Secret Mommy

New Adventures in sign language!

2012-01-27T16:22:00.000-08:00

Secret Mommy is always looking for new challenges. (Despite considering myself a pretty lazy person...) Right now life obviously is busy. We're expecting a new baby in May or June. I'm in charge of the fundraising auction for my son's preschool, which will be held in April. And I just decided to start a new business. Nothing like keeping the schedule full, 'eh?

I've just received my training materials and will soon become an Independent Certified Instructor for the Baby Signs® Program. I'm super excited about this as I have done sign language with both boys and it was a very rewarding experience. I'm a strong believer that it really did cut down on frustrations and tantrums in my kids during those pre-talking and new-talking with few words stages of life. Mostly, though, I always just found it a fun way to engage and play with them when sometimes it's hard to find something baby might be interested in. (Besides, of course sucking on their toes for the 11th hour that day...) Haha!

I'll be keeping you all posted here as I get set up with my new business website which will include a link to ordering materials and seeing my class schedule.

It's funny that I've decided to embark upon this adventure RIGHT as Eddie and Henry both have recently re-discovered sign language. They obviously both speak a lot now (seriously, a LOT!) but now they are curious about how to say fun things like dinosaur or giraffe or dirt or bug. And they both also seem to remember that since THEY did sign language as babies that they want to help teach their new baby sister to learn her sign language. It's very cute.

Have fun and stay busy! We sure will.

Children raising themselves...and doing a GREAT job!

2012-01-20T09:03:00.000-08:00

When I only had one kid I did a lot of patting myself on the back for what great parenting choices I made. Henry slept all night, ate EVERY kind of food (including kale and beets) that I ever gave him, never fussed or cried, never watched television, etc. etc. etc. Then I sprouted another child and some of my choices got lazier. I still made Eddie's baby food, but he was a MUCH pickier eater and remains stubborn about trying new things (unless it's his idea...) They watch entirely too much television, tho I do still hold the reigns tightly on WHAT they watch. And they are generally more "free" to make their own choices.

Which is sometimes bad. And sometimes not so much.

I was feeling a touch lazy this morning, so I asked the kids, "Do you guys want to watch a cartoon?" (Mama needed to check some emails and do a bit of fundraising work...) Henry said, "Um, no, I don't think so. I think I'll read Eddie a book on my iPad." (Okay, so still a "screen," but one where they sit together and do something that does require a LITTLE bit of input and cooperation...and BTW...my kid does not own an "iPad," but rather a $70 vTech Innotab which I think was one of the coolest gifts EVAR because he has learned to be very responsible with how much time he spends on it...HE seriously will choose after brief periods of "iPad-ing" to put it away and go play outside or in his room.) Later I asked, "What kind of cereal do you guys want for breakfast?" And BOTH squirts said, "Oatmeal, please!!!" and then Henry followed with, "Can we have cranberries in it?"

Oh how I love them. I've started to transition in this path of motherhood from patting MYSELF on the back for my choices to patting my CHILDREN on the back for theirs. And there's so much of this road yet to travel...

The funny side effects of watching television

2012-01-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

My oldest son is CRAZY about arts & crafts, decorating for holidays, and doing any number of things in the kitchen - from squeezing slightly over-ripe oranges to make orange juice to helping with a batch of cookies to unloading the dishwasher. I like this side of his personality because he's otherwise sort of a rugged sporty kid with a loud voice, tons of energy for things like sledding (pic from yesterday when we FINALLY had snow in our neighborhood) and basketball and wrestling with his dad and brother. I think balance in all things is wonderful and worth encouraging.

But sometimes I wish he wasn't so into kitchen-stuff. Because I don't really feel that guilty when I turn on the television to let my kids watch a few cartoons now and then. But when Henry exclaims, "OH! I WANT THAT! WE NEED THAT!" every time the Bake Pop commercial comes on, or the new Cookie Magic commercial with play-dough colored cookie dough and a weird play-dough looking squeezy contraption, or now this new cupcake pan that makes cupcakes with a hole in the middle to fill with candy...then I start feeling the obvious reaction about the TV. He watches too much! Isn't it funny? I don't mind if he watches a half hour of Transformers Prime or begs to watch the Caillou Christmas movie for the 80th time this winter. But when he starts begging for things he sees advertised in commercials I feel we've got a problem. (However I am also going to try combating the problem today by making a batch of cupcakes today that we'll happily scoop the centers out of ourselves with a grapefruit spoon to fill with lemon filling before frosting with a heaping mound of yummy frosting. No special, expensive, tiny cupcake pan needed!) :)

And then there's Eddie. He likes Sesame Street. There are way worse things for him to love, so I let him watch it a few days a week. I noticed the last few days, though, that he likes to call Bert & Ernie, "Bernie." Collectively. Bernie. He means both of them. I say, "Do you mean Bert and Ernie?" And he says, "Yah, Bernie." And I can picture him as a teenager or adult meeting a couple of dudes named Bert and Ernie. And Eddie, in his extreme confidence, impatience for things that take more time than they should, and sense of humor will call the two a collective, "Bernie." And they'll correct him and once again rattle off their individual names and he'll smile in a really charming way and say, "Yeah. Bernie!" And they'll just have to go along with it because they will sense that his resistance is stronger than a stone fortress.

And here's a pic of cute and stubborn monkey himself. I wanted to get him to stand by his brother and neighborhood friends for a pic. Did he? No.

Tough Morning Crowd

2012-01-12T08:14:00.000-08:00

Oh my is it ever getting rough around here! And we're about to add another munchkin to the mix! Haha!

This morning, Henry came and got in bed with my husband and I at about 6 am. Henry was all snuggled up with me, but when hubby got up to get ready for work around 6:15, Henry rolled over to Daddy's spot, which is WAY far away for a 3 year old in a King-sized bed. So I was VERY surprised when 5 or 10 minutes later Eddie woke up and came in and got in bed on my side and snuggled up to me and Henry FREAKED out! He jumped down out of the bed and went running and screaming down the hallway to his room saying, "NO! Don't snuggle my Mommy! I'M SNUGGLING MY MOMMY! Wahhhhh, wahhhhh, wahhhhhh, wahhhh!"

Poor Eddie was so relaxed and comfy and he stopped sucking his thumb and said, "Oh, Henry don't like Eddie? No? Henry don't like Eddie?"

I said, "Oh, honey. Of course Henry likes Eddie. He loves you, hun. He's just frustrated because he wanted to snuggle."

Eddie stuck his thumb back in his mouth and went RIGHT to sleep. I guess he was not as scarred as his words led me to believe.

Sooooooo........I really only have 2 sides and if new baby co-sleeps with me for a few months like her brothers did...where are these jealous snugglers going to go? Hopefully Daddy can lure them over to the warm side of the bed. :)

Gender neutral? Not here.

2012-01-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I went through my tubs (and tubs and tubs and tubs) of baby clothes. I've got 2 boys and they've been pretty well-dressed little munchkins. I wanted to see if anything in the buckets would work for baby girl to cut down (somewhat...) on what needed to be sewn, purchased, borrowed, thrifted, etc.. But as I went through the bucket saying, "Awwww! I remember this outfit on Henry. It was SO ADORABLE!" and "Oh, this was Eddie's going-home jumper," and stuff like that, I found very little I want to put on little girly. Maybe it's because I've already had 2 boys and am ready for some glam 'round here, but I just don't have much interest in "gender neutral" clothing. We do have a really sweet pair of footed sleepers with yellow duckies that someone bought for Eddie that she'll wear, partly because they are such amazing quality and still look brand new and partly because the Peter Pan collar is to die for cute. There's also a newborn onesie or two with a little embroidered nursery rhyme animal on the front, and a couple of boyish t-shirts that I think will just look cute on the little stinker-girl (one baseball shirt with a piranha on it that was insane on Ed and a long-sleeved green robot t-shirt that Henry rocked and a Johnny Cash onesie in black that both boys looked awesome in and so will J.)

But the rest of the little baby boy clothes I either boxed back up in case we do this again and have a boy, or I separated into a couple piles for friends who are due to have little boys of their own in the next few weeks.

Now that I have an inventory of what can be re-used from the previous squirties, I can start assessing what exactly baby needs, what I want to make and what I want to shop for.

This little apron dress is at the TOP of my list to make. A good friend of mine made similar dresses for her daughter in many sizes and many fabrics and I vowed to do the same thing if I ever was blessed with a little girl.

I didn't buy the diaper-cover pattern because our cloth diapers are already so cute AND I have a free diaper-cover tutorial already bookmarked that I think I can make my own ruffles for. I'm planning to make a few of these swingy apron tops and diaper covers out of the same Anna Maria Horner LouLouThi fabric that I'm doing the baby room in. Lots of sewing for me in the next 5 months!

The baby GIRL in my belly...

2012-01-06T09:17:00.000-08:00

So we found out yesterday that the Secret Mommy baby growing in my belly is indeed a GIRL child! I'd sort of had a hunch that direction, but wasn't sure I trusted that instinct. (Should have known better...I knew both times before that I was having a boy before the ultrasound confirmed it.)

Anywhoosies, tho I don't want to go completely crazy purchasing stuff, I am excited to girly-fy the nursery AND newborn baby clothing stash and I want your suggestions!

What are your fave girly colors/prints of cloth diapers? And what are your favorite brands of girly clothes? I have a feeling that some of my fave brands for the boys are not going to be my fave brands for Josie. I like Hanna Andersson and Polarn O. Pyret (and even just dumped a couple cute little newborn girl dresses into my Polarn O. Pyret shopping cart...) I really like well-made and unique styles, colors, designs. I LOVE non-fussy but adorable clothing. I would especially love to find your favorite Etsy.com destinations for girly baby shopping.

And what are your favorite dress, pant, top, hat or whatever patterns for SEWING for baby girl? I imagine many pillowcase dresses are in my future. But what else? And what about cutie-pie baby or little girl toys? Do you have any tutorials or patterns for sewing up simple dolls and doll dresses?

Oh, I just can't wait!

Bottle..."What dat?"

2012-01-03T16:35:00.000-08:00

Eddie had his 2 year well-baby check-up at the doc today. Her name is Dr. Perreira, Eddie calls her, "Dr. Bella." So cute. He remains fit as a fiddle, spry, energetic, 70th percentile in weight, 90th in height and cute as a bug's ear. Oh, that last thing was not measured by the doctor and was simply an assessment by this completely biased Mommy. (Though he did receive a complement from "Dr. Bella" on his luxuriously long and curly hair.) :)

While waiting in the super fabu waiting room at the doc's office, Eddie struck up a convo with another 2 year old boy. They gazed at the bright neon fishes in the fish tanks, talked about trains and toy cars and various other things. Then Eddie spied that the boy had a little sister and lost ALL interest in his new buddy. Eddie squatted down onto his knees and sat staring into the baby bucket/car carrier thing with all the patience and bedside manner of Mother Theresa. He wasn't loud, wasn't fast, didn't touch her. He just sat there with his chubby little hands on his knees staring at her and every now and then saying, "Awwwww.....cute!" Her mama seemed to think Eddie was pretty cute, too. I asked how old the baby was (I couldn't see her since the bucket thing was turned away from me) and was surprised to hear the mama say 11 months. I never have liked carrying my kiddos in one of those things anyway, (Yeah babywearing!) but definitely did not pack my heavy babies around in them past about 3 months old. But obviously to each his own.

Then the baby made a teeny tiny squeaky noise. I don't think she cried or was upset, but again I couldn't see her face. Eddie had asked, "Kiss baby?" and the girl's mama said he could and he gave her a kiss on the cheek or forehead or maybe even square on the lips...I don't know. The big brother seemed annoyed to have lost his playmate, but was as enchanted by the fish tank as Ed was with Malia. While Eddie kissed the baby (I think he's going to be a politician...charming, a bit outlandish, and with ALL the smooth moves of a polished yes-man...) the mama dug a huge like 12 oz. or something bottle out of her bag and tried to stick it in the baby's mouth. Eddie never had a bottle in his life and looked at the thing with SUCH a strange expression. He looked at the baby with his head cocked to the side as she repeatedly spit it out and he finally turned to her mama and said, "What dat?" The mother looked at me and then to him and said, "It's a bottle. With her milk in it." And GUESS WHAT MY 2 YEAR OLD SAID?

"No Mommy Mook???" and grabbed his own chest. I love him.

New Year's Eve & Pregnancy Nightmares

2012-01-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

My family made it to about 8:10pm on New Year's Eve. The boys ASKED to go to bed while we were all laying in Mom & Dad's bed watching a movie that was only about half over. Once they were tucked in and asleep hubby and I couldn't help ourselves. We buttoned up the house, turned out all the lights and were both fast asleep by 8:30pm! Hahaha! Oh my gosh I crack myself up. I woke up around 12:05am hearing fireworks, popping and some yelling or cheering, but once I realized the rest of my fam was still sleeping (hubby told me in the morning that he'd woken up around the same time to the same noises but also went right back to sleep...) I rolled over and snoozed myself further until SEVEN am on New Year's Day! I'll take it. Seriously, my twerps are usually up by 6am and I woke up VERY happy to find that I'd slept over 10 hours.

But despite getting a terrific night's sleep, last night was the first real night I had pregnancy nightmares. And thankfully they were - even in their nightmarish-ness - sort of silly enough that they didn't really terrify me.

The first nightmare I had was about where we delivered baby and by WHOM our baby was delivered. In real life, we are switching hospitals this time after two pretty not-wonderful experiences at the place about a 2 minute drive from our house. The new hospital is only about 5 to 10 minutes away...so this is not a big change. And I needed a new care provider anyway, after also being generally unhappy the last two times, so having to switch docs to one who delivers at the new hospital was no biggie at all. In my nightmare last night, I went into labor suddenly and the baby was COMIN' out! So hubby just drove me as fast as he could to the place right here by our house and I was rushed into the hospital where THE DOCTOR WHO I STILL BELIEVE FORCED ME INTO AN INDUCTION and consequently C-SECTION with Henry (in real life) said, "I don't care if that baby's coming out! I'm giving you another c-section!" And then she wheeled me into the operating room where she continued to berate me for bad-mouthing her all over town (I have...but usually I don't mention her name, just tell people how awful my first ob/gyn was...) while she surgically removed my baby from my body. Awful.

Then the second nightmare was after we'd gotten home from the hospital and I was taking a nap with the baby in a bassinet right next to my bed. Henry and Eddie decided to "help" Mommy out by taking the baby for a walk so I could sleep longer. And so I woke up (in my nightmare) to find my house completely empty and not knowing where ANY of my children were...that one is still giving me the creeps, actually.

The third one I don't remember that well, but had something to do with the new baby TALKING to me while I was changing his/her (I think it was a "she" in my dream...but don't remember) diaper. That also freaked me out.

I don't recall EVER having pregnancy-related nightmares before. The whole time I was preggo with Henry other friends would tell me about these terrifying dreams/nightmares and I just could not relate. I was brimming with self-confidence and could not have been more ready to have a baby. I don't think I had any worries in my sub-conscious that needed to come out in my nocturnal thoughts. With Eddie, I was raising an 11 to 20 month old during that pregnancy - one who was still nursing AND in diapers - and so I was just too pooped for worry or nightmares, I think. Haha! I didn't have time for such foolishness. This time I think I am letting my mind and body occasionally think, "Oh crap. Do I have it in me to handle 3 children under age 5 on a DAILY basis without losing/breaking/ruining one of them?" I think the nightmares I had last night were all related to some anxieties I have with this pregnancy. I do worry. And I'm trying for a VBA2C (vaginal birth after 2 cesareans) which is both risky and semi-rare (well, not THAT rare, but also not THAT common...KNIM?) and could be impossible for me if I have another 10 lb. babe that won't fit down into that birth canal.

Did you ever have pregnancy-induced or related nightmares? Or just plain ole' bizarre and crazy thoughts or dreams? In a way I hope I don't have any more, but in another way I wonder what else my brain is capable of cooking up while I sleep. :)

18 weeks.........................

2011-12-30T14:13:00.000-08:00

Almost half way there! Well, I shouldn't really say that, because 20 weeks is technically half way. Henry was forced out a day after his due date and Eddie came on his own a week AFTER his due date, so tho I know there's probably no connection, I've little reason to think this baby plans on coming anytime BEFORE or even around his/her due date. Haha! I don't mind. I'm gearing up for my absolute FAVORITE part of pregnancy. I'm a terrific 2nd & 3rd trimester preggo. I suffer a few symptoms like restless leg syndrome, back aches and heartburn that I complain about far too much, but all in all I really adore being pregnant. And the more biggy preggy the better in my mind.

My only wish is that I could drink some REAL champagne for New Year's. I just love champagne. And tho I believe that a tiny little glass would be okay, my hubby doesn't like it and so I won't bother buying or opening a bottle. Pooh! Catch me next year, New Year's Eve!

Necktie in a pinch...Waldorf Spiral Walk

2011-12-28T10:06:00.000-08:00

Earlier in December, my oldest had a "Spiral Walk" program at his school. It is a traditional winter celebration in Waldorf education and he had so much fun getting all dressed up and participating in it. The whole school community had a wonderful time as we all had a potluck of appetizers, snacks and desserts and then we assembled in the music room for a few winter and Christmas songs, including one that our own kindergarten class wrote themselves! It was a woodsy-inspired version of the 12 days of Christmas and it was awesome.

Anywhoo, when getting ready for the event, my youngest became pretty jealous that big brother had a necktie. I'd found a clip-on tie for Henry a couple of weeks prior and hadn't thought to pick up a 2nd one for Eddie. (Seriously, did I just become a mother of 2 children yesterday?) As it was, both boys were sort of donning thrown-together "dress-up" outfits. Eddie's was comprised of a hand-me-down plaid shirt of Henry's, a pair of skinny jeans and his adorable Chuck's canvas sneakers. They were the nicest and cleanest shoes he had that I could find. Henry was wearing the dress-shirt that came with the clip-on tie for a bargain price ($10 for the shirt, tie and a rather unattractive vest and pants combo that were both surprisingly too big even tho the shirt fit and tie was actually much too short????) He was also wearing a very nice pair of dress pants that we bought for him to wear to a funeral a year ago. And in the world of a 3 year old, a year ago means a SIZE ago. I could barely get them buttoned and they were a smidge too short. He also wore his Chuck's sneakers and I thot they were precious and cute but also wished the boys had some nicer dress shoes.

When Eddie's tantrum required that I figure out some kind of necktie solution, my husband said, "Just cut him a strip of fabric and I'll tie it like a tie." I thought it was absolutely genius for my very non-crafty hubby to even remember that I *HAVE* a closet full of fabric, but for some reason his instructions were misinterpreted in my head and I ran downstairs and cut a necktie SHAPE out of felt. The felt was good. We only had about 10 minutes and I wasn't going to be hemming up frayed edges of regular fabric. But I should have cut strings for the tie to be tied around Eddie's neck. What I did was cut the tie shape and then safety pin it to the top of his buttoned shirt. But when he got tired of it he gave it a huge yank and the pin popped open and I was afraid he'd poke himself before I could get it out of his shirt.

He loves the tie, though, and brings it to me almost every day to be pinned onto whatever jammies or t-shirt or sweater he's wearing. I'm thinking of adding strings or velcro or a resin snap or SOMETHING to make it safer when he tires of it.

Santa bags!

2011-12-20T16:36:00.000-08:00

My kids are young and don't really know too much yet (I don't think...) about Santa. Neither of them is super crazy about sitting on his lap. But Henry's old enough now that he really wanted to write a letter this year to tell Santa what he wanted, and Eddie goes bananas saying, "Santa, Santa, Santa! I wuv you, Santa!" when he sees him from a distance. I, myself, have been a long-time believer in Santa Claus and so feel no guilt whatsoever in helping my children to believe in this magical, giving, cheerful little part of Christmas.

