One More Day Of Heavy Cleaning

Today is my last official day of full-time cleaning before I start work tomorrow. And by 'start work', I mean 'actively spend a large portion of the day focusing on writing and Heritage Makers at home in an attempt to make money'.

Upstairs is looking pretty good. Downstairs is in deep peril of not being finished. The laundry/craft room, for instance, hasn't been touched at all. Cleaning out the downstairs closet left A LOT of messy boxes all over the (formerly fairly clean) bar area and family room, and I'm still sorting through the debris. I'd LIKE to have those areas completed by the end of the day, but I've also made peace with it if they're not, because I built time into my work schedule for both maintenance cleaning AND 15 minutes of continued decluttering every day for the areas I didn't finish. It's a small time slot, sure, but as I know from formerly following flylady (don't you love alliteration? I do!), 15 minutes a day can add up to real results sooner than you'd think.


original image by Anne Taintor

So that's my plan. Is there an area of my house you'd like to see? Either to see what kind of progress I've made or to see if I accomplished my goal downstairs? Ask in the comments today and I will check in at 9pm CST... whichever area has the most votes will be photographed and posted tonight.

As a reminder, 'areas' of my house are:

dining room
kitchen
hallway/pantry
upstairs bathroom
kids' room
master bedroom
stairway
bar area
family room
downstairs closet
downstairs bathroom
laundry/craft room
garage

I suggest you don't ask about the laundry/craft room again simply because you'll get the exact same pictures I posted last time. Seriously, it doesn't look different AT ALL. (Also, I won't be touching my garage until after the laundry/craft room, but since I don't think I've posted pictures of it, if you want to see it, that's your call.)

Anything else is fair game!

Cooking With Kids

Try it some time. They're delicious!

No, no; I jest. I've never tried children. ("It's a cookbook! A COOKBOOK!")

I HAVE, however, had children assist me with cooking - many times. I've mentioned before on this blog how much my kids like to help me in the kitchen; my daughter in particular. They've been doing it since they were able to pull themselves up on the kitchen stool, and truth be told they're still wee little bits - at 5 and 3 years of age, cooking with my kids is often a challenge. They can't do many of the tasks yet - chopping, dicing, touching raw meat, measuring, pouring correctly, stirring anything that requires precision or actual WORK, putting things in the oven, taking things out of the oven, slaving over a hot stove - yeah. There's not much they CAN do safely or accurately yet. Even the tasks they ARE able to accomplish - pouring in certain ingredients, light stirring - often result in spills, slops, dumps, and extra things (dish soap, anyone?) being added when my back is turned. Cooking with kids is often a supremely frustrating experience.


"helping" me bake the lamb cake last Easter (ages 4 and 2). They could still both share the stool. Barely.

Despite the added hassle, I believe it is a very valuable experience for them. Of supreme importance in their young lives, even. And that is why I keep doing it. That is why I set that damn stool up in my tiny, tiny kitchen over and over, knowing full well I'm going to trip over it 50 times, every time they come running in and squeal "Mommy! Are you cooking? I want to cook with you!" Here are just some of the benefits of cooking with your kids:

1) They learn, from an early age, that food is not 'magic' in that it does not appear out of nowhere. This is an invaluable learning experience - teaching them about the individual ingredients you're using, where they come from, how they got to you, and how they change as you combine them with each other IS a sort of magic.

2) Being able to cook for themselves is a valuable life skill. Have you ever dated someone who lived on take-out or macaroni and cheese and PB&J's? Would you rather date that person or the one that can whip up a mean lasagna and garlic cheese bread on the fly? My kids will never have to rely on other people to cook for them, or rely on bland processed foods as dietary staples.

3) Kids want nothing more than to spend time with you (at least, when they're young). Cooking together will build lifelong memories of good times with Mom (or Dad) in the kitchen. I still look back fondly at Sunday "pancake" mornings with my Daddy. Create cooking rituals with your kids. You won't regret it.

4) Kids are naturally curious and creative. Cooking gives them an outlet and allows them to explore their passions, safely, with your supervision.

5) When you have to make dinner, and you're the only adult home, it's much easier to involve your kids than to send them off to watch TV or entertain themselves... it might make your job a little harder, but they're WITH YOU and not off, say, pouring water into the computer. (My son actually did that. He doesn't have a computer anymore.)

There are other reasons too, that's just what I came up with off the top of my head. I just think that food created with love and laughter tastes better. There are times when I am in a hurry, or I'm making a precise dish, and the kids are underfoot and I get frustrated, and I kick them out. It's true. I'm not perfect. (You're shocked, I know.) But more often than not, I include them. And I try to make it a positive, fun experience. And more often than not, I find that not only are they having fun... I am having fun too.

