is nothing like a CA avocado...Okay you can't have everything. Focus. Think about the salad.  What else?  I feel like meat! Okay, all the meats sound good and the egg but maybe more cheese for color. And mmmm...ranch but not the watered down crap. Okay, that all sounds good. Hmm, maybe it is a little too fatteneing, better add some coutons to counteract all the protein and fat!  Alright. 

Out loud: okay, I know what I want!

Oh, couton. If only you could enter our lives and sprinkle our salads with delightfully sinless crunch!

Shelley's not the one for me

Although I was initially completely gung-ho about Discardia, the momentum has slowed considerably. That is in part due to the supremely crappy weather we have been having. I have no motivation for anything! Spring cleaning, ha!
These pictures are part of a "collection" that I took back in February- the proof is in the date stamp.  I pulled a bunch of books off the shelves and sent a large number to the thrift. The rest, like this Shelley book are in a paper bag labeled "re-evaluate in 6 months (August 2013)."  They are the books that are inscribed or have some special significance. I am not sure why this book jumped out at me today. Perhaps it is because I am waxing nostalgic at my childhood. Indeed, lately I have been seriously contemplating, questioning and examining my childhood in order to figure out what I am all about now as a mother and 36 year old woman.  Sounds cheesy doesn't it? Well, write to me if you have an alcoholic mother and we can talk. I do not need to justify myself to you or anyone else. Yes, I do know that I am being defensive and offering thoughts as if they were asked for. You may not have asked but I am going to tell you anyway. Who are you anyway? I am the only one that reads this blog so I am really only conversing with myself. That's fine. Probably better that way.
Anyway, my mother and father must have done something right if a high school teacher saw potential in me, even if my peers did not. I always felt misunderstood, like all teenagers. But I also felt like I needed to be different. Or rather I felt I was different in an agreeable way. I was proud of the way that I was able to be my own person. Even if it meant that I forever secluded myself from a vast majority of my classmates who thrived on fitting in and belonging.  I was made of stronger stuff than I might have let on about when under pressure. I still am a strong person. My husband tells me so.
I never read the Shelley book. I never cared for his style. I kept the book solely for the inscription. And you have to admit that it is pretty good. Not just a Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas. This was personal.  It did always nag at me, though, that despite the insight Mrs. Aavang seemed to have into my inner soul, the book was not even close to being one I would cherish and re-read till the pages were worn and the ink smeared.  Maybe she was trying to push me farther into my own person. Maybe she thought that my responses to the poetical analyses were an indication of my fondness for Shelley. Maybe I should have read the book.

Governor Squawker

As I type this Annika is still screaming upstairs in her bed. It is hard to tell if she is getting any less frantic. My head hurts from the noise. The sound of the typing keys is almost too much. This will have to be short. At times like these the only thing that eases the pain and angst is a hot shower. And since I didn't take one this morning I could really use the cleansing waters.
This baby girl amazes everyone when we are out in public. She charms the pants off everyone. I am not exaggerating. Complete strangers have told us that she is the most beautiful baby they have ever seen. She is the most calm baby ever. She has the most beautiful eyes. Oh those eyes! Oh that hair! Is she always this calm they ask. Ha! As if.
She still does not sleep through the night. and she tends to do all of her crying between the hours of 6 pm and 6 am.  The night before last she was awake around 11 pm or something so I nursed her.  She went back to sleep with only a few noises. But she woke up less than 2 hours later fit to be tied. So we let her cry. We let her scream. We let her keep us awake. We groaned and cursed and pounded the pillows until 1.5 hours had passed. Steve stormed into get her intending to feed her a bottle of formula. I followed him and nursed her even though it had not been 4 hours since her last feeding.  She woke up then around 6 am.  And I can count the number of times that this child has woken up happy on one hand! She just instantly screams.  When I am standing too close to her while she screams it makes my ears hurt. I do believe that her screams are making me deaf to that decible.  She could wake the dead! So Steve started calling Annika Governor Squawker. More like Governess Screamer. It is just unreal.
Annika is just this tiny little petite baby who weighs only about 15 pounds. That's 14th percentile or something. No big shakes in size. But if we could measure her vocal output she would be off the charts! I think we have to come to terms with the fact that she is just not over the colicky business. She is just a fussy baby. Or maybe we should just be putting her to sleep in public places. I should cart the pack and play around and just set up baby bedtime wherever we happen to be. Target shoe aisle? Woodman's produce section?  I know that would fail.  For Easter weekend we were in Santa Barbara with Steve's family. She showed her true colors at night there- Uncle Mark can tell you "Yeah, she really gets all worked up doesn't she?"  And I think one day she started to let loose when she was hungry and tired and she had to wait. But I know that all those pregnant sisters are hoping for a calm baby like Annika, except one that will sleep through the night. We intimated a couple of times that there were a couple months of hell and they were surprised. Guess if you don't ask the right questions you won't get the full story! We were "off radar" for a reason people! Seriously.
I don't wish Squawker tendencies on anyone. I do wish though for some perspective. For someone in the family to be able to nod their heads and truly understand how we feel. With 3 more nephews/nieces on the way there is bound to be a fussy one in there, isn't there? Governor Squawker can't be the only one can she? Really?

