Bedtime Story #1: The Legend of the Secretly Moonlighting Mama

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, lived a not-so-young, not-so-old girl with beautiful, golden, curly locks of hair.  But, although this story grew out of a comment made by the not-so-young, not-so-old girl with beautiful golden, curly locks of hair, it is really a story of desperation and ultimate triumph.  One day, the girl said to her mama, "Mama, I know you love me, and I know you care about me, so please fix my ski pants with a patch.  There is a hole in the knee, and it makes my legs all wet, and I am going to play outside all day tomorrow.  Please, mama, if you love me, please mend my ski pants."  The mama, touched by her daughter's expression of need, reached out her arms to her daughter, and gently assured her by saying "Of course I love you, and of course I care about you, I will not let you down."  Then she proceeded to promptly forget the whole conversation.

Six hours later, the mother woke up from a gentle night's slumber with a start.  She remembered suddenly her grand declarations made only hours earlier.  After briefly considering suggesting to her daughter that she wrap scarves around her knees, she resigned herself to mending the pants.

While searching for something that could be used as a patch, she spotted an unfortunate pair of hockey goalie knee pads.  She rationalized that they were not being used by anyone, and had been acquired for free, so the loss was negligible, she reasoned.

She proceeded to cut two squares out of the knee pads and sewed them together to make a nice, sturdy patch.  It was after she had finished sewing that she discovered the thread she had been using was not black, but yellow - and not a murky, dark yellow that could be interpretted as, say, black, but a bright you-may-not-love-me-but-you-will-notice-me daffodil yellow.

Not only did this yellow thread highlight all the amateur sewing, it most certainly did not disappear against its black backdrop.

Undaunted, but perhaps slightly afflicted by sleep deprivation, the mama decided to mask the colour in a most clever fashion.

Yes, it was even permanent!  Having had much experience attempting to remove permanent marker from many a fabric, the mother silently rejoiced (for the first time) at having non-washable markers in the house.  Her confidence soared as she covered the unsightly yellow with a more pleasant, discreet plum.

The mama then set to work fastening the patch to the afflicted pant leg. At this point, she began to think about her role as a mama.  She had never requested the position of seamstress, yet here she was, hired for the nightshift, without the ability to be fired.  It seemed that life was altogether unfair.

After 20 minutes of minimal progress and a forefinger painfully red from multiple needle punctures, the mama fiercely determined to herself (for who else would wish to share this moment with her?) that there HAD to be another way.   As if on que, she remembered another clever trick she had employed on numerous occasions.

Yes, Super Glue had been a solution to many problems...fixing toys and sealing children's lips, among others.

Within moments, the triumphant mama had successfully adhered the patch, and proudly hung the ski pants on her daughter's hook in the entrance of their home.  Her fatigued state and desperation prevented her from recognizing how awful it really looked. 

  

In the morning, when the mama saw her project in the light, she immediately offered to buy new ski pants for her daughter.  But the not-so-young, not-so-old girl with beautiful, golden, curly locks of hair, insisted, with all the grace of royalty, that the pants looked great, and she was most pleased.   The mama, weak with relief and exhaustion, sank into a chair and said, "I love you and I care about you, and I tried to not let you down."  The End.

Weather Outlook for Melbourne, Australia

I think I can handle this!

14°C | °F Current: Partly Cloudy Wind: SE at 13 km/h Humidity: 72% Fri 21°C | 13°C Sat 29°C | 19°C Sun 35°C | 19°C Mon 34°C | 21°C

Pantry Mini-Makeover

I'm here to share a small, recent home project with you.  In our kitchen, we have pantry doors that open up to reveal pull-out drawers.  For a long time, I've pondered what to do inside the frame of the door, to either make it more functional, or prettier, or both.  Yes, while some people discover new cures for diseases, and others spend their time working with government intelligence agencies, I think of what material I should use to cover the inside of my cabinet door. Such a diverse world we live in....