Today Oksana and I cooked dinner. It was a "take things in the house, combine them in some fashion, hope it tastes good" dinner (another valuable thing to teach them; you don't always have to follow a recipe to create something fantastic. Cooking is all about experimentation, and often it's more forgiving than you'd think!). We combined chicken, mushrooms, bacon, feta cheese, garlic, and some liquids (cream of mushroom soup, chicken broth, butter) and baked them all together. (It was delish, but I'm not posting the recipe yet because it needs a little tweaking.) She helped me wash the mushrooms, put them in the pan after I sliced them, and sprinkled the feta cheese. She ate her first raw mushroom (ANOTHER reason to include them - exposure to new foods, AND they're more likely to try them and get excited about it if they helped create the dish).

As we were getting started, shortly after she climbed up on the stool, she asked me what we were making and I told her what I was thinking about doing. "Doesn't that sound yummy?" I asked her.
"Yeah!" she exclaimed. "I love cooking with you, Mommy! I'm gonna do dis when I have babies. An' I'm gonna make dis, dis chicken and mushrooms and bacon, when I'm a growed-up."

And THAT is why I cook with my kids.

It's Almost Here...

So, a (group) great idea (actually a couple of great ideas combined) last night has lead me to being ridiculously overexcited, once again, about launching a new blog and I want to zOMG GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY! But I want to really be COMMITTED to the new blogs I launch (as well as my blogs currently in existence), and as such I am waiting until February to get them going. It's only a week away but boy howdy is it ever hard when you're overexcited!

In other news... February is only a week away?? Holy chips! I thought about my cleaning goals last night and have come to accept that I'm not likely to reach them. I was overambitious. I always am. The good news is that I know I can get the 'house' clean (the laundry/craft room is, sadly, a room I sort of don't even consider part of the 'house' since we don't use it hardly at all, and haven't for years). I am reasonably certain I can even make good headway in the laundry/craft room. I do not think I'm going to get to the garage. Not only is it a NIGHTMARE out there, worse even than the laundry/craft room... I only have a week to get the rest of this stuff taken care of, AND it's JANUARY. In CHICAGO. And my garage is OUTSIDE. (And detached, which makes it even colder.) I'm not saying I'm going to ignore it completely... but I won't be heartbroken if I don't hit my self-imposed time limit either. I'm not giving up, mind you! But I know it's going to be rough. Especially since I have a PTA newsletter to write and publish, some work to do on the family reunion I'm planning this year, and we're having a play date this Saturday, then going out with friends, so pretty much all of Saturday is lost.

I need to take a little time to think about how I'm going to schedule my days once February starts. I need to make time for my maintenance cleaning... I will need to make a little time for further decluttering of the laundry/craft area and garage (I may adopt the Flylady technique of '15 minutes decluttering a day'... slow and steady)... I want to make time for Heritage Makers, for writing (blogs AND my novel), and for spending time with the kids / family. That may not sound like a lot of things, but I can easily spend a LOT of time on any ONE of those items. Scheduling and time management has always been tricky for me.

It's almost February! Be on the alert for some exciting new things from me in the coming weeks :)

Craft Room? More Like CRAP Room!

I knew when I opened myself up to scrutiny that some things would be painful. But I promised full disclosure, I did! I also knew that when I invited you to ask me to see some of my rooms, inevitably the ONE room I hate/fear the most, the one room that is going to be most difficult for me, the one room that I haven't even attempted to tackle in years - THAT would be the room you'd most want to see.

My laundry / craft room is the room that, assuming I stick to my schedule today, I will start tackling tomorrow. This room fills me with anxiety not only because it is so full of stuff that the task is daunting, but also because I have a real phobia about spiders, and i KNOW there are some lurking in there. Of course the weekend is over after today, which means my husband is back to work tomorrow, which means I am all alone during the days. No one to help me battle this complete and irrational terror. It's going to be really hard, and people, I've only given myself three days to complete this room. This will require Herculean effort and strength of will on my part. So, feel free to ask me again mid-week to see this room, and we'll see where I'm at.

In the meantime, here it is. Photo AND video.

When you first walk in, you can see the washer and dryer. We've talked about moving them over to the far right wall and making a better working area for the laundry, but then my 'craft' area would be here, and I just don't know which is better for me yet. I guess cleaning out the room is the first step, then finishing it off, and then we can figure out placement of everything.


