CSN Stores

Hey! So excited about CSN again. CSN Stores has over 200 online stores where you can find everything from a Swing set to cute cookware to chic lighting pieces! Stay tuned for a review.

Hitting Snooze

I'm afraid that I'm hitting "snooze" on this blog. I can't say that I won't be back here or there or maybe just later. But, for right now, contributing to Kids on the Grand is fufilling my blogger needs! I hope that you'll visit!

Cute as a Button Christmas Ornaments

Are you ready for Day 2 of Christmas break? Only 13 more to go!

I posted a super cute, cheap, easy craft on Kids on the Grand...the tri-fecta of kids crafts! Here's the link!

Taking the Crazy out of Opening Presents

Sometimes I wish my kids were little puppets so that I could control what came out of their mouths! Not all the time....just when they unwrap an ugly sweater on Christmas, right?!

No matter what your kids say...unwrapping presents at BIG Christmas parties can be overwhelming. I find myself forcing thank-yous and leading them by hand to find the person who gave them the gift. It's confusing for kids! Add into all of that the fact that once they open their first gift, all they want to do is play with that gift! Forget opening more!

I was commiserating over all of this with a friend at our moms group when she told me her secret. They have the gift givers keep all of their gifts and have the child travel from aunt to grandma to cousin and so on... This way the child gets to open the gift in front of the giver and the child knows who to thank and hug. GENIUS! I love love love it!

Merry Christmas!

Where do sweaters come from?

Today I went with a group of friends to a live nativity. My daughter was in heaven petting the kitties, bunnies, and holding little baby chicks. I grew up with a barn of horses, chickens, bunnies, dogs, and cats but we currently have no pets. We had a few fish who lived for a few years and then we had a hamster which caused way too much grief with it's untimely passing.

Anyway,...it was eye opening to watch my daughter today with the animals. She really was out of her element. This became obvious when I tried to explain that the sheep's coat was cut with clippers, washed, spun, and made into sweaters...I was trying to bring it home for her. This is the point where she turned to me, horrified, and said, "I don't want to wear sweaters!" I just about died laughing right there.

I got my laughter in check and tried to continue her barn education explaining that it doesn't hurt the sheep but I had lost her attention by then. When we got home I picked up the conversation but was told, "I just want sweaters from Target." I was never a fully fledged country girl but I definitely have a city girl on my hands. I'm still dreading the conversation of where babies come from but who knew explaining where sweaters come from could be so hard!

Clay Pot Nativity

Looking for a great Christmas craft to fill in those long days of winter break?
Her'es a post I contributed to Kids on the Grand that willl give you the step by step how to...

Kids on the Grand

I'm so happy to share that I'm now an official contributor to the blog Kids on the Grand!

Read my latest on organizing kids toys before Christmas here!

CSN $55 Giveaway!

This Contest is now closed!Need a little help stretching the Christmas budget this year? Help is here with a CSN gift card giveaway!

You know that I love CSN! And since I'm not driving anymore, most of my holiday shopping is happening online. I'm in love with shopping during nap time, tucked in a blanket, hot cocoa in hand! Plus, I get to choose my own music to listen to and NO lines!

If you've never heard of CSN stores...they have over 200 online stores where you can find everything from stylish briefcases to cute cookware to chic lighting pieces.

So much to choose from and easy breezy to win!

Visit CSN and then leave a comment telling what you might use your winnings on!

One entry per person, winner must live in the U.S. or Canada, and the winner will be announced December 7!

Winner

Congratulations to Cafe au Mommy & Dianne's Butterfly Dreams, winners of the EZ Sox giveaway! Enjoy a break from putting on kids socks ladies!

EZ Sox Review and GIVEAWAY!

This gieveaway is now closed !
Socks are always a headache at our house. First of all, I'm about to start gluing them to my 3 year old'ss feet. It seems that every time I turn around she's sock less and just when I was starting to wonder where they all were....I found then in the oven of her toy kitchen.
Thankfully, there is one pair that she will wear ALL day and even better...she can put them on herself! The makers of EZ Sox sent me a pair of their adorable bunny socks for her to try. I was telling my sister-in-law about them at Thanksgiving...

EZ SOX are fun learning socks for children and a helpful teaching tool for parents. It helps build the confidence that pre-schoolers need as they learn to dress themselves.

When I asked her to put them on,she fought me for a second because after all, up until this point she hasn't been able to do it herself without a ton of frustration. With a little encouragement she slipped them right on using their handy loop handles. The face on the socks helps kids figure out which side is up...genius but I'm sure what the makers didn't count on was the fact that my child will wear little bunny face socks ALL day long....hooray! They also have non-skid bottoms which definitely protect her from falls on are hard wood floors. I'm planning on buying a pair of EZ SOx Cat socks for her Christmas stocking!

Here's your chance to wind a pair! Visit the EZ sox website and let me know which pair you'd like to win in a comment below...that's it! EZ to put on....EZ to win! I will announce 2 contest winners on Dec. 1!

