penny carnival

The Little Red Riding Hood birthday party

Hooray for another birthday party! Last night was Magpie's Little Red Riding Hood-themed 2nd birthday. These are getting more fun all the time--so many kids running around the house, so much excitement beforehand, so much more time for the grownups to catch up with each other now that the little ones are more self sufficient. 

Something always goes a little wrong, but that's part of the fun, right? Right?! 

Besides, the look on this face makes the mad scramble at the end worth it:

 

You can see more pictures/details on my About.com Kids' Parties site.

You might notice that she's clutching a couple of her birthday gifts there--a stuffed pig and a plastic giraffe. Almost every picture I took last night shows her with those two toys in her hands. I guess she took a liking to them right away.

She's also wearing another gift--this apron I sewed her (modeled by Lulu the lamb the other day so I didn't ruin the surprise):

 

I wish I'd had more time to make her some other handmade gifts. On my to-do list were a Mimi Kirchner doll (dressed as Little Red Riding Hood), a felt cake and a camping blanket, but time ran out. Oh, well. There's always Christmas.

Anyhoo, she was happy to get the apron, especially after having to borrow her big sister's for the last year or so. Magpie is an avid cook--I can't make anything without her "helping" these days--so I'm glad I got that project done for her.

Moving on ... to Christmas. 

I really don't see the point in decorating the house for Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving, but we're not going to be here for it, and why put the effort into decorating for Christmas if it's only up for a few weeks?

So we pulled out the crates labeled "Christmas" today and put a few things out. 

 

The big hit was the nativity set (the one I let them play with). You wouldn't believe the adventures Mary, Joseph and Jesus had today. My goodness. Did you know Mary is a princess? Yep. 

The best part, though, was that every time Bo would say something about "the baby Jesus," Magpie would look up and ask me for a "cheese stick." 

Halloween costumes 2009

Just a quick note to show the Halloween costumes I made for the girls.

Magpie was a pirate and Bo was Glenda the Good Witch ... for about three hours. Then she decided her costume was too scratchy so she put on the Cinderella dress I made for her birthday. Ay caramba. I did the same thing to my mom every year from about 1980 until 1985. Payback's a beeyatch! I would have gladly skipped the Thursday night wrestling match with three yards of tulle if she hadn't begged for it in the fabric store. Who's in charge here? Oh. These two are:

 

 

 

About to be blown away to Oz:

J and I dressed up, too, but he won't let me post the photo. (Every party has a pooper and he's the pooper of the party. I tell him that sometimes. Somehow it doesn't inspire him to be less of a party pooper. Did I tell you I am an awesome wife?!). Our costumes were very last minute. I bought us both Superman T-shirts and we wore them under white dress shirts with the buttons halfway undone. We also wore black-rimmed eye glasses. You get the picture. Clark Kent about to become Superman. I'll try harder next year.

The craft room has seen some serious action in the past week. Last night I frantically stitched up a pair of Montessori slippers for Magpie's first day at her big sister's school. Very exciting. I'd show you a picture, but the slippers hardly had time to be in existence before they were whisked away and put to use in the actual school this morning. 

And this week is all about preparing for Magpie's Little Red Riding Hood birthday party this weekend. Oh, and working. Not sure how it's all going to get done, but it always does. Details coming soon ... 

P.S. The pirate costume was Simplicity 3680 ... with some serious shortcuts. The Glenda dress was Simplicity 4139 ... with some serious tulle.

Birthday party planning and other tidbits

I'm knee deep in a work project right now. Did I say knee? I meant neck. It's time consuming but fun, and I'll tell y'all about in a few days.

Deadlines aren't what they used to be, though. When I worked full time for newspapers I used to thrive on knowing a story had to be filed by 9 p.m. After being wherever I had to be to cover the news, I'd have half the thing written in my head by the time I got back to my desk. And if I didn't, I was in trouble.

Everything changes with kids, though, especially when you work from home. Except when the girls are at preschool, there's never a guarantee that I'll have time to focus on what I'm doing and get it done by the time my editors need it. That uncertainty is more stressful than any breaking news ever was.

A phrase we seem to keep repeating around here is "It is what it is." In other words, quit complaining. Be grateful for the fascinating careers/assignments/life we have. Get it done. And move on. 