Both boys are receiving Santa gifts this year that they asked for (first time ever in this house...Eddie was previously too young and Henry's never really asked for anything...) and the toys they requested are large-ish, bulky and came in those darn open-faced type boxes that are odd-shaped, hard to wrap and impossible to figure out what to do with. In my house Santa gifts were always wrapped, tho I have heard from many friends that in their houses the Santa gifts just have a bow. I wanted to wrap my boys' gifts, but wanted it to be special. At first I bought a roll of special Santa paper that I'd only use each year for Santa presents and would try very hard to keep hidden in between Christmases. But the paper was flimsy and did a terrible job covering up those awful, annoying, awkward boxes.

Then I decided to make Santa bags! I thought it would be super special and would be something I could easily fold up and keep hidden from year to year. (Nor will it be hard to whip up some new ones in years when a new oddly sized or shaped gift needs figured out...) Today I trekked to the fabric store and found some very charming vintage-y looking cream, green and red striped flannel that was 25% off this close to Christmas. Then I found some very pretty green polyester cording. I bought 2 yards of the felt and 3 yards of cord. When I got home I roughly wrapped each gift in the flannel to make sure I knew where/how to cut it and then I made a couple bags. One bag is slightly over a yard and the other is slightly under. One bag is sort of short and wide and the other a bit more tall and narrow. I wanted the bags to fit this year's gifts, but possibly accommodate next year's, too. The larger bag took almost 2 yards of cording for the draw-string and the smaller one took just over a yard, but could have used a slightly longer chunk if I'd bought more.

I didn't take any step-by-step pics, but certainly can re-make a bag and do so (after Christmas!) :) if anyone's interested. It was a super quick and easy project and I think the boys will LOVE playing with the bags on Christmas day, too. (Plus the bags will make packing up all their stocking stuffers and small toys easier, too, since we'll be at our cabin and have to haul all that stuff home.)

Activity Advent Calendar Ideas

2011-12-16T11:28:00.000-08:00

I really wanted to do an "activity" Advent calendar for my squirts this year and never got around to it. We've ended up doing much of the stuff I might have put in it for activities, (make cookies, drink cocoa, go see Christmas lights, wrap presents, sing Christmas carols, etc.) but I think as crazy as my elves are about Christmas, they'd have liked the additional decoration AND the tradition and "event" of opening up a new activity each day. So like any good mama who procrastinates something one year, I'm already doing some research for the awesome-o calendar I'm going to craft next year. Here are some ideas I found around the interwebs that I really like:

Both of these ideas come from Budget Wise Home and link to other places, but I'm just going to link you to Budget Wise Home, because she has done an entire series of posts with Advent calendar ideas that are all pretty cute.

Aren't those great? For me, I'd still use the hanging flashcards with a new activity for each day, but maybe in addition I'd keep the idea of a new cute ornament each day, too. And then with the books, I'd just wrap up the GAZILLION Christmas books we already have and then write a new activity on the outside of each package. So maybe each morning the boys could get up and unwrap a "new" book AND learn our activity for the day. (This year I noticed when I pulled out our box of Christmas books that it was overwhelming and we haven't read them all because it's a touch unorganized...wrapping them up and opening one at a time might make it more special.)

And then I also like to sew and many of these fabric craft ideas catch my eye. These all came from a series The Crafty Crow did, and so again, rather than linking you to each of these projects individually, I'm going to link you to the series at The Crafty Crow so you can check out ALL the goodies. (Including a cute toilet-paper-roll craft that might be fun specifically for the play room or kids' rooms!)

Sort of doesn't surprise me to find an idea I like from the Family Fun magazine. They always have super cute and quite simple ideas. This one would be simple to put together and you could write your activity right inside the paper tree or have it hanging on a separate piece of paper in there or many other ideas...

I'm also fond of these cute little boxes in a frame from Buzzings of a Queen Bee. The body part of the box is fixed (permanently with glue or temporarily with magnets to a backing of sheet metal) and the child removes the lid each day to find their activity. I guess now that I'm checking into all these ideas I do like the ones that allow for some kind of treat AND activity each day, like the trees above and these boxes below.

Well, now that I've posted all my ideas, I see that I'm drawn most to the adorable linen/felt stocking garland or the wrapped Christmas books. We'll see what strikes me next November when it's time to pull all of this together!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

60+ Stocking Stuffer Ideas for Toddlers/Preschoolers

2011-12-13T19:51:00.000-08:00

A conversation started recently in an online group I frequent and someone asked about stocking stuffer ideas for 1 to 3 year olds. I happen to have a couple of those, so I quickly posted her a list of what is going in my kids' stockings this year or has in the last year or two. Some of these ideas would work for slightly older kids. The under toddler crowd in this house has typically gotten a new cloth diaper, small stuffed animal or toy, a teether or some other small toys like baby keys. Some items on this list may also work for infants, but probably not many. I have two boys but tried not to make a boy-centric list. After all, I *used* to be a little girl and I've always ADORED opening my stocking!

Chapstick
Toothbrush
Finger puppets (or other small puppets)
Matchbox cars
Small note pads for doodling
Crayons, markers, colored pencils, chalk, pastels, etc.
Kid-safe scissors
Flashlights (small, kid-safe)
Small dolls or newborn baby dolls
Doll clothes
Wooden trains or accessories (like street signs, trees, connecting pieces of track, etc.)
Small containers (store-bought or homemade) of playdough (or other "dough" type toys like Moon Sand, Play Foam, silly putty, slime, flubber or whatever else.)
Playdough accessories such as small rolling pins or cookie cutters
Craft store packets of foam stickers, googly eyes, pony beads, ribbon, tubes of glitter, etc. for the crafty kiddo
Kid-safe (plastic lens and handle) magnifying glass
Packets of seeds (great if they are indoor-sprouting things that can be grown in the windowsill starting right after Christmas!)
Kid-friendly chopsticks (my young kids LOVE theirs and are so great at using them for all kinds of foods!)
Apple, orange, popcorn ball, nuts in shell
Typical Christmas candies (I particularly like candy that is or includes a small toy, like a Santa Pez dispenser or the M&M toy filled with candy that seems available every year.)
Movies on DVD
Small plastic animals or other figures
Small musical instruments like kiddie harmonica, recorder, finger cymbals, maracas, etc.
Inexpensive, small and safe jewelry for children (harder and harder to find these days, seems it all gets recalled for choking hazards or lead paint...)
A few coins (my guys LOVE "money!") especially special ones like 50 cent pieces or silver dollars.
A crazy pair of socks (not Christmasy, but something colorful and zany that can be worn all year. Stripes, fuzzy, weird colors, etc.)
Package of thank-you notes with their name or initials printed on it for Christmas and birthday thank-you card writing (Paper Moon Shop has TERRIFIC kid-styles of stationery at reasonable prices!)
Non-candy kiddo snacks (like CLIF Kid Z bars or GoGo Squeez applesauce packets)
Kid-safe fingernail polish (like Piggy Paint)
Funny shoelaces to replace plain old white ones in their sneakers
Rubber stamps and a non-toxic ink stamp pad
Sheets of stickers
Homemade bottle of "monster spray" or "fairy dust" or any such other potion that might apply to your child's needs/desires/interests
Batteries (this one's kind of dull, but I seem to remember that I'd get batteries in my stocking as a kid and then I'd KNOW something I was about to get took THOSE batteries!)
This sort of goes with the above, but if you have some crazy, mysterious or otherwise benign "piece" of one of their gifts that might not completely give it away, you can put it in their stocking as a teaser.
Barrettes, ribbons, headbands or other hair accessories for girls (or a boy, like mine, with super long locks...haha!)
Personalized tchotchkes you find at various places this time of year, tree ornaments, tiny license plates, sticker books, jelly band bracelets, etc.
Those crazy rubber band shape things all the kids like that I don't get ;)
A few pieces of Legos, a new Lego figure or Playmobil figure
Any kind of "guy." My kids like GI Joe and Army men and these little outdoorsy men someone got them at Cabela's
Small photo album either pre-filled with pics of family they don't often see or one you can fill up together after Christmas and family snapshots get taken and printed
Sippy cup, water bottle or other liquid-holding vessel
Balls (baseball, bouncy, whiffle, etc.)
Rubber duck or other small bath toys
Small bottles of a soap, shampoo, bubble bath, lotion or other thing they like (My boys don't give a rip about any of this, I imagine some girls might have preferences for these things...) :)
Marbles, jacks, tops, yo-yo's and other small kinds of toys it seems like children don't play with much anymore but should
Novelty erasers in various shapes, colors, etc.
Keychains or other things with a hook or clasp to hang from their backpacks, jackets, etc.
Hats (stocking caps, baseball caps, etc.)
Miniature versions of larger toys, like mini slinky, mini Mr. Potato Head or mini etch-a-sketch
"Practical" things they might both need AND want, like mittens, underwear, etc. (bonus points in this department if they are wacky or zany...right?)
Refrigerator magnets (letters, animals, etc.) And it is true, someone mentioned to me in an email that Melissa and Doug make GREAT wooden refrigerator magnet sets of letters, animals, vehicles, dolls, etc.
Packages you make yourself of "elf donuts" (Cheerios with glaze and sprinkles on them,) "snowman poop," (mini marshmallows,) "coal," (bits of licorice candy) or other funny things. Put them in small zip-top bags and make cute labels to staple to the top.
Thank-you letter from Santa for the milk and cookies
Christmas ornament, especially if your family gives each child a new ornament each year, it can go in the stocking
Apron (a frilly baking apron for girls, a tool-belt style apron for boys, or a crayon-holding apron for either. All can be rolled up quite small for the stocking)
Felt food (traditional stocking stuffers in felt would be especially fun: candy canes, apples, oranges, acorns, lump of coal, etc.)
Unusual small toys. This year I found in a catalog but did not purchase some very cool "Finger lasers." I also found the teeny-tiniest headphone walkie-talkie things that seemed cool and were cheap enough if destroyed quickly...which I'm sure they would be.
Wrist-watch (both my kids LOVE wearing Daddy's watches! I need to get them their own but didn't this year. Maybe Easter baskets? LOL!)
Flash cards
Personalization stickers and bands to put on kiddo's fave possessions
Sunglasses
Paints (watercolor, acrylic, finger, tempera, paint pens, etc.)
Paintbrushes
Vanity set (handheld mirror, comb, brush)
Echo microphones (you know those inexpensive ones that kids seem to LOVE yelling into at 6am???)
Band-aids (cartoon or printed ones) or a boo-boo buddy (especially funny if they are accident prone...especially NOT funny if they've recently been seriously injured...)
Belt, neck-tie, small wallet or other "Daddy-like" items if you have a boy who wants to dress like Dad, as I do.
Lacing toy. Some lacing toys are small cardboard or plastic sheets with pictures on them and holes around, they come with a blunt wooden or plastic needle and a length of yarn, twine or ribbon. Other versions are a set of beads with a similar needle/thread set-up. GREAT for small hands around this age.
Steal a page from The Polar Express and put a fancy sleigh bell on a heavy piece of ribbon in your kiddo's stocking.
Small puzzle
Dollhouse furniture
Swim cap or goggles for the water baby in your life (or just to fun around with in the bath tub)
British? Then you already know to have some Christmas Crackers on hand for the special day. They'd be a perfect fit inside a stocking.
Another slightly dull but possibly quite useful one...do they need any new parts or pieces of existing games and toys? Would a new wheel keep his fave dumptruck from the trash? A new pair of shoes make a certain doll seem just like new? Or how about an upgrade to some existing toy? Download cards or new software for a LeapFrog game?
Play silks (small to large silky scarves typical in Waldorf play and available in many toy stores and in numerous catalogs.)
Kid's music on CD. (I REALLY love shopping for kids music on the independent music site, CD Baby. Dan Dan Doodlebug and Nicolai Moderbacher are a couple faves around here.)
Face paints or crayons. (These Lyra face pencils from MightyNest.com seem especially awesome.)
Dover Little Activity Books for Children
Bicycle/tricycle accessories like a horn, handlebar tassels, spinner for the handlebars or wheels, etc.
Bubbles (store-bought or homemade.) I am not a big fan of blowing bubbles in the house because the store-bought ones have glycerin or something in them that seems to NEVER come off my wood floors and leaves them slippery, but in the winter they could be a bath-time activity...Also, they can be kind of fun to blow outside if you live in a very snowy/icy winter climate!
Silly straws
Kaleidoscope, prism, mini sun-catcher or other dazzling things to look at/through
Jump rope
Bath paints, bath crayons, or other fun novelty bath-time art supplies
Night light
Small wind-up or clockwork toys
Blow-up toys like beach ball, sword, animals, etc.
Paper dolls (or a boy-type version maybe? Check online or Etsy to possibly find interchangeable paper car or truck kits or something?)
Dice, standard or unique. Some have multiple sides that go up to 20, some have colors or shapes printed on the various sides. Would be good for making up a wide variety of games with toddlers/preschoolers.

Feel free to leave comments with ideas from your own family traditions! (Or just stuff you think sounds awesome that I didn't include.) I will keep updating the post and adding the new items you all think of and put in comments so they're all in one easy-to-read list.

As you can probably see from the length of this list, my boys often end up with more stuff than will actually fit in the stocking. I like to wrap a few of the larger pieces and lay them under and around the stocking where it lays in front of the fireplace waiting to be found Christmas morning.

Also please remember to use your own judgement when buying SMALL toys, games and items for Christmas stockings. I've got 2 kids who have never really put things in their mouths, so we can get away with little bouncy balls, small Lego men with tiny removable hair and hats, marbles and other such typical "chokey" kinds of things. Know your kids, obvi. :)

Another note: None of the items linked in this email were sponsored or suggested by advertisers. They are just products that I use or buy or that readers like you have suggested to me. I linked them only as a service to you last-minute shoppers. :)

Merry Christmas!

Spending too much time together?

2011-12-08T11:00:00.001-08:00

My squirts and I have been attached since each of them entered this big ole' crazy world. I like being around them and seldom have desires to be some place they are not.

That being said, my 3 1/2 year old has been acting lately like a boy who needs a bit more time away from his Mommy. I can't help but wonder if it's because we're just spending too much time together? He goes to preschool 2 days a week for 4 hours each time, but other than that he's generally home with me. He's been pushing against my rules, testing the limits, ignoring punishments and generally being sort of disagreeable. This all comes at a time when I'm expecting baby #3 (could he be jealous even tho he says he's excited?) AND my husband lately has been working crazy long hours and some days doesn't see the boys at all...so weekends are really it for their interactions.

Last summer, he went to stay for a week and a half with his Grandma and Grandpa and tho it killed me to be apart from him, he had a great time and returned home seemingly refreshed. I could never "ship him off" like that around the holidays OR take him out of school for such a trip, so does anyone else deal with these kinds of things and what are the best solutions?

A pic of my sweet boy the day he came home from his nearly 2 week trip away from home.

One funny thing about Henry's personality is that he remains just about the sweetest boy I've ever met in my whole life. His general disposition is one of calmness and compliance. He usually sees when I'm getting frustrated with his precocious and crazy younger brother and yesterday when I was about to blow steam out of my ears Henry said, "Mom? Could I just give you a hug?" So his testy, fiesty moments are more scattered throughout each day rather than an overwhelming part of his being. I'm pretty sure it's a common thing for his age, but I'd still love to hear of any tactics for dealing with the rough times. Thanks, mamas!

A two-year-old speaks (a LOT!) in the night...

2011-12-04T06:20:00.001-08:00

Shoot, I think I've mentioned here many times before that Eddie started talking later than Henry had and so we always joked that he was going to be our strong, silent guy. But then the floodgates opened right around Halloween and every SINGLE day since has been crazy. Simply crazy. We're at that stage now where he says a bunch of new stuff every day and we ask each other or ourselves, "Where on earth did he learn THAT?"

Last night I put him to bed at 8:30. He got up at 9 and I laid in his bed with him trying to snuggle him back to sleep. He got up again at 10 and 10:30 and each time I'd go lay in his bed for 5 to 20 minutes trying to snuggle him to sleep. While I laid there, he CHATTED. UP. A. STORM! Some examples of his hilariousness:

These boys frequently find reasons to sneak out of bed. But thankfully last night only one was feeling restless and un-sleepy.

Holding his little baby doll, "Baby fussy! Baby fussy, Mama! What I gonna do? Ohhhhh, baby fussy!" (I've never heard him say the word "fussy" before nor do I think I use it...)

Laying on his back and throwing his arms up over his head (laying on the beach-style,) "Read me book, Mama. Eddie bored."

Grabbing my chest, "Oh, I thirsty. I thirsty, Mama. Eddie have mama mook?" (He was weaned 2 weeks ago from nursing and hasn't asked about it once since. Nor has he ever EVER referred to having Mommy Milk (Mama mook) as something thirst-quenching.) When I said, "No, buddy, sorry." He said, "But it soooooo good! It good, Mama! Henry drink Mama mook! Daddy drink Mama mook! Eddie drink Mama mook!"

Looking up at the little transom-style window that is over his bedroom window and has no shade on it, (and therefore was letting in the glow of our many front-yard lights,) "Oh, Kwiss-mass wights! Kwiss-mass wights, Mama! Eddie go outside to Kwiss-mass wights! No sleep now, Mama!"

Trying to sit up and get out of bed during my 3rd or 4th attempt in his room to get him to sleep, "Nope. No nap now, Mama. Eddie not sweepy. Wake up now. No nap. Night, night, Mama." (I was still lying in his bed pretending to be asleep and hoping it would rub off.)

Oh there was so much more but after a pretty decent night's sleep I can't remember any more. But boy was it hard to not just lay there laughing with him. And honestly, in hindsight, I should have done just that. He was going to fall asleep when he was tired anyway and we could have had a good bit of fun while he was getting sleepy.

Next time. :)

As if...

2011-11-28T17:22:00.001-08:00

As if it weren't already easy enough to make this pregnant woman cry, my kids seem to be on a mission to see how many times a day they can cause water to fall happily from my eyes. I know they are still a bit young for plotting against their Mama, but I sort of can imagine them upstairs in Henry's room, sitting under a fort made of blankets, lighting their faces up with flashlights, and giggling about how easy it is to "get" Mama these days.

They are awfully cute, you know.

Anywhoosie, lately Henry has really taken great leaps in his doodling. Just a month ago if he sat down with pencil (or way back then it was more likely to be crayon) and paper, he'd scribble a few circles and maybe make some attempts at a couple of the letters he knows. He'd make large marks across the paper and tell me that they were dinosaurs or cars or a house or whatever, but I couldn't "see" it beyond the way moms say, "Oh! I see! It's wonderful." And of course it is wonderful, but I just never saw a dinosaur or car or house.

But now he sits down with pencil (his sketching tool of choice now that he's a "grown-up artist") and REALLY draws what he's telling me he's drawing. And when he shows me the picture, I can completely SEE what it is. Rocket ships, trucks, spiders, and our family are his favorite subjects. Which brings me to my tears. Yesterday he said he was going to draw a new picture and when he brought it to me he said, "See! This one is of you, Mama! And there's the baby in your belly and I drew you with really long curly hair because I think that when you grow a baby in your belly you also grow really long pretty hair." Okay, so the hair bit may have been a bit of a slam or opinion on my current short hairstyle, but the fact that he drew a picture of me with our new baby in my belly just got me. So sweet.

Today Eddie and I were sitting on the sofa snuggling after he took the very briefest of afternoon naps. Big brother was still napping and we were enjoying some quiet together time. All of the sudden he sat up from my lap and turned around to face me. He rubbed my cheek with his chubby little hand and then planted a big, juicy kiss right on my lips! Then without a word he turned back around and got himself re-settled into my lap.

Gushes. I sure love these fellas.

