hairyshoefairy

I found this blog tonight and am quite enamored of it.  Mila’s Daydreams is written by a woman in Finland who is on maternity leave.  While her baby naps she imagines what her baby might be dreaming and quickly re-creates it and takes a photo.  I think it’s so charming!  Here are a couple of my favorites but you really should clickety over and check the rest of her photos out.  What a funny, sweet idea!

Up!

A Little Ray of Sunshine

There have seen some fun little videos and commercials along these lines lately but this is the first time I’ve seen the concept with a sweet little babe.  It makes me wish Wingnut were still a tiny little thing so I could give it a try myself.

Peanut has reached the question phase.  Her question isn’t the usual, “Why?” I’ve heard many parents complain of.  Instead, all day long I hear, “What kind?”  Here’s a sample conversation just to give you a taste.

Me: “Jump into the car, Jelly Bean, we’re going to the store.”

Peanut: “What kind of store?”

Me: “The grocery store.”

Peanut: “What kind of grocery store?”

Me: “Sunflower Market.”

Peanut: “What kind of Sunflower Market?”

Me: (taking a deep breath and counting in my head) “The one on State Street.”

Peanut: “What kind of State Street?”

Me: (trying to not yell) “The only State Street there is!”

Truly I don’t believe she actually wants to know these things but just wants something to say and “what kind” is what she’s come up with.  Usually she’s asking me “what kind” questions while I’m trying to focus on something else, like chasing Wingnut down the driveway so he doesn’t run into the street or switching the carseats from one car to the other.  It’s maddening to say the least and I hear it all. day. long.  I know it’s just a phase and will pass eventually but in the mean time I’m being driven to the point of insanity.  To help me not completely lose my marbles I’ve taken to asking her the same question back and she almost always already knows the answer (as I suspected) and it usually stems the flow of the obnoxious “what kind” questions.

And to think, we’ve been excited about Wingnut babbling and saying some words and once felt the same way about Peanut.  What were we thinking?

Peanut turned four last week.  How did that happen?  I’m not really sure where all the time went but there it is.

ODD was gone on her birthday so we celebrated early.  I let her choose what we had for her birthday dinner.  She wanted pasta.  When I asked what kind and named off some options she requested ravioli.  I then asked if she wanted red or white sauce.  White.  So for dinner we had cheese filled ravioli alfredo.

After dinner we opened gifts.  Lady of PC mentioned to me a few weeks back that a local dollar store had some wings for sale.  All the ones I’ve seen have been at least $15 so when I heard about some for $1 I rushed over and grabbed a couple.  They were a big hit and even Wingnut ran around the house after Peanut wearing some bee wings.

I can’t remember where I read about it but a while ago someone posted about making some play make-up for her little girl.  Peanut loves playing with my make-up brushes and when I mentioned some play make-up to her one day she completely lit up.  I cleaned out a bunch of the make-up I wasn’t using anymore, removed all the old make-up, and filled the pots and tins with different colored nail polish.  It took a while today dry completely, but that play make-up, along with a couple of make-up brushes from e.l.f. was another favorite gift.  I’m making a little bag for her to keep it all in and she’s very excited about it.

We gave her a few other little things as well, but the big gift of the day was a new camera.  I remember Em and Renn giving Oliver a camera a while ago and thought it was a brilliant idea but didn’t know if Peanut would be interested.  Over the last 6 months of so, though, she is always asking if she can use my camera for different things.  My camera is no DSLR or anything but it’s a good point and shoot camera and I want to keep it all in one piece so I’m always hesitant to just hand it over to a wild little girl.  Knowing she was interested, though, made the decision to get her a camera for her birthday a no-brainer.  I looked over rough and tumble kids cameras but couldn’t find any that took high quality photos.  Despite being .5 MP they were still around $100+!  After talking to ODD I decided to look for a real camera and use it as an opportunity to teach her how to take care of her things.  I combed KSL for a while and finally found a good camera for a very reasonable price.  When I talked to the guy on the phone he lowered the price even further because he didn’t have the charger for it anymore.  I found a charger on Amazon for $2 and bought the thing.  It’s been probably the best investment we’ve ever made.  The photos Peanut takes crack me up.  Sometime I’ll have to do a post about it and share some of her photos.  She loves the camera and takes it almost everywhere with her.  We still have to remind her sometimes but overall she’s been good about taking care of her new camera.

After presents we had cake.  Peanut had told me she wanted a chocolate cake with pink and purple.  I’d seen a recipe for marshmallow fondant recently and thought I’d give it a try.  I made a fondant cake a few years ago for ODD’s birthday and love the way it looks but I don’t especially love the taste.  I thought marshmallow fondant might be better that way so I gave it a try.  ODD doesn’t love the texture of fondant in general but I do and I thought the marshmallow fondant turned out really tasty.  Peanut and Wingnut loved it, too.  I baked the cake in the afternoon and put the whole thing together while the kids napped.  I used three 6 inch cakes so it would fit on the only cake stand I have since my pretty white one is no more.  The pink and purple don’t really look good with the green but Peanut didn’t mind.  Thankfully she also didn’t mind my sad attempt at working with fondant.  I’m so not a cake decorator and oh, my does it show.  ODD said it looked like a hat.  Great.  It still tasted good, though, and that’s what matters, I guess.