But here's a phrase I came across tonight--on Sarah Jane Studio's blog--that I like much better:

"Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved." -Thomas S. Manson

I wish that had been in my head last night as I was frantically trying to get the dishes done before bedtime while Magpie was crying and tugging on my leg, begging for my attention. Instead of turning off the water, parking my rear on the floor and loving her up, I scrubbed those pots clean like a madwoman ... and eventually let all the noise turn me into, well, a mad woman. 

Ridiculous. I'm not advocating being at kids' beck and call at all times (they need to learn patience, right?) but two minutes of quality time probably would have calmed her down and allowed me to finish the dishes in peace.

I read something once that said even if we do something we regret with our kids--even if it happened just a second ago--we have the option of changing our direction and taking a more positive route. In the next moment. Right then and there. Turn the corner. Don't look back. 

I don't know how that looks when your kids are older, but at 2 and 4, usually that means shifting gears from frustration to total silliness. Usually that comes naturally to me. Other times, the dishes win. Grrr ... moving on. 

I really just meant to pop on here to share a few tidbits:

-I'm getting a lot of hits right now on my pumpkin carving tutorial from last year. Just thought I'd post a link to it here to make it easier for newbies to find.

-Everybody and their brother also seems to want to bake an owl cake right now (based on Google searches that find their way to Penny Carnival). You can read about my adventures with owl cakes here and here.

-At some point, I'm going to have to start planning Magpie's second birthday party. The original idea was to make it a parade-themed party, which was inspired by these invitations I ordered. 

Aren't they adorable? They're even cuter in person, with their sweet little rounded corners and all.

But the weather has become downright frigid here, so I'm not sure I want to subject a bunch of kids to a late-October prance around the neighborhood. I think I'll save the invitations for Bo's July birthday, since she's the one who's been begging for a neighborhood parade anyway. A parade party could be so much fun--tell the kids to bring their bikes/strollers/wagons, have a stash of streamers and flags they can use to decorate their rides, do the parade thing (inviting neighbors to cheer them on), then come back to the house and serve a long, skinny cake that's frosted to look like a street. 

So I'm working on a Plan B now. Little Red Riding Hood birthday party? Three Little Bears? Alice in Wonderland tea party? Vintage circus? Hedgehogs? Mary Had a Little Lamb? OK, I need to have more kids so I can fulfill all my toddler birthday fantasies.
Update: I just want to acknowledge that I realize the birthday theme should be all about what the kid wants, but Magpie is at an age where everything is awesome to her. "Do you like moldy bread?" "I like mo-wee bed." "Do you like Brussel sprouts?" "I like bussybouts." 

Other things I'm loving right now:

-This idea for thank-you cards (just in time!)

-A work-in-progress by Anna Maria Horner. I will never get tired of rainbows.

-A lovely white dress

-and Art Nest Studio's (a.k.a. Susannah, the highly talented portrait artist) fawn softie pattern. Oooh ... another birthday theme possibility. Those could be the favors!

Repurposing a quilt top, this little piggy, and my sweet Bo

It has taken me 10 minutes to start typing this post because my hands are busy feeding my mouth a big hunk of bread that just came out of the oven. I would like to tell you that it's some earthy, nutty, whole wheaty bread, but it's not. It's white sandwich bread, made with overly processed flour. There's butter melting on top of it. And I'm in heaven.

First, congratulations to my friends Carolyn and Scott and their daughter Joey, who welcomed baby Julian into the world today. I always get weepy when that much-anticipated e-mail comes (or Facebook update, I should say. E-mail seems so old fashioned now, doesn't it?). Good work, Mama. Now cuddle up with your little bundle and get some rest.

I have a partial update from Saturday's trash-to-treasure presentation. As a reminder, the newspaper gave me $25 to buy some junk at the big indoor yard sale they host, and then I had 24 hours to come up with a plan to repurpose it. Then, in front of a (very small) audience, I transformed it.

One of the items I bought--for $5--was a quilt top. I don't think I'm going to win any points for creativity here, but I basically just used it like I'd use any fabric and turned it into an Emmeline apron:

This was the last project I did at the show because I knew it would take a while, so I sent the audience off to do more shopping while I sewed it up. They came back at the end (well, some of them did) to see the result.

Thanks again for everyone's encouragement before the show. It went fine. Later this week, I'll show you what I did with wooden alphabet blocks, an old picture frame, and a soda-bottle crate.