To your left, we have: water heater. Furnace. Cat litter box and food area. Fridge/freezer we haven't opened for a long time. White shelving units that have been piled up with crap. Laundry sorting bins.


I have a dream of maybe making this my 'disaster preparedness' storage area, for extra food and supplies, so we will be ready to face the Zombie Armageddon when it comes.


To the right, we have my 'craft' area. There's a desk in there, somewhere. And lots of craft supplies. In boxes and bags. There's also a whole lot of... crap. I don't even know what's in half of these boxes. This stuff piled up during many 'hide that shit, people are coming over!' cleaning marathons over the years, until it pretty much got full, and then we've just... left it.


More of that crap to the right, and another shelving unit that's full of crap.


And if the pictures weren't enough... here's a video tour for you to, erm, enjoy.


Like I said, feel free to ask me about this room mid-week, or a week from now. Hopefully the situation in here will be VASTLY improved.

What Do You Want To See?

So I've been thinking about offering up an extra 'feature' (heh) on my blog. I'm still struggling with disorganization, but lately I've been treating 'getting the house organized' as a full time job (more or less), and I've set a lot of self-imposed deadlines that will, if followed, ultimately get me to a clean and organized home by the end of the month.

We've come pretty far. I'm actually, at this moment, on track and on schedule. Tomorrow's tasks are going to be a little dicey, time wise, but I'll give it my best effort.

At any rate, in the interest of complete disclosure, and as an additional incentive to clean my house and KEEP it clean... I'm inviting you all to be drop-in guests, anytime, as it were. Anytime you feel like it, drop in on my latest post and ask me to see a certain room / area of my house. When I get the comment, I will comply with a picture and/or video post of said area WITHOUT CHANGING THE CONDITION OF SAID AREA FIRST. Hopefully it'll give me a little incentive to keep up with the work I've done and to finish getting everything organized too! And if it's been a while and you've been wondering 'hey, did she ever finish that laundry room?' (NO) or 'hey, I wonder if they can finally use their downstairs bathroom?' (YES) - just ask!

So here are the 'areas' of my house. Some have been tackled, some are in progress, some haven't been touched in months, maybe years.

Dining Room
Kitchen
Upstairs Hall / Pantry
Upstairs Bathroom
Master Bedroom
Kids' Bedroom
Stairwell / Back Entry
Bar Area
Family Room
Downstairs Bathroom
Laundry /Craft Room
Garage
Yard

Tonight I invite you all to vote on which area you'd most like to see, and I will post it in the morning once we're all up and moving (so probably lunchtime. We're not exactly morning people.).

And in the future, feel free to comment spontaneously and say "Hey, show me your ____ (room, people!)".

storage solutions

It's "show us your..." day over at Saucy Dwellings, and today it's saucy storage solutions! How coincidental; I've just been working on storage solutions for my home myself. I don't know if these exactly qualify as 'saucy' but this is what I posted in the comments on their blog:

Storage and organization is a HUGE issue for me, I'm terrible at it. I'm in the process of trying to give my home an organizational overhaul right now, actually. We're a family of four in a small 2-bedroom ranch house, AND I'm a packrat (*cough* slight hoarder *cough*) so I really need creative storage solutions. Here's a few things I've come up with so far.

I like things that have dual purposes, so that's what I'm really trying to look for when I pick storage containers.

My bedroom:
This is my bedside table. It's an old school desk I had when I was a kid; you can still see remnants of the Pac-Man and Flintstones stickers I used to 'decorate' it long ago! I repurposed it to be a nightstand / jewelery / dressing table. My jewelery box and a few larger accessories are perfect for displaying on top...


... and all those little boxes and large pieces fit perfectly inside, yet I still have enough room to peer in and find what I'm looking for. Though I may get some dividers in the future (I just set this up two days ago, heh.)


Kids' Bedroom:
Stuffed animals are the bane of my existence, I swear! but the kids are really attached to them. This old shelving unit (that previously housed a big stereo system and CD's for us) ended up being perfect for the critters, which previously lived in my children's beds. Which meant my kids were sleeping ON animals all the time, and it was really immensely difficult to change the sheets.
I also went out last weekend and bought a bunch of those plastic Sterilite stackable drawers at Target, because we were overrun with toys. There's another 'unit' just like this on the other side of the room. They're colorful and sturdy, perfect for kid-stuff storage. They're also a pretty good size, and only $8 a piece! I used my labelmaker, labeled each drawer with a category of toy... and so far, the kids have been REALLY good about keeping their room picked up (they are 3 and 5). I've also found that they are PLAYING with their toys a lot more, and they seem to have a lot more fun when they can find the toys they want. They've thanked me no less than ten times in the past week for doing this. I guess cleaning really IS a good thing! LOL As a bonus, I get to store stuff on top of these 'units' that I don't want my kids playing with quite yet.