Random Tiddle Biddles...baby, knitting, handmade Christmas

2011-11-18T16:05:00.001-08:00

I had my early ultrasound yesterday to measure baby's neck (a non-invasive test to see if babe looks healthy and he/she looks terrific!) and I can't get over how amazed I always am to find what a perfect little teeny tiny human I have growing in my belly at just 12 weeks. My husband and I were both startled to tears when that first image of Henry came up on the screen. We thought he would look sort of faintly tadpole-ish or semi-resembling a human and then all of the sudden this wiggly little swimmer showed up on the black and white screen. With Eddie we were just as giddy and now with this baby I found myself crying just as much. Maybe it's because the little stinker is just so darn cute. Want to see a headshot? Of course you do! Here ya go! ;)

The babysitter my boys have is such a wonderful girl! She's a college friend of my youngest sister and lives close to me now, so she babysits just about every Thursday while Henry is in school and I go run errands, help at Henry's school or make myself busy with something. (Dr. appointments now, I guess....) Anywhooosie, she's a knitter and so has given Henry and Eddie some yarn and a little circular knitting loom thing and a couple of needles and they just LOVE to sit and play. Henry woke up from his nap yesterday, came downstairs and said, "Can I please do some yarning?" I got him a skein of yarn and a needle and he sat in his Daddy's lounge chair twisting the yarn around and around and watching his cartoons. It was so cute. Then of course Eddie needed some yarn and a crochet hook, too.

Then this morning he said, "Mommy, will you make me a blue scarf to keep my neck warm this winter?" So off I went to the store to pick up some navy blue bulky yarn and knitting needles and plopped myself down on the couch with Wool & the Gang's tutorial videos and away I went. I knitted as a kid, so I knew I just needed a refresher. I've never learned anything beyond knit stitch, but I think a cute little garter stitch scarf made out of this AWESOME chunky Lion Brand yarn will please my boy very much.

Isn't that yarn pretty? I cast on 20 stitches and so far have only done 3 rows, and I already think it's too wide for such a small neck, but I think I'll proceed and see what I think when it's a bit longer. I only bought one ball of this yarn, though...so I may find myself running back to the store for more. :)

I was daydreaming this morning about making a completely hand-made ornament covered Christmas tree this year. I've done this before. BEFORE having kids. And it seems so much more meaningful, appropriate and fun to do it now. But does this mama have the time between now and the 1st or 2nd weekend in December? We shall see. If I do...I'll be cruising Pinterest for ideas, that's for sure! :)

I'm back! With a recipe you NEED!

2011-11-16T10:16:00.001-08:00

How's that for a long hiatus, 'eh? First it was summertime and I was busy busy busy with the fam and found so little time for toy-making and baking and sewing and blogging and then whaddya know? Fall comes along and we find out we're expecting Secret Baby #3! Over the moon. Seriously. But the morning sickness hits this mama HARD and stays until a wee bit into the 2nd trimester (historically speaking...) and so I've been feeling too low to even come up with a few words to share with my fabu online friendies.

But today's find was just too good to wait on. I pinned this recipe some time ago on my Pinterest board for Snickerdoodle Muffins. Sounded pretty good and I've had a HANKERIN' lately for Snickerdoodle cookies, so when Henry woke up this morning and said, "Can we please make some muffins? I like baking." I had to give him a huge hug and kiss and prepare the kitchen for muffin-making.

My kiddos LOVE stirring!

I'm not going to re-type the whole recipe here, but what I changed was that I made these muffins CRANBERRY SNICKERDOODLE MUFFINS! Are you gasping right now? I was when I thought of it. And after reading the original blogger's notes about how she liked but didn't LOVE these muffins, me thinks I'm going to have to share my modification with her. Because these muffins ROCKED THE HOUSE today. Both boys were chomping and smacking and licking their fingers and I ate three. One for me, one for the baby and one for a bonus in case I got hungry later. ;)

Is there anything more gorgeous than cranberries?

So, follow the recipe exactly as Ashley has hers typed up at eat me, delicious. Except I couldn't find in her instructions where she used the nutmeg she called for, so I threw it in with the flour mixture in step 2. Then at the very end of step 3 after the batter was completely mixed, I folded in a heaping cup of coarsely chopped fresh (mine were actually frozen, but thawed by the time I mixed them into the batter...) cranberries.

Henry mostly handled step 4 for me, and we found that tho this batter is a much wetter and stickier batter than you would expect to be dropping into a bowl of sugar and cinnamon and rolling it around, it works. Drop your ice-cream-scoop's worth of dough in the bowl of sugar/cinnamon and then use your fingers to scoop the sugar/cinnamon mixture onto the top and sides of the dough until it's coated enough that you can grab it with your fingers and kinda flop it over. Repeat the dusting and then scoop it up once again and drop into your muffin tins. I also squirted a spray of Pam into each of my muffin tins even tho the original recipe didn't call for it.

Unbaked dough in the muffin tins. You'll have sticky fingers after this part, but it's more do-able than it seems at first.

My muffins came out pretty easily after they'd cooled a while. The first 4 (or 5 or 6) that we had to eat IMMEDIATELY were a bit sticky and fall-aparty as we pulled them out, but they were much firmer after cooling 15 minutes or so. It's possible that the addition of the cranberries might require an extra 1/4 cup of flour, and I think I'll do that next time.

After they came out of the oven. My food photography is awful, but the muffins are FANTASTIC! One extra note, you can fill your muffin tins pretty full, I didn't find a lot of rise in these muffins and the ones that had the fullest cups baked up with domed tops and looked the prettiest.

These would be a terrific item to have sitting on a platter Thanksgiving morning (make the day before...) for people to snacky on while you're busy cooking the big dinner. Or a Christmas morning breakfast with some kind of scrambled egg casserole or something? Anywhoosie, go make 'em. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Busy kid wallet...

2011-09-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

I might have saved this for another Make-a-Toy Tuesday post, but it's not really a handmade toy. It's more of a scrapped-together-out-of-whatever-you-have-handy kind of toy. But oftentimes those are the best kind, aren't they?

Originally, I saw this idea on Pinterest. I immediately loved it and couldn't believe I hadn't thot of it myself. The idea has become even MORE appropriate for our household since we've been buying "scrip" gift cards through Henry's school (it's a year-round fundraiser where the school sells gift cards at face value, but gets a percentage of the value for themselves...) Each time I use a card for grocery shopping or to pick up something we need, the boys want the spent card to play with. I do hate throwing away the little bits of plastic all the time, and so far I haven't found any of the cards that I buy "re-fillable." (Plus if I refilled the card at the store Henry's school wouldn't get its percentage...)

So anyway what I did since I didn't have an old wallet lying around was to pick up a cheap one ($4.00) at Ross Dress for Less, where I happened to have a scrip card I wanted to use and once I did it went in the wallet! When we got home, I filled the wallet with a bunch of other scrip cards the boys had been playing with, along with some business cards for child-friendly products we've purchased (Lunchbots, Snack Taxi, Earth Monkeys) AND one of Daddy's biz cards and even one of Mommy's old biz cards. I also cut up a few "dollars" from a piece of green craft foam I had handy, but felt would have also been nice. I think I will cut some coins out of foam or felt eventually, too. My kids are too young to be left to their own devices around the house with an ink pen, so I didn't bother buying a longer check-book style wallet, but if you had older kids and did this, you could include some blank scraps of paper in the money or checkbook section for random doodling.

Fun and easy idea, right? This would be a fun "toy" for road or airplane trips (you could fill it with new & special items like stickers or tiny homemade "books" or pictures of where you're traveling to or whom who you are going to see or ... ?) and would be especially handy for keeping kiddos in the cart entertained while grocery shopping. I think Henry might like if I made up a grocery list for him with drawings of various items that I could ask him to help me find. (Can of soup, bananas, box of cereal, loaf of bread, etc.)

Enjoy!

Make-a-Toy Tuesday RETURNS! (Sort of...)

2011-09-27T05:53:00.000-07:00

The longer I have a go at this blogging stuff, the more I learn about myself and my family and my work/blog ethic. I can see that I'm pretty much on track to work my blog "teachers hours." I can put in long hours when I need to, but holidays and summers you can pretty much expect to find me out of the classroom. :)

And now that the cool, rainy weather has returned (at least in Oregon where I am...) I find myself making a toy again! Today's toy was a quickie impromptu thing like most of my other creations and it was inspired by a terrifically fun and well-planned birthday party we attended only yesterday. A pajama party for one of Henry's pre-school classmate's 4th birthday. It was a super cute idea. The party was from 10:30 to 12:30 and all the kids wore jammies. They played games and did crafts and had a "bubble bath" (host mama blew bubbles at them from a very cool bubble blowing wand thing...and then they had a special breakfast/lunch where they built a Flip-Flap Jack out of a small pancake, small waffle and a few fruit and meat bits. It was so adorable. Can you see it very well here in my cell phone pic?

The "goody-bag" gift was a small plastic box (seriously great idea...what kid couldn't use some new small plastic box to corral some miscellaneous toy parts???) with a paper copy of the lyrics to the Flip-Flap Jack song and then pieces of craft felt cut into the appropriate shapes to make a reusable Flip-Flap Jack. So cute! Henry loved it and as soon as we were home he wanted to get out the few other pieces of felt we have around the house. Problem is, the only thing he had to build a story on was the blue piece of felt that came with Jack. But Mama remembered a leftover piece of thin plywood in the garage and several rolls of felt purchased for some long-ago thought-of but never executed craft project. So I grabbed the board (it's approximately 18" x 24") and wrapped a small piece of leftover quilting batting around it. I used hot glue to hold it in place because I didn't want to look for screws or a powertool or any other such device. I ALWAYS have my glue gun handy... I used a very dark navy blue felt to cover the board front and back and tucked the edges under as best I could on the back side. I hot glued all of this in place, too. Within just a few minutes, Henry was telling me crazy stories and building terrific pictures! (I rather like it, too!)


Mommy had fun telling Henry stories while he worked on some play dough. Flip-Flap Jack is in the center of the board, tho we subbed out his sausage mouth for a fetching blue mustache we had from another handmade toy...

Henry having fun at his own turn telling stories.

Eddie has fun, too. He grabs the blue box of felt pieces and goes to the board and says, "Stowee? Stowee?"

The possibilities are obviously endless when it comes to the pieces you cut to use for your stories. Start with some basic shapes and colors and then build from there. A simple stick figure or two maybe? Atmospheric items like trees, rocks, clouds, sun, moon, stars, flowers, grass, water? (My clouds are made out of some natural cotton quilt batting that is SO very soft and fluffy!) Maybe a few basic animal shapes? We have already discovered that the half-circle we initially used as a boat with a triangle on top for a sail also became a rather fetching pirate hat atop the head of our Flip-Flap Jack!

An idea I like very much is to cut a few pieces that are specifically related to a book your child loves. At Henry's pre-school, they have THIS book and matching pieces of white felt cut out in all the shapes the spilt milk could be. Henry asked me this morning for a chair, a bed and a bear so that he could tell the Goldilocks and the 3 Bears story and then he also asked for a house and a pig so he could tell the 3 Little Pigs. Love it. He'll be receiving those pieces post haste. :)

Have fun toy-building, story-telling, memory-making and whatever else you're up to this glorious fall!

Turning tomatoes into tomato soup...accidentally

2011-09-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know how other people do things, because I'm generally pretty bad at following directions...but the way I make homemade tomato sauce is to score the bottoms of my tomatoes, drop them in boiling water for a few seconds to a minute, then pull them out of the water and peel. Then I drain off some of the more watery liquid from them and dump the rest in a blender and process it until it's smooth and most of the seeds have been ground up and disappeared. (You see, I have NO patience for straining things or any other such nonsense...)

Anywhoosie, I was going through this process today with a couple dozen tomatoes we had and Henry said, "Could I please have some of that tomato sauce I made?" (I had let him mash the peeled tomatoes up with a potato masher before I blendered them...yes, I said blendered...) So I gave him a small bowl of it, which meant that I also had to give his little brother some or face the wrath of a child left out. Guess what?

They both CHOWED down on the basically raw and blended tomatoes like it was ice cream! Eddie even cried when I took the empty bowl away.

So the "tomato sauce" I was going to be making for dinner tonight went back into the blender with some basil, salt and pepper and then into a pot with some Barilla ditalini pasta and is now a delish fresh tomato soup that is going to taste GREAT with this homemade bread. Yummers.

Loving the moments...nurturing the child

2011-09-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

When one of your children wakes up at 5 in the morning it's hard to stay positive. Or when the other one is having a GINORMYOUS melt-down some gorgeous afternoon that you'd love to be out taking a walk but it's OBVIOUS he needs a nap (a long nap...) it's hard not to be grumpy. When they are both tossing their dinner at each other and all over the floor and painting designs into the table with a combination of cranberry juice and mashed potatoes, it's hard to appreciate their energy and creativity.

I lose my patience with my kids. I wish I never EVER did. But I do. But on the very best days when I've taken time to myself (somehow...) or been conscious about why it is I do what I do, I'm able to breathe deeply and get through - shoot, even ENJOY! - these moments with my rug-rats.

Sometimes all it takes is appreciating that 5am wake-up because it's the first time in a week or two that your "baby" has slept more than 7 hours in his own bed. Sometimes it takes guilting yourself with, "I do NOT want my kids having vivid memories of me losing it and screaming at them all the time." Other times it might just do to find a quiet place and let them have their moment. It's hard to be a child. It's hard to live within the boundaries and rules that grown-ups with more fully developed brains and bodies have established. It's hard to understand why it's not okay to punch our brother when he takes away our toy. It's harder to understand why it's frowned upon to paint a beautiful picture or build a stunning sculpture on the table with shockingly pink cranberry-infused mashed potatoes.

My husband and I are generally pretty strict with our kids. There are a lot of rules. A lot of "don't do this's" and "do do that's." We have high expectations for them and look for them to rise to meet those expectations. But sometimes we also have to remember that the largest mountains are formed over a millenia of volcanic eruptions. The sandiest beaches are formed out of the heavy, crashing waves of the stormiest seas. Our children's brains are constantly firing and crashing and forming and connecting. And our best service to them is to guide them in the way that suits our family AND give them space to grow in the way that suits them as individuals.

Even if it means scraping dried, crusted potatoes off the dining table, walls and kitchen floor after everyone has gone to bed.

Baby-wearing Babies!

2011-09-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

Back when Mothering was still a *PRINT* magazine (egads...the online stuff is not the same to me and I feel I've lost a good friend...) it seemed to me that every month in the "Letters to Editor" section there was at least one pic of a small child wearing a "baby" (stuffed animal or doll...) in some kind of child-sized baby-wearing device. And I was always a bit jealous. For even tho I'd worn both my kids FOREVER, neither had ever shown any interest whatsoever in copying their mama and toting around one of their stuffies or lovies.

Until yesterday. Eddie is sick right now and pretty much demanded I carry him on my back in the Ergo just about all day. Finally around 5pm he grew tired of being contained and said, "Up, up, UP!" (Which, of course, I knew meant, "Down, down DOWN!") But when I put him down and took off the Ergo, he started trying to put it on and was CRYING and SCREAMING when he couldn't figure out how to do it.

So I cinched up all the straps and put Flip - the fuzzy green Ugly-doll-knock-off I made - in the back. We ended up needing an extra strap of fabric tied around Eddie's chest to secure the whole thing (which was obvi too big...) but he wore Flip around the house for over an hour, taking him for walks, having a snack, and even reaching back and pulling Flip out, laying him down on the couch for a nap, coming in the kitchen and saying, "Sleep!" and then returning to get Flip and stuff him back into the carrier.

Henry did not want to be left out, so he got Bulldog, his most favorite stuffie, and asked if he could wear him, too. I was happy that he was okay with using a sling, since the boys usually want THE EXACT SAME THING THEIR BROTHER IS PLAYING WITH and I only have one Ergo.

They had a lot of fun and I was almost crying with how adorable the whole scene was.

You win! Lucky girl...

2011-09-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

Drumroll, please!!!!!! We have a winner of one fabulous jar of Bouncing Berry Farms Cranberry Apple Compote! It's entry #1, (chosen via Random.org) Lisa!!!! Congrats, Lisa!

Awww, ladies. I don't know if it's because I've been absent so much this summer or because people's interest in me offering giveaways is fading, but we had VERY good odds for the winner of the Bouncing Berry Farms Cranberry Compote, with only 2 entries!!!! To my readers who have probably found me too flighty and absent these last couple months I apologize. And to my sponsor, Bouncing Berry Farms, who provided this SUPER YUMMY cranberry apple compote, I also apologize. I obviously need to get re-focused on the bloggerific stuff going on here and I promise to do that now with the cooler months coming and fewer vacations, days at the pool, trips to the park, etc. on the horizon.

"Mawwwww---meeeeeeeeee!"

2011-09-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

Eddie has a very funny way of communicating. He's passionate AND nonchalant in his approach. When he wakes up in the morning lately he stands in his crib screaming, "Mawwwwwwww-meeeeeeeeee! Maww-meee! Mommy! Mommy! Mommymommymommymommymommy!" And so I get out of bed and walk down the hall to his room and as I open the door he sits down in his crib and grabs a stuffed animal. (My husband has spied on him in the video monitor so that we can see how all this business plays out.)

When I get the door open, he sits there playing with the toy - acting as if that's what he's been doing all along - and looks at me and says, "Oh! Hi, Mommy!" As if he's just wondering, "What brings you in here this fine, quiet morning?"

I really love him.

We adore cranberries! Do you?

2011-08-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

I think a lot of people have probably never had a cranberry outside of Thanksgiving dinner. And probably many of THOSE people have never had a cranberry that didn't come out of a metal can with little rings impressed into the jelly-substance that once WAS a cranberry. If you are one of those people, let me try to change your perception of cranberries. If you are not one of those people, read on for a fabulous NEW cranberry food item that you are going to want to try.

I grew up in a small Oregon town with a very small # of people/jobs/opportunities. But the area is pristine and gorgeous and natural resources abound. It is the sort of area that more city people should know about because it's one of those places that appreciates what nature has to offer, and makes use of the natural landscape/weather/terrain/etc. to harvest and use those natural resources in a generally positive way. Though the logging industry is now a fraction of what it used to be, all the people I ever knew working in the industry would tell you that it was being done "right" there. There is still a strong commercial fishing community, though it has also shrunk from it's former size. There are families who specialize in harvesting cedar and mushrooms from surrounding forests, ranchers who raise cattle, sheep and goats and farmers who grow delicious foods like blueberries and cranberries.

And it's the powerfully delicious little bright-red bundle of anti-oxidants that I'm writing about today. Cranberries. Yummers. Maybe it's because of where I grew up. Maybe it's because I have family in the business. Maybe it's just because they're insanely delicious AND wonderfully good for you, but I have always been a big fan of cranberries.

A few months ago I found out that a friend of mine from high school was starting a new business selling cranberries from her own family's farm in the form of a delicious fruit compote. I told her that I was eager to try it and so she provided me with a couple of samples so I could AND so I could share it with all of you.

The first night I grilled up some super yummy pork chops. I brine mine in a salt-water mixture for about an hour and then rinse and pat dry. I grill them Au natural after that on a very high heat for a few minutes on each side. Then I reduce the heat and grill about 5 minutes more on each side. Then I place them on a platter and cover with tented foil for about 10 minutes.

For these, I then sliced them up and served with the Bouncing Berry Farms Cranberry Apple compote on top. The boys and I LOVED it. (Daddy worked late that night...poor guy!)

Henry's first bite. (He's not a super huge fan of meat these days...)

Henry's almost entirely clean plate. (Meat went FIRST!) He LOVES cranberries, so these are the PERFECT solution to getting him to eat the protein with his dinner. Sweetens it up in a healthy and anti-oxidant-filled way!

Lately, Eddie doesn't really need to be convinced to eat anything. He downs it all. But this was an especially popular meal with him.

The next day we had Tillamook vanilla yogurt with a spoonful of the compote on top. So delish!

And then for a couple days I made leftover pork/cranberry sandwiches. I even caramelized some onions and sliced up an avocado to REALLY pack these lunches with tons of flavor and lots of healthy vitamins/minerals/grains.