Now, shifting gears ... to poverty.

There have been a couple of pivotal moments in our 4-year-old daughter Bo's life. One was when she saw the Broadway production of "Annie" last winter. It's probably not P.C., but she still likes to don the Annie dress I made her and scrub the floors "like an orphan." Hmm ...

A second pivotal moment was when her beloved preschool teacher Miss Kathleen quit her job at the school to go back to social work, helping homeless women and children find permanent housing. Ever since then, Bo has been on the lookout for homeless people. She also sometimes asks me if Miss Kathleen has found a home for Annie yet. (After which I fruitlessly try to explain the difference between fiction and reality and then give up and assure her that Annie is with Daddy Warbucks now.)

Anyhow, on a more serious note, Bo's concerns about poverty--especially children without enough food to eat or without a place to live--has been growing. I asked her last week if she'd like to do something to help, and she said yes.

Together, we came up with a plan: she's going to make crafts that she'll sell at a local farmers' market and then donate the money to a crisis nursery here in town. So between now and Oct. 10, the date of her sale, we'll be stocking up on crafty-kid inventory.

She got started tonight with a project I've eyed for months now.

Presenting Bo's very first papier mache pig puppet:

 

(Turns out an empty thread spool makes a great snout.)

The little pig is drying now, and tomorrow he'll get a coat of paint and something to wear.

I'm sure we've all read articles about kids doing good things for charity, like donating their birthday gifts to a cause. I love seeing that, but I have to admit I've always been skeptical about how much the parents are pushing it rather than it coming from the kid. Not that it'd be a bad thing that they're pushing them to do. On the contrary. It's just the pushing I don't like--or the assumption of pushing, since it's just the cynic in me that questions the kids' motivation.

But I can tell you this crafting project of Bo's is coming straight from her heart. It's the first thing she talks about in the morning and the last thing she says at night ("are we going to help the people tomorrow?"). I'll never question those feel-good articles again.

It's enough to warm a mama's heart. 

Bread warms up other parts of me. One more slice before bedtime ...

Back to reality

Good golly. I can't believe more than two weeks have passed since I last posted something here. I think that's a record. Not a Michael Phelps sort of record (as in, yea! good for him!). A Takeru Kobayashi sort of record (as in, UGH!).

We got back to town last night after two weeks of laughing and eating waaaaay too much food with the Italian side of the family across the state. It was a great trip, but we all were happy to sleep in our own beds last night. 

Before I had kids, I had a healthy case of wanderlust. I wasn't a frequent flier by any means, but I've been to Costa Rica and Italy and I tended to move every couple of years. If I wasn't hopping cities (Portland, Ore., Boston, Mass., Spokane), I was moving to a different apartment across town. I loved change.

I still do, but ever since the babies came along I've had little desire to travel far and wide. Now I crave routine and simplicity and it might be to a fault.

The kids do great when we travel. Even on the six-hour drive home yesterday, they were fantastic, with Bo making up stories about princesses and her dead dog Cronkite (r.i.p., sweet doggie) in my car and Magpie reciting every word she knows in J's car (J had to work so he couldn't stay as long as we did).

The first couple of nights in a new bed are always a bit rocky, but any battles at bedtime are usually more my fault than theirs (i.e., trying to get them down at our regular times rather than easing up a bit). 

Going away is always worth it, but our itinerary here at home today reinforced my love of our quiet little lifestyle in Spokane.

On our agenda today:

-Run through the sprinkler (I felt a bit guilty after just visiting a town with watering restrictions, but it's super hot here right now so it was either crank up the A/C and stay inside or hose off the kids on the lawn).

-Hang wet clothes on the clothesline. The girls can't get enough of this.

-Do "magic" tricks, i.e., put a wine cork under a cup, shuffle the cup around with two other cups, make the kids guess which cup holds the cork. More endless fun.

-Make edible play dough (1 part honey, two parts peanut butter, 3 parts powdered sugar), cut out cookie shapes, bake it at 200 for a long time. This last one is doing nothing for my attempts at weight loss (I'm eyeing the leftover "cookies" across the kitchen right now), but as you can see the girls were captivated:

I didn't get a good shot of this, but is there anything better than seeing your child wearing your Nana's old aprons?