First, I considered a wallpaper of sorts - I've seen this done with great success, but I feared that my taste would change, and I'd be stuck (pun intended) with wallpaper that is outdated.  And, besides, I like to change things up in my house more often than some newborns get their diaper changed, so whatever I decided to do, it'd need to be either easily removable, or adaptable. I've also considered narrow metal baskets, but there's really not enough space when the doors are closed.  A couple of weeks ago, I had a moment of decisiveness, and decided we would install cork (you will shortly see that "we" means my dear husband).  With cork, I could easily change up what greeted me each time I opened up the pantry.  Simple! I purchased one linear foot of cork at a local home hardware store.  Later that evening, my dear husband, seeing the cork laying on the counter, offered to help me "install" it.  Within minutes, he had glued the cork, filling out the frame of the door nicely.

Ah, that's better. Thanks, hubs!

This is now where I store my shopping list.  And it leaves plenty of room for small, handcrafted gifts from my sweet kids.  And a card I purchased on Etsy last year that I have no intention of giving away yet.  I have, by no means, attempted to create a stylish display here, but I can totally see myself obsessing about pretty, inspiring stuff to hang on this little board sometime when the mood strikes.  For now, I enjoy the small burst of friendly colour and the warm fuzzy feeling I get when I'm reminded of my kids each time I open this door.

Does anyone else have a special place to store a shopping list? Or are you one of those people who mutters 39 food items under their breath, by memory, while running through the grocery aisles?  Do tell - the rest of us are simply dying to know.

(For those of you super-clever readers who noticed the "before" picture and the "after" picture were not the same door, you busted me!  As I'm really new at this, I'm not good with taking proper "before" pictures yet, so the BEFORE picture was actually the other pantry door and was taken approximately 2 weeks AFTER the after picture.  Just keeping it real, people)

God's Sculptural Art

This is what I saw when I looked outside my window this morning. Though my limited photography skills prevented me from capturing it perfectly, I was amazed at how soft each crystallized flake appeared.  It was like each tree was covered in thousands of downy feathers.  Fortunately, they weren't actually feathers, because can you imagine the mess if a tree would molt like a chicken, and lose all its feathers?  Yikes!  And I thought raking feathers after butchering chickens was lots of work!

Family Binder

I'm so excited to share today's organizing idea with you all. 

We'll start our discussion (or perhaps, more accurately, my monologue!) today with addressing the problem many of us face. Odd, miscellaneous paperwork.  Not stuff that needs to be stored for 7 years, but not junk mail, either. The paperwork may be as different as the people who occupy the home, but I think we can all agree that papers of all shapes and sizes walk in through our front door, taking up residence in our home. I'll share the type of stuff we deal with in our home, and maybe you can adapt the ideas for the paper that takes up prime real estate on your countertop.  Perhaps you have a different system that works well for you, and that's great!  In fact, I'd love to hear about it, and use your input to tweak my system!  Doesn't this sound like fun!?

Here's my scenario....

If our society is going paperless, they must have forgotten to inform my children's school, because our kid's bring home a lot of paperwork.  And, really, I'm grateful for how the school places such a high value on communicating with parents; however, it seems, every other day, someone is coming home with something regarding an upcoming event, a form to sign, a reading log, birthday invitations, newsletters, special day calendars, blah blah blah.  These sneaky little papers, although important, have a way of bullying their way onto a pile on the counter right beside the fruit bowl, maybe together with yesterday's mail. And then there's the schedules for kid's extra-curricular activities, volunteering, church-related activities, and on and on the story goes.  For a system to work well, it needs to be readily accessible, yet out of the way so that spaghetti sauce from last night's supper doesn't splatter all over Hermanda's immunization permission slip.

The solution?

It will require perhaps an hour of your time, at most, a binder (new or otherwise), plastic page protectors, and some subject dividers that have holes that fit into your lovely binder.  It's as simple as that.