After all the birthday cake excitement we had a family movie night and watched Disney’s Aladdin.  Peanut’s never seen it and ODD and I haven’t seen it in years so we all enjoyed it.  I think it’s become one of Peanut’s new favorites.  Even Wingnut was happy to watch most of it and didn’t squirm around too much.

All in all we kept it pretty low key.  Nothing fancy, nothing big, and nobody but us.  It was nice to have a mellow, happy time, and Peanut’s still talking about it a week later, saying  it was “the best birthday ever!” so I’d say it was a success.

Happy birthday, my beautiful girl!

Goals time again.  I’m sure all of you are thrilled for the update.

• Fit Into My Clothes Again - I haven’t been exercising like I should.  I’m having a hard time making time for it in my day.  I know it’s a problem and I’m trying to figure out a new schedule that will work better for me.  We’ll see how it goes.  I finished nursing Wingnut at the end of May so some of my clothes that were fitting, uh, snuggly up on top are getting back to normal.  I’m not sure if I should be sad or not.  Also, since I no longer have nursing hormones coursing through my body I’m hoping my body will respond more quickly to exercise when I get back to it.  Again, we’ll see.  Feeling a little discouraged about this one right now.
• Organize my recipes and get rid of my magazine collection - I only have 4 more magazines to go through which won’t take long.  I’ve also been getting the recipes I have saved on my computer in order.  Next up, get everything into binders.  Yay for progress!
• Pare down and organize my photos - Squee!  Done!  I finished this just a couple of nights ago.  ODD was gone for a few days for a Youth Conference.  While he was gone I reverted back to my night owl ways and in true HSF fashion I dove into organizing my photos in an all or nothing way, staying up until 2 one night and 4 the next to just get it done already!  To give you an idea of what this really involved, in addition to tossing duplicated and superfluous photos I also looked at every single photo, relabeling them, and organizing them by date.  The last 4-ish years were almost all already organized by date but also I still had to go through over nearly 16,000 photos and sort them to determine what I wanted to keep and toss.  The years preceding that didn’t have as many photos (these are pre-kids years) but they were all disorganized and put in random folders all over the computer.  To add to the work we also recently scanned all the prints we have and I had to organize those as well.  All in all we’re talking about almost 20,000 photos.  It was a huge undertaking but I’m happy to have it done now and it makes finding photos much easier because they’re all in the same place.
• Publish my blog again - Although I found a quick, easy way to do this I decided to wait a little bit until ODD got a raise at the beginning of July.  Now, instead of making roughly $8/hour he’s making $9/hour!  Woo!  Anyway, at the same time blog2print was also having a deal for 15% off which was nice.  I printed my blog sans comments and the past two years were still roughly 250 pgs.  The photos are smaller than the ones I had printed through QOOP but I don’t mind and I’m so happy to have them in hard copy.  I ordered them in hardback and they were around $100 each.  The only thing I was kind of sad about what they didn’t have an option where I could design the full cover myself.  Not really a big deal, though.  I’m thinking I need to get my first two years redone now so they all match.  I love looking at them all together.  How cool to have four years of our lives in print!

• Sew at least one project each month - I can’t remember if I posted about May’s project but I made a little make-up bag for my mom for Mother’s Day.  Now both Teeny and Kermit want one too so I need to get some time to sew them up.  They don’t take long, I just need to do it.  For June I made a new skirt for myself.  I still need to add some big, red rick rack to it but you get the idea.  I also went to a quilting shop hop last month and bought a great new pattern so I can make a jacket for Peanut this fall.  I’m very excited about it but I’ll post more about it when the time comes.

Over all I’m making pretty good progress on my goals.  I’m so happy to finally be completely finished with two of them!  Now I just need to get myself in gear with exercising which will probably always be a constant struggle while I have little kids who like to “help” if I exercise while they’re awake.  All in all, though, not too shabby.

I went through that entire bottle of my fresh pressed limeade with mint all by myself  in only one day so, naturally, I had to make more.  While I was at it I pulled out an extra lime, a lemon, and an orange, and made another citrus drink I love.  It’s a recipe Kermit gave me a few years back.  I was going to just link to the recipe on her blog but neither of us can find it in her archives there so she’s letting me share it here.  I’ve changed it a little to fit my 1 liter bottle.  For a 2 liter/2 quart pitcher just double it.

Fozzie’s Citrus Drink for a 1 liter bottle

• juice of 1 lime
• juice of 1 lemon
• juice of 1 orange
• sugar to taste - I go for about 3/4 C. for a 1 liter bottle
• water - enough to fill the rest of the bottle

Combine all  ingredients in bottle and shake until sugar dissolves.  Serve chilled.

And I figured since I’m sharing recipes I may as well put the recipe for my limeade up here as well.

Fresh Pressed Limeade with Mint for a 1 liter bottle

• juice of 5 limes
• simple syrup to taste - I make a 1:1 water:sugar ratio and heat until all the sugar dissolves and it begins to bubble a little.
• bruised/torn fresh mint leaves - I use 6-8 depending on size
• water - enough to fill the rest of the bottle

Pour all ingredients into bottle and shake to combine.  Serve chilled.

So refreshing on a hot summer day.