It goes without saying that this compote would be GREAT with your family's holiday meals and will be an EXCELLENT accompaniment to turkey. But I have already decided that this is one product I'll keep in the house and use all year long. Ice cream topping, pie filling, a simple side-dish with chicken or pork, reduced down and used as the filling in my thumb-print jam cookies, the possibilities are almost endless. I can think of so many ways I'd use this compote.

What would YOU like to try with it? Visit Bouncing Berry Farms or "like" their Facebook page. Come back here and leave a comment that you've done one or both of those things AND tell me how you would use the compote. One entry per person. The winner will receive a complimentary jar of Bouncing Berry Farms Cranberry Apple compote to try out! I don't think I am exaggerating when I say you'll be hooked. It is really so good. Winner will be chosen on Saturday, September 10th from eligible entries.

(Review/giveaway disclaimer: Bouncing Berry Farms provided me with a free sample of their product to try, but did NOT influence my review in any way. The experience of trying this product and my account of it are completely my own words.) :)

Muffins out of over-ripe fruit...

2011-08-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

I hate throwing out produce. We obviously need to eat as many fresh fruits and vegetables as we can, and in this house I do let some meals slide by without enough going on in the fresh produce department. But we receive our fantastic delivery of Organics to You every other week and that pretty much guarantees us at least a week of delish fresh treats at every single meal. Sometimes, though, I look in the fridge the day before our new delivery is set to arrive and I find a few overly ripe but not-yet-rotten bits of this and that. And I search the deep recesses of my brain for ideas of how to use these things other than just dumping them into the compost pile.

My most common go-to for leftover fruit is quick-breads or muffins. So on Tuesday I whipped up a batch of blueberry, strawberry, peach, banana muffins. My favorite muffin/quick-bread recipes are in my "Just a Matter of Thyme" cookbook that I received from Grandma Jo (my husband's grandma) as a wedding present. This charming little cookbook is one of those rare ones where everything I've made from it I love. I highly recommend it. My kids LOVE the muffins and everything else I make from this book. It's filled with hearty comfort foods and tends to encourage the use of fresh, local produce, which I like. A lot.

Anywhoosie, for Tuesday's project, I used the "Blueberry Peach Cinnamon Muffins" recipe on pg. 18. I chopped up all my fruit (roughly mashed the banana) and it came to about 2 cups of fruit rather than the total of 1 cup the recipe calls for. I like that, but it makes about 18 muffins rather than 12. Also, for the topping, I like to mix granulated sugar, cinnamon AND brown sugar rather than just the gran sugar and cinnamon the recipe calls for. I also think a streusel-type topping with brown sugar and oatmeal would be DIVINE! (Or no topping at all would be just as good, honestly, and save you the fat and calories added in that topping.) I don't know if it's my oven or the fact that I'm baking 2 pans of muffins rather than 1, but I find I have to bake my muffins for about 22 or 23 minutes rather than the 18 to 20 the recipe calls for.

Want the recipe without buying the book? I'm sure it's okay for me to share since I *AM* also encouraging you to go and buy this little cookbook gem. :)

Blueberry Peach Cinnamon Muffins (or whatever fruits you can rustle up and throw in there!)

1/2 cup blueberries
1/2 cup peaches, peeled and diced (use more fruit if you like, I do!)
3 cups flour (I use 2 cups unbleached white all purpose and 1 cup whole wheat...King Arthur Flour!)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, melted
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
4 Tbsp. butter, melted
2 Tbsp. sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon, mixed (add brown sugar, too, if you like!)

Mix flour, sugars, baking powder & salt. Add butter, beaten eggs and milk...stirring just until blended. Carefully fold in fruit. Fill greased muffin cups about 2/3 full. Bake at 400 degrees F for 18-20 minutes or until golden. Brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Makes about 1 dozen. Enjoy!

Welcoming our new co-contributor!!!

2011-08-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's not going to surprise you secret mommies when I say that I've been QUITE absent this summer. I never intended to take any kind of vacation from my blog and I do - in fact - have SEVERAL wonderful posts drafted up in my que that I haven't taken the time to finish...but the reality is that my boys and I have been trying to soak up every single second of this glorious (though short it seems...) Oregon summer and I never have enough attention left for the blog to get anything posted.

And then recently a dear old friend and I hooked up via that magical, wonderful, interwebby universe of Facebook. He's not a mommy, but he is one AWESOME crafter, sewer, cook, and experimenter of all things fun and lovely.

My sweetie-pie friend Bryant. Doesn't he look fun? He's FOR SURE going to keep us in dandy projects from around the web!

So it seemed quite natural to me that Bryant should be our new guest host here! Right now he's all set up for sharing links and goodies on the Secret Mommy Facebook page, and I'm going to get him set up to make longer articles and posts here, too.

Join me in welcoming Bryant to the Secret Mommy blog! (Maybe our mommy-ness will rub off and one day he'll be a crafty Daddy to more fully join our ranks!!!) ;)

Kids in the woods

2011-07-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

Henry's new preschool has a strong focus on children spending time in nature. And it's oh so easy for them to accomplish when there is this GORGEOUS little plot of land on the property the school uses. There's a wooded area that leads to a wetland and this is where the children spend their play and recess time and where we today had a family picnic to celebrate the last day of summer camp this week.

My boys had a LOT of fun.

You get what you get. (Which takes a lot of pressure off we parents, I think...)

2011-07-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

My neighbor has told me many times his theory on kids. "You get what you get." Sometimes we parents try to take too much credit for doing things to make our kids turn out "right" or we beat ourselves up too much over doing something we think is "wrong." But the very thoughtful and intelligent father who lives next door to me surely is thinking about it in a healthy way with his theory.

My kids with some of their neighborhood friends. Seriously some of the most wonderful kids you could ever meet.

On one hand, it's probably super easy for him to say, "You get what you get," when his 9 and 11 year old son and daughter are some of the most awesome I've ever met. They are fabulously polite and thoughtful and sweet and fun. They know how to keep eye contact and have a conversation with an adult as well as being the most playful and enthusiastic playmates with my little ones. It's certainly a very humble move to say, "You get what you get." Rather than accept a compliment about his incredible kids with a stream of how-to's on how he and his wife are raising them. Right?

Seriously, though, I think he's right. My children are certainly partially a product of the environment my husband and I have created for them, just as our neighbor kids are quite a lot like their kind, gentle, smart and thoughtful parents. But every single day my kids amaze, amuse and - at times - frustrate me with their innate personalities and gifts. Eddie is a very good example of this because Henry kind of is a mini-version of my husband and I, and so offers up far fewer surprises. Henry is relatively quiet and gentle, but is easily excited by things and can get a bit hyper with little warning. He's incredibly empathetic and loving and very intelligent in a "book smart" sort of way. He talks a lot (totally gets that from me) and says the most hilarious things (that's from my hubby.) And now back to Eddie. I don't know WHERE his personality comes from. He's a clown, a trouble-maker, the center of the room, the life of the party, a feisty and independent stinker, a passionate snuggler, and very cunning in a "street smart" kind of way. He's always surprising me because he's not a lot like me or my husband. We got what we got.

Naturally, the things we do to and with and for our children help shape how they react to their world. But this innate part of their personality is so concrete that I imagine they'd be very similar even if their environment were completely different.

What do you think?

Friday moment........Cereal and milk

2011-07-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

this moment...
a single photo (or in my case a series of photos...) capturing a simple, special, extraordinary moment from the week. inspired by Amanda Blake Soule at soulemama.

(Their Daddy taught them this....) ;)

"Could I please have some broccoli with my zucchini pizza?"

2011-07-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

I am not even joking. This is what my 3 year old asked me last night while we were making dinner. Gotta love him.

Ever since I was pregnant with him I've had a very firm and unwavering idea in my head about how my kids would eat. I knew I'd make my own baby food and keep them away from the crap in the jars that tastes like a wet sponge. I knew I'd introduce them to veggies EARLY and often and NEVER give up on giving them things even if they say they don't like it. (Case in point...all my life I've hated onions and olives. But as an adult I would be exposed to different kinds of foods prepared in different kinds of ways and I finally discovered that I only dislike RAW onions and canned black olives. Bring on everything else!) But even with these very regimented ideas of how I'd introduce my kids to veggies, I knew it was a "you can lead a horse to water" kind of situation. I mean, kids DO in fact have very picky palates. And they want to be in control and make their own decisions. And all of this often manifests in them deciding that any vegetable they touch may in fact poison and kill them.

A trick I found VERY helpful was to receive an organic, local (mostly) produce delivery. For as well-intentioned as I am, I still found myself buying the same 4 or 5 vegetables every single time I went to the grocery store. Shopping at Farmer's Markets is probably even more awesome, but they are usually quite seasonal and require a person to actually get out of their pajamas and brush their teeth before 2pm on a Saturday...and that can be a stretch for me. So instead every other Wednesday we get the UBER fantastic, wonderful, delectable, reasonably-priced, honest, mostly local, seasonal, healthy kids bin from Organics to You. If you live in the Portland-metro area you should visit their website or go like them on Facebook. Definitely check into signing up for a delivery. (If you aren't in the Portland area, look for some kind of CSA program or other connection to year-round organic (local when seasonally available) produce. To me the delivery part is KEY as I can't put off going to pick up or buy the produce. We get it at the door and eat it almost IMMEDIATELY!) The prices are great and the produce is beyond awesome. You can even add terrific groceries like organic milk and eggs and local cheese and all sorts of other fantastic-ness.

Oh, back to my story. So anyway we receive this box and when it arrives I open it up on the kitchen floor and ever since Henry has been able to stand up he helps me pull the things out of the box. (And now obviously Eddie participates in this, too.) And we talk about what they are and what color they are and what they smell like and look like and taste like. We do crazy stuff like take a bite out of a raw purple potato - just to see what will happen - or we squeeze our kiwi berries until they burst and then we lick the yummy green-ness off our fingers and pop the rest in our mouths. We've sat on that kitchen floor before and eaten a raw ear of corn. The last few weeks we've eaten almost all the peas and berries as we sit there going through everything. And whatever is left Henry helps me put away. While we are putting it away he'll talk about what he wants to eat for dinner that night or the next night or for lunch or breakfast some upcoming day.

Last night we decided to make little pizzas using zucchini as our "crust." I sliced the zucchini lengthwise since these were small fellas, but if you had a big late-summer zuke, you could slice it into rounds. Henry laid the slices on a cookie sheet that he'd spread olive oil all over (a very gratifying project for a wants-to-be-messy 3 year old) and then I sprinkled on some salt & pepper. I baked them about 6 minutes at 425 degrees, took the pan out of the oven, flipped the zucchinis over, then I put a tablespoon or two or three of jarred pasta sauce on each one. (No homemade sauce on hand...bummer.)

Then I added some grated carrot also from our delivery and then topped each one with some mozzarella cheese.

On top of the cheese I added a few of the peas we managed not to eat. Henry thought they looked cute on our pizzas and I agreed. I handled all the toppings-steps after the hot pan came out of the oven, so he wouldn't burn himself, but he was happy to watch since he'd done the first part.

I put the pan back in the 425 oven and baked for about 8 minutes longer. Delish!

While the zucchini pizzas were cooking, Henry said, "Could I please have some broccoli with my zucchini pizza?" So I cut some up and steamed it very lightly. The boys call them crunchy, munchy trees as in their "Monsters Don't Eat Broccoli" book and I love sitting at the table watching them DEVOUR so many veggies. (For dessert I let them have some homemade frozen yogurt pops I made with blackberry yogurt and fresh, local organic cherries. Treat to them, but felt less unhealthy to me. Totally healthy night. Yay!)

Will you miss me?

2011-07-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

I have been a very attached mama with my kids. I never really intended to be such, and I don't *really* subscribe to any particular style of parenting. I've never read a single parenting book all the way through and I do not like to be told what to do, so following some *expert's* style wouldn't really suit me anyway.

Nevertheless, to outsiders I look very much like an "attachment parenting" subscriber. There are some differences. My kids sleep in their own rooms once they reach a few months of age. I like babywearing, but don't do it all day long. I vaccinate. (Why this is part of the attached mantra sort of confuses me...) But I spend almost all of my waking hours with my children. I rarely use any kind of babysitting or childcare and I generally like the way my day unfolds with my rug-rats a constant part of it.

My kids seem to like it, too. And they also show what seem to be the *typical* signs of confident, well-adjusted children. Rather than being clingy with me (as a lot of people think will happen to children raised in this "attachment" style,) they do not mind at all when I *do* leave them with a sitter or with a grandparent or now we are discovering . . . . . . when I drop them off at day camp.

Yesterday Henry went to his first ever non-Mommy-accompanied activity. Lego Camp. It was only a couple of hours, but I guess I hadn't made that clear enough when telling him about it. We had breakfast and I got him dressed in the morning. Then he started running around in circles clapping his hands together and giggling in a super excited and giddy way and said, "Okay! I'm ready! I'm ready to go! Will you miss me? Where's my suitcase? Let's go!"

He had a good time and is excited to go back today. But something tells me that an overnight trip somewhere is imminent... :)

Friday moment......Cardboard house

2011-07-15T04:45:00.000-07:00

this moment...
a single photo (or in my case a series of photos...) capturing a simple, special, extraordinary moment from the week. inspired by Amanda Blake Soule at soulemama.

Brine meats before grilling/roasting.

2011-07-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

A few years ago on a cooking show, I first heard about "brining" meats before grilling or roasting them. It is basically a process of soaking the meat in a saltwater mixture (the brine) for an hour or more before cooking to increase (dramatically) the moisture content of the meat. I've been hooked ever since I first started doing it. It's the easiest and most amazing way to pretty much ensure delicious and moist meats.

And I experiment with my brine mixtures all the time. Besides just putting salt in the water, additional spices or herbs or flavorings can be added. Anything from liquid smoke to honey to seasoned salts to fresh or dried basil have gone into my brines.

Yesterday I used a Jarritos (thanks, again, Jarritos, for all the delish sodas to experiment with in the kitchen!) soda as the brine on some chicken destined for the grill. It was simple.

Put chicken (trimmed of the nasty bits the butchers leave on prior to packaging...ewwww....) in a nice big bowl. (Or a gallon ziplock of you are not anti-plastic bag as I am these days.) :)
Add some salt, pepper and any other spices you'd like. I just used salt and pepper.

Pour in your Jarritos soda. I used tamarind, but I actually don't think the flavor matters all that much in this instance. What seemed important to me was the bubbles, the REAL sugar, and the sodium.
Let soak for at least one hour and ALWAYS brine your meats in the refrigerator. Meats left at room temp can make people VERY ill. I let my chicken brine for about 3 or 4 hours in the fridge.

Pour off Jarritos brine. Add a tablespoon or so of olive oil and toss the breasts around to coat each lightly. (It is extra good to let refrigerated meat sit about 15 to 20 minutes at room temp before cooking. Helps the meat retain it's moisture when it hits the grill.)

Preheat grill on high. Cook breasts for about 2 minutes on each side on high to sear. (Lock in the juices.)
Turn grill down to medium or medium-low and cook an additional 5 to 7 minutes on each side. Cook until your juices run clear (when you press down slightly on the chicken breast with your spatula.)

Serve with a side of your favorite flavored mustard, BBQ sauce or on a crispy crunchy salad!
These breasts will amaze you with their plump juicyness. Yay Jarritos!

Being happy with less

2011-07-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

I think I started talking about this last summer. Good friend Chelsea was declaring a fatwa against "stuff." And I was going to join in. She went from this:

to this.

I was much less successful despite 3 or 4 (or was it more?) FULL suv-trips to Goodwill and filling our garbage can several weeks in a row. I got rid of a box of broken or neglected toys. Got rid of clothes no one wears. Got rid of any remaining tsotchkes (I abhor tsotchkes...) I even got rid of a few books! Many other books found their way into boxes that are now stacked up in my garage and I can't help but think..."Why the EFF am I keeping those books?" I mean, I do love books. I love the smell and feel of old books. I love curling up with a classic or a modern novel. I have nostalgic daydreams of my kids finding something interesting amongst full shelves of books in some future library of some future house with the space to devote to these books. But is any of that realistic in this age of Nooks and Kindles and iPads and what-not? And is it even smart to be buying books when one can just borrow them from the library and then move on?

Picture frames. I've got a HUGE box of picture frames sitting on the floor of one of our closets. They are from a period in time when I thought it was cute to have a little side table COVERED with mis-matchy frames containing pics of all the people I love. It's no longer practical to keep little square pieces of metal and glass on low little tables in my house. And I rarely get around to printing out any of the THOUSANDS of pictures I take. Tho I'm not as bad as some people who never even get them off the camera memory card, they do all remain in folders in my computer and get played as slide shows to entertain my kids now and then. And at the end of every year I spend a week or two organizing them into a book on MyPublisher.com which I print out and give to the grandparents as gifts.

Toys. We are DROWNING in toys in this house. I don't really want to get rid of them all, but I would like to find better storage solutions for them. (In their BEDROOMS, too. NOT the living room!) I also REALLY need to employ the plan of boxing up lots of the toys so the boys forget about them and then switching them every few months. Henry has a large bedroom closet that would work for this if I'd empty it of OTHER unnecessary stuff that probably needs to go to the dump or find better storage homes.

Sewing stuff. I really do love sewing but no longer have a sewing room. A couple shelves in our master bedroom closet hold pillow forms, interfacing, batting, fabric, etc. A few drawers of the dresser in Henry's closet hold fluffy fleece and old clothing items that I have plans for repurposing into new things. And still more stuff lives in the "craft area" set up in the wet bar in our kitchen/dining room. It's maddening when I finally do sit down to a project that all my stuff is not in one place and I have to scour the house to find everything. It's further maddening that there is so much crap all over.

In some ways I feel like it would be so cool to just get rid of EVERYTHING. But I obviously do not want to part with my sewing stuff. Hubby does not want to part with his box of high school momentos or the box of graduation gowns and items from college and law school. And the boys do not want to get rid of their toys. (Though some will secretly find their way to Goodwill or the garbage, I'm sure.) ;)

But if I am ever going to feel like our home is a relaxing and serene space, I've GOT to get rid of the clutter. I don't want to open drawers and cupboards and closets and be met with a wall of stuff. I hope I'm successful.

Making new stuff for us out of old stuff of Daddy's...

2011-07-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

Do you like how reading this blog is like bobbing along in the waves on a very flimsy life raft? There's very little stability and you're being tossed and turned every which way. I'm sorry. At least you will not die, right? This is the way my brain works and since the blog is just my brain emptied into the interweb-o-sphere then it's what you get. For one month I'm completely consumed by cloth diapers and that's all I seem to write about. Another month I'm going green (well, shoot, my family is staying green...just as we still use cloth dipes...I just lose interest in writing about it every single day...) and another month I'm spending every spare second I have at the sewing machine. That's where I'm at now. Every day. Sewing. And to be further defined, I seem to be on a real strong clothes-sewing kick.

The last couple days I've been obsessed with figuring out how to make the boys some shorts. They've each got several pair of khaki-type shorts with zippers and pockets, but my husband and I like for them to have soft and comfy shorts, too, for hot days or playing in the yard or whatever. It seems hard to find those nylon basketball-type shorts in kid's sizes, though. Old Navy and Baby Gap usually have them, but the fit is sometimes odd and the prices aren't usually great unless you catch a killer sale, which I never seem to do. My husband prefers the Adidas and Nike ones on the kids, but I think in the 3 years we've been parenting we were successful finding them one year for Henry and so have a pretty large stash of size 2T shorts, but neither boy wears that size right now.

My husband LOVES basketball shorts and probably has 40 pair in this house. He consistently wears about 5 pair of those 40. Some are so old that they are a bit faded or they are the shorter style that is not popular now and haven't been worn by him for many years. So I took it upon myself to remove the older shorts and sweats from his massive piles of athletic apparel and figured out how to turn them into new shorts for the kidlets.

