Last Day

I'm afraid my last post of the month is going to be sort of a bust. The laptop is broken again so I can't do anything I normally do. At least I made it through the whole 30 days without missing a post. I found it a little harder going this time then the last time I did it. I didn't exactly have a lot of inspiration and I think it showed in a few of the posts including this one. So, now I'm signing off for November and I think I'm going to take a few days off before I return to my usual 4 or 5 posts a month. I'm getting so lazy....

I Swear I'm Going To Get To These

For Christmas, Grace wants to make a fabric banner for her cousin Ashley in Wisconsin. We picked out the fabric a few weeks ago but I need to get going on actually making it. They are very simple to make especially for a novice sewer like me. First, I had to find the pattern and directions from the last time I made them. I was pretty sure they were at the bottom of my project basket...

I haven't looked in this in a while and when I dropped it on the floor, I woke Carly up and she gave e quite the look. Sorry dog. I know you need to get in your 18 hours of sleep.
There is too much in here. I think I need to buy another basket or maybe, actually make some of these things.
I pulled everything out and found all my cute ribbons at the bottom. I never really use them but I love to buy them just in case. I have more in my sewing box.
About a year ago, I was going to make those feather headbands that were in style. I don't think they are in style anymore but maybe by the time I get around to making them, they'll be back.
This apron pattern was on the clearance rack and promised only 2 easy steps. I haven't even opened it to find out what those steps are. It is cute though.
I swear I want to make this but I think I'm sort of scared of screwing it up. It's just a little baby quilt but it's got green toile fabric in it which is my favorite. I'm also hoping the directions are inside it because the paper tags that came with it are long gone.
Lastly, my pile of fabric that I never really use. I bought all of this to make headbands and banners and fabric necklaces. Even with all this, I'll still buy more. One day, I will use it. Maybe when the kids move out or I finally quit my job. Whichever comes first.

Like We Need More Ornaments!

Making baked Christmas Tree Ornaments is the perfect activity to do with your kids. I made mine by myself. The kids were playing outside in the freezing cold air and didn't want to come in so I just went ahead and made them. I have to use my spurts of energy when I have them and I figure this is just the prep work. They'll get involved when we actually decorate them.

The dough is just 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of salt and 3/4 cup of water. Mix until it forms a soft dough. Add more water if you need it. Then, knead it a little to make the dough consistent.
Then just roll out out and use cookie cutters or whatever you want to make your ornaments.
Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet and use a straw to make the holes at the top.
Bake at 250 degrees for a half hour then turn them and bake for 1 1/2 more hours. Then, you have your ornaments. The edges are little rough so I think I'll file those down a little. Now, I'll get the kids involved. Beyond paint, we don't have much to decorate them with so it looks like a good excuse for a trip to the craft store. Next, I want to make cinnamon dough ornaments. They smell awesome! The recipe calls for 1 cup of cinnamon and I don't know if my cheap little heart will allow be to buy that much of it. Maybe they sell it at the Dollar Store?

My New Favorite Things

It's time for another installment of my new favorite things...

Carly looks all sweet and innocent here but what you can't tell from this picture is that she smells. It's not her fault but it needs to be taken care of. We've had no problem washing our cats in our tub but Carly is too much to deal with at home. Portland has a self service dog wash store and it's worth every penny of the $14.00 it costs. She comes out of there smelling like peppermint and eucalyptus. We sound like spoiled yuppie dog owners but she was a free dog so we can buy deodorizer for her and not feel guilty.

This year, I invested in real slippers from LL Bean. I even went for the bright red ones. Usually, I just buy random slippers that only last one winter. These have a real rubber sole so I wear them outside a lot. Most mornings, I have to remember to take them off before I go to work. I have actually made it all the way into the car before I remembered. As I get older, I am going to be one of those ladies who wear their slippers to the store but I'm all right with that.
This summer, the kids and I discovered there are pick your own blueberries farms around us. Growing up, I just went into the woods to pick them but I guess I'm a city girl now. We went several times and I still have a huge bag of blueberries in the freezer. We were way more interested in picking them than eating them. Anyway, I found these pictures during our blueberry craze and I framed them for the kitchen.