Napquest

Yesterday, I had a happy accident when I meant to google mapquest but traded the "m" for an "n". Napquest. Yeah, I'm googling that all day today. I'm searching for any time that I might be able to lay why weary head down.

I am not going to be efficient. I am not going to use nap time to put laundry away, wash dishes, or do anything even slightly productive. I'm going on a napquest!

Think Thanksgiving

Here are a couple of cute Thanksgiving crafts to try at home. I can't lay any claim to the ideas and I'd gladly credit the original if I could only think of where I found them.....


Step 1: Paint your kids hand to make a turkey body. I used brown, red, and yellow.
Step 2: Print the hand on construction paper. You can see that I pre-printed a Bible verse that I hope to help my kids learn this week.
Step 3: Using construction paper, cut a head (tear drop), nose (triangle), and whatever that red thing is called (...I should really know this by now). Glue the pieces to the dried hand print. You can either cut eyes or use google eyes....my kids can't get enough of the google eyes.




Okay, so truth be told...you will end up making these hats if your kids are under the age of 6, but trust me, they will never look more adorable and it is totally worth the effort!

The pilgrim boy hat is, I think, fairly self explanatory. You cut the shapes, glue them together, and then attach them to a long strip of paper to make a sweat band like hat. The girl pilgrim hat takes a bit more ingenuity.

Step 1: Use a 12"x18" construction paper. Fold back one of the 18" sides to make a 1" crease.

Step 2: On the opposite side make two 5" slits.

Step 3: Make a hole punch next to the 1" crease on each side. Attach string to tie the hat under the girl's chin.

Step 4: Fold and staple the cut flaps to create a bonnet. And let it be said that I am no hand model....man, do I need to lotion!









Happy craft time pilgrims!

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

I need to step it up in the craft department. I have 2 kids who LOVE crafts and truth be told, the other night they snuck down to the basement to "craft". Their version of crafting included watercolors, old business letter head paper, and glitter...handfuls of glitter! So, after I de-glitterized the basement and banned them from all paint, I thought that maybe I should offer a few more mommy lead crafts so that they don't have to sneak off to get their fix.

So, here's some fun that we're working on at our house. If you're not a big fan of this book, copy the idea and use it with any book that your kids love. I'm happy to report that it promotes literacy,(you can use that line to impress other moms, pediatricians, and teachers) and your kids can actually play with it and re-tell the story when they're done.

We're Going on a Bear Hunt is a classic children's book. The repetition of the text makes it an easy read for early readers! Here's what we did:








I stapled together 6 pages of construction paper, 1 for the title page and then 1 page for each of the "oh no" adventures....grass, river, mud, forest, snowstorm, and cave.









For my 3 year old, I made the backgrounds and for my 6 year old, I helped. Then, using a paper trimmer, make a slit in each background. Be sure to leave a margin so you do not cut the paper all the way to the edges.










Color people shaped popsicle sticks to use as bear hunting characters. You can also glue on a paper person to a regular popsicle stick.










Have your kids draw or sticker in details to the pages. We plan to add flowers to the grass page, foot prints to the mud page, forest animals to the forest page, fish to the river page, and a bear, of course, to our cave page.





Kids can re-tell the story using their own book! Help them slide their characters through the slot on each page of the bear hunt. Encourage them to use the pattern, "Oh no! ________ We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no, we have to go through it!"




Happy bear hunting!

This post is a part of Things I Love Thursday.

It's Like Nails on a Chalkboard

I used this phrase on my kids but realized, as soon as it left my lips, that it had lost it's meaning. I guess I missed the obituary and was a no-show at the funeral. Isn't that sad... a whole phrase has lost it's meaning.

My son is in 1st grade and has whiteboards in his class which will surely be updated into some sort of techie super thin plasma touch screen. He has never experienced a moment when the chalk twists and screeches out in a teachers hand. He's never had a classmate, determined to inflict pain on the rest of the class, raise his hand, bare his fingernails, and slide them down the board with a cruel grin. All this to explain that I have to come up with another descriptive phrase to explain why he should stop the noise he's making.

And, oh what a noise. How can one small person make so much noise? I guess I don't fully realize the volume that our family lives at until we're out in public. In public, my ears are hyper-attune. In that moment of noise, I'm slightly embarrassed and frustrated but when I reflect back on it I'm thankful for kids who live so lively and loudly.

So, I'm trying to stuff down the type A personality bits of me and embrace the noise, the fingerprints, the wiggles of today. I'm trying not to be aggravated and just hear the symphony of chaos that it is.

Happily Late

Sometimes I think that somehow our family was just programmed to be late. Any combination of 1 to 3 of us can be on time to an event but throw that 4th family member into the mix and we're late. Last night, Michigan, along with a few other wacky states even gained an hour and we were still late to church.

So, we made a new commitment. You would think that it's to be on time but nooooo, that would be to logical. Instead, we've committed to be happily late. Before our newfound commitment, my husband and I felt like drill sergeants. Our sole purpose was to round up the troops, feed them, clothe them, and march them to the car. And all for what? To teach them how fun and enjoyable Sunday mornings and going to church as a family is? Yeah, that's probably not the lesson they were picking up on.