Size 2XL men's sweat pants

Turned into boys size 4T shorts. :) (With a lot leftover for more shorts...I'll just have to hem the next pair.)

For the longest time I've wanted to do this, but I just never could wrap my mind around how to "shrink" a pair of Daddy's shorts down to fit the kids. For some reason I had my mind too focused on trying to reuse the existing waistband. I don't know why, but I just thought using it made the most sense. But the elastic band area on men's shorts is much too tall for boy's shorts and so the planning never worked out for me. Finally, after making a few pairs of jammies and shorts for the kiddos using plain old fabric and making my own waistbands, it dawned on me that if I just used the legs of Daddy's old shorts and sweats as my "material" then I could just make my own waists out of thinner and more little-boy-appropriate-sized elastic. Further, by laying my pattern pieces at the bottom of each leg, I saved myself the trouble of having to hem the shorts! Ta-da! Genius! Hehehehe.

Once again, I used Dana's basic pants/shorts pattern. (I use the all-around elastic waist rather than the flat front...) It works well for me, but I add about a 1/2" to 3/4" allowance on all sides to make the pattern fit Henry's 4T frame and I trace it exactly to fit my slender 18month-sized Eddie who wears a bulky cloth diaper. Also, both my kidlets have a bit of a long rise AND my hubby is not overly fond of the more trendy low-waist cut on them, so I add about 1 1/2" to 2" at the top to make it a bit more "standard" and accommodate their size and Eddie's bulkier diaper.

I lay out the pattern pieces on each leg. I originally thought I'd lay my pieces "on the fold" to save myself even more sewing, (and in this 1st light blue pair of shorts I wanted to salvage the argyle design on the sides) but Dana's pattern is not intended to be used this way, and I couldn't figure out in my not-enough-coffee-yet morning head how to do it. (I figured it out later and will share at the end of this post...)

So with my 4 pieces of fabric cut out, I then followed all of Dana's standard instructions for sewing from crotch to waist.

Then the inseam from one leg to another.

Then the outside leg seam (hip to knee.)

Then the casing at the waist for the elastic.

I save time by not having to hem the shorts and cranked out a couple pair in about an hour an a half...but that amount of time ALSO included checking on my twerps about every 10 minutes because they were playing in the back yard together and kept fighting over who would ride the trike and who would shovel in the dirt. (See them out there? And see my cup of coffee sitting there getting cold because I kept having to intervene out there? Grrr.....) :)

And then who would eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and who would eat the yogurts. Then they kept coming in and out and I heard myself screaming, "IN OR OUT! Choose one and stay!" And I realized I sound like every single parent who swears they will never sound like THEIR parents yet eventually do. Anywhoo...2 pairs of shorts. Made.

Then a few hours later I sat down with a couple of Daddy's old undershirts and thought I'd make Eddie some new sleep shorts since all his jammies are long-sleeved shirts and long pants and it is getting downright hot 'round here. (Finally...) I have so many undershirts that I decided to play around with the fold thing and realized it's EXACTLY the same to use Dana's pattern on the fold as any other pattern I've drafted myself. You just have to ignore Dana's step-by-step sewing instructions for a bit. That's what was throwing me and it was hard, because I like following her instructions. But once I cut out my two leg pieces "on the fold" then I layed them out flat with right sides facing and sewed them together from crotch to waist. Then I pulled them open sort of and stacked the seams I'd just sewn on top of each other and VOILA! It looked like a pair of shorts. Those seams made up the rise. So then I just had to pick back up with Dana's instructions for sewing up the inseam and then making the waistband casing, thread in the elastic, sew up the opening and done. No side seams required AND no hemming since I used the bottom (already hemmed) edge of the t-shirts. So easy I'll do more tomorrow when the boys are napping again. (And for anyone who totally did not get but wants to my description of how I sewed the 2 "cut on the fold" pieces together...I will try to remember to take pics when I make more of these...)

And then I haven't done it yet, but I have grand plans to make myself some nightshirts out of a couple of hubby's old dress-shirts using this tutorial I found - where else? - on Pinterest. :)

Scrambled egg pie!

2011-07-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

I have NOT been in the mood for cooking lately. Life has been busy. Summer-time is for playing, not working. And tho I often find great comfort in domestic tasks like creating food-stuffs, lately it's just a chore. It's probably because in the summer I primarily like to BBQ a meat and then just whip up a salad or side dish. But our BBQ is broken. Hopefully we're going to fix or replace it this weekend, but until then I've just been trying to "get by" in the eating department.

Tonight I came up with a dish that I was originally thinking would be like a baked chili-cheese omelet. I was looking for the "baked" twist because it's hard to make things for dinner that require any kind of standing in the kitchen for a while tending to things. I have these crazy kids who always seem to want/need me at that time. Anyway, I found a frozen pie crust I had left over from last winter (I like to keep "emergency" supplies in the house for whipping up quick desserts like pumpkin pie if we have sudden company or plans to travel somewhere for a holiday fall thru...) and that made me think that my baked omelet could just be a sort of quickie quiche.

So here's what I did. Heat oven to 375 and bake frozen pie crust (empty) for about 5 to 8 minutes. (Mine was a nice organic whole wheat crust.) Remove from oven and put a can of chili into the crust.

Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese (about a half cup...) over the chili.

Beat together about 6 eggs (# of eggs depends on the size of your pie shell...I ended up with a bit extra) and a half cup of whole milk along with some salt & pepper. (Add chives or green onions if you've got any. Yum!) Pour egg mixture over chili/cheese.

Place in oven and reduce temp to 350. Bake 45 to 55 minutes or until eggs are cooked to consistency you desire. (We like eggs pretty well done around here so went about 55 minutes.)

Remove from oven and sprinkle a couple tablespoons of grated cheddar on top. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and some yummy sides like hash browns, roasted potatoes, a green salad, fresh peas from the garden (that's what I had...) or whatever your heart desires.

Henry came in the kitchen when I took this "quiche" out of the oven and he said, "Oh my! You made me a scrambled egg pie? Oh! I love it!" And he did. Both boys ate 2 helpings. And all their peas. :)

Here's to dinners we can create out of stuff we "find" in our fridge, freezer and pantry!!!

Fish faces

2011-07-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

While I made dinner last night, the boys scrambled into the bar stools at the island and entertained me with fish faces.

These are the moments that make it all worth while, aren't they? Enjoy your day, peeps!

Independence Day pics

2011-07-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

We had the most glorious Independence Day weekend. Seriously. Today we're all tired, sun-burned (okay, only I am sunburned...the men in my family just tan) and totally wiped out, but it was amazingly fun. We spent the weekend, as we almost always do, at our cabin with my in-laws. My father-in-law's birthday is July 3rd, so there's always a lot of family and fun around.

The weather was simply gorgeous.

The view was and always is amazing.

There was some relaxing to do.

Some playing to do.

Some eating and drinking to do.

Some parade-watching to do. (Note our matching outfits, cute 'eh???) :)

And then of course some fire-working to do.

In between it all we even snuck in a picnic in Boardman, Oregon on our way home on the 4th. We like to stop at their gorgeous park on the river to have a picnic when we pass through and on this day we happened to stumble into a pretty fantastic 4th of July party! So we parade-ed in Haines, picnic-ed in Boardman and then firework-ed in Portland. Cool day.

30 minute dinosaur blanket...

2011-07-05T05:31:00.000-07:00

(This isn't really a "toy," - tho my kids can play with a blanket for hours making forts and playing peek-a-boo and whatever else - and there's not much involved in "make"-ing it, but it's Tuesday...so here we go!)

I've always eschewed this 100% polyester no-sew fleece stuff. For one I prefer natural and organic fabrics. For two I like the idea of quilts even tho I've only ever had time to make 2 very simple ones. And for three the prints on these no-sew fleeces (is that a word?) is usually just horrendous, even for kid-stuff.

But when we were at the fabric store one day Henry had some time to browse the aisle of fleece (the display is RIGHT next to the cutting table...on purpose to give kids something to "do" while mom waits for her cuttings I bet...) He came out and said, "Dinosaurs! Mom! A dinosaur blanket! Oh, I WANT it!" So I went to check it out and it was actually a pretty tolerable print in more muted tones of orange, blue and green. I agreed. I'd been thinking of making the boys a fleece blanket for a while now. The year Eddie was born the boys' Grandma and Grandpa gave them a super marshmallow-y soft fleece blanket with Santas and snowmen and candy canes all over it. They LOVE it and it's been in the living room for a year and a half now. I always thought if I could make them something less seasonal that I could bring that blanket out just for the holidays.

So anywhoosie, while purchasing the fabric I mentioned that I'd never used no-sew fleece before, but was sure it was going to be super easy to put a hem in it, right? The lady behind me said, "Oh, I don't hem it, I just hand it to my kids just like this!" And I thought, "Ugh. How ugly and unfinished looking." Because even in my destroyed-by-children house I like things to look sort of nice and that sounded awful. Then the sweet Grandma lady working there said, "I sew a nice decorative stitch all around it a few inches in and then cut fringe strips around the edge going up to the stitch." I liked her idea and knew immediately that I'd use this little stitch that looks like chicken (or dinosaur) feet.

So I did it.

The boys love it.

I'd be happier about this thing if it matched my sofa, but there's a LOT about having children that doesn't match my sofa...know what I mean?

(Like seriously, my gorgeous, custom-made, hand-made, first-ever-REAL-furniture purchase sofa. Note the non-matching fabric being used to cover the seat cushions which have more holes than a 3-year-old's excuse for why he pooped his pants AGAIN and the frayed and tattered fabric on the delicately curved arm...I wonder if I could slip-cover my sofa in no-sew fleece???) :)

4th of July sewing? Hand your kids the scraps!

2011-07-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

I spent quite a bit of time at the sewing machine this last week trying to finish up our fabulous 4th of July outfits. I generally sew while Eddie's napping and Henry's awake and poor Henry gets a bit bored. So I either shuttle him out to the back yard to play, or try to engage him in an activity. One day the weather was ick, so I handed him a pile of scraps, a bottle of Elmer's glue and an empty can and told him to make a container for his colored pencils. (His favorite and most coveted art supply right now...)

Here's what he made!

(I helped him finish it off a tiny bit just by covering a couple of large areas that weren't covered by fabric, but for the most part this is entirely his creation. Mommy's learning to butt out of his projects and he's learning to enjoy the process of open-ended creation.) :)

4th of July outfits finished...before the 4th! Yay!

2011-06-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

I sort of can't believe it. And tho I wish I had the time, energy, patience and enough fabric to re-do Henry's shorts (I'm unhappy with the attempt I made at a flat-front waistband...) they are finished and look cute and we're going to wear them on the 4th of July! Yay!

See that sweet, sad little munchkin? He's teething (molars...) and been napping a lot lately, which has been TERRIFIC for me to do all this sewing. But at this particular moment he does NOT care that his mama made him a new pair of shorts. He just wants to be picked up and snuggled. Sweetness.

The boys have these cute shorts I made out of stretch twill I found on sale at Joann. I think it was normally $9 per yard, but was 50% off. I used Dana's pattern for basic toddler pants/shorts and tho I did mess up the flat-front version a little bit (it was my first try...) it was a SUPER easy pattern/tutorial to use!

I do actually feel like the striped polos with the striped shorts is a bit much, but I couldn't find any solid-color polos in red & blue in my one stop (that's all the time I had...) and I feel like over-the-top red, white & blue is okay for the 4th of July. I'll probably get some solid navy t-shirts for the boys to wear with their shorts the rest of the summer. Or I'll make up a couple knit tanks in navy...

I have this vintage-inspired skirt with pockets that was so much easier than I thought it would be! I have blogged about all this before, but after the first skirt I made myself, I decided I wanted a new skirt that had pockets AND a flat-panel front rather than elastic all around. This skirt fits the bill. And I used a coordinating floral print fabric for the pockets. Isn't that cute? I sort of almost wish I'd used the pocket fabric to make the waistband, too. But this skirt was so easy that I think I'll hit the fabric store (or my stash...good grief...) soon and whip up another one.

I almost made my pocket openings too small! The pocket itself is plenty roomy, but when I traced my hand to determine my pocket size/shape, I tapered in at the wrist. Dumb. Lesson learned. Luckily I *can* get my hands in and out of these pockets, but another 1/4" and I wouldn't have been able to, I bet!

Happy 4th of July everyone! (PS - Tomorrow I'll show you what Henry did with a big pile of my scraps from these projects...) :)

Weight loss math...and why it might be time for another baby.

2011-06-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

When I got pregnant with Henry (my oldest who is now a little over 3,) I had been nesting and co-habitating and generally enjoying domestic life with my hubby for about 6 years. We'd been enjoying the parts of domestic life that include cooking and eating and spending long afternoons in bed watching movies (or whatever...) and NOT the part of domestic life that included working out, running a 5k, lifting weights or whatever else.

Me graduating from college a couple years before getting preggo with Henry. (NOTE: I was *NOT* a math major...) :)

So at the moment I found out I was pregnant I weighed 162 pounds. That's easily 20 pounds more than I *should* weigh. But oh my goodness did I not care. I was going to have a baby! I've never really been all that obsessive about my body or weight anyway, tho most of my life I've been at a good healthy weight and exercised enough to feel healthy. I had a full time job while pregnant with Henry and by the time I got home in the evenings I was pretty wiped out. So while we tried to go on a few neighborhood walks per week, there was not a lot of exercising going on in my life.

About 7 months pregnant with Henry. He probably already weighed what most newborns do...

Long story short, I only gained about 30 pounds during my pregnancy and was SURPRISED (and happy) to find that after having a 10 pound plus baby almost half of it was gone by the time I got home from the hospital! Add to that CONSTANT breastfeeding and I was back to the same 162 within about 8 months. I wanted to go lower, though, and at least *try* to start the journey toward my goal weight without compromising my already weak milk supply. (20 year old breast-reduction surgery...if you haven't read about that before and are curious you could look at this post or even this one...)

When Henry was 9 or 10 months old, though, my husband and I were already itching for another baby. We couldn't believe we'd waited so long to start a family and after doing some math that revolved much around our "advanced" ages, we decided we better get cracking! And when Henry was 11 months old we got pregnant with Eddie. I think it was the week before Henry's 1st birthday that I took the test confirming it. I stepped on the scale. 160 pounds.

1 month pregnant with Eddie and making Henry's 1st birthday cake. I was feeling NAUSEOUS and bloated that day. I remember it well.

With Eddie, I only ended up gaining about 25 pounds, and he was a 9 lb. 9 oz. baby, so by the time I lost him, the placenta, water, etc., I'd lost MORE than half of what I'd gained in pregnancy by the time I left the hospital the day after he was born. He's an insatiable nurser who at 18 months nurses ALMOST as frequently (tho for not as long) as a newborn.

A week before Eddie was born. Two of my favorite pictures EVER!

So hubby and I have lately been thinking it is time for baby #3. I turned 39 recently and time's-a-wastin', ya know? Out of curiosity, I stepped on the scale the other day. 157. It seems I lose about 2 (or 3) pounds between each baby, so I immediately thought (jokingly...) "OH boy! It's time for another baby before I lose any more weight!" Haha! Heaven forbid I actually reach that 140 pound goal between children. Haha.

A couple funny pics Henry took of me in the back yard a couple weeks ago. Still over-weight, and sportin' a little belly roll that you can see hanging over the top of my jeans under that too-big t-shirt! :)

In all honesty, tho I do wish I weighed closer to my ideal weight, I would prefer to be preggo with baby #3. I've always wanted to have a large family and hoped for 4 or 5 children. But at my age I can't help but think that if we're able to get pregnant again it might be the last time. We'll see how it all works out, but there's nothing like the thought of adding to my family that makes me care SO VERY LITTLE about that silly # on the scale.

My pal Jenny ROCKS some leftovers!

2011-06-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

So Jenny and I have been friends since....egads....she'd know for sure since she'd know when her family moved to my hometown, but I think it was 7th or 8th grade. (Jenny...is that right?) We went through high school together - she playing volleyball and basketball and having the most amazing blue eyes - and me cheerleading and spectating and having muddy brown eyes. Jenny often rocked a fabu curly perm and I once TORTURED my hair with a frizzy overly processed chemical disaster. I wish I had time to dig through all my boxes of old pictures, because I'm sure I've got something fabulous that I could have shared here.

But alas, I do not and I've got a job to do here anyway and that is to introduce you to a new Jarritos recipe that Jenny cooked up the other day. Jarritos recently hooked us each up with a bit of soda so that we could experiment with cooking using the made-with-sugar (not high fructose corn syrup which we should all be trying to avoid...) and uniquely-flavored sodas. Without further adieu, here is Jenny's awesome creation. (And yes, I'm sure she'd have us all over for dinner if we ask really nicely...) :)

(One last note...one thing I really adore about this recipe is the fantastic way you can squeeze a 2nd meal out of leftovers without just serving up bland old leftovers - which is what I usually do. After a busy holiday weekend like we have coming up or a busy summer day full of shuttling kids to and from camps and playdates and shopping and playing at the waterpark, etc., a meal like this is JUST the ticket to fill up hungry bellies!)
____________________________________________________________

Thanks to my friend Kimberly and her AMAZING boneless pork spare rib recipe and her help in getting Jarritos to send me a nice sample case of their soda along with a free t-shirt and music cd, I have been inspired to try out some recipes with Jarritos soda.

Jarritos soda in Mango flavor

Yesterday I put a boneless pork roast in the crock pot all day long. It was so tender and yummy. Today I decided that I would use the left over pork roast and make BBQ'd Pulled Pork Sandwiches (which is one of my family's favorite suppers). I used the Mango Jarroitos soda along with with our favorite BBQ sauce, Sweet Baby Ray's.

Adding the Jarritos to the leftover pork roast in the crock pot.

I put the left over Roast in the crock pot, I then poured the whole bottle of the Mango Jarritos over the top of the roast. I then poured over a whole bottle of the Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce. I kind of stirred it together to help the soda and sauce mix up.

Adding the BBQ sauce. Our favorite is Sweet Baby Ray's.

I set my crock pot on High and let if cook for about 4 hours. (I would usually have a roast in the crock pot for at least 8 hours. Since I cooked it in the crock pot all day the previous day I fiqured that the roast was pretty well cooked through.) After 4 hours I put in on warm so that it would still be nice and warm for when the Hubby got home from work.

I set the crock pot on high for about 4 hours.

The pork after it cooked and I shredded it to break up the last few large pieces.

I served it on a nice French hoagie roll (although we usually use hamburger buns) along with a nice Caesar salad. The sandwiches were great. I love cooking with the Jarritos soda and can't wait to try out more recipes. :)

BBQ'd pulled-pork sandwiches on hoagie rolls with Caesar salad. Yummy!

Matching outfits for a mama and her boys?

2011-06-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of tutorials online for making adorable matching outfits for mothers and their little girls. And for those who don't sew, plenty of catalogs offer the cutest combos as well. (I always look at the matchy ensembles in Hanna Andersson's catalogs and get all swoony...) And I have recently stumbled across some matching ideas for Daddy and sons, mostly in the form of matching accessories like hats or ties. But my husband isn't really "into" wearing something homemade OR that someone else picked out or made for him. On the other hand, I love wearing things I make myself - now that I've attempted and enjoyed the results of making clothing - AND MY BOYS get all giddy about the stuff mama makes for them. I adore this about them and want to keep encouraging this endearing trait they have of being gracious when someone does something for them AND enjoying handmade things.

