Inquisition

Phone conversation I had with Matt yesterday:

Matt:  Did you lose a plate?

Me:  ??

Matt:  An Allison plate.

Me:  Um, I don’t know.  (Should I care about a $.20 Ikea plastic plate?!) 

Matt:  Maybe from waffles?

Me:  I’m pretty sure she wandered around the house eating the waffle.  

Matt:  Well, my mom found a sticky plastic plate in Allison’s kitchen.

Me:  Okay…  I’m guessing that would be from french toast yesterday.  She didn’t have syrup with waffles.  (Is there a point to this inquisition?)

Matt:  It was covered in ants.  (Oh.)

Me:  *gag*  Let’s just burn the house down and start over. 

Matt:  No.

Me:  Wait!  We still have that stupid actual cash value insurance policy, so we can’t do that.  If something happened to the house, we’d probably only get $32 and a pack of Twizzlers for the place.  And I don’t even like Twizzlers.

I’m still not sure how this evolved into a 3 minute conversation, except that I suspect that he was trying to deny any blame for the ant plate because he was present for french toast.  He probably planted the plate because he likes Twizzlers.  And setting things on fire.  But this conversation is now evidence that he didn’t want to set the house on fire, should our house suspiciously catch on fire.  I hope the Twizzlers were worth it, Matt.

Rainbow Birthday Party

Since before I had kids, I had always wanted to throw a Candyland theme party for a little girl.  Only one problem.  Now that I’m older and wiser, I wasn’t so keen on the candy part.  It doesn’t quite fit into my real food philosophy.

So I let go of my dream theme and decided to let Allison choose what she wanted for her 3rd birthday party.  Except she’s 2.  And very little help.  All she could articulate was that she wanted a strawberry cake.

When I mentioned my lack of inspiration to a friend, she was quick to suggest a rainbow party. 

Now I know that the rainbow theme is EVERYWHERE right now and I have a tendency to run away from anything trendy.  (Except for salted caramel.  That is one fad that I. am. all. over.)  But the more I thought about it, it all just began to fall into place…

Allison would get her strawberry cake.  And orange cake.  And pineapple cake.  And tons of bright balloons.  And maybe even a little candy.

And I would get a theme that I could go so crazy with, I’d have to be committed when it was all over.

The birthday girl.  I ordered the embroidered rainbow shirt from K. Mae Designs and made that rainbow tutu in 30 minutes for $3.  She even kept in on for the ENTIRE party.  It was a birthday miracle.

I LOVE how the decorations turned out.  And all I had to do was spend $112 in assorted balloon packs because each bag was short one. freakin. color.  I went to Hobby Lobby so many times, I had to have an intervention.  True story.

We had hoped to set up the party outside since it was a rare 80º in March, but the ground was a little soggy since it had been raining for two days.  We were lucky that things dried out enough for us to move the festivities outside, but it was a last-minute decision.  So sorry to all the people who stepped in dog poop since we didn’t clean up the back yard.

The secret to a successful party is a piñata.  Apparently, beating things up with the payoff of candy is all that kids need to have fun.  Way better rate of return than the rainbow parachute, which occupied their attention for 10 minutes.  Which is highly unfortunate because I actually purchased two.  One from Amazon and a second one from Party City that was $7 cheaper.  I was going to return the Amazon one until I saw it costs $5 to ship it back, somewhat negating my initial cost savings.  I. just. can’t. win.

But a birthday party is all about obsessing over the details, isn’t it?  That’s why I spent 42 hours planning these bath-themed favors, including homemade rainbow soap, and served sandwiches for dinner.  Because favors live on forever.  Food is a distant memory within 36 hours.  Unless it’s leftovers in my house.  Because I still have fruit sauces in my fridge.

Which brings me to the cake.  Or should I start with the cupcakes?  The 12 DOZEN mini cupcakes that I baked in rainbow flavors, that pretty much all tasted like vanilla.  At least the orange and pineapple did.  The strawberry, blueberry, and green banana actually turned out pretty well.  I won’t even talk about the grape. 

