Why I wish I'd had the internet as a kid

When I was a child, I loved going to the library. The bookstore was my favorite -- all those brand-new books, organized by genre, just waiting to come home and carry me away on new adventures -- but the library was far more vast. It wasn't just fiction; there were books on all topics. My favorites were the how-to books. Projects and patterns. Origami. Science experiments. Recipes. I ate it up. My local bookstore likely had some of these sorts of books, too, but nothing like the selection the library had.

But I lived in a very small town -- neither the library nor my local bookstore held a candle to what is now available on the internet. Which is why it frustrates me so that my daughter spends most of her internetting watching adults open and play with kids' toys.

Still, I don't restrict screen time, and other than the parental controls (oh, okay, and the occasional nerve-grating video) don't ban her from watching anything because I don't want her to get secretive about her viewing. I feel that the way to protect her from the darker side of the internet later on is to create a level of trust now. Also, I believe that kids learn best when you step back and let them. So I do.

And day by day, I am seeing evidence that she is at least occasionally using her tablet to learn. Like this.

She calls this Strawberry Swirl.

She watched a video on repurposing eos balm containers, and then took it upon herself to create new balms by mixing up chunks of her (quite impressive, really) lip balm collection. We are addicted to eos balms around here, so she had quite a few containers to fill. And fill them she has. Considering the fact that a) she is four, and b) she's never done anything like this before, I think she did a really good job. (I am studiously avoiding the mess in her "lab," and trying not to think about the dress she ruined making her new balms. Focus on the pride, Mommy.)

A while back, I pinned a recipe for making lip balm that uses these eos containers. I haven't tried it yet, but I've been meaning to. Now I know who to go to for pointers.

Artsy craftsy things

I've had a sudden burst of creative energy, and have started a list of projects I would like to do. Mostly small things -- floral arrangements and decor makeovers.

First up is this vase. Mom had it in her office for years, and gave it to me when she retired. I like the shape of it, but the design is not my style.

Too dark, too...birdy.

So Anya and I primed it, and I am currently deciding what color to paint it. Initially I was thinking champagne gold, but that's awfully...neutral. I have the tendency to overneutral.

I feel like I should do something a little more bold -- copper, maybe, or slate blue. (Copper I have; slate blue I will have to buy.) It all depends on where I am going to put the finished product. Which I should have decided before we slathered it all up with primer, I know. I have some ideas, but nothing definite.

Ready when we are.

Anyway. I now have a blank slate for painting, that didn't cost me a dime because the vase was given to me and the primer was left over from another project. (The priming also occupied Anya for an hour on a cold, blustery day, which is worth way more than the cost of a brand-new vase.)

Next up: A couple of photo collages made from frames I already have. (Hoarding does occasionally have its uses.) I think we'll prime them tonight, while I'm deciding on the color of the vase.

What I want (the 2016 edition)

I want to get back in shape. In some ways, I am already in shape -- at the very least, I can lift and carry way more than I ever could. And thanks to the pounds I lost to the stomach flu, I can see that yes, there are still abs in there under the loose skin. But there are refinements to be made, certainly. Also, much of what I need to accomplish is maintenance; if I do not exercise regularly, my old injuries flare up. So I need to make time for yoga, for planks, for walks. If I can get my allergies under control, I may even give running another shot.

I want to get my allergies under control. Resume immunotherapy, keep the house cleaner, buy a dehumidifier. I am tired of my itchy eyes and runny nose, tired of feeling bad so much of the time.

I want to feel better. I want to get enough sleep and eat better food and meditate. I don't like the cranky person I have become of late. I want to be a better me.

Because I want to do more. So much of my daily activity is...mundane. Not the kind of stuff I'm going to lay on my deathbed and think, "My gosh, I am so glad I kept my kitchen floor so clean all those years!" I want to write more. Practice graphic design more -- I've been doing some design for my day job and finding I have really, really missed it. I've also been designing jewelry in my head; I'd like to make at least some of it. 

