Ballerina Behaving Badly

Maren's first day of Preschool

It was a success! Hip Hip Hooray!

Tiny Dancer

The Aftermath & A Swap

Thank you all for your comments about my video. :) Truly, I laughed and laughed! For those of you who mentioned how calm I sounded, I did my freaking out/swearing before I picked up the video camera. The whole thing went down like this: I discovered Maren, took one glance at her "finger painting" project, grabbed her wrists with my Mommy-death-grip and rushed her to the bathroom to attempt to wash her hands before she could touch anything else. I actually was able to laugh about it when I was scrubbing her hands and they weren't getting any less purple! Once I had scrubbed Maren as best I could, I grabbed the camera! After I captured my blog-worthy footage, I grabbed the rubber gloves and paper towels and went to work. With the exception of the fabric on my chair and Maren's pajamas, the dye came off of every other surface due to the liberal use of a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I've said it before and I'll say it again--I'd like to find the person who invented those little white miracles and give him a big, sloppy kiss!

My calm in the face of disaster may also have been because this is not the first time she has done this. That's right, folks--this is actually the second food coloring incident this month. The first was far less catastrophic: although another of my chairs got ruined, she didn't get any on her brand-new Gymboree cupcake clothing and the mess was minor. I don't know what possessed Maren to get my food coloring out in the first place, other than her internal radar for finding the things that will cause the biggest mess in the least amount of time. I kept it in the back of a kitchen cabinet, and have no idea how she spotted it. After incident #1, I moved it to the very top shelf of my cabinets. That means on Monday when she got it out, she had to climb from the chair and stand on the countertop in order to reach that top shelf, and even then it must have been a stretch. That alone is enough to give any parent heart palpitations--she is fearless, I tell you! And really, the food-coloring mess pales in comparison to the Great Rit Dye incident of '07, which ruined another chair (that's three, if you're counting), several towels, and left a big green spot on the office carpet.

In other (less destructive) news, my swap partner Amy from the Sweet Heart Box Swap received her package so now I can share it with you. The idea for this swap was to decorate a heart-shaped candy box and fill it with supplies and other goodies. I was lucky and found this really great fabric-covered box at at thrift store, so all I had to do was cover the bottom with pretty paper to disguise the nutritional information and then gussy up the top. I made a ribbon flower with a vintage earring in the middle and used a vintage black rhinestone shoe clip to frame a cute fabric tag phrase. Not sure why I went with the black but I just liked how it looked with the pale pink and red. Here's what the inside looked like:

With the exception of I think three or maybe four of those little cups, everything else was stuff that I had in my stash! I'm currently working on another heart box for a different swap and I have enough to fill that one too. That, my friends, means I have a LOT of stuff squirreled away in my craft room. Yikes! This was such a fun swap and I do hope Amy liked her swap package.

It's back to the craft mines for me--I have to finish heart box #2 to be mailed out by Friday (eek!) and come up with a brilliant idea for the Sweet Goodness Hanging Heart Swap, to be mailed out by Monday (double eek!). Back to the glue & paper I go!

L'Chaim!

This morning I was outside in the backyard pulling weeds and cleaning up dead plants to get ready for winter. Maren came out of the house holding a peeled banana, which she'd gotten herself for a snack. I made note of it, and then she disappeared back into the house, only to reappear holding another peeled banana--this one was for me, she said. I took off my gloves and began to eat it--didn't really fancy a banana at that time, but there wasn't much I could do with it otherwise. When I had eaten about half of it, she held up her remaining half and *clinked* mine with hers, saying "Cheers!"

I have no idea where she learned that--the only toasting that goes on at this house is the variety that I eat topped with peanut butter for my breakfast in the morning. I almost choked on my banana, I was laughing so hard.

Photos taken yesterday afternoon. The first one is what I got when I asked her to smile, the second is when I told her to "say cheese."

Happy Flag Day!

Eyebrows, rainbows and yo-yos

"They're only eyebrows, right? Eyebrows grow back....eventually. Everybody loves the Mona Lisa, and SHE doesn't have any eyebrows."

Those are the thoughts ran through my head repeatedly last night as I was laying on a table, being pecked to death by a persistent bird with a razor-like beak. All right, not so much a bird as an aesthetician with a pair of really sharp tweezers, but it did feel like I was the victim of an an angry woodpecker attack. I can't believe I actually paid someone good money to do that to me! Normally I just pluck my eyebrows on my own but I've been wanting them to have a more pronounced arch and I thought it might be better to have a professional do that for me, lest I slip and poke out my eye or pluck all my eyebrows off or something. I will grudgingly admit that I do like the arch better now, although I have considerably fewer eyebrows than I did yesterday at this time. I think I'll be maintaining them myself from now on, though. I'm just not willing to go through that again. Labor and childbirth--yes; eyebrow tweezing--no. Right-o.

I had my second cake decorating class yesterday, and made my first fancy cake. Our first technique was learning to use the star tip to make stars and other squiggles. Wilton makes a tip that actually has 3 stars in one, which saves you time but takes a little maneuvering to get the stars close together without any space showing. That's definitely something I need to work on but I think with a little practice it shouldn't be too difficult. We also experimented with writing tips and making Swiss dots, which were more difficult. I purposely made a boring yellow boxed cake because I knew the frosting would be yucky, and I didn't want to waste good cake on mediocre frosting. We each had a piece when I came home yesterday and now the rest is going straight into the trash. Wasting cake pains my sweet-loving soul, but I'd rather use my calories on something that doesn't taste like cardboard. On tap for next week: scary clowns and drop flowers. Whee!


On Friday morning I packed up Maren and went downtown for a church rummage sale I'd seen advertised. It was run by little old church ladies and had a darn good amount of stuff at very reasonable prices. Now I see why the folks on Yardsalequeen rave about church sales all the time! I picked up a bag full of stuff most of which is for resale. After the church sale I drove around the area to hit a few more yard sales and found these in a bag for $1. These are circles of fabric that are already cut for making yo-yos. I've wanted to learn to make yo-yos for a while, and now the hardest part has been done for me! Cute fabrics, maybe vintage? Not sure, but there are probably a couple of hundred all together, enough for me to decide that making yo-yos is a tedious waste of time after all, LOL. There was also a baggie full of old yo-yos but they have what I can delicately call a "condition problem," meaning: they are full of dead bug carcasses. ICK. The skeeve factor is pretty high but I might be able to get over it and clean them very, very thoroughly. We'll see.

And I'll leave you with a photo from the 15 minutes we were at the pool yesterday, before the rain and lightening forced us out! See you tomorow!

Think Pink

You may recall Maren's affinity for pink high heels, as seen here. Her Grammie Bunnie saw those photos and decided she needed some shoes closer to her size and managed to find these little pink lovelies! They're still a little big for Maren but that doesn't slow her down one bit. The 5-year-old in me secretly squealed when I saw these; if I'd had shoes like this when I was little, my poor mom would have had a tough time getting them off of me. Ever. Winter snows be damned, these would most certainly have been my every-day shoes. The fabric underneath is a vintage hankie, found this past weekend for about $.50.


Also found this weekend was this adorable dress for Maren. It's from Lord & Taylor and it's in great condition, with smocking and little pink roses across the front. A perfect spring/summer dress for church. And the shoes are a perfect match! Serendipity! :)