Or, if you're like me, you make it complicated by looking for beautiful subject dividers online and in stores, and still end up with a not-so-pretty looking end result.

Before I continue, I need to give credit where credit is due.  Although I've had a binder like this for some time now, just the other day I discovered a blog called  I Heart Organizing, and discovered she had almost the exact same binder!!!   What are the chances!!  Since then, I've seen other bloggers use similar systems, but with file folders instead.  But after reading HER version of the binder, I added some pages to mine....like a babysitter info page, as an example.  If after reading this, you are interested in organizing other parts of your home (like me!), I encourage you to read her very helpful, friendly blog.  She has an insanely organized home, and has so many pretty ways of getting it done.

To create this binder, begin by gathering all these papers you have laying around.  As I said before, gather all the stuff that comes home from school that I mentioned earlier,  the office christmas party invitation (well, ok, if you still have 2010's invite, throw it away!), the Proctologist's pre-op instructions for your upcoming colonoscopy, the Septic Cleaning business card that you want to refer to annually, but is currently hanging on the fridge...you get the idea.

Sort the papers into casual piles.  Keep the piles fairly general for now.  Depending how much your family has going on, you may end up with 3-7 piles. My family doesn't have 576 activities planned each week, so I can get away with the following categories "Phone/Contacts", "School", "Kids", "Mom and Dad", and "Other". 

Once you feel comfortable that the piles are not too general, but allow some flexibility, throw the individual papers into page protectors, one paper per protector.  For example, currently, in my "school" category, I have my children's annual school calendar, each child's monthly classroom calendar, the pizza/hotdog day schedule, a ziploc bag of pizza/hotdog coupons purchased (I buy them in bulk at the beginning of the year, so I can forget about it for a long time), the swimming lesson shedule for my Grade 2er, a letter from the school outlining an upcoming field trip, a school fun day schedule. Because I won't be around on Valentine's day, my children have already addressed the valentine's they'll be handing out to classmates and friends, and we have each of these cards in ziploc bags, ready to be thrown into their backpacks on the day of the exchange.  That's what's in my "school" pile.  Just saying.

Once all the papers are put into page protectors, put them into your handy binder, and separate them with subject dividers.  When the paper becomes obselete - the event has passed, or whatever - simply toss the paper into recycling, shred it and use it to make paper mache elephants with your kids.

Put the binder in a readily accessible spot in your home (not in the same box as 2002's income tax papers, behind the furnace, or at the bottom of your fridge, behind the turnips you bought at the beginning of January when you resolved to try one new vegetable per week).  I have my binder in a drawer in the kitchen island. Right close to all the action.  For those of you who are wondering, I lined my drawer with a sheet of cardstock I purchased at The Scrapbook Cottage. My drawer happens to be so small, that one 12" x 12" paper was more than enough to line it.  It's obviously not essential, but I find that I smile when I open my little drawer and see a smidgen of fun paper peeking through.

A smidgen....that's the operative word here.   My binder actually doesn't fit this drawer as well as my old binder (but the old binder was black, and the graphic pattern on this binder was calling my name).  If you look closely, you'll see there's not a lot of room between the binder and the drawers edge.

About the width of my thumb, to be more precise. My dear kids have actually adapted well, and have diligently learned a special technique of getting the binder out of it's cozy abode.  Bless their hearts.  I'm so fortunate to have sweet kids who are so gracious towards their mother and her zany ideas! I'm not sure what my husband will do if he needs access to this binder. Maybe I'll have to store a small jar of Vaseline nearby so he can grease up his finger before attempting to displace the binder.  No system is perfect, I suppose.  I can accept that.

There are more things I have in my binder, like kid's list of daily/weekly chores, and an extensive phone/contact list of friends, families and business we regularly use, but I think you've all heard enough for one day, non?

How do you store this type of paperwork? Do you have a system that works well for you?  Do you subscribe to the "pile on the counter" approach, and see no need to change it because it works for you?  I'd love to hear your ideas.

