Life stages through SLEDDING

1. Have your first child.
2. When your kid turns 2, go to store to buy proper boots, snowpants, scarf, mittens, hat and long underwear. Go to several different stores to look for the safest sled available - you know, the one with the back and seat belt. Buy other cool sleds, too.
3. Bundle everyone up, apply vaseline to your child's cheeks. Apply lip balm. Load up car with the 6 new sleds you bought (and the pump, in case the new tube sled deflates), and drive 17 miles across town to the best hill. Bring camera and camcorder. Stop at gas station to get fresh batteries.
4. Watch your husband go down the hill with your child, screaming WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE each time.
5. Videotape your child going down the hill at least 23 times.
6. Make jumps by gathering and packing large amounts of snow in strategic spots on the hill.
6. Take pics of your child eating snow. Put hand warmers in child's mittens. Wipe her nose.
7. Get different sleds every 10 minutes and go over jumps with each one, comparing speeds and height of jumps.
8. Talk to everyone you see, saying: isn't the weather beautiful tonight?!?!
9. Leave after 2 hours. Go home and drink hot chocolate with tons of marshmallows. Sit by the fireplace.
10. Upload and edit all the videos you took and forward them to friends and family, who of course are DYING to see them.

Several years later:

10. Have your second kid.
11. When this kid turns 5, dig out hand-me-down boots, snowpants and whatever else you can find in your musty basement. Wipe off the cobwebs with your shirt.
12. Put baggies in the boots cuz they probably leak.
13. Grab the two sleds - you know, the one that has a big crack down the middle and the other one that has a broken handle. Look for rope to fix handle. Give up on finding any rope.
14. Drive to the closest lame hill, which happens to be 1/2 block away.
15. Park the car and let your kid out.
16. Stay in car and watch kid go down hill, as you are already exhausted from the preparations to go sledding and your foot hurts. You feel a backache coming on, too.
17. Sit in car for an hour with the heat blasting, reading a week old paper with the dome light on.
18. Notice your kid and another kid repeatedly pushing each other down. Notice your kid getting run over by inner tubes full of roudy middle schoolers.
19. Yawn and look at your watch.
20. Roll down the window and beep your horn, waving your kid into the car. Time to go.
21. Come home and tell your kid how lucky she is to have a mom that takes her sledding.

Christmas shopping

I decided I was going to take the "buy handmade pledge" very seriously this year, as I want to support small business owners, but frankly, even more-so, I just cannot stand the crowds anymore. Etsy has been good to me, so I wanna be good to etsy.

I bought several items for my daughter, Molly (15). If you read my blog at all, you know she's a sorta FASHIONISTA. If you knew me at all, you'd wonder how I birthed this child. I am super plain and uninterested in getting my nails done, shopping, etc. Poor Mols.

The first item I bought is the most precious little heart ring made by Sweet Nirvanas. Is this just the sweetest darned thing or what? Franky (the owner) is just as sweet.


I fell in love with Cory's shop, Sweet Petula. She has a definate gift. She has created a wonderful look and feel to her shop, don't you think?

For myself, I bought a solid perfume called "Sweet P". It's made up of five different kinds of essential oils, the main being Lavender & Litsea-Cubea. I love lavender and lemon verbena together, so I'm so excited to get this!



Molly loves lip balm. I bought one pomegranate and one dark cherry. YUM!



I did a search for "silver bird necklace" and found Just Jaynes. I love her style! I found a lot of silver bird necklaces, but when I saw this one, I knew this was IT. She has a very nice following and I enjoyed her blog, too.


Have you bought Christmas gifts on etsy, too? I'd love to hear what you bought!

Liz

Circles for the tree

In an effort to hit that critical "100 followers" mark, I'm posting yet another witty, constructive, family-friendly story. :) :) :) <--- chock full of smilies for your enjoyment
Need something fun and simple to do with your young children? Don't have enough on your plate? If you are bored (HAHAHAHAHAHA) and have lots of time and lots of patience (ahem)... and of course LOTS OF FELT, then this project is JUST FOR YOU. Felt. I can't get enough of the stuff. Except in the winter it gives me the creeps when I touch it with my nasty dry hands.

Anyhoo... Cut your felt into circles... we used a pinking shears and a regular scissors to add some SPICE-OLA! And of course don't cut all your circles the same size. That would be so Martha. Plus you will argue with your children cuz it's impossible for them to make them perfect (believe me, been there done that).

Thread a big needle with embroidery floss and connect your circles. We used a nice long piece of floss. Tie more floss on as needed. Samantha connected them all herself. She's one of those crafty, arty kids THANK GOD. I wanted one SO BAD. My oldest daughter hates crafts. And nature. Which I don't get. How can anyone hate nature??? Like I'll see a hawk and get all freaked out and impressed and she'll be like I JUST DON'T GET WHY EVERYONE GETS WORKED UP OVER A BIRD. THERE'S BIRDS EVERYWHERE. Sigh. I threaten her with country living sometimes.

Anyway, you can put your finished string of circles on your tree (OBVY! as my non-nature girl would say) or do like we did, hang it over one of your windows ... super cute! Of course when I went to take a pic of it on her window to share with you, my batteries in my camera were dead-as-a-doorknob. Can you just visualize?! Her room walls are pink and her window frames are light wood. Oh... the windows are sorta dirty. I know you can see it right now. If you can't, I know you really don't care, cuz you're thinking one of two things: I really don't care OR I wanna do this myself and I don't care what it looks like in your house cuz I'm already thinking of where I'm gonna put this thing in my house and if it's worth having it around for like 50 years. And untangling it like a million times. I'm guessing you're thinking the latter.

So here's more pics:



If you take this on, let me know and post pics!!!

Yours forever,
Liz

morning dilemma

So as I'm literally half asleep this morning going pee I noticed we have NO back-up toilet paper. Just a smidge left on the roll! EEK.

Samantha (6) is waiting for me to finish so she can go. I tell her not to use much tp (good mom) as we have hardly any left and Molly probably needs to go yet.

"We have another roll!", she proclaims.

"What??? Where???", I ask. I know she's mistaken, but being the good mom I am I go along with her confused state of mind.

She pulls me out to the living room and points to the tree in front of our house.