The day wasn't perfect. At one point, I had to put Bo's toys in time out. ALL of her toys. Seriously. But setting boundaries is just part of our routine, too. Besides, it took her all of 30 seconds to turn a washcloth, a baby blanket and her little sister into toys that weren't off limits. I don't know what that says about my attempt at discipline, but by that point I sort of forgot why she was in trouble.

Lots of crafting is on the horizon. I've sold a couple more book slings, so I'll be putting those together this week. And more inquiries are coming in!

Meg McElwee over at Sew Liberated has approved me to make and sell her Emmeline aprons, so I'm going to fill my Etsy shop with those as soon as I get through some other deadlines. Thanks again for everyone's encouragement on that!

And later in August I'm running a "make-and-take" craft booth at a local county fair (it's part of my role with the newspaper's Down to Earth blog). I'll be sure to share the four projects I'm doing with folks here.

Busy, but fun. Simple, but fulfilling.

Hope you all are well, too.

Vintage toys, a country wedding and more farm charm

Is this the summer of the hoedown or what? I hope you guys aren't getting sick of my photos of country chic, but I can't seem to help myself. I keep going to these vintage barn bazaars and find myself leaving totally inspired.

This weekend was the Vintage Barn antique show in Rathdrum, Idaho. 51 vendors, home-baked goodness by women from a nearby Mennonite community, and live bluegrass music. This was the scene:

I thought this would make a great lemonade stand for the girls, but for $300+ I decided we'd stick with the card table for now:

Can you imagine the hours that went into this?

More tartan! This time plates:

Bo contemplates the "naughty chair." I'm not sure today's child psychologists would recommend this.

Wee! No buckles! No straps! A handle that can become dislodged and used as a weapon. 

Pretty paper flowers made from pages of vintage books, I assume:

I loved the sea of blues and greens in this booth by Wild Whimsy (photo above, too):

Given that my blog is named Penny Carnival, I couldn't resist bringing home this toy for $5:

Can you see the grumpy look on the Ferris Wheel operator's face? I love it. It's like me at the sewing machine when I need to use the seam ripper. Grrrr ... 

The girls each chose a vintage toy, too--a dog on wheels for Bo and a helicopter on a string for Magpie. Bo named her dog "Flower" and insisted we build her a dog house this morning.

There's something about painting 3-dimensional surfaces that thrills my children to no end:

That's why I rarely recycle cardboard boxes and I keep the hot-glue gun handy at all times.

Does anyone else buy their kids secondhand toys? The girls chose these vintage ones on their own, but on birthdays and at Christmastime, I always throw some garage sale finds into the mix. Just today, I heard a funny story about an old friend whose dad always bought his kids stuff from garage sales for gifts. So they'd be putting together a puzzle and get to the end only to discover that four pieces were missing. And one Christmas two of the brothers got bicycles--one bicycle worked and one didn't. That cracked me up, but it caused one of the brothers to vow to always buy new toys for his kids. You can probably guess which brother.

In other news from the weekend, we attended our nephew's absolutely gorgeous wedding in the, you guessed it, country.

I don't know if Bo was more thrilled by the bride and groom's kiss at the altar or the horse-and-carriage rides:

This draping was inside the barn where dinner was served:

Outside the barn looking in:

Inside the barn looking out:

At the risk of sounding completely unappreciative for the lovely wedding J and I had 7 years ago ... um, can I have a do over, please?

I did do some sewing this weekend, but it just involved adding straps to an otherwise revealing strapless dress. I'd show you the before and after, but the before shots would make this an x-rated blog. Not that I actually took before shots like that.

We did manage to hang my hammock in the backyard after it spent, oh, 15 years in storage. Literally. I bought this hammock while studying abroad in Costa Rica in 1994, lugged it all the way home on the plane, and then never hung it. Leave it to my task-master husband to get it swinging. That guy can plow through a to-do list like nobody I know.

It's dreamy to relax in there under the cherry trees, callused feet and all (don't zoom in. you'll regret it. I've been running a lot).

Speaking of cherries, I'm overdosing. I need an intervention. I just filled a small baby bottle with pits while writing this post. 

They're. Just. So. Frickin'. Good. And. Sweet. 

I mostly just eat them as nature intended, but we had J's cousin over for dinner last night so I made this dessert:

Bo took her job of making it snow on the clafouti very seriously.

OK, so she went a little overboard. What can I say? The kid is used to living under 4 feet of the white stuff every winter.