Whenever I need to go to a fabric store I ALWAYS check out the sale racks or clearance area. So many cute things can be made with a $1 half yard remnant or a discontinued 1 yard bolt end or something like that. The other day I hit the Joann near my house and found some stretch twill in a lt. blue, navy blue and red stripe (there's also a touch of white, tan and pink in there, too...love!) and I thought it would be AWESOME to make matching shorts for the boys for the 4th of July. The fabric was priced really well ($5 a yard, I think...???) and so I bought 2 yards, thinking I'd figure out something fun to do with the extra, even if it was just larger-sized shorts for them for next year. But then yesterday, while at a party and wearing the skirt I recently made myself, I thought, "I'll make a skirt for ME to match the boys shorts! What an awesome matchy set-up for us for the 4th of July!"

So now I'm armed with my MADE Kid pants/shorts pattern and my tutorial for a skirt that is EXACTLY what I've been wanting. Flat front, elastic back, and SIDE pockets. Awesome. Now I hope I can pull it off. :) (And from looking at my pattern instructions it seems I may have to run back for another half yard of fabric...)

Naptime Nanny Winner

2011-06-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

Good grief gals. What is wrong with me? My last 2 giveaways have sailed right through their "end" date and I forgot to choose a winner! I am very sorry about that.

Anywhoosie, why prolong something that's already overdue, right?

The winner is Michelle W from One Sock Missing.
Congrats Michelle. You are seriously going to LOVE these CD's.

Now for those of you who did not win, be sure to visit the Naptime Nanny on Facebook or her website. If you aren't ready to buy right now, at least "like" her page and/or bookmark her website so you'll be able to find her when you need Naptime Nanny miracles or would like to give another family the gift of peaceful afternoon sleepage.

It's never worth it

2011-06-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

You know that conversation you have with yourself at about 4:30am when you hear that your 3 year old is up and awake and DOWNSTAIRS unsupervised? You know how you say something to yourself like, "Oh, I don't care if he's making a huge mess with his toys. It's worth it. I need to sleep at least another hour."

He's not playing with his toys. The mess is something else entirely. It's never worth it.

Because then when you and your hubby wake up a hair before 7 and you go downstairs to see what's going on you find a potty-trained boy who for some reason has pooped in his underpants, has left the refrigerator door standing open and a bowl of cantaloupe stickily and drippily semi-emptied onto the rug in front of the fridge, a package of chocolate creme cookies has been dismantled and bits of separated cookie are strewn about the kitchen counters and floor, your cell phone is laying in the middle of a pile of beef jerky and raisins (???), several dirty cups from the un-run dishwasher are sitting in a rough semi-circle on the kitchen floor and each has *some* amount of water in it, AND the downstairs toilet is full of wadded up toilet paper/facial tissue/Starbucks napkins.

And tho this scene would have made an EXCELLENT Friday Moment photograph...you were probably so freaked out by the whole thing that you cleaned it up and never gave your blog a 2nd thought until it was too late.

:(

EDITED! I can't believe I forgot about the bread! The two loaves of bread (one sliced sandwich bread and the other sandwich rolls...) that were both on the floor and open and missing a CONSIDERABLE amount from each which has still NOT been found, but which seems like too much even for a ravenous early bird to have consumed...I'm sure some or all will turn up somewhere weird.

Finally a finished project! (It's more fun to start them, isn't it???)

2011-06-23T08:36:00.000-07:00

I'm forever attracted by the allure of a new project. I see new ideas and I get all jazzed about it and want to get it going. But in my life of 2 kids on different nap schedules it seems I never get anything done. And in my life of using the kitchen/dining area for my sewing room, and having to pack EVERYTHING away every time I'm interrupted, finishing projects is not as fun to me as starting them.

This was different when I had a dedicated sewing room. I would leave tidy piles of unfinished projects on my side table or shelves and happily pick them back up the next time I had time. But this putting it all away and getting it back out business every time I want to sew is disheartening. I can't WAIT to find a new house that *hopefully* has some space for me to dedicate to my hobby.

Anywhoosie (that is my go-to segue word, have you noticed?) a couple of weeks ago I decided to use up some fabric I had purchased almost 2 years ago from Very Baby to make some fitted diapers. I never got around to making the diapers and now have an ENORMOUS stash that should last us even if we had 3 or 4 more children. (I don't think we are going to have 3 or 4 more children...) I got the idea to make the boys some loose and comfy knit-jammy-board-shorts-type pants and went online in search of a tuturial. I found a couple, but mostly used this one to draft a pattern and make the shorts/pants. They turned out much like I wanted (loose, baggy and long) but are a skosh baggier than I'd intended. For Henry's I took the legs in a bit more and cut out the extra, but Eddie's I left sort of like culottes. I figured he's got floppy hair he might as well have floppy jammy pants! I also hemmed Henry's and left Eddie's with a self-roll hem that will probably curl up even a little more once the pants are washed.

Tho I traced a pair of Henry's shorts (size 4T) and a pair of Eddie's shorts (size 2T) to make 2 separate patterns, I think they are almost identical in size and I might try each pair on each boy to confirm this. If they are, then I might just plow ahead with a single pattern and whip out a few more pairs of these comfy baggy shorts that they can share all summer long. Will make packing for trips to our cabin very easy and laundry day a cinch!

I'm finding that undershirts (either tank-top or short-sleeved) make terrific tops with homemade jammy pants. Tagless ones are a bonus. In these pics, Henry is wearing a Hanna Andersson muscle tank undershirt and Eddie's wearing an Under the Nile pajama top that goes with a pair of bottoms he's outgrown. BabyGap undershirts are some of my personal faves. They are very soft and tagless for maximum nighttime comfort. :)

Now...to find time for sewing up some more jammies. (And maybe a few pair for myself...these really DO seem super comfortable!)

Make-a-Toy Tuesday - Round-up of OTHER people's ideas!

2011-06-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

It's not that I don't have enough ideas of my own for Make-a-Toy Tuesday, but I do often find that I lack the time to execute some of my ideas. OR I just find myself so smitten by the random goodies I find on the internets (thanks, Pinterest, for increasing this problem 100-fold) that I spend a large part of my crafty time making these wonderful goodies from OTHER people! So today I'm doing a round-up of a few recent finds and faves. (I do have a BAZILLION new toy ideas, and many geared toward outdoor and summer play...so I will try to execute one or two this week and have a fresh batch beginning next week.)

Over at Prudent Baby a short bit ago, they posted an insanely AWESOME tutorial for a "crayon apron." It is from Samantha at Bobaloo Kids. I adore it. And as soon as my sister pinned it for me on Pinterest I knew I would make one. But then when I went off to my closet in search of fabric, I got the idea to turn the thing into a tool belt, which Henry has been asking for ever since his Grandma Candy gave him a tool box and tools for his birthday over a year ago. I do still plan to make the crayon version, too. It's too cute.

So I generally followed Samantha's tutorial, but I took a few short-cuts when it came to finishing edges before hemming and stitching them (I'm lazy...my boys don't care about details...and I'm lazy.)

I made only 3 large pockets in the front and then used my snap pliers to add a couple of big loops to hold tools.

Henry loves it!

The things I'm going to change when I make another one (I've got 2 boys...I need 2 tool belts...) are: I'm not going to gather the front and make it ruffly. I'm going to shorten the overall width of the front pieces (body and pocket) so they will be the right size but stay flat.

I'm also going to make the whole thing about an inch or two inches longer, which will allow for the front three pockets to be deeper and hold their toy tools better. I think I'll also shorten the length of the waist ties and use velcro so they can put their belts on and take them off without me needing to tie and untie the bow (plus a bow seems a bit NOT tool-belt-y...)

The next project I found on the interwebs that I just HAD to try were these fun water-sponges for bathtime or outside play.

I like them as an alternative to water balloons, which the older neighbor kids introduced to my kidlets. I don't really mind my little guys playing with water balloons, but picking up (and throwing away) all those little bits of balloon at the end of a fun afternoon is kind of a drag. Plus the expense and hassle of always buying news ones AND giving my kidlets access to the garden hose....which can be - eh - a mistake. Anywhoosie, I ran to the dollar store and my local grocery and bought a bunch of cheap cellulose sponges. I ended up with 3 different sizes.

The grocery store ones are standard size. The dollar store ones came in humongous packages of 6 or 8, but they are a bit smaller than standard and only came in yellow, or they came in more colorful packages of two that were much larger than normal size. I cut them all into strips and mixed and matched some, kept some all the same (in terms of size and/or color...) It was very easy and they came out looking very cute. I think these will be fun to play with all summer. (I found that wearing my kitchen gloves while pulling the dental floss tight around the sponges saved my fingers a bit....but then the bulkyness of the gloves made tying hard...so I kept putting them on/pulling them off. A second set of hands would be best, but I do most of this stuff while hubby is at work.) :)

Here are a couple of ideas I haven't tried yet, but want to soon. This homemade sidewalk chalk sounds like fun, but my husband ABHORS chalked-up driveways and sidewalks...so I don't know if I'll put the effort and expense into homemade chalk. (I'll just sneak my kids a few store-bought pieces and put them in front of the neighbors house!) :)

This wooden disk memory game is a DEFINITE to-do on my list. I just need to procure the wooden disks. Both my boys like playing memory games on my husband's iPad, and I'm hoping they'll love this tactile handmade version even better. (Sounds like a stretch...but my kids actually DO usually enjoy "real" things more than the stuff they discover online...thankfully!)

Lastly, and why I haven't already done this one I'll never know...are these homemade bubbles that Jill from Baby Rabies found and pinned. (Sorry about all that previous talk about laying off the Pinterest stuff...) :) I think at some point she also pinned someone's idea for storing homemade bubble solution in one of those big glass jars used for serving iced tea. You know the ones I mean, with the spigot at the bottom? I love that idea. It looks charming AND seems very practical. (Here's a link and pic I found on Pinterest...but I think it's different than the one I saw before.)

All right everyone. Go forth and conquer summer. Hopefully I'll get myself organized AND motivated and have a new ORIGINAL toy idea next week. :)

(Also, when it comes to copying OTHER people's ideas...don't forget to whip up your felted wool (or craft felt) grocery set from Kris at Resweater from the last 3 weeks on this blog. The grocery bag, canned tomatoes and box of O's are AMAZINGLY cute!)

Recipe Roundup...stuff I think you should try!

2011-06-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

Do you ever bookmark recipes you find online and think, Oh, I should try that some day! And then you lose track of the bookmark or never buy the right ingredients or for any other reason just never try it? I do that a lot. But lately I've been trying the things I find! And guess what? There's a lot of good stuff out there! I thought I'd post a round-up of recipes I've made lately that are killer and worth sharing.

And by the way...my bookmark-it-but-never-try-it problem is greatly solved by using Pinterest. I think I vowed to quit talking about Pinterest, but it's such a wonderfully easy way to catalog great things you find on the internet that I really can't stop singing the praises. I have a separate folder "For my Belly" and each time I pin something to that folder it is so easy to go back to it later. It's also increasing my craft & sewing creativity since I have folders for various things for me and the kids and when I have some time to make something, I just browse the photos in the appropriate pin board and then go to town! (Sometimes the photos alone are enough to inspire me to go make a new dish or sew up a new thing...without even clicking through to find out how someone ELSE did it!)

Anywhoo...the recipes. The first one I want to share is this BLT Pasta Salad from Food Network. I made it a couple of weekends ago when my in-laws were visiting and it was a BIG hit! The only thing I'd do differently next time (from the recipe) is to keep the lettuce out of the tossed pasta salad and serve each serving on a small bed of romaine or Bibb leaves. The leftovers had some soggy lettuce pieces hanging about which made me grumpy since I normally ADORE leftover pasta salads!

The next one is this FABULOSO Sour Cream Noodle Bake from the Pioneer Woman. In her post of this recipe she says, "Raise your hand if you love recipes with the word "bake" in the title." And boy did I almost dislocate my shoulder raising my hand! I adore "bakes." I adore casseroles. I adore noodles. I adore ground beef. Seems that some of things are not considered "cool" and so many people turn up their noses at the word "casserole" or its more modern and slightly pretentious counterpart "bake." But not me. I, and thankfully the rest of my family, CHOW down big time on 9x13 pans full of hot, noodly, beefy, cheesy goodness. (I made this sour cream noodle bake in a smaller pan...an oval pan probably about 7" x 10" or so...) I would not change a SINGLE thing about this recipe. It's divine. Tho I could see playing with it a bit. For example, I thought I had green onions in the fridge so didn't buy any at the store before making this dish. Turns out I did not. But I do have some nice, big, hearty garlic chives growing in my garden, so I used those. Delish! I served this casserole with some bread sticks and a nice crunchy iceberg and veggies salad with a balsamic vinaigrette. Very nice.

Did I already blog about these once? Yes, I did. But they belong in this round-up and anyone who missed them before can now go and try them. Make these. Make the original version I found on Pinterest or my slightly easier version using a box-mix for the brownies. Oh my goodness. Just looking at the pic again has my mouth watering.

These were a fun little treat to make for breakfast one day. I'm a pretty busy woman and am always changing/modifying recipes to make life/cooking quicker. To make these yummy toast cups I skipped the part about using a cookie cutter to make bread circles. I just used a knife and whacked the bread down to roughly 3"-4" diameter octagons. Then I pushed them down in the greased muffin tins. I also tried not to separate out some of the egg white and sadly found that my egg cups overflowed a bit. But they baked just the same. Oh, also, I skipped the step of putting the cups with just the cheese and bacon in the oven to toast the bacon a bit more. I just fried my bacon until it was almost entirely done, but still pliable enough to shape into the cups. Then I added the cheese, egg, salt and pepper. I also baked them about 3 or 4 minutes longer than suggested because the boys and I like pretty well-done eggs. I think next time I might try scrambling the eggs (at least for a few of the cups) and chopping up the bacon into little bite-sized pieces to make the things a little more appealing to my kiddos who love eggs, but for some reason aren't crazy about egg white/egg yolk visuals.

It seems like I've tried more recipes that I've found online, but these are all the pics I can find, and pics are what jog my memory. I'll keep keeping track of yummy internet-vittles and maybe post some more again later! Enjoy, everyone.

More Father's Day crafting and a School's Out gift...

2011-06-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

What a busy weekend, 'eh? Father's Day is Sunday. The last day of school for all our neighborhood kids (who are great friends to my two little not-yet-school-aged boys) was one day last week. The boys and I are sick. We had a few houses to look at (nothing grabbing us yet to buy, sadly...) And don't tell my boys, but Thomas the Train is visiting a local historic railway and we may have to venture out of town this weekend or next to go ride it.

I wanted to share a couple of additional Father's Day crafts that we whipped up this morning. As TOGETHER they took probably a half hour...so you've still got time if you need any ideas to help make the day special!

The first was to make a pennant for the cake we'll make Daddy on Sunday. My husband is a big fan of a cake made in a 9x13 cake pan with a thin layer of frosting spread over it. So I will make him that and stick this cute pennant in it for decoration. I swiped the idea from a pic I saw on the internets. So easy. I just used scrapbook paper, a little piece of string and some wooden skewers. You could use fabric, ribbon and chopsticks or straws or just about anything you can scrounge up around the house! (I stuck the pennant in lemons for now because we are also going to make Dad some homemade lemonade AND iced tea so he can make some delicious Arnold Palmer's (his fave drink) on Sunday.)

The other thing we got done quickly this morning were these cute "I love you this much" cards I saw on Pinterest. I traced each boy's hand, glued them to a piece of construction paper I folded up, and then just used a Sharpie to write the words on since I didn't have any more cute lettering stickers and didn't even want to take the time to find a solution online. I thought it was cute to just write, "Me, too!" on Eddie's card. (I should have referred back to the pic on Pinterest before I made these...I see how much cuter it is to have the "This Much!" part be on the accordion...I totally forgot and put it all on the outside...oh well.)

I used scrapbook paper for the hands and construction paper for the accordion. I used the same scrapbook pad for the picture frames I made the other day and these two projects today. So when we set out the entire Father's Day feast I think it will all look very cute.

Now for those neighborhood kids who just got out of school! We went to the dollar store recently and picked up 8 or 10 packages of those infernal water ballooons. Tho the kids do like my sponge balls, they just cannot replace the absolute joyful fun all these twerps seem to have with good old-fashioned water balloons. The kids who live around us have been so sweet to let my kids in on their balloon action that we figured replenishing their stash would make a fun gift. (And even buying a stash that will blow their minds was pretty cheap...)

And what would the beginning of summer be without some fun and yummy orange-y sunshiney cupcakes? Tomorrow or Monday I'm going to whip some up using a box mix of Betty Crocker vanilla cake. My plan is to add little orange food coloring and about 2 tablespoons or freshly grated (organic) orange zest. Then I'll make a vanilla-orange-cream cheese frosting tinted yellow. Dried apricot pieces cut into strips to make the sunshine. And finally some chocolate frosting piped on for sunny summery sunglasses! Cupcakes on a tray with a few mason jars of milk! Yummers! Honestly, I haven't put this much effort into dessert the last several times we've had GROWN UP COMPANY at our house! Haha! So fun to do stuff for the kiddos. I'll hopefully take some pics when the cupcakes are all done and post them here. :)

Have a great Father's Day everyone!

Father's Day gift/gift-wrapping idea

2011-06-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

My poor husband usually gets shafted when it comes to gifts. He really has no hobbies like gardening or working on cars or some other thing that might lead to great gift-ideas. He loves to ride his dirt bike, but he's got all the gear he needs for it (save a new dirt bike...but the boys and I aren't buying him one of those!)

So I try to make the little gifts he does receive a little more special by packaging them together or letting the boys be a part of the making or wrapping of the gift. This year I took pictures of the boys doing something related to the gifts hubby is receiving, touched them up a little bit on picnik and then used them as the tags on the gifts which are wrapped in plain white paper.

This gift has a couple of books in it. The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Coolest Dad on the Block. I think he and the boys will have fun reading these books and exploring the tricks and things in them. I took a pic of the boys reading books, picniked it and then made a simple frame using some strips of scrapbook paper glued to the back of the photo. I think it's cute.

This gift has a pair of Crocs in it. My husband and I have had many conversations over the years about how Crocs just do not look good on men (our opinions are largely swayed by the fact that my hubby wears a size 14!!!) but he is often jealous of how quickly the boys and I can slip our Crocs on for a quick little after-dinner neighborhood stroll while he has to find socks, lace up a pair of sneakers, etc. He will enjoy having these for around the house/neighborhood stuff, I think. :) And now maybe other couples can see him and say to each other, "Boy, guys with THAT big of feet just should NOT wear Crocs!" :)

The last gift is sort of his "real" gift and it's a new set of cuff-links I purchased from a very creative Etsy seller. The cuff-links have a center made from pieces of a real baseball. My hubby dresses up for work every day AND is a big baseball fan, so I'm hoping this is a gift he will really love. Both boys already love baseball, too, so it's a wonderful, sentimental AND practical gift from them to him. (I hope!) The pic for the package is of the fellas holding a baseball and softball.

For all the pictures I just turned them to black & white on picnik, then I used the paintbrush feature to highlight/color one part of the picture. The crocs turned out the best, and the books look good, too. The baseballs are already white so all I really got highlighted were the boys hands and some of the red stitching. Oh well. I really like this technique (it's how I created my blog header, too...) and it's super simple!

Next year I'm hoping we can come up with a good handmade gift idea, but for now handmade gift packaging will have to do! Happy Father's Day to all you Mommies and Daddies and Kiddos! It's really a wonderful day to celebrate all that makes up a family...whatever and whoever your family is made up of!

(I'm sure it goes without saying that those of you who actually know my husband should not say that you read what he is getting for Father's Day on the internets. Not only will it spoil his Father's Day surprise, but he'll probably be upset to know that a portion of the web-o-sphere knows he's going to be sporting Crocs...) :)

Don't forget to get your nap on!

2011-06-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

I've had another week or so to keep using my Naptime Nanny products since writing my original review (don't forget to enter the giveaway peeps!) and the only thing I can add is that these CD's WORK, my friends.