My two new Louisa May Alcott bios. Actually, only one of them is new because they are written by the same author but they are new to me. I look forward to trying to read both of them before they are due back at the library.
I love the new London necklace I made. They are really scrapbook embellishments or something like that-I don't scrapbook. I added metal rings to them and just strung them onto a chain. Total cost(with 40% off coupon) $1.50.
The Royal Wedding. My new thing to look forward to. I now have an excuse to start buying People magazine again. I haven't really bought it since Princess Diana died because there was never anyone interesting on the cover anymore. Princess Kate isn't the same thing as Princess Diana but she's all we have now. At least until Prince Harry follows his Uncle Andrew and marries somebody totally inappropriate. That will make for really good People covers too.

Black Friday At My House

I had to work today so there were no Black Friday sales for me. Until, I came home...

Grace and Declan had each set up Black Friday stores in the house and they were passing out coupons and fliers for them. They posted signs all around the house to advertise.
Grace's coupons were very thorough. They even had a bar code for easy scanning.
She also passed out a bunch of free coupons. I mostly used those. They were mainly competing to see how much they sold not how much money they could make.
Grace's store was in her room and was called the Christmas Tree Decorating Shop. I found several ornaments there that I liked.
Here are two of my favorites.
Declan's store was called The Declanator and he set it up on the stairs.
He has had a bookmark making business for over a year now so he had those for sale along with some ornaments and old Happy Meal toys. After tonight, I'm pretty much done shopping.

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving at our house was brought to us by the boys again. This year, Tim didn't have to go into work Thanksgiving night. This meant we didn't need to eat at noon and he didn't have to get up at 3am to start dinner.

Declan was a little helper again this year. Ignore how dirty the front of my stove is. It's been cleaned.
Tim was starting the stuffing here. He makes his grandmothers recipe using sweet Italian sausage. I love it but we do only have it on Thanksgiving.
While the boys were cooking, I started a new holiday tradition-Thanksgiving shopping at LL Bean. I got a great parking space and the lines were short. Plus, I get Tim's 30-40% discount. It brings their wildly overinflated prices down to normal ranges for me.
Her first Thanksgiving confused Carly. She couldn't figure out why Tim was so busy in the kitchen and why I was home during the day.
The kids skipped ahead in their holiday celebrating and started making Christmas ornaments while dinner was cooking.
Tim's bird came out perfect as usual. Thank God he cooks or we would just be making reservations somewhere.
This year, we have our new old table in the dining room and I put all the leafs in it. We were always been crammed in together with the other table but we had all kinds of space this year.
Every year, I look at the bags of real cranberries at the store and think we should make real cranberry sauce this year. Then I think about how Tim would divorce me over that so we have the traditional can of cranberries. Maybe I'll buy them to string on the Christmas tree.
A full plate and Tim cooked all of it. What a good husband.
I even snuck in a picture of the elusive 10 year old girl.
I was in charge of pies and cleaning here. Here is my pumpkin pie but I won't show you the cleanup other than to say it took an hour. Tim is making turkey soup tomorrow so I expect to do the cleanup all over again.

I Promise

So...the laptop is back, the furnace seems to be working again and nothing has broken on the car for a couple of weeks now. Things seem to be holding steady for now. I promise I will be back with a real post tomorrow. Tonight was date night for Tim and I. We always manage to figure out how to make the time for it when a new Harry Potter movie comes out. What will we do after the last one next year? Anyway, this was the best one yet but I forgot how many people died. I have to reread the last book if I can get it away from Declan.

Were Computers Alway This Big?

Our laptop has been taken away to the Apple store to be fixed. I feel like one of my children has been taken away. Does this mean I'm addicted? I'm on the kids computer now and it's like I'm back in 1996. This thing is huge and strange and it has none of my bookmarks. The laptop might be back tomorrow. Or Friday. Or next week. I don't want to think about it. One good thing, since we didn't have the laptop to distract us, Tim and I sat down and watched a movie. You should all go rent Get Him To The Greek but don't try to watch it while the kids are still awake-lesson learned here. Also, don't watch this trailer while your children are around or if you are sensitive...

Too Much

Too much has been going on and too much in my house has broken over the past few days. Therefore, I'm counting this as a post so I don't stop my streak. Hopefully, I'll be back with something better tomorrow, when the laptop might be fixed...

Empty Nest

Someone posted this on Facebook the other day and it made me cry. I'm about 10 years away from an empty nest. I never really think about it that much except to wonder how we are going to pay for their college and to daydream about being about to take a nap whenever I feel like it. This video showed me loud and clear what a nightmare it's going to be. I've now got this womans book on hold at the library so I can torture myself some more.