What started as an innocent suggestion from my toddler, turned into an obsession.  While it may not have been worth the effort of spending two days recipe testing and baking more cupcakes than I could ever use for the sake of keeping manageable ingredient measurements, it looked damn cute.  And she got her strawberry cake.  So I have to say I’m pretty proud of the effort.

But the round cake was a masterpiece.  Because six icing colors and two decorating tip couplers did not make this a simple task.  But totally worth it.  I mean, check out those cake-writing skillz!  So much better than my first attempt.

I know all of this was more for me than it was for her, but I’m pretty sure she had a blast.  Look at that face!

Happy 3rd birthday, my sweet girl.  I love you more than words can say.

A Simply Awesome Easter

Easter was a fairly low-key event this year.

We dyed some eggs.

Matt gave me all kinds of trouble because I bought our usual brown eggs to dye.  He later had to eat his words because they turned out rather impressive.  Look at those vibrant colors!  It might have actually been the gel dyes that I used, but don’t tell him that.  I like to hear him say I’m right.

Allison was enamored with them.

There were baskets with chocolate bunnies and peanut butter eggs.

We did some egg hunting.

And I brought my tripod so I could actually be in a picture for once.

Allison’s first Easter we had taken a picture with her, me, and my mom.  It was time for an updated one.

Thank goodness I have better equipment now.  And I’ve learned a thing or two about photography since then.  Eek.

Overall, it was a simply awesome holiday.  Even without 15 craft projects that involve discontinued components to hunt down.

How was your Easter?

Simple Days

Ok, so simple may not be the best word for the title of this post, but I’M GOING FOR A THEME, PEOPLE!  Obviously, I have problems.

What I’ve been up to…

I think the last couple weeks can pretty easily be summed up by adventures in obsessive party planning.  I’ve been making soap for favors, making yogurt by the drum, making SIX DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF CUPCAKES, making 6 different trips to 4 different grocery stores, and overall making myself crazy.  But I *think* it’s in a good way?

While I know I sound like a lunatic going to these great lengths for a 3 year old’s birthday, I really do enjoy the process.  At least most of the process.  It’s my one time a year to go balls-to-the-wall crafty.  When I can astound family and friends (and myself) with my mad Martha skillz.  And that is hella awesome.  Even though the knowledge of a sixth dimension of crafty that includes printables exists taunts my need for perfection…  But I’m just not ready for that yet.

While party prep has been taking over a large portion of my days, it’s not the only thing we’ve been doing.  Last Friday night, Matt went to an old sand mine in Herculaneum, MO that has been converted into a rec center of sorts.  He’s a disc golf player and they have a 9 hole course underground.  Next time, we’re all going to go because they have barge tours and other activities as well.

Then Saturday night we went to our neighbor’s house for a while to hang out while our kid was asleep.  It was a good break from the cupcake recipe testing that had broken my brain.  I love that we have cool neighbors because we can be social without having to get a sitter since we can still monitor the house closely.  It turned into a fairly late night and tacking on the time change made for a rough start to Sunday.

Daylight savings is always best enjoyed the next day…  After I get home from work and it’s still light out.  I love that.  I wish it was that way all year round.  So on Monday, I said the hell with cleaning the kitchen and we packed up after dinner and got ice cream.

Tuesday night was a bit of a “fuck it” night, too.  After Allison’s hair cut, we came home (after going back to Trader Joe’s to pick up the forgotten items) and invited some neighbors over for a bon fire.  What can I say?  We like fire.

Finally on Thursday we went out for one of my closest friend’s birthday.  It is an annual tradition to spend it at Schlafly Bottleworks, a local brewery specializing in local ingredients.  I usually get the field greens salad that was the inspiration for my vanilla bean vinaigrette, but this time I got a bison burger.  It was good, but someone else’s plate of pistachio ravioli make my burger look a bit less impressive.

What I’ve been doing around the web…

Sarah from Clover Lane is one of my favorite parenting bloggers.  She always makes it look so easy, but this week she lifted the veil on “doing it all.”