Before we started using the CD's, Henry was taking maybe 2 or 3 naps a week. With them he's taking 6. We still have a day every now and then (maybe 3 times now since we got our CD's) where he just cannot fall asleep. But even on those days he's laid in his bed and listened to the whole hour of stories before he gets back up. I can't complain too much about that!

Also, before the CD's, his daily nap was running about 2 hours. And with it it's about 3 hours. I'm not entirely sure whether it's because he spends an hour being awake first listening to the stories and THEN sleeps for 2 hours, or if he's just falling into a deeper sleep because he's so relaxed from listening to his stories. But either way, again, I am NOT going to complain!

So the word from Secret Mommy is two-fold. One: ENTER THE GIVEAWAY! SOMEONE is going to win a set of CD's! It might as well be you! Two: Order a set of CD's. Maybe two or three sets. Because you're probably going to want to give them as gifts. I do.

Okay go!

Make-a-Toy Tuesday - Ooooo I'd like some CEREAL!

2011-06-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome! Today is a happy AND sad day. Happy because we have yet another FABULOSO felted wool toy tutorial from Kris at Resweater. Sad because it is her last one and I've had so much fun with these! But I won't dwell on the sadness. This relationship is not over. Because I don't see myself scrounging through the sweater racks at my local overpriced Goodwill any longer when I can buy BETTER sweaters for BETTER prices from Resweater! :) Bring on the projects!
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Hi everyone! Are you ready for the final tutorial? Cereal anyone?

First, start with cutting out your pattern pieces. I measured a cereal box, and cut the measurements in half, just like I did with the "paper" bag.

Now cut 2 of each.

These are the pieces you will need to cut out if you do the appliques.

Now sew your appliques on to the front piece.

You will not want to overlap your o's, or they will end up looking like a pretzel. I may or may not be speaking from experience.

Using the same techniques from the grocery bag tutorial, sew the sides, top, and bottom together, then sew them to the front of the box.

Now sew the back of the box on, but leave a couple of inches.

Stuff your box full of scraps or polyfill, and sew shut. You are done! Now you should have a fun little set of play food!

I can't wait to give these to my friend's little girl! I hope you had fun with with these!

Kris :)

It's summer...and there are so many things to make and do!

2011-06-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

Summer…time to make it ourselves!

There is something so magical about the lazy, crazy, warm days of summer. From one minute to the next we have an almost unlimited zest for getting out and DOING something! And for us, part of the fun of DOING involves MAKING.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

2011-06-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

When I found and pinned this picture on Pinterest, (you tired of me talking about Pinterest yet? After today I'll stop for a while, I think...) part of the reason I liked it was because I thought the hairstyle was very cute and one that I could pull off. It seemed like something that might look cute messy (most of the time for me...) and be able to be dressed up when necessary.

But there was something else about the picture that I couldn't quite put my finger on. The girl kind of looked familiar. But I didn't think she was an actress or anything. I loved her sunglasses. I loved her shirt (I do have a thing for navy/white stripes...) I loved her necklace. What was it about this picture?

And then this morning I got dressed. And I looked in the mirror at my new haircut and one of my fave Sue Bradbury tops that I've had for almost a year now and it hit me. I liked that stinkin' pic on Pinterest not JUST because I liked that girl's haircut...but I liked everything about her look. And I probably saw myself a little bit.

What do you think? (Okay, whatever, I don't have her delicate facial features and I do not own that super cute necklace...but I do think I'm channeling that mystery lady in my look today.) :)

Now that I've gotten all this "style" and "Pinterest" stuff off my chest, I'm hoping to chill out for a while and talk about something else. Hope I haven't bored you all to death! :)

Adrenalin rush! From sewing!

2011-06-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

This sewing thing? So miraculously gratifying when something actually works out!!!!!

Today I put Eddie down for his morning nap at 10am. When he woke up at 12 noon I was still in my jammies, still hadn't brushed my hair or teeth, hadn't had breakfast, (but was drinking plenty of coffee...) but I did have THIS amazing creation to show for all my 2 hours of the morning.

It's the 20 minute skirt! It did take me every second of his 2 hour nap to make it...but it was my first time ever making adult clothing. (Plus my sewing machine and ALL supplies live in a cabinet, so getting everything out and set up takes 15 minutes or so all on it's own!) I also didn't totally understand the instructions in the tutorial so I sort of forged my own path. My fabric also did NOT have ravel-proof selvedge edges (is that what those are called?) and so I had to hem and zig zag every raw edge.

Nevertheless, I made a skirt. And it looks super cute on me! But you'll have to take my word for it for now, because in my current condition there is no way I'm modeling it. I cannot WAIT to see what it looks like with my super awesome new shoes! Could be my summer uniform.

Handmade summer style? Can I do it? Pt. 1

2011-06-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

I have had 2 kids in the last 3+ years. I've been either pregnant or breastfeeding (or some combination of...) for nearly 4 years now. I have cloth-diapered 1 or 2 children at a time for almost 3 years. I have done countless loads of laundry, made countless meals, cleaned countless crumbs and gooey messes off the floor, scraped unidentified boogery-like things off cheeks (theirs AND mine) and noses, and generally let myself live in sweat pants while doing all of this.

A pic Henry took of me. In sweatpants and an 8 dollar Target t-shirt.

A few months ago I decided to do something about it. After spending the majority of the last 4 years in frumpy, baggy, shapeless sweat-pants, I figured that a couple pair of form-fitting blue jeans would be an improvement in my wardrobe. I don't really care all that much about how I look, but I do feel better and am happier when I feel put together. It's also important, I think, to set a good example to my children about taking care of our bodies and our appearance. I know lots of moms who are trying to improve their looks by getting "off" the jeans, but I'm taking baby steps here. For me, jeans were an improvement. I went shopping and picked up a few new things that FIT me well (SURPRISE! I was TWO sizes smaller than I thought I'd be! No wonder all my sweat pants looked so frumpy!) The improvement was IMMEDIATE.

Same messy hair as last pic. Same 8 dollar stretched-out dirty Target t-shirt as last pic. Sweat pants replaced by "distressed" jeans in a size 10 (I'd been wearing 14's!!!) from White House Black Market. Love that store's denim...

Then last week I blogged about my new haircut and color. I love it. It's super cute and stylish AND very easy to maintain. It looks cute messy (ala bed head-ish) and cute when I take 5 minutes to style it.

Awesome new 'do thanks to Leah at Bel Amici salon. Semi-awesome new 8 dollar Target t-shirt which will soon be stretched out and dirty.

Also last week, I mentioned that I had caved in and ordered a pair of shoes I found on Pinterest that I absolutely could NOT live without. They arrived yesterday and I'm IN LOVE! So cute. So comfy. So red. I adore red shoes.

KILLER new red shoes in size 8 from Lori's Designer Shoes. They are Miz Mooz and I am just in love with them. They will hopefully NOT be stretched out or dirty anytime soon. They also don't look very good with sweatpants, but do rock a pair of form-fitting jeans and an 8 dollar Target t-shirt.

And today I went to the fabric store to pick up some fabric to make a couple of new skirts. I spent a total of $25 on two pieces of fabric that will make 2 skirts (probably have leftovers for headbands or some other accessories or fun projects...) I'm planning to make THIS skirt with the gold/ivory striped knit and am pretty sure I'm going to make THIS one with the linen-y floral. (Both fabrics were chosen for their ability to be worn with the new red shoes...and because they were 50% off.) :)

Hopefully I don't muck up the seamstress-ing of a couple cute summer skirts out of these fabrics. I've never made myself clothing before...

Now I wonder if I can pull it all together? And I wonder if I'll be invited to any summer parties where I can show off my stylish new mommy look? :)

Naptime salvaged - thanks to the "nice voice lady."

2011-06-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

I love naptime. Not for me. For my kids. I know I'm not alone in this. Some of us relish our kids' naptimes because we like to lay down and take a little siesta ourselves. Some of us like to use the time to power through a bunch of housework undisturbed. Some of us like to use it for "me" time - whether that be vegging at the TV or computer or pursuing some sort of Mommy Hobby like sewing or gardening. Whatever we choose to do with the time, most of us LOVE IT when we have an hour or two or three free while the kidlets nap.

Two little boys NOT taking a nap...one jumping and one crying to be picked up. Sigh...

My 1 1/2 yr. old, Eddie, still takes 2 naps a day. Between the two naps, I usually get about 3 or 4 hours of down-time. And until very recently, Henry always took a nap in the afternoon, as well. He would generally sleep for 2 hours. And I would rotate amongst the above list for things to do while the kids napped. Some days I needed to watch Desperate Housewives while they napped. Others I needed to fold a mountain of laundry without it being unfolded faster than I can stack it. Every now and then I needed to crawl into bed and catch a few zzz's. And when Henry started resisting the naps I found myself being a very grumpy mommy in the afternoons/evenings. And he was, too! He still needs the rest or at least some quiet time to himself. We all need to reset a bit. I bemoaned his lack of sleep and my increasing grumpiness on my Facebook page. And then heaven sent me an angel. And her name is Naptime Nanny.

The Naptime Nanny herself contacted me about her story CD's. She offered to let me try some out and see if they would work for us. Let me tell you...the $20 I just spent on an inexpensive CD player for Henry's room has MORE than paid for itself in the peaceful afternoon quiet I've been getting. He's such a happy boy when he's rested and I'm such a happy Mommy. This sounds like a platitude, but my life has CHANGED since we received our set of CD's. We don't argue over naps at all anymore. Henry looks forward to his quiet time and wakes up refreshed and happy.

The first day I told Henry it was time to take a nap and I'd put on a special CD to listen to while I put his brother to sleep in the other bedroom. He was sooooo excited. He wanted to put the CD in the player and push play. Then he JUMPED into bed, snuggled under the covers almost so far I couldn't see him and said, "Oh, this lady sounds nice in her voice." I told him I'd check on him after Eddie was asleep, then I shut the door and left.

Fifteen minutes later I went back and Henry was in a very sleep-like but still-awake trance. Usually he would ask me to come snuggle him if he was that tired but still incapable of falling asleep. But on this day he barely looked over at me and said, "You can go downstairs, Mommy. I'm story-sleeping." I checked on him again about a half hour later and the CD was off and he was fast asleep. He slept THREE hours that day. He also told me later that when he got tired he went over and turned off the CD by himself then crawled back into bed and went to sleep. Precious.

One sleepy toddler passed out COLD while Naptime Nanny plays in the background. Bliss!

The next day went pretty much as usual and when it was time for naps Henry said, "May I please go take a nap, Mommy? With my story lady?" And so he did. And he slept his normal 2 hours. The following day we were having company for dinner and obviously wanted the boys to be on their best behavior. Afternoon naps are CRUCIAL on days like this and it used to seem like these were the VERY days Henry would choose not to take one. But not anymore! Now we go in his room, put on the CD, he crawls into bed and within a half hour he's asleep! He sleeps for 1 1/2 to 3 hours each time and always wakes up happy and telling me about the last story he remembers hearing before sleeping. (His fave is "Go-dee-wocks and her bears.) He loves "the nice voice lady" and all of the fun stories. I haven't even been able to listen to a CD all the way through yet because he asks me to leave so he can listen by himself and fall asleep on his own (a real breakthrough!) but what I have heard I love. Some stories have a small modern touch or two - such as Goldilocks considering calling 911 when she discovers she's lost in the woods, but there is no phone nearby! Haha! Too bad she didn't have her iPhone on her! The stories remain classic and endearing, though, and are told in such a bright and cheery but also soothing and gentle way.

One set of Hanna Andersson rocketship PJ's and our set of Naptime Nanny cd's all ready for action!

The best way for me to get my kids to sleep has always been to have a routine. At night we have a fairly strict routine we always follow (even when traveling, for the most part) and it helps us get our kids to get a reasonable night's sleep no matter where we are. For naps I've always had a routine, too, but when Henry weaned from nursing just after he turned 2 that we lost a huge part of his pre-nap routine. It became harder and harder to set aside a real space in the day and create a true feeling that it was time to rest. These CD's have given us a new pre-nap routine. It seems to be one that Henry really enjoys. He so far likes to listen to them by himself while laying in bed snuggled under the covers and with his fave snuggly toys. I could see many applications for these CD's including mamas and kiddos snuggling together to listen until kiddos fall asleep or using them in the car when kidlets get fussy on a long trip as Naptime Nanny suggested to me. Though they've been working quite well in this house at getting Henry to actually take his afternoon nap, he has also a couple of times asked if he could go to his room to play by himself and listen to the CD's while he played. I think long after he is done needing a daytime nap, this CD's will be great tools at giving him a little down-time each day to be alone in a relaxing environment.

Needless to say, all this going on and on about the Naptime Nanny CD's is to encourage you to pick them up for yourself. If you've got kids who are starting to resist naps, you run a home daycare that is required to get kids down for some kind of rest time, your little ones get grumpy on long car trips or some OTHER thing, then you'd do well to check these out. And the Naptime Nanny is going to make one lucky reader quite happy by offering a FULL SET OF ALL 3 CD's as a giveaway! Yep, that's right!

Enter to win a set of Naptime Nanny CD's for youself by visiting Naptime Nanny's FACEBOOK page and "liking" her. (Leave a message saying "Hi" and that Secret Mommy sent you if you like!) Come back here and comment that you did that! This is the mandatory entry and most be done before any "additional" entries.

For additional entries: Visit Naptime Nanny's website and listen to a sample or read the reviews or the parenting tips and then come back here and leave a comment saying what you read or learned, Visit Secret Mommy's Facebook page and "like" me then leave a comment here, Become a follower of this Secret Mommy blog via your reader or Google friend connect and then leave a comment here. (For all modes of entry, if you already "like" or "follow" something, then leave a comment that you already do and that will be your entry.)

Giveaway ends at midnight on Thursday, June 23rd.
Winner will be emailed (if you've left your email addy) and posted on this blog.

So there we have it, four different entries available to win a set of 3 Naptime Nanny CD's. And seriously, even if you're entering to win, you should also go buy a set. I'm going to buy several to keep on hand for baby shower gifts!

Disclaimer: A set of Naptime Nanny CD's were provided to me for free to try out for the purpose of offering a review. All review material, glowing recommendations, love and GRATITUDE are solely my own and were not provided. :)

A boy climbing his first tree...

2011-06-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

Well, shoot. Technically...I had to put him up in it. Because there aren't any branches low enough for him to even really grab, let alone hoist himself up on.

And - actually - once I got him up there he didn't really move much other than to get situated in a comfy way he liked and that didn't require me to hold onto him at all. But once he found himself that nice little perch something really magical happened.

This bright smile spread across his face.

The sharp cold breeze that had been blowing all afternoon and evening seemed to stop for a moment as the baby and I moved a few feet away to see what Henry looked like sitting up there in that tree all by himself. The clouds moved so we could see the sunset and the last rays of evening sun shining through the soft maple leaves as I snapped a few pics with my phone.

The whole world stood still.

My boy was up in a tree. Not just "a" tree. He was up in the tree that when I first met my husband was just a tiny little sapling, held in its place in the world with a few plastic ties and a couple of very tall 2x2's. He was up in the tree we fertilized so many Springs so it would grow and become something significant. Significant. As if we even knew what significance was before we had these amazing children in our lives whose weight that tree will now bear. (Barely.)

And then we heard our neighbor kids practicing the piano and Henry, high up in his new seat, said, "Oh, I have a song in my head that goes with this music!" And I'm not exaggerating or kidding, he started MAKING UP a song right on the spot about butterflies and hippos and a burrito and the color orange and I seriously almost cried.

I don't know why I didn't just let myself cry. Would have been the perfect moment for it.

Make-a-Toy Tuesday - Canned Play Food!

2011-06-07T04:16:00.000-07:00

Today is our 2nd installment of our now regular Make-a-Toy Tuesday feature and we're still lucky enough to have Kris from Resweater here to thrill us with another ULTRA-GROOVY felted wool toy. You can also see this tutorial listed on her blog as part of Tutorial Tuesday! I'm in so much awe of her and this fun little project she's whipped up for us that I could go on and on, but I'll try to refrain. I'm super excited about today's tutorial since most play food I've ever seen is for "fresh" fruits and veggies and the occasional "cooked" item like toast/bread or cupcakes or even bacon. I don't think I have EVER seen this:
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Have you all been sitting in front of your computers clutching the little grocery bags you made from last week's tutorial, waiting anxiously to fill it? Today is the day! This week I bring you Auntie Resweater's Down Home canned tomatoes! Ok, it's just a can of tomatoes, but it's cute, and your child will want to play with it :).

This tutorial is even easier than last week's, and you can even hand sew the whole thing (might even be easier than using the sewing machine), in a short amount of time. I apologize in advance for any wonkiness and unpolished-ness... my son is out of school, summer has began, and time is at a premium right now (but I love it!).

First, you need to make your pattern pieces. I will give you the dimensions I used, but of course you can customize this as needed. Can: 8" x 3 1/2", label 8" x 3", top & bottom (cut 2): 2 1/2" diameter circle.

For the tomato, since I can't give you exact dimensions, just cut out a heart with a rounded bottom, and a star for the stem. Tomatoes aren't perfect or symmetrical, so don't worry if yours is not either :). Mine certainly wasn't!

Ok, now that you have all your pattern pieces, go ahead & cut out all your felt pieces. I recommend felted merino wool sweaters for this project, gray for the can pieces (so it looks like metal), red for the tomato, green for the tomato stem, and the label color doesn't really matter. Sorry I forgot to get a picture of the tomato pieces cut out.

First, sew your tomato & stem to the label. I used a zig-zag stitch, but a straight stitch is just as good, or even hand stitching.

Now center your label on the can piece, and sew it on. I used a contrasting colored zig-zag stitch, but again, a straight stitch or hand sewn stitch will work just as well.

Now take your can piece with the label sewn on, and fold the length in half with the label on the inside, and sew the 2 ends together. It should look like this when you do that:

Now flip it right side out, and it should look like this... a can with no top or bottom.

Take one of your circles, and sew it to the bottom, with right sides out, sewing close to the edges. I know it looks a bit wonky in the picture, but it's fine ;). I ran out of the original gray, and had to use a matching lambswool scrap I found to make the can bottom.

Now flip the can right side up, and stuff it with scraps.

Sew the top circle on, like you did with the bottom, and you are done!

If this was really easy for you, and you are an intermediate, or better, sewer, you can create your own appliques for the labels, and make different canned goods, or you can make an additional lid with velcro on the lid & can, so your child can "open" the cans. If this tutorial seems a little difficult, you can hand sew the entire thing with blanket stitching, or even leave off the tomato and make some cans with generic blank labels.

Still got room in your grocery bag? Stay tuned next week for the final installment of my guest tutorials here on Secret Mommy!

Crafty / balanced day...

2011-06-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

I wanted to work on a sewing project today (which you'll find out more about at some point...probably in a couple weeks when I've had time to re-do it since my trial today wasn't entirely successful...anywhoooo!) and I was able to get the wee one to take a morning nap...but Henry doesn't do that anymore. So I gave him a plastic tray (the kind that multi-packs of Matchbox cars come in are GREAT for setting out an assortment of little crafty tidbits for a project...) full of odds and ends, a piece of wood, a few markers and a bottle of glue and told him to go crazy. He looked at me wide-eyed and in a certain amount of disbelief. I think I have mentioned here before how it is one of my life's greatest challenges to back the HECK off when my kiddos are doing something. I like to jump in and "help." I do it when my husband tries to make something in the kitchen. I do it when my mother-in-law is here after I've just had a baby and she tries to help with laundry or what-not. I do it to my kids when they are trying to have fun and be creative. ON. THEIR. OWN. I'm not very good at just chillin' out.

But not only did I have something else that I wanted to do, but I am also trying to learn to let their creativity be THEIR creativity. I think that it is infinitely more fun to Henry (see his happy face?) to do what he did today than to be given a pile of items and told HOW they are supposed to be put together to create some random thing. Whether that thing be something that he truly is tickled by, like our pretzel log cabin, or something he doesn't really care about at all, like our paper daffodils. It's more fun to let them just have at it. See how much fun he had? And honestly, I'm a little bit in awe of his cool use of the golf tees. I'd only thought of laying them flat against the board and gluing them on. He stands them up and gives them a hat! :)

Fun.