Too Much Pokemon

See how happy he is? It's because he's playing Pokemon with his sister. It makes both of them really happy so I try to hide the fact that I loathe it. There are some things I have tried to hide from the kids and I have been successful with Barney and Hannah Montana but one of their "friends" got them into Pokemon. Did I mention I don't like this friend?
Today, they were upstairs for most of the day building houses of cards with their Pokemon cards. Only they called them temples. This is Grace's temple. Nothing related to Pokemon makes any sense to me and I try to block out most of what they tell me about it. I just nod a lot.
Declan was willing to pose with his temple. It was pretty big because he has too many cards.
There is some sort of game you can play with them but nothing that's written on them makes sense to me. They mostly just trade them to build up the power of their deck. Again, this makes no sense to me.
Later on, they smashed their temples but they made me promise to print out the pictures we took so they could remember them forever. I'm hoping this will just run it's natural course and they will move onto something that doesn't drive me crazy. I have been very successful so far in getting Declan into Harry Potter so I'm just going to keep pushing that.

Trader Joes

So, there was a huge article on the front page of the paper today about the new Trader Joe's that opened in Portland and how it is causing chaos. People are crazy for this place and it's the first one in Maine so they are coming from everywhere to go to it. There are fanatics about this place and I made my first trip there last night.

I'm sad to say that I was not impressed. I have never been in one before so I didn't know what to expect. I thought it was a regular supermarket with some Trader Joe's brands thrown in. It wasn't. I was also shocked at how small it was. Maybe it was because it was late and I had been wearing high heels for over 12 hours without a break but I just wanted to turn around and leave.

I did grab a few things. All I hear about is their cheap wine so I picked the one whose label I liked the best. I don't know why I keep trying to convince myself that I like alcohol. I honestly picked this one because I liked the label. That should tell me something.
And there was a huge display of these candy cane Oreo knock-offs. I think I should have grabbed a couple more of them because they are disappearing fast.
All in all, I don't think I will be going back. I was hugely impressed with one thing though. Look at the bags you get. Paper bags with handles are unheard of in Maine supermarkets. I want 10 more of these. Maybe I'll just keep buying the cookies to get the bags.

Of Course It's A British Movie

We don't have a TV in our kitchen or one of those new, modern homes where you can see the living room from the kitchen. Whenever I'm in there making something, I end up watching Peter's Friends off YouTube. It's not out on DVD and I love it so this is how I watch. It's the British Big Chill. Want to see Hugh Laurie before he was considered hot?

Can I Do This?

How cute is this bag? It's so cute that they don't sell it in stores. You have to actually make it yourself. I'm going to try it but I'm a little scared.

My sister-in-law Joyce runs a very successful EBay store called Alaska Quilting Adventures selling quilt fabrics and supplies. I was looking around on it the other day and saw this pattern. I decided it could become my winter project.
The instructions are a little scary. I might have to Google most of the terms before I attempt to start.
Thankfully, Joyce very thoughtfully threw in all the fabric I'll need to make it. I am so glad she did that because it saves me standing around the fabric store for hours trying to match fabrics.
I'm just going to take this step by step and we will see what happens. Hopefully, I'll end up with a great new bag. Now, I just have to buy some thread and get started.

Princess Kate

I remember being 9 years old and getting up early to watch this...

I even got up early to watch this...

Then I watched this....

And then unfortunately, I got up early again to watch this...

I even watched this but it wasn't the same...

And, I'm still not sure how I feel about this....

So, I was very happy today, to wake up to this....

They need to announce the wedding date soon because I am taking the day off.

Mom's The Maid

This is what my living room looks like when I walk out the door in the morning. Excuse the bad picture-there isn't really a fire in the corner, just a lamp.
This is what the living room looks like when I come home from work. At this point, the kids have only been home from school for an hour. This is actually sort of clean for them.
The dining room table looks like this. There is actually a table under there.
I will own up to some of the mess because I started a project over the weekend that I haven't been able to get back to. One of the reasons I haven't gotten back to it is because I have been cleaning up after other people. Vicious circle there.

Even this one leaves her toys everywhere for me to trip over and pick up. I can't really blame her since we haven't taught her yet to put her toys back in her basket. We need to add this to the long list of things we need to teach her.
Tonight, I did get this picture hand delivered to me by Declan. It's not this orange in real life. He's cute and a good suck up so I will keep on picking up after them. He just needs to add a broom next to me in the picture.