Ever try to share a blog post link on Facebook and you get a generic thumbnail and excerpt?  I was pulling my hair out about this just the other day.  Then Blogging with Amy shared a great tip on a plugin that can fix it!  It was like the Blogging Gods were listening to my prayers!  Or my complaining…

I recently stumbled upon a site called Homemade Frontier and FELL IN LOVE!  And as I was talking to my mom the other night about Allison’s party plans and she was telling me she didn’t understand why I go to so much trouble, this post played through my head. Because it’s not just about making things.  It’s about making memories.

Hope everyone has a great St. Patty’s Day! 

First Haircut

Allison was born with a good head of hair (especially considering both her parents were bald babies).  And as she grew, it grew out so beautifully in these sweet wavy layers.  I never wanted to cut it because some people pay lots of money for hair like that.

But as it got longer, she became more and more resistant to me brushing it, screaming, “I’ve got to run away!” every time I can near with the comb.  And pretty soon she started to look a little homeless.

So we figured that it was time and in preparation for her 3rd birthday seemed like a good opportunity.

 I had no idea how she would react to someone messing with her head, but apparently Dora on tv and sitting in a train chair is sufficient distraction.

She even followed direction!  I think I need one of these train chairs…

No nap + Dora = zoned out.

Pretty!

Simple Days ~ 3.7.12

March 7, 2012 • 5 Comments

My intention was to get this post up over the weekend, but with Matt’s schedule being all wonky these past couple weeks, I’m totally off schedule and out of my groove.

But he has THE ENTIRE WEEKEND OFF this week, so we can plan some fun things to do around town (read: get things ready for Allison’s birthday party the following weekend) like maybe visit the Arch or if the weather holds, the zoo.

It would definitely be nice to do something different, however, I do really love our times at home.

What I’ve been up to…

The weekend before last was the perfect mix of work and play.  We met friends for dinner on that first Friday of Lent for a Catholic fish fry dinner.  Allison always loves seeing her favorite friend, Shelby.  It was a great time until we got home…  And Allison had a meltdown because WE WENT IN THE WRONG DOOR!  The Horror!  I’m assuming she was just really tired and it was a timely trigger, but that set the pace for the evening.  She wasn’t playing well and sharing was practically an impossibility.  She also seems to be getting a thrill out of defying us these days, too.  I don’t know why they talk about the terrible 2’s because 3 is shaping up to the tough one.

Saturday started out not much better with more tantrums.  But she finally crashed out for nap and I did manage to get our desk cleared off after watching two episodes of Hoarders.  Maybe not ideal motivation, but whatever works, right?  The nap helped and after Matt got home from work, he baked cookies with Allison, which always makes her happy.  She loves to bake.  But perhaps we gave her a few too many cookies because she was still awake at 10 o’clock.  Finally asleep, we grabbed some beverages and our neighbor came over for a highly competitive game of Scrabble.  I won.  Of course.  

Sunday was a lazy day of errands then we met my cousin and her family for dinner at Bailey’s Roast.  The food was good, although next time I’ll choose a different burger and we were actually able to conversate even with the kids around.  Miracle of miracles!  We wrapped up the weekend with a bonfire at our (other) neighbor’s house after Allison was in bed.  We are so amazingly lucky to have such wonderful people living around us.

Last Monday through Friday are a blur.  I guess because Matt was gone most nights.  I do enjoy working on the blog when he’s not home, so I installed a new theme and so far I’m lovin’ it (once I figured out how to use it)!  I still have some tweaking to do, but I think it looks pretty sharp so far.  We had our regular dinner with friends on Thursday, but I totally slacked and we ended up going out to eat instead of me preparing the meal I had planned.  Perhaps some of my lack of motivation was due to the fact that I didn’t run at all last week due to a quad injury…  But I did “play yoga” with Allison a couple of times.   I was able to notice the difference running has been making on my overall health because I was achy from just sitting at my desk all day.

Since I’m behind and this is getting long, I’ll go ahead and stop here and pick up where I left off on my next post.

And now a little game of ‘Pass it On’

Jill at Mommy Inconsistent challenged me and a few fellow bloggers to play along.  And I like to be a good sport.