There are other things on my 2016 list. Things like scaling back my debt. But while it is a high priority and I am especially motivated, it's not an interesting goal. Not to me, anyway. It's about hard work and discipline and curbing thoughtless spending. So don't expect blog entries on it, because while it needs to get done, it doesn't exactly melt my butter.

Now, the things I can do once my debt is under control...that is a different story. But those are off on the horizon. I'm trying to rein myself in on the long-term focus. I don't want to get so caught up in 5 years from now that I miss today.

About dropping the ball

Shutterfly just delivered my 2016 photo calendars.

Yes, that is the cover.

SHEESH. Didn't forget anything big, did I?

But I fixed it.

Photo paper and tape = cover.

I think I need to take a short break from blogging. See you after the holiday weekend. If you celebrate it, I hope you have a merry Christmas! And if you don't celebrate it, I hope you have a pleasant weekend nonetheless.

Hoarding redemption: Oatmeal boxes

(Sorry for the missed post; Monday turned out to be extraordinarily hectic, and it just slipped my mind!)

Ordinarily, I am not a hoarder -- in fact, I am the trash-happy member of this household. ("What did you do with my whatever?" "Oh, did you want to keep that? I pitched it. Sorry!") But every now and then, something takes hold of me and I hoard. The strangest things, too -- butter tubs, hangers, cardboard toilet paper tubes. This goes on until R teases me, at which point I realize the extent of my foolishness and stop. Usually. (When we moved into this house, with us came a large moving box full of nothing but empty hangers. Seriously.)

 

Lately, it's oatmeal boxes. I eat oatmeal like crazy now -- I go through about a carton a week. And I have been keeping those cartons, because they look cool. I'd thought I would make flower arrangements in them, since my salt box arrangement turned out so well. Which was fine for one or two boxes, but my collection was a bit bigger than that. The problem is that once I save one box, I have a hard time justifying throwing away subsequent boxes. If I needed that one, why don't I need these five?

Yes, I have issues.

I started scheming about a collection of seasonal arrangements. However, the arrangement wasn't quite tall enough for the carton, so I moved it to a vase and repurposed the covered oatmeal box to an advent present container.

Which left the rest of the stack. Thankfully, inspiration struck: I could use them to pack gift boxes for the homeless at the Memphis Union Mission. They ask that you put toiletries, gloves, and little treats in a wrapped shoe box, but I don't have any shoe boxes. However, the oatmeal container is about the same size as a shoe box, and can be wrapped in such a way that the paper need not be ripped off.

Cover the bottoms and tops.

Wrap the sides, leaving a small
overhang at the bottom.

Curl paper over the bottom edge.

Fill!

So I made a bunch of packages, which we will drop off sometime in the next week or so. And have depleted my hoard, which is also nice. 

But I'm almost through with this week's box of oatmeal, so the pressure is mounting.

November 2015: Never say die! (And be grateful, bitch.)

The above is the title of the November 2015 PopClogs Bootcamp. If you're not on PopClogs, the Bootcamps are basically a set of monthly goals we set for ourselves. Largely fitness related, but not entirely. Each month has a theme. I'm particularly fond of this one, because it captures perfectly my current mindset.

I had big plans for October. Through no fault of my own, I did not accomplish everything I set out to do (or even most of it), but I am not giving up. I have refined my list and added to it (probably too much, to be honest), and am approaching November with a Goonies "give-'em-hell" grin.

Despite my big list, which I will refrain  from sharing so you can't laugh at me a few weeks from now, my main focus is to get my mornings in order. I've found that when my mornings go well, my whole day goes well. So it is my goal to achieve the following each morning:

• Get up at 5:30.
• Practice yoga.
• Meditate. (Even 2 minutes would be nice.)
• Write a blog entry.
• Write a paragraph on my book.

I have a weekend cleaning routine going, finally. The house does not get 100% clean every week, but I get the big chunks. The laundry gets done -- sometimes it even gets put away! Each Saturday morning I get up, practice yoga, and clean the house before we do anything else. Sundays are free days, or I repeat the Saturday process if there is still cleaning left to do. I've been doing this for a few months now, and it's finally become routine; even Anya is into the "clean on Saturday morning" groove. So now I just need to get my weekdays in order, in order to accomplish the things I want to before the work day starts.