Summer art kick start

I'm late in wishing you all a happy summer solstice and Father's Day. Are there any dads out there? I recall getting comments on here once or twice from some men, but I just don't know if we have any regulars. If you're here, xoxo. I hope your yesterday was full of love and joy. 

I was too busy enjoying Father's Day with my dad and my husband yesterday to pour out my heart here, but my feelings about the two dads in my life haven't changed since last year. Thank you both for ... everything.

As for summer ... what summer? It's a stinkin' 60 degrees here today. Please put a reminder on your calendars for six months from now so you can smack me for complaining about 60 degrees. But c'mon. We want to go swimming! Bo keeps asking when it's going to get "hot, hot, hot." I need to remind myself that last June, it snowed. 

Our family has been in such a lovely rhythm lately. I can't explain what or why. Life is just ... nice. And simple. Hardly any TV. Lots of running, being outside, gardening and arts and crafting. 

One thing I did to make art happen more spontaneously was to move the girls' easel and paints outside. 

The other day I encouraged them to paint objects they saw in nature, and Bo came up with this:

An airplane, in case you can't tell. Our local airport recently started using its backup runway, so the air space above our backyard is getting lots of low-flying action. I'm sure some neighbors aren't thrilled, but I honestly love it. And Magpie definitely knows how to say "a-pane" now. 

Another nice thing about painting outside is that you don't have to worry about this:

Paint away, Baby. I'll blast you with the hose when you're done.

We took part in a parks and rec art class this morning, where Bo created this beach:

Instructions: paint a paper plate blue. Paint an empty toilet-paper tube brown. Brush glue onto one portion of the blue-covered plate (or the whole dang thing, if you're like Bo). Dust the gluey part with sand and seashells. Glue the brown tube down so it stands up like a tree. Add some green leaves to the tree. Viola! Puerta Vallarta on a plate.

They also made butterflies by painting coffee filters with watercolors then cinching them in the middle with short pipe cleaners, leaving the two ends of the pipe cleaners pointing up like antennae (or "antlers," as my niece Em calls them). They're cute. I'll add a photo later. I think our butterflies are trapped in the car right now.

Lastly today, an Etsy product endorsement. The prize money I won from Ohdeedoh a few months back for my book sling has been burning a hole in my PayPal account. I finally chipped away at it by buying a return-address stamp from a shop called RubberStampPress.

Mine looks just like this, but with my name and address--obviously.

It arrived so quickly, I didn't even have a chance to respond to my last e-mail from Kim, the talent behind the stamp. Isn't it great?! It is inspiring me to write some letters. Real letters. And maybe I should buy a bike, too.

Happy summer, everyone. Despite the chill here, my heart is warm and life is aglow with goodness. I hope yours is too.

Cookin' and bookin'

I'm almost four years into this parenting gig, and I still don't have a clue what I'm doing. Does anyone else feel this way sometimes? 

I guess I thought by now I'd kind of have things figured out. And, yes, there are days when I'm like, "Bring it on! Give me 10 more of these little muffins. I can take it." But a lot of the time I'm second guessing my decisions and thinking of better ways I could have handled a situation. In the meantime, another situation has presented itself, and I'm scrambling to do the right thing.

Don't get me wrong. Life is beautiful and all is well. I just never knew how much time would be dedicated to doing things that I hope will have a positive impact down the road without knowing for sure if they will. Parenting is the ultimate test of delayed gratification, I guess, especially when it comes to teaching values. How do I know if it's sinking in when we talk about kindness or taking care of the earth or each other? One minute, I think Bo is catching on. The next, she's bonking her sister over the head for taking a bite of her Cheerios. As if there aren't more Cheerios in the box. If there's one thing I've got, Kid, it's Cheerios.

At the same time, I'm bombarded with little moments of beauty and gratification all the time: Bo insisting on picking up litter and holding onto it until she finds a trash can (no matter how long that takes). Catching the girls giggling together without them knowing I'm there. The sweet touch of Magpie's hand when she strokes my shoulder from her perch in her backpack throughout an entire 3-mile walk.

One easy little thing we do--with an ulterior motive of instilling respect for nature--is to collect neat little bits from outside and display them on a "nature tray" on our dining room table. We go through phases where I'm more jazzed about doing this than the girls are. And then there are times when Bo is more than happy to rip a bunch of leaves off a tree and bring them inside for further inspection.