Here’s how it goes…

1) Answer questions asked of me by the blogger that tagged me.
2) Create a list of questions and tag a few fellow bloggers, hoping they want to play the game too…thus…
3) Passing it on.

1) What’s your favourite childhood memory?

I’d have to say that my favorite childhood memory is of the band that my cousin and I started when I was in elementary school.  Not because it was awesome (although it was) but because she hates to acknowledge it happened.  This went on until I found the notebook with all of our song lyrics written in it a few years ago.  For a gift recently, she conceded to the existence of The Band.  Best. Gift. Ever.

2) Who or what inspired you to start your blog?

One day I stumbled onto The Pioneer Woman and just fell in love with blogs right there.  I loved her writing voice and breadth of topics.  It opened up a new world to me.  Since then I’ve found so many amazing bloggers that have taught me so much and I am really thankful for how blogging has enhanced my life.  Corny, but true.

3) What’s the best advice you’ve ever received about blogging?

Although not from one particular source, the best advice I’ve received is to throw yourself out there.  For a long time, I was intimidated by bloggers that seemed totally out of my league and I got in the way of my own self by refusing to guest post or even comment on their sites.  I’ve lost a lot of time and missed many opportunities due to my own insecurities.  While that is something that I still struggle with, I have been making a greater effort to get over my fear and get out there.

4) What’s your most embarrassing moment?

Ugh.  I blush really easily, sometimes for no reason other than being the focus of someones’ attention.  I hate it.  If I could change one thing, that would probably be it because it can be crippling in social situations.

5) What melts your heart?

My daughter.  She’s everything I ever dreamed of having and more.

Now, because I’m nosy, I don’t want to just tag 5 people to answer my questions.  So anyone that wants to answer, feel free to link up a dedicated post or just write them up in the comments!

1) What is the hardest thing you’ve ever done?

2) If you didn’t have to work (in home or out), how would you spend your time?

3) What is one thing you would tell your childhood self if you could go back in time?

4) What is your favorite blog to read?

5) Salty or Sweet?

 

Happy Wednesday!

Simple Days - 2.25.12

I know I’ve been a little absent this week and now I’m all showing up on a Saturday just to mess with you but I’ve been a little lacking in words this week and I’m not the kind of person that wants to publish junk just to get a post up.

But something I have been interested in doing is publishing a weekly “what I’ve been doing” kinda thing because I know that I like to read these posts and thought maybe you would like to also?

So I was thinking Saturdays would be kinda a good day for this.

Obviously, this would be contingent on me writing in advance because I don’t typically blog on the weekends due to my non-napping miniature terrorist running around all. day. long. So I can’t promise this will be something that happens every week, but I’ll do my best.

What I’ve been doing…

There is one good spot in my house that I can get decent photography lighting for about 1 hour in the morning. I’ve been making a better effort to pull out my camera during that time in the hopes of getting another great shot of Allison. Unfortunately, she’s pretty much always eating when this occurs, so most of my images have a spoon or cup in her face.

It was over 60° on Thursday and today it’s a chilly 41°. People have been chattering about snow, but I don’t see it happening. We might be done with two minor snowfalls for the year. I’m actually a little disappointed because the Snowman Wars with our neighbors did not end well for us and we want REVENGE!

Our snowman would be the one on the left BLEEDING

Matt had a rare Friday night off so we attended our first fish fry of the season yesterday. Fish fries are incredibly big in St Louis. Not sure why. But even though we’re not exactly
practicing devout Catholics, we love us some fried fish.

I’m trying out another new thing on Facebook. I am going to post a picture of my daily To Do lists for the world to see. The initial inspiration came from wanting to be more organized because if I have to show you a photo of my list, it’s more likely to not be scribbled in the margin of a cluttered notebook. But it also has the added benefit of letting all you voyeurs see what I’m up to every day. Fun, right? Well, it is for me. I love to snoop on people.

What I’ve been doing… On the web.