When it was all over he said, "I'm sort of sticky from glue. Can I go play outside and be wild?"

Hahahahaha! What a fun and balanced day. (Though I would like to say that when he asked to go out and be wild I said yes and tried to send him outside without shoes or a hat. He said, "Mom! I want to ride my bike! I need my crocs and my helmet!" Sometimes he's his mother's boy...)

Mini makeover...every mama needs one!

2011-06-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

I never used to let myself go so much. Pre-kids I was always heading to the salon to get a mani or pedi or wax something or massage something or steam/scrub something or SOMETHING! And now I'm the calloused-footed, furry-lipped, tense-backed, frizzy/gray-haired mama who doesn't pay enough attention to herself. I always say I'm going to try to take care of myself more and then I don't. My hubby even encourages me to take a half day and go to the salon or shopping or something for myself. And I still don't. What am I? Nuts?

So a couple days ago I finally made good on the promise to myself to do something fun. I got a haircut and color. I had about an INCH of roots from the last time I home-colored (why do I keep doing that?) and had absolutely no style whatsoever in my limp, frizzy locks.

See what I looked like before?

And see what I looked like after?

Seriously, I was so frumpy in my before pic that even MY CAMERA couldn't focus on me! Haha!

Leah at Bel Amici salon in Cedar Mill is seriously my new BFF. Well, I shouldn't say that because it's kinda mean to my REAL BFF's to say so, probably. So let me say that Leah at Bel Amici is my new go-to-girl for taking care of ME!

Love you, Leah! I'm sure I'll be back soon for some waxing or steaming or manicuring or . . . SOMETHING!

Jazzed up box-mix brownies...with credit to the genius who made the "real" version...

2011-06-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

All righty. Yesterday I told you about my new obsession, Pinterest. And I even showed you a pic of these Caramel Brownies that I said I had to make and did and that they were sinful. But what I didn't share because it wasn't really the time or place to go on and on and on ad nauseum about brownies (oh, but it is here...so watch out!) is that I modified the original recipe.

Because although I used to be the woman who made everything from scratch, eschewed all things box and glorified my dear sweet Grammy with my baking prowess, I am she no longer. Now I'm the busy mother of two boys under age 3 who is still breastfeeding and cloth-diapering a 1 1/2 year old, tries to dream up a new craft every day for the 3 year old, insists on making something for breakfast every day besides cold cereal, expends a lot of energy trying to maintain a tiny garden, and more. I'm sure that many other women in my situation still find PLENTY of time to do all their cooking and baking from scratch, but I have become the woman I've so long loathed on the Food Network, Semi-Home-Made Sandra Lee. I can't believe I just admitted it. But admit it I must. Because most meals I make and treats I bake these days tend to have an essential part of their make-up rooted in a boxed or pre-packaged convenience item. And now back to those brownies.

Okay, so the original recipe from Annie's Eats is a gorgeous one that I'm pretty much 100% positive tastes better than my knock-off. But my knock-off will save you some time and get you to the task of shoving these gorgeous hunks of brownie in your face all that much quicker. And that, my friends, is key.

So alls I did is replace the homemade brownie part with a boxed mix. I think I used Duncan Hines fudgy brownies. I prepared the batter, poured half into my prepared pan as instructed by Annie. Only I used a 9x13 pan because until this second when I went to re-read her recipe I didn't even NOTICE that she said to use an 8x8. Oh well. It works either way, though my brownie layers were admittedly very thin when split in half over that amount of space. Anywhoosie, prepare the pan and grease it up GOOD with Crisco. I'm still soaking my pan now to get the caramel off a couple spots on the sides where I didn't grease high enough.

I baked the pan of brownies with half the batter poured in for about 20 minutes. Took it out, let it cool, all as instructed. Then I prepared the caramel sauce as instructed by Annie. I poured it over the baked brownies (and was unable to use the nuts cause my hubby hates nuts in things...but it would be SOOOOO good with them in there!) Then I poured my other half of brownie mix carefully over the caramel and baked them again for another 25 minutes or so until the top layer of brownie was cooked completely.

These puppies have to cool a LONG time before you can cut them. I'd recommend making early in the day to eat that evening. Or even a day ahead.

They are so scrumptious!

And so for those of you who don't do a lot of baking because you think it's too hard, try jazzing up boxed mixes in new and unusual ways to get your baking feet under you! Before you know it you'll be a baking champ!

It would seem I spend too much time online...

2011-06-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

I thought I might have heard angels singing when I discovered Pinterest. A fabulous Mommy blogger that I adore reading (Jill at Baby Rabies) mentioned her new obsession one day on Facebook and I thought, "Nope. Not going to touch that one with a 10 foot pole. Don't need another online/social media obsession." And then curiosity got the best of me and I clicked.

But instead of finding a new site to suck and drain away all my "free" time, I found something that actually SAVES me time. For you see, I am forever bookmarking or adding to my reader or emailing myself or even - believe it or not - writing down websites or blogs that I find that have something in them I want to remember. Some cute photo or craft idea or recipe or pair of shoes I'm dying to have or tutorial I wish I had time to follow. And because I've used so many different places and ways to try cataloging all this crap, I lose things or don't go back to them or I forget.

And that ends now! Because now I have the power of Pinterest! And I will simply "pin" anything I see that I like. I will put my "pinned" items in folders to make the cataloging of and retrieving of said items as easy as can be. I will no longer bookmark items simply because I wanted to save this "one cute thing." I will now only add things to my reader that I actually want to regularly read. Everything I love is going to be pinned. And when I'm sitting around looking for inspiration or a craft or a recipe for dinner or a new hairstyle or pair of shoes or ANYTHING, I will browse through my Pinterest folders. And if I don't see what I'm looking for in my own folders? I'll go searching through everyone else's!

Because someone else is bound to have pinned exactly what I need. Ahhhhh........

Note: This is not a paid endorsement or ANYTHING! I just love Pinterest. Here's a selection of my recent pins and maybe you'll see why I'm so in lust...

The haircut I think I'm going to go get today.

The new shoes I saw someone else pin that I HAD to have and immediately ordered.

The brownies that looked so good I had to make. (They're sinful.)

The skirt I'm hoping to make very soon to go with my new red shoes.

The neckties I want to make the boys.

You won't be sorry if you go check out Pinterest. Well, you might be. Because while it is saving me time and organizing my online life, it is still a bit of a time suck perusing everyone else's pins and looking for the next wonderful thing I have to make or do or have. :)

Make-a-Toy Tuesday!!! Inaugural edition...let's go shopping!

2011-05-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

I am so excited about today. Kris from Resweater is here visiting with a FANTASTIC toy tutorial. Resweater is one of my newly fave spots on the web. I sometimes have the time and patience to head out to my local thrift stores looking for wool sweaters to felt up for sewing projects, but usually I don't. So Kris takes good care of us by doing the legwork for us and then listing fabulous varieties of wool in her online shop. Come on! How easy is that?

She's also got incredible talent in coming up with terrific projects using felted wool. I could spend ALL day trying to decide which of her pillows I'd like to copy. And I've already made one pincushion using her very easy and clever salt shaker and scraps method. I love crafting with felted wool, and finding a terrific (and easy) place to buy the sweaters for felting makes it SO much MORE wonderful!

Wanna see what she's got for us today? Okay...here goes!

(Note to my readers who don't sew..read to the end for a little tip from me...)

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Today's tutorial is for a "paper" grocery bag for pretend play. This is the first in a series of 3 tutorial total, the other 2 being play food to put inside the grocery bag. Fun, right? Ready for the tutorial?

First you will need to make your patterns. I personally love to use Hallmark wrapping paper for my patterns. Why? They always have a 1 inch grid on the back, so it is super easy for measuring! These are the measurements of the pieces you will need:

main - 7" x 6"
sides - 7" x 3 1/2"
bottom- 6" x 3 1/2"
handles - 7" x 1"

Obviously you can customize these measurements if you want a bigger or smaller bag, but I measured a paper bag, and cut the measurements in half, since our shoppers are half sized :) .
(Ed. note: Isn't she cute and clever? Half sized...that kills me. In a good way.) :)

Choose your material. You can use craft felt, but I always prefer to work with recycled wool (aka felted sweaters). For this project a well felted merino or other thinner wool is best. I used a lambswool I had on hand. Cut out your pieces. You will be cutting out 2 of each piece, except the bottom.

Take your 2 main pieces, and your 2 side piece, and sew them together, right sides out. When you are done with that, it should look like this:

Now you are ready to sew on the bottom. When you get to each corner of the bottom piece, leave the needle in the wool, lift up the sewing machine foot, and pivot the wool until you are lined up with the next side. Then put the foot back down, and continue to the next corner. Hopefully that makes sense!

It should end up looking like this:

Now you have the basic bag shape. Now we will put a crease in the sides, so it will look & fold like a real paper bag. Pinch the side like the fold in a paper bag.

Reach inside with your other hand & grab the pinch at the bottom. Flip the bag inside out.

Now start sewing from the pinch to the edges of the bag, close as you can to the edge. Repeat this on the other side. When you are done with this, it should look like this:

Now flip it right side out again, and it should look like this on the sides:

Now we are ready for the handles! Take the ends and fold them in, so they meet in the center, right sides out, and pin them in place.

Now sew a zig zag stitch on either side. If you don't have a zig zag option, I think a straight stitch will be just fine. They should now look like this:

Um, actually they should look better than that, because mine are so sloppy, but you get the picture ;). Now you just need to sew them on to your bag where they look good to you. I made a simple square with zig zag stitch to hold mine on.

Now you have a cute little grocery bag!

Next week, and the following week, we will be making some pretend food to put in it. In the meantime, any empty small food boxes make great "pretend food" for playing grocery store or kitchen! When my son was small we loved to play grocery store, but we have a small house, so we would use a small piece of Scotch tape to tape the boxes closed. When he was bored with playing grocery store for a period of time, we would remove the tape, and store them flat to save space.

Thanks for following along! See you next week!

Kris :)
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Ed. Note: Isn't she awesome? I love this tutorial so much I'm giddy! I'm going to try and set aside enough time today to make it!!! Now the note for my readers who don't sew. I think it's quite possible that you could take "inspiration" from this bag tutorial and craft one up using craft felt (which is very thin and would be easier to glue) and some craft glue or maybe even heat and bond. I'm sure you'd do a few things differently (no crease down the sides and maybe single-ply handles to keep life simple) but it would still be a fun and cute fabric shopping bag! Let me know if you do that, I'd love to see pics!

Make-a-Toy Monday ... Sorry, you're a day early!

2011-05-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

What on earth am I talking about? Well, here's the skinny. Make-a-Toy Monday is going to be moving to Tuesdays. And for the first 3 weeks of the new Make-a-Toy Tuesday, we are going to have a guest providing us with a series of tutorials to put together a REALLY FUN toy in multiple parts that will be enjoyed by both girls and boys and will make kids from a pretty large age range happy.

Sound like too much to promise? Ladies (and gents...) it ain't. I've seen it already. It's adorable. And relatively easy. And fun. I love it.

I was going to give you a bit of info today about our guest blogger/tutorial writer for tomorrow...but I've changed my mind. I want to keep you all in suspense. It's more like a surprise party that way. And I love surprise parties!

Come back. I'll see you all tomorrow!

Friday/Saturday moment....I am a SERIOUS painter!

2011-05-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

this moment...

a single photo capturing a simple, special, extraordinary moment from the week. inspired by soulemama.


"Mom! You can't take MY picture! I'm a SERIOUS painter! Grrrr......." ~Henry

I'm taking further inspiration this week from waldorf mama, Shelley Caskey, and adding a list of things I am grateful for this week:

: : The sound I hear now as I type...my snuffly sicky baby taking a nap on his snoring Daddy's chest as they lay reclined in the big comfy chair.

: : This wonderful, peaceful, magical world we have at our retreat in the mountains. It rejuvenates us all.

: : My friends and family. I feel very rich in them these days.

Never settle for less than your grandest adventure

2011-05-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

Henry, my 3 year old, loves to pretend. (What a silly thing to say, right? I'm sure most 3 year olds love pretending.) He can throw a bath-towel over his head and be "exploring a cave." Or crawl around the living room with the laundry basket on his back and be "crawling all over the beach with the other turtles." A few square feet of backyard patio can become a circus tent or a factory or even an ocean in his mind. I adore his creative pretend play. I like to be a part of it when he invites me to and I love being a spectator when he doesn't even know he's got an audience.

This morning a simple question, "Why do we eat breakfast?" turned into a raging, howling, mysteriously sad moment for my explorer. You see, he asked me said question and I answered, "So that we have lots of energy to do grand things all day. Like pretend to run with tigers and climb mountains and fly airplanes and ride elephants!" And Henry crossed up his eyebrows and said, (in his naughty voice,) "I don't *WANT* to pretend to do those things!"

Startled me responded with, "Why not, Booger-Bear?"

And my sweet, darling adventurer said, (in almost a sad voice and I swear with tears starting to well up in his eyes...tho that could just be my dramatic memory of the situation...,) "I want to do all those things for *REAL*!"

And so you shall, little buddy. I have no doubt in my mind that whatever grand adventures you want in life you will seek out and accomplish.

Make-a-Toy ... TUES-day ???

2011-05-23T22:07:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to post a felted wool toy for a long time. Felted wool is nearly as easy as cardboard when it comes to toy making. Even those of you who think you can't do it almost surely can. Shoot, you can probably even use your glue gun to put your felted wool toys together!

One can come up with felted wool many ways, but my way is to scrounge around cheap thrift stores (I've found Goodwill to be about the most expensive in this endeavor...but I've still purchased there...) for 100% wool or at least 80% wool sweaters. All different kinds of wool will give you all different kinds of results, but you can generally tell that thick pre-felted sweaters will give you a very thick felted wool and thinner ones, like cashmere, will return finer results. Once you've got your sweaters, take them home and dump them in your washing machine. I use a little bit of my regular laundry soap (Biokleen laundry liquid) and wash on HOT water with an extra HOT water rinse. Some people do this a couple cycles, I think, but I just do 1 very long one with the extra rinse. When done, put them in your dryer on high heat and run until totally dry. You may want to clean your lint filter at least once during this cycle, as it can get full and hot with all the sweater lint. When done, you've got a bunch of brand new felted wool! This wool can be chopped up just like cardboard or paper and will not fray or unravel. It's awesome.

So the new toy I came up with for today are crowns and wrist bands. (Which I know is sort of dumb since I made duct tape crowns and wrist bands not too long ago, but those crowns have been deemed "scratchy" by my kid who talks and neither boy will wear them for very long. The felted wool ones already get a LOT more playtime.) And they can range from the insanely simple to more extravagant and difficult. They can also be made VERY girly or VERY boyish or even just VERY unique. Before I show you my meager attempts at head-gear for my kids, let me share THIS fantastic example I saw on a blog last week. I'm in awe of other mommies and their talents. And I'm totally going to make this one myself one day this week...but obviously didn't want to just copy it for this post.

Isn't it friggin' insanely adorable? Yes. It is.

Anywhoo...so here's what I whipped up. One quite plain crown made out of a colorful stripey wool. I don't know why I always make a pontiff hat for Eddie, but my husband thinks it's pretty weird and honestly so do I. I don't plan it. I think I always make Henry's first and then am running out of time and energy by the time I get to poor Eddie. Note to self...make Eddie's "whatever" next time and make it EXTRAVAGANT!

Eddie's plain-Jane crown didn't come with any arm bands.

The first crown I made was this blue one for Henry. I really wanted to use this pale blue cashmere I had left over from some diaper wraps. But I really wanted to come up with some unique idea/style/design. I enlisted Henry's help but all he kept saying was that he wanted "shapes." I didn't execute it very well at all. We both like it, but neither of us is feeling it that much. The shapes are made out of brown felted wool so I cut some brown wrist bands off some sleeves in my scrap basket and made simple bands. I wanted to embellish them with blue but like I say, Henry and I were just not really "feeling" this set. I'll probably add some blue diamonds or triangles or something to the bands at some point...

Then right as I heard Eddie waking up from his nap, Henry said, "I want an alien-eye crown!" And I thought, "That's a terrific idea!" Wish we would have had it 2 hours ago when we started this project...

But throughout the afternoon I was able to carve out some time (aka . . . let my children run wild with a bucket of tinker toys and lincoln logs and destroy my house,) to work on the alien-eye crown and arm bands.

Though I'd do it differently if I had more time and less distractions, I generally like it. The antennae are floppy which I hadn't intended, but Henry LOVES! To make this crown, I cut out a large piece of a heavy ivory-colored fisherman's sweater. It was a scrap not nearly large enough to go around a head, so I laid it out on a piece of gray flannel felt.

The gray felt is not as stiff as felted wool (hence the floppy antennae) but it's nice and soft and gave the crown a good backing and I had plenty of it so it wrapped around Henry's head. Speaking of which, I measured Henry's head and then made the crown about 2" smaller than that and used about 1 1/2" or 2" of elastic in the back so it would fit well. Anywhoosie, I free-hand cut out the shape in the gray felt with the little floppy antennae. Then I cut out a red circle and brown circle for the "alien-eye." I used my machine to stitch the piece of felted sweater to the gray felt backing. (I was working at the kitchen island by the stove to keep my project away from little fingers!) :)

You could hand-stitch or even fabric glue this step if you don't sew. The red and brown "eye" circles I fabric-glued and then whip-stitched around the edges. I used my machine to stitch the elastic piece in back that join the ends of the crown together.

For the arm bands I just cut the wrists off a felted wool sweater (the same red one that I used for the eye) and then added gray felt circles. I used my snap pliers to add an ivory-colored resin snap to the center to hold the gray felt in place. Easy and cute. Henry thinks they're awesome. And Eddie does, too. He wants to wear ALL the bands at the same time.

Here's one last pic to show the backs of the crowns and how I made them a bit too small and added the bits of elastic. You could skip this step if you don't have/don't want to use elastic. (With the blue one I had to make it too small because I only had so much blue felt left to work with...)

And some other things you can make with felted wool are flowery bracelets, (Henry is modeling a bracelet here that we made for a friend.) They are obviously just like the plain or superhero arm bands but with a flower and leaf stitched (or glued) on.

Dolls. (Here's a robot doll I made for Henry's 2nd birthday...) This one is embellished with old snaps, buttons, hook & eyes, and bits of fabric. But basically it is just a bunch of rectangles of felted wool all stitched together. (And with bits of velcro sewn onto the inside "stacking" edges so it all comes apart and goes back together.) I have also made some adorable little fish I can't find any pics of right now that have loops on one end so they can be "caught" by the boys' toy fishing pole.

and even Christmas tree ornaments. I'm looking forward to making some more detailed wool ornaments with Henry and maybe Eddie, too, this year.

Now go shrink up those wool sweaters and see what YOU can make out of felted wool!

Friday moment.... "What? It snowed in MAY?"

2011-05-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. - Amanda Blake Soule

All righty friends. Once again...I'm posting more than a "single" photo and I'm including "words."

But it's still my simple, special, extraordinary moment.

We woke up on the morning of Monday, May 16th at our cabin in Eastern Oregon to find several inches of fresh new snow! This was after getting sunburned on Friday and Saturday in 75 degree temps! We bundled up as quick as we could to get outside and play in it. I couldn't find mittens for Eddie, so he wore socks on his hands and didn't stay out as long as Henry and I did. I couldn't find gloves for myself so made a "Snow Bear" with Henry bare-handed and then stood in the yard doing windmills to try and get warm blood back into my fingertips! An hour or so after we came back inside a HUGE herd of around 200 elk passed through our property looking for breakfast. Amazing day.