Right now, there's a pine cone, two sand dollars, and this in the tray:

What a great find over the weekend, huh? I admit I was a little scared a bee would coming crawling out of one of those hexagons, but it looks like the critters are long gone and now we're left behind with what I think is one of nature's really beautiful art installations. 

I once wrote an article about a man who brought all sorts of things from nature into his home. Mostly skulls, skeletons and big rocks. He had a display of about 15 different skulls of various animals, sitting from smallest (mouse) to biggest (I can't remember. A moose, maybe) in his entryway. In between there were things like raccoons and possums. That must sound really creepy, but believe me--it was lovely. And his four young children were very involved in finding treasures for the house--skulls and all.

FYI--Amanda Soule suggests creating a nature table in her book "The Creative Family." (By the way, can you hardly wait for this?)

Amanda is responsible for another project from our weekend--a photo memory book I made tonight for Bo. 

Bo's school is celebrating all the summer birthdays tomorrow and the parents usually bring in some sort of photo display of the kids' lives. I thought Bo would be excited to read a book about herself, so tomorrow's early birthday celebration was the perfect excuse to make one.

The photos are printed onto special fabric that runs through a regular computer printer. Packets of six sheets cost about $12 at JoAnn's--so use your 40 percent off coupon! I just used Word to arrange the pictures with some text about Bo's life. I wish I'd put more time into it. It truly was slopped together tonight. But I think Bo will like it just the same.

After printing on the special fabric, I cut around the photos and text and sewed them onto 8 x 12 pieces of fabric--all leftovers from dresses I've made Bo over the last four years--using a zigzag stitch. Then I sewed the 8 x 12 pieces to each other with a piece of flannel--taken from some of Bo's old receiving blankets--inside. I'm still trying to figure out how to bind the book since I've created quite a thick stack. For now, I just used three pieces of embroidery floss to connect all the "pages" by threading a needle and pushing the needle through all the thickness by hand, then tying it off. 

Ah! Update! It's 12:45 a.m. and Bo just woke up for a glass of water. She saw the book on the table and giggled her way through it. It's a hit.

Besides those two things, I wanted to share a new blog in my life. In Praise of Leftovers is written by Sarah Murphy-Kangas, a friend of mine from high school. I haven't seen Sarah in almost 20 years, but our moms bumped into each other recently and got to talking about their bloggin' daughters. 

Sarah's is a food blog, but--of course--it's a life blog, too. I think you'll enjoy her beautiful words and photography--not to mention the recipes. Tonight, I followed her instructions for a savory galette and it did not disappoint. What's a galette? Here's Sarah's definition:

A free-form tart. Roll out one disc of this easy dough, dump whatever you want in the middle (sweet or savory), fold the crust up around it, cook it for 30 minutes, be a goddess.

Here's my attempt at deification:

Choosing fun

I wasn't going to write a post tonight. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about our day today. I sewed up a book sling for a new friend. (It was in exchange for a one-hour massage by her. How lucky am I??? Those of you who keep saying, "I wish I knew how to sew ..." Take a class! It pays off!). I did some meal planning (more on that topic one day soon). And I made pumpkin muffins with Magpie in the morning.

So who cares, right?

Well, I just came from Emily Chadwick's blog and she made me think today might be more significant than I thought. 

Instead of letting her two little ones get the best of her today, Emily turned a frustrating car ride into an adventure in rhubarb. Instead of just getting everyone home and making it through the day, she stopped at a farm stand near her house and let her kids see her go bonkers for the red veg. They brought some home, found a recipe to follow, and made something yummy together. You can read all about it here.

I try not to write much here about the tough days in parenting. We've all been there (right? please say I'm not the only one who loses my mind now and then). You don't need me rehashing a bad day and bringing everyone down. Unless, of course, it leads to a Penny Carnival group vacation to Canyon Ranch. Oh my--doesn't that sound nice right about now?

For whatever reason, I've had my fair share of rough patches in the last couple of weeks. I was kind of spiraling down into grumpy mommyhood until I snapped myself out of it the other day. I had to remind myself of something I fundamentally believe: with any relationship, the answer to challenges is more love, not less. (At least, that's what the Dixie Chicks tell me.) More kisses. More hugs. More compliments.

And more fun.