This is my focus for November. Everything else is just gravy.

Speaking of gravy, some of my subgoals this month are to work on teaching Anya about gratitude and taking over some of the Turkey Day preparations. I'll talk more about both later. Should be interesting.

I meant to write a blog post this weekend

But life happened. I did bake some mini pumpkin pies, though.

I think whole pies would be less trouble, though these sure are cute.

Celebrating the seasons

I find myself working to establish seasonal family traditions. The Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's trifecta is pretty well set, though I have tweaked it over Anya's lifetime. I'd started out trying to implement a tradition I had with my parents (giving a small gift for each of the 11 days preceding Christmas*), but it's evolved into a longer time range with smaller presents thanks to the advent calendar I made last year. And there are other activities, which do not involve gifts. We do Zoo Lights. Starry Nights. We visit Santa. We bake cookies. We eat Thanksgiving dinner with both families. We decorate the tree the day after Thanksgiving, and take it down around Little Christmas, January 6. I take a picture of Anya (new this year: Anya and Kai) in front of the tree in a Christmas outfit for our Christmas cards. Actually, I take about 50 pictures, and never quite get the one I want -- though I always get one that captures her personality perfectly.

I have personal celebrations, too. A quiet reflection on the year that starts with 10Q in the fall and culminates in my revising my goal list and recapping my year on PopClogs. I try to start the year in the manner in which I intend to continue -- full of energy and hope and good intentions. It usually falls apart by March, but I mean well.

I love these traditions. They pull me out of my head, out of my to-do list, out of my present worries and future plans. They make me focus on what's in front of me: A loving partner, amazing kids, and an imperfect but pretty awesome life. I need that.

That's just one season, though. Just a month, really. I need that sort of pause all year round. So I have been slowly testing other seasonal celebrations. For fall, I've made the following list:

• Go to a farmer's market
• Bake mini apple pies
• Walk in the park and collect fall leaves
• Visit a corn maze
• Go to Zoo Boo
• Pick out pumpkins
• Carve/decorate pumpkins
• Bake mini pumpkin pies
• Make soup
• Do a leaf-based art project
• Make an autumn centerpiece for the kitchen table

I've been working on this for a month and a half now, and it's really helped me savor the season. Which is nice, because it's my favorite season -- I would really hate to miss it.

Gets me to thinking, though. I should make lists like this for the other seasons. Things that I want to be sure to do and make and experience. Things I want to share with my family. The highlights reel. Because time often gets away from me, and you never know when your last chance to do something will be.


*A tradition I started as a child, I must confess, in order to get a few presents early. It was a lot of fun, though. And yes, I gave presents back.

I made this!

Anya is at the stage where she makes artwork for the sole purpose of displaying it. If she had her way, I would hang every paper she scribbles on -- on the cork board, on the wall, on the fridge, on the door...any flat surface will do, really. I have put quite a bit of it up, because I am a mom and because she is my first born. (When it comes to taking pride in things you've made, you certainly cannot overlook children. Children are the ultimate craft.)

We live in a rental house, so the walls are not in the greatest of shape. Still, I don't want to fill them full of (more) holes. So I won't let her hang things with push pins; indeed, I had to hide the pushpins, because she is less concerned about our security deposit than I am. But I have let her have tape. To deter her looking for the hiding spot of the push pins, I left the roll of tape in her office (a printer cart next to my desk where she can "work" alongside me while I'm freelancing).

She loves making confetti. (Groan.)

Earlier, I left the office door open while I went to the doctor, thinking access to a normally forbidden room might take the sting out of being left at home. (It did.) I came home to a mural of...well, look.

The box is from R's latest Loot Crate.