How I Save Money By Spending More of it at the Grocery Store I loved this post on Debt Free by Thirty because it reminded me that it’s not such a bad thing to buy a carton of ice cream at the grocery store because it saves you money at Dairy Queen. Granted, if you eat said carton in three days, that might have other ramifications…

Preschool Activities: Colors and Shapes I am a *little* obsessed with learning activities for Allison and thought these ideas from The Happy Housewife were great. I especially loved the shape pictures and it’s educational on so many levels. (I am also a little obsessed with multi-functional items.)

My Top 3 Tips for Getting Stuff Done This Money Saving Mom post was kinda the inspiration for posting my To Do lists on Facebook. I’m a natural list maker, but pretty unorganized so at any given time I’ll have multiple lists for the same day/week/month/etc. So now I’m working off of a long-term list and using those items to help me make my daily ones.

What have you been doing this week?

12 Projects for 2012: Take a Cake Decorating Class

For well over a year, my cousin and I have been talking about taking a cake decorating class for no other reason than we like to bake and we like pretty things. 

But life always got in the way.  And when life wasn’t getting in the way, your brain is by telling you things like, “You don’t have time to take a cake decorating class!  Get back to mopping those floors!”  Except you aren’t mopping floors, you’re watching Netflix.

Then next thing you know, your house is a wreck and you still can’t make a pretty cake. 

I had to do something.

So in my poorly executed way, I told my cousin on Christmas Eve that we were going to take a cake class as her Christmas/birthday present and signed us up for February.  Except I screwed up the class time.  So we had to switch to the January class.

And that’s how you accomplish four projects on your list in one month by accident.

There were several late nights piping buttercream roses onto sticks…

And baking cakes and mixing frosting to precise specifications…

And piping frilly borders…

And hunching over a table carefully arranging fragile flowers.

But I’d have to say, I’m pretty pleased with the end result.

Well, at least until I wrote that “D.”  YIKES.  That needs some practice.

(That last picture is awful, so if you’d like to see a less blurry better pic, you can check it out here.)

Just a Mom

Every weekday morning, I drag myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7am, make some half-assed attempt to pretend that I care about my appearance, and head out the door to my 9-5.  This is my choice.  But it is not my preference.

I work outside the home because my family needs the income.  Not because my passion is sales or customer service.

My passion is giving snuggles, kissing boo boos, and reading stories.  I am happiest when I am providing for my family, whether through preparing meals or washing clothes. 

I love my job as mom as you love your job as lawyer.  Or designer.  Or realtor.  And when you love your work, you want to dedicate your life to it.

Many people would say that past generations fought for us to have more.  But what feminists fought for is having a right to choose.  A choice to be an astronaut.  Or a choice to be a mom.  Or a choice to be both.

And choosing to be just an astronaut would not make me less of a person.  Just as choosing to be just a mom does not make me unambitious. 

I did not put my life on hold to have children.  I have been waiting my entire life for them to arrive.  My daughter is the purpose of my life.  And if I only do one thing well, I hope that it’s raising a healthy, happy child that has the courage to follow her dreams.  Whatever they may be.

{Semi} Wordless Wednesday

I could stare at this face for hours.  Love this girl.

What could be better?  This photo is SOOC.

Right now I am…

…just getting to work.  At 11 o’clock.  Because it took my poor mother-in-law 4 hours to get from her house to mine with 1 inch of snow on the road.  The drive usually takes 50 minutes.

…excited about seeing friends this evening.  We are going to a bounce house play area and I’m hoping that Allison doesn’t cry like she did the last two times we tried to go.

…sad that our Alaska friends are leaving to go back home soon.  There just wasn’t enough time over the holidays to see them as much as I would’ve liked.

…eating pistachios because breakfast seemed so long ago.

…missing my baby girl.  We had a great morning hanging out.  Unplanned playtime is so much fun.

…thankful for a week off in the kitchen.  But ready to get back to my meal plan.

…enjoying cake decorating class.  I attended the first one last night.  We learned how to pipe stars, shells, and strings.  Next week is roses.

…ready for a quiet weekend at home.  My intention is to watch lots of football and maybe start working on the hallway tile.

…watching the snow fall outside my office window and wishing I was at home in my jammies, sitting in front of a fire with a mug of hot chocolate.

What are you doing right now?