In this moment, I am......

Drinking: Green Tea, with no sugar, in my favourite mug.

Listening: to the early morning silence in our home.

Observing: the slight change of colour I see in the sky, as night grudgingly gives way to day.

Enjoying: this song, by Leeland.  It's a song that had to grow on me, but now, I keep hitting repeat on my mp3 player.

Anticipating: a visit on the weekend from dear, out-of-town friends we haven't seen in a very long time.

Wondering: casually, what I'm going to feed the aforementioned dearly beloved.

Absolutely loving:  the warmth that our woodstove brings us during these cold, dark days.  Laundry is folded in front of this fire, countless games of Uno are played here; this is the go-to spot after skating or sledding outside, stress melts away here, prayers are prayed here.

Resolving: to go to bed earlier tonight.

What are you doing right now?

Bright idea

During one of my (many, many, many) visits to the local MCC Thrift Store, I purchased this lamp for $4 (actually, I bought two at the same time, and got a bit of a discount for purchasing in multiples!).  I liked the shape of the lamp base, and knew exactly where it would fit in my home. 

This is the underwhelming before photo (yes, that is a child's painting hung upside down behind the lamp - I think that was my heroic move):

I sprayed it with Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Paint in a Glossy White, being careful to tape the cord and the light socket to avoid overspray.  A minute here, and a minute there, and within an hour, the lamp had found a new home in my living room (with the addition of some lampshades I had purchased earlier).

I guess in all my excitement (because these things do get me very excited!), I didn't take a before picture of the second lamp I bought, but imagine it to look a lot like the first lamp, except with a yellow shade.  Here is the after (please ignore the doily thing that the lamp is resting on - I couldn't resist putting the lamp in place while it was still wet!):

So there you have it.  Decorating on a dime.

I'm acquiring a taste for humble pie

Game:           Memory
Contestants:  Mother, age 33, versus daughter, age 4
Score:          15 to 11
Winner:         Isn't it obvious from that smile?

9 more sleeps.....

I signed this out at the local library on the weekend.  The vacation is coming up so fast!!

I love my new brother!

I have an illness.  I'm obsessed with organizing.  I showed traces of this condition while I was growing up -  organizing the family books, from tallest to shortest one week, and then by colour the next.  In my adult life, I have struggled, along with the rest of mankind, to keep all my "stuff" in order. Through much trial and error, I have discovered several ways to keep my home organized and functioning smoothly (though it's by no means exactly where I'd like it to be).  In the future, I'm sure I'll write about some of these systems, as they've really made my life easier (and they allow me to talk about this subject!).  But today, I want to introduce you to my new brother....yes, friends, I have a new brother.

Ah, yes, the Brother P-touch label maker.......this lovely baby had me at hello.  I purchased it at Staples for half price.  It is very user-friendly, prints a variety of font types, colours and sizes.  It is PC compatible and can be used plugged in or with batteries. Among other things, it has fed my insatiable appetite for containing my clutter.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have labelled the following (note that this is by NO means an exhaustive list, but will merely give you an idea of what I've been doing when I should be returning phone calls or exercising):

Labelling my fridge's freezer.  I find coralling things in baskets helps prevent the avalanche that occurs when everything is rammed in.  I used to open up the freezer, only to have a pound of hamburger fall out and slam onto my small toe. Definitely not my favourite way to start my day. Baskets also act as a big deterrent for me to put a "taboo" item in the basket. But anyway, back to my labelling....

Pantry items.  I store lots of my smaller bulk items (seeds, flax, bulgar, steel cut oats, walnuts, etc) in mason jars. By storing them on a pull out drawer in my pantry, and labelling the lids, I can see at a glance what I have on hand.  Sigh.

Toiletries and meds....no more "MOOOOOOOOOOM!  Do we have any more toothpaste?!"