It's less the art and the medium, and more pride in the fact that she can operate a pair of scissors and tape things together (and to the wall). While these pieces are more likely to wind up in the recycling than the Anya Art Hall of Fame, they are exciting to me in that they are a sign that she is ready to move beyond scribbles to more complex projects. As a crafting junkie, I have been dreaming of this day since before I ever got pregnant with her.

Okay, maybe I will keep one of them, to commemorate the occasion.


*Yes, the post title is a reference to the X-Files production company, Ten Thirteen. Because I am old, and a geek. Also, I have been rewatching Season 1.

I am addicted to Command hooks

Is there anything they can't do?

Actually, yes. They failed at holding this up:

But they rock here:

Home making

My daughter's language skills improve more and more each day. Lately she has been focused on classifications: boys/girls, old/new, the color (preferably pink!) and size (tiny babies, biiiiig ice creams) of things. One of the things she specifies is whose house she wants to be at -- usually it's Mimi's house, but sometimes it is Anya's house.

The way she says that, Anya's house, resonates with me. However temporary I feel about the house we rent (I was hoping we'd have bought a house by now, but it looks like that goal is a few years off yet), it is the only home she has ever known. It's her whole childhood. The center of her universe. I should do what I can to make it nice.

So that's my new goal (in addition to adapting to life with two kids and finding my abs under all this postpregnancy sag): Making this house a home.

Mother's Day mini-projects

Anya and I wanted to make mini-vases for the grandmas. Anya picked the paint, ribbon, and flowers (and ate the sprinkles). She also arranged the flowers.

https://instagram.com/p/2xUAWXr0ah/

Mumma cleaned and painted the bottles...twice, because the top coat ate the paint the first time out. (I didn't use a top coat on hers...and perhaps shouldn't have here either. Mixing the paint with the top coat seems to have helped some.)

https://instagram.com/p/2xUR9TL0a3/

I also attached the ribbon with hot glue and trimmed the flowers.

https://instagram.com/p/2xUYHWr0a_/

Only a week late, too!

Mini project: Flower vase

Quick little project, inspired by the realization that the candy bottle looks like a little vase.

Candy Bottle Vase
One empty candy sprinkles bottle
Craft paint
Paper towel
Toothpicks

I removed the label (vegetable oil works great for this) and scrubbed the bottle well. Once it dried, I poured some craft paint inside it and rolled it around to evenly coat the interior. I then balanced it upside down on two toothpicks placed on a folded paper towel and set it aside for a couple of days to dry.

Anya was impatient to see the finished product, so I did not go through with the additional steps I had planned (coating the painted interior with a top coat, gluing a ribbon around the threads at the bottle's neck); I just popped the flowers in the painted jar and called it done. If we do another, I will finish it properly.

What I get for trying to be frugal

After showering last night, I decided to use up the last of a bottle of baby oil I received as part of a baby shower present for Anya. Aside from one bout of cradle cap, I never really used it on her, and I have another huge bottle should the baby require such treatment. Plus, I have had crazy dry skin as of late. The kind that keeps me up half the night itching, when I'm already not sleeping well. So I lubed myself up like a wrestler. My thirsty skin sucked in the oil immediately; rather than feeling greasy, I felt...well, baby soft. So I had high hopes for this stuff.

I still scratched all night.

When I got up this morning, I realized why:

I guess last night's itch-induced insomnia was not without reason. And now I can add another product to the no-fly list. This is why I make my own...

A photo posted by Nicole (@nmb1974) on Mar 2, 2015 at 6:30am PST

Time to make my own baby oil, I guess.

New project: Anya's blanket

Anya picked the yarn and the pattern; I am merely assembling her vision.

http://instagram.com/p/ytIyz0r0X2/

Baby blanket complete

I've wanted to make something from this yarn for ages...it's so soft!

Mommy-daughter craft time

Latest quick-n-dirty craft project: a holder for lone socks.

http://instagram.com/p/yJC0ELL0QH/

Mini-project: Spice cabinet

Before:

http://instagram.com/p/tlok5pr0VA/

After:

http://instagram.com/p/tlozhZL0VV/