Missing Sweater

When I took the pictures of this sweater I did not think that I was setting us for actually really needing the pictures. But that's how life works it seems.
This sweater has special significance for me.  My best friend, Emily, loaned it to me a few years ago. I had left Emma home with Steve and headed to Chicago to spend some time with my friend. I don't remember what we did, but I clearly remember wanting a warmer shirt or sweater. Emily had a lot of clothes, but she is smaller than I am so the choices were somewhat limited.  As soon as she showed me the striped sweater I chose it. I loved it instantly and I know that it was also one of Emily's favorites.
Back in our high school days people used to think that Emily and I were sisters. We both had long, dark hair. We both wore red plaid shirts as coats. We spent a lot of time together.  One thing we loved to do was shop at resale shops and garage sales. We often found things that we both wanted- shirts or sweaters were often equally desired by both of us. We took turns keeping the contested items. We may have even shared a sweater or two.
So here we were many years later and reliving the good old days through fashion. I think Emily let me wear the sweater home to wash it.  What I didn't know was that Emily had emailed Steve and told him to wrap the sweater up for my birthday. So he hid it and on my birthday he gave it to me from Emily. It was the best present! When I talked to Emily she told me it was mine until I decided to return it to her.

I wore the sweater a lot, always thinking of my friend. I loved that sweater and got excited every winter when I would "find" it among my other winter clothes. It was my favorite sweater ever.
Emily came up for Annika's baptism and I wore the sweater on that Saturday. I knew when I put it on that day that it would be one of the last times I wore it. I felt like it needed to go back to Emily. Of course she commented on it and said something like maybe if a certain guy saw me in it, it would make him fall in love with me. Out of context that sounds odd but there you have it. So I didn't say what I was thinking but I knew that I would be giving it back to her soon- before winter was over.
Then before Christmas after washing the sweater one last time I wrapped it and put it in an envelope along with a nice long note to Emily. I told her how much I loved the sweater and how great it was of her to share it with me. I told her that I weaved some magic into it for her. She would know if the spells worked if after wearing the sweater a few times, a certain guy falls in love with her, she finishes and publishes a book that makes her famous and if she comes into some money. I put it in the mail using the drop box and automated teller on December 24th. That was the last I ever felt it. Emily never received it.
While talking with Emily after new years she said something about her guy saying he loved her. But she didn't mention the sweater or my note. So I asked her if she got a package from me even though I knew the answer. We're convinced that someone stole the package (it has happened at her place before apparently) and hope that the person feels really bad. I am deeply distressed that I lost the sweater that we both loved so much. And of all the packages and boxes we sent for the holidays, that was the one that I should have insured. That was the one that if I had thought about it before hand I would have said would be the worst one to lose.
So this is my tribute to a thing. Something that meant a lot to my best friend and I, but that is just a thing. At least I still have my friend! She asked me a couple of times to share what I had written in the note and was amazed that her guy said he loved her and that I wrote about that in my note. I guess the sweater magic was stronger that we knew!

Discarding felines

Discardia is a book we all should read, especially if we want to organize and simplify our lives. This book has inspired me to be more rigorous in my pursuit of reducing clutter in my house! One idea presented in the book is to consider an item you no longer use or want but hesitate getting rid of it because of sentimental or nostalgic reasons.  So photograph it, write about it and then get rid of it. (My personal caveat: get rid of it responsibly- trash it only if there is no way to recycle, reuse or thrift it.) This is my first post for my new discardian self. 

My husband's grandmother gifted us the kitty in the flowers wall hanging back when we had cats or still admitted that we liked cats. (The whole story of how we came to not have cats anymore is a long humorous and heart wrenching tale for another day.) Now that I think about it, this may have been a birthday present to me.  When I see it I think of how sweet Bugga was to think of me. I feel like it represents that I may have a more important place in the family than I thought.  Still...this wall hanging has not seen the light of day or hung flush to a wall in over 10 years. It's time to say goodbye.

My mom made me the large cat wall hanging back when I was still in college (I think.) It did hang on our basement wall when we first moved into this house, but it no longer fits my style or who I am.  Once upon a time I had dreamed of being a wildlife vet specializing in large cats. I loved large cats. I still find them impressive and awe inspiring, but the dream has long since passed. And I really don't want to decorate my house with them. That reminds me that I have some posters that need to go as well. Goodbye big cats!