Freezer meals.......yes, I know, masking tape and a sharpie work just as well, but there's something about seeing in a neat and tidy typed font that gives me this extra feeling of satisfaction- like maybe the food inside will taste better with a typed label than if it'd be scribbled by hand (I never said my obsession was logical).

I'm on my second 8-metre tape, in two weeks, so that gives you an idea of how "busy" I've been.  But enough about me....I'd love to hear how you label stuff.....or how you don't label stuff.  Anyone else out there who is sick, like me?

Way to go, No Name (not to mention any names)!

This is my third can like this.....nothing beats whipping up an unexpected batch of pumpkin muffins when corn chowder was on the agenda.  This can must have been packed on a Friday afternoon.

A Grand Time....

Having kids tends to get in the way of living spontaneously.  At least for us. I remember Jeff and I doing pizza runs at 10:30 at night, before having kids.  Now, we think we're being crazy when we decide to get the mail, impromptu, after supper.  When we want to live impulsively, we schedule it into our day planners three weeks in advance.  So for us to have gone to Grand Forks this past weekend, and to have booked a hotel room on Friday, is pure insanity.  Living. On. The. Edge.  As crazy as it gets.  Over the top.  And fun!  In fact, I didn't even start packing until half an hour before we left.  I know.  You're shaking your head in disbelief.  Where has this woman's mind gone?

It's always interesting to observe our kids when we wisk them away on a mini-vacation.  We chose a hotel with a pool (no-brainer), a larger slide, a few smaller slides and a dumping bucket (which we forgot acts as a deterrent for Squeaky to venture into that part of the pool area).  All things that will really impress the kids, and cause them to rise up and call me blessed, right?  Well, yes and no.  They had fun the water...

and inhaled the pizza we got ordered in, no doubt about that.    But the real joys of a hotel are in the details....being in charge of the room key, pressing elevator buttons, running full speed down a long, vacant hallway, and getting ice from the ice machine.....NOW we're talking quality entertainment!  Are all kids like that?  Although kids are notorious for inspiring us old people to revel in the small things - the whole "stop-and-smell-the-flowers" concept - they keep surprising me with their delight and pleasure over small things.  And, in doing so, they remind me to do the same.  So, don't mind me - but I'm going to open the door of the refrigerator a crack and marvel at the way the light goes on and off when I swing the door back and forth.

What do the little people in your life remind you to do?

Wintry days....

Finally....A new beginning

"So, what are you going to write about?"  It's a question I get asked when I tell people I'm contemplating the idea of starting a blog.  It's an idea that's been percolating in the deep recesses of my mind for a few years already (with much nurturing from my Australia-dwelling brother). So why haven't I started already? 

Well, for starters, I have a deeply-established relationship with procrastination - we go way back.  I have, more than once, considered putting it at the top of my list of "things to improve about me", but I keep putting it off.  (For the record, I don't actually have a list of things to improve about me, but I imagine procrastination would be on that list, along with the usual suspects - "I will not micro-manage my kids when they form unevenly sized cookies when helping me bake", or "I will shave my legs at least once a month in winter").

But, although procrastination has kept me from starting, I also think that, I  too, am stumped by the question I get asked from others - what AM I going to write about?  I mean, of what interest is my little life to others?  How on earth could recording the day-to-day happenings in my world inspire others?  I realize, however, that even while I've been thinking about what I would write about if I started blogging, I'm more aware of the beauty in my world.  I see the humour in my life a little more (and with three kids, there's plenty of material to work with!),  and I see many of the small, simple, even mundane, details of my life in a different way.  I've got blessings galore, I tell ya!  Perhaps my increased awareness of  my world is reason enough to blog.

Of course, with family and friends living in different ends of the globe, a blog also helps us all stay connected.  So, without further ado, thanks for joining me on my journey as I fulfill my 2010 New Year's resolution (no, that date is not a typo - blogging was on my list of things to begin in 2010. I told you - me and procrastination, we're old friends.....)