It's not fool proof, but so far this is what it has meant for us this week:

Fewer errands, more stops at the playground. Less cleaning, more dancing to ABBA songs. Later bedtimes (within reason). And more spontaneous tea parties at the fanciest hotel in town (the wait staff at our local landmark was more than happy to serve Shirley Temples in teacups the other day, and they didn't bat an eye at the eye shadow and blush smeared all over my daughters' faces). 

Today's fun? Bo and I decided to bake a cake, and baking a cake turned into throwing a small birthday party. But whose birthday was it today? I told her I'd look online. Jerry Seinfeld. She gave me a blank stare. So I suggested throwing a birthday for a thing instead of a person, like how about for our house? She had never heard anything so ridiculous. 

We looked around her room and settled on a character from a book. Little Red Riding Hood was the first thing she grabbed.

Is today really Little Red's birthday? I guess that depends. If one person in the universe believes it is, doesn't that make it so?

Here's to choosing fun. Here's to rhubarb!

Gratitude

I was thinking recently about compliments, and some of the more memorable ones I've received over the years. When J and I were young and on our first round of dating (there was an extended break in the late '90s), he once told me I had pretty eyes. 

"They're really big, like a cow's," he said.

What can I say? He tries.

Another memorable compliment came from my Uncle Tommy, who passed away a couple years ago. He was a big-hearted man who I loved dearly. Big, strong football coach on the outside. Warm, tender peacemaker on the inside. 

When I called to tell him I was getting married, he told me my husband was the luckiest guy in the world because he was going to have a wife who would be upbeat and positive every day of the marriage.

Umm ... not so much today, Uncle Tommy. Talk about a grump! I might have actually stomped my feet at one point. Ooh. That's embarrassing to see in print.

There's nothing in particular to blame for my bad attitude. I had just had it. Had it with not being able to go pee without a child wanting to come into the bathroom and be with me. Had it with my coat being at the bottom of several layers of coats on the peg so that all of them fell when I tried to get mine. Had it with another day of cold weather.

It's so hard to talk myself out of that place when I'm there. It took me several hours, but I'm back to my happy place now (disclosure: the kids are sleeping. Could that be part of the reason?).

If anyone has an answer as to how to get out of that mood--or how to avoid it altogether--please chime in. The quickest route for me is to focus on what I'm grateful for, a list that ends up being quite long. I'm not saying that tactic always works, but it never hurts to try.

Last Thanksgiving, I suggested we put a jar on the kitchen shelf with slips of blank paper next to it. On the paper, throughout the year, we could write down the things we're thankful for as we think of them and then read everything during the following year's Thanksgiving dinner. 

I still need to set out that jar, but in the meantime, here's an excerpt from my gratitude list.

Making me smile lately:

-These body tracings of the girls, especially the quirky face Bo (left) drew on Magpie (right). Can you see the two round eyes and the grin?

-The Dixie Chicks' version of "The Rainbow Connection" on the "Mary Had a Little Amp" CD.

-This photo of homemade playdough from Hop Skip Jump and the recipe for it.

-My Friday night date with the girls making our own version of playdough--the edible variety! (Combine peanut butter, powdered milk, honey and flour.)

-Magpie's rump in these pants, which I made from the denim of an old pair of my jeans. The pockets are pieces from Klay's fabric donation. (Thanks again, Klay. It's the gift that keeps on giving.)

-This conversation between Bo and me tonight:

Bo: "I love tea."

Me: "Me, too! I love drinking tea at night. It quiets my body. It's warm so I have to drink it slowly, and that slows me down and gets me ready for bed. How about you?"

Bo: "No. Tea makes fast and it makes me scream!!!!!"

-This granny blanket, which I bought for $2.71 at a thrift shop last weekend.

-The health and happiness of my family and friends, including all of you.

-J's patience and love when dealing with my foot stomping today.

-And a children's music CD called "The Planet Sleeps," a compilation of lullabies in various languages and from various cultures. Incredibly soothing songs that might very well be a nightly routine for us to wind down to from now on.

The producer recorded the songs all over the world to "show the similarities that exist between widely different cultures, regardless of racial boundaries" in hopes that it "might in some small way help challenge the beginnings of prejudice, wherever it may exist." 

He adds, "no matter how old we get, we are all still children, we all need occasional refuge, and, most importantly, we all need each other."

Amen.