It's not that we're opposed to being on time. Certainly, punctuality is an upstanding trait. It's the realization that if you're going to be late you might as well be happy, remain calm, and carry on.

Opposite R.I.P.

Just when you thought this blog was R.I.P...

Well, if you didn't I did. I was stuck. I promised myself that if I was going to have a blog that tied in with the funny stories and helpful hints that I, the author, would bare myself. I would not hide the ugly truths, the painful bits, or the mundane and boring pieces of life.

Somehow though, when I shared the bittersweet truth about my sight I became stuck. I wasn't sure how to move from something so life changing, so brutal, so honest and then go back to talking about the little celebrations of parenting. Truthfully, I'm struggling at knitting myself and my non-driving status into this blog. Even more truthfully, I'm having a hard time allowing something that has been a bitter journey to not affect the sweetness of my life.

What lead me to this ah-ha moment was one of my favorite author's, Shauna Nequist. Shauna's new book Bittersweet (yeah, I didn't coin the phrase folks) speaks straight to my heart when she wrote, "When life is sweet say thank-you and celebrate and when life is bitter say thank-you and grow." I'm still learning what that looks like. This season of change has been hard on me and hard on my family...and maybe it's even been hard on Parenting in Blue Jeans. In the last few days, it seems I've been granted permission to come back and write. I'm can't say that I'm done with this time of loss...but I've learned how to celebrate the sweet spots that are scattered through it.

Chalkboard Sticker: Things I Love Thursday

It's Things I Love Thursday and I love to write on the walls. At our last house I took a permanent marker to our ugly kitchen walls...until we remodeled it that is. In our current state of ugly, I've refrained from permanent marker by using this cute chalkboard sticker.
I applied it to our refrigerator and it's turned out to be a great place to make grocery lists, write notes to the babysitter, make to do lists and so on. It was fairly easy to apply and I was able to reposition it to fix a wrinkle I made. Because it's made from vinyl it won't damage your surface area either.
I bought my chalkboard sticker at a local Hallmark store but you can get this one at Mushi.

You can find many more things to love at The Diaper Diaries

Too Quiet to Think

It's so quiet in our house right now that I can't even think. I'm conditioned to living in an environment where my thoughts must compete with a sometimes shrill, ear spitting racket. Now my thoughts seem to boom and echo through the hushed noises of the house. With our oldest off to 1st grade and our youngest quietly playing by herself, I can't get anything done let alone think.

Really, there is noise. Noise that has eluded my ears for awhile. The trees are swaying in the wind dropping leaves like they've been caught red handed. Acorns are falling onto our roof making me fell like Henny Penny, and there's a slightly disturbed woodpecker who cannot distinguish the brick of our house from...wood.

I vaguely remember this variety of quiet. It's been a long time and truth be told, I'm not sure that I like it. It makes me feel lazy. It's beckoning me to have one more cup of coffee, read one more chapter, or even *gasp* take a nap.

My eyes keep darting to the clock with the silly fear that I might forget to look for the bus at drop-off time. My mind keeps wandering off to his 1st grade classroom, wondering what he's doing. There's nothing load enough to distract me from missing my 1st grader.

Flip Flops and the President

I have strep throat. I've had no trouble feeling sorry for myself either. It's a holiday weekend and I'm missing out on a friends s'more party and possibly another friends out door movie party...wahhhh. To top it off, this is my kind of weather...it's jean and a sweatshirt heaven out there.

Even though I'm knee deep in self pity, there's 2 things that have put a smile on my face . Number one, we have the most hilarious neighbors across the road from us who are entirely fed up with the neighbor next door to us. They're not alone of course! Mr. next door likes his rock and roll and he likes it loud. I feel like we live in a horrible B rated movie when I look over and see him on his porch, no shirt, beer in hand, scruffy beard, and long stringy hair, rocking out to The Rolling Stones. Anyway, in protest Mr. and Mrs. across the street have started to play speeches of President Obama, knowing full well that Mr. next door cannot stand anything milady Democrat let alone the President's voice. It just makes me smile with a low chuckle, and a slight tilt of the head. And just to be clear...we live on the good side of the tracks.

Secondly, my daughter who is now 3 (do you know how much I love 3?!) Anyway, the same child who struts off to her bedroom, arms crossed , a look of pure defiance on her face, yelling no and even daring to slam the door behind her is the same child who can change my mood with one word...well, maybe it's two. Flip flop, only you have to say it with the pronunciation of a 3 year old....plip plop. I swear, it's the cutest thing you've ever heard.

So, to sum it up, I'm laying on the couch listening to the muffled sound of the President's voice, sucking on Halls, and asking my daughter to say flip flop. Awesome, right?

A Mother's Song

I've had some good old fashioned Dutch guilt about not posting anything lately. Nothing seems important enough to post and some things seem too important for a casual post. Anyway, 2 nights ago someone asked me what I would want my kids to say about me 30 years from now. I think more than anything, I would want them to say I laid myself down for them.

Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel

When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you

I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind

What about you? If I ask your kids, 30 years form now, about your parenting....how would you want them to answer?