Our Dining Room / Entryway:
Unfortunately our front door comes right into the dining room. No foyer, no mudroom, nowhere convenient to put hooks or coatracks or anything. Enter my grandmother's cedar chest.


Not only is it nice and deep and perfect for holding all our winter gear, it also provides extra seating for the room AND it's the perfect place for the kids to sit and put on boots / shoes.


It actually has some really gorgeous copper 'buckles' but they are currently being stored in my closet because I don't believe they'd outlast my kids and dogs, heh.

And so that's it. I'm still doing some major overhauling of the house, things are looking good, and I've been trying to work up to a post about all the work I've been doing. Unfortunately I'm also on a tight (self-imposed) schedule so I haven't exactly made the time to sit here and update in a while. (But expect more house posts in the near future!)

ALSO-also, we just got a new camera and I'm still trying to figure out how to take good pictures with it. And the self-imposed tight schedule hasn't afforded me a whole lot of time to read up on it OR play around with it.

Tonight is Oksana's preschool 'winterfest' program; you know, the thing all preschoolers do around the holidays (or not, this year, since they wanted to be PC I guess) where they get together and sing cute songs and all we parents go and ooh and aah at our little stars and starlets? Yeah, that. Wish me luck that I will have mastered the camera enough to get some decent pictures tonight!

Death Spasm Party

I don't often videoblog, largely because I tend to be much better at writing stories than relaying them orally. However, my friend Melly videotaped me telling this story that I LOVE when we were at the Golden Nugget the other day. So I stole the video from her and am uploading it for your viewing pleasure. Prepare to be horrified at the terrible state in which I let myself leave the house.

This story took place in the summer of 2003. For a long time we referred to it as the Jackopede of DOOOOOM story, so named due to the Michael Jackson Thriller-esque dance moves that Caitlin and I would bust out whenever we tried to explain the frantic spasms of the millipede. I was seated during this performance of the story, so there was less frantic spasming on my part; let's just title it Kristi And Caitlin VS The Thousand-Legger.



And just because I can... here's a photo of Caitlin re-enacting the Jackopede Dance of DOOOOM a few months after the original event took place.



The smackdown took place in that very living room, just a few feet from where Caitlin is standing. Back in my Apartment of Solitude, the only apartment that was MINE ALL MINE (even though I had three different friends pass through as short term 'roommates' throughout the time I lived there, and it was wonderful to have their company for as long as they wanted to stay!). God I miss that place sometimes.

Onions Don't Make My Girl Cry!

Me: chops onions for dinner.
Oksana: "Mommy are you making dinner? Let me see! Let me see!"* drags chair in from the dining room so she can stand by the counter; climbs up to put her face right by the onions.
Me: "Honey, back up a bit. These onions are going to make you cry."
Oksana: "what? what you say?"
Me: "I said, the onions will make you cry. They do that."
Oksana: incredulously: "onions? Make you cry?" Oksana rubs her eyes. "No they won't!"
Me: "Yes, baby, they do. Well, they make your eyes water anyway." Oksana rubs her eyes again, at the same time shaking her head 'no' like I'm totally making this up in some elaborate plot to get her out from underfoot. "They have a chemical in them that is released into the air when you chop them, and it irritates your eyes and makes you cry."
Oksana shakes her head and rubs her eyes again. I can see from the side that they're getting pretty red.
Oksana: "uh uh! They DO NOT!"**
Me: "OK baby. Whatever you say."


She's NOT crying. Not one little bit. :P


*This is a common occurrence in our home. Both kids like to help cook but Oksana is FASCINATED by it. I can't even make a sandwich without her dragging in a chair or stool from some other room of the house so she can watch and ask a million questions about the process. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this kid became a master chef.

** Yes, she's in the F-YOU three's stage.

Things Kids Do When No One Is Watching

My five year old son, Drake, got a hold of Photobooth on my Mac the other day when I wasn't around. Here's one of the videos he took of himself. Clearly I am not schooling my children properly in the horror genre - someone needs to tell this kid that zombies eat brains, not ghosts. :)



I love this kid!


happy new year :)

I Need A Spark

It's been a while since I posted. I've been having a lot of issues with my diabetes, I spend most of my days feeling pretty under the weather, and it's kept me from getting a lot of things accomplished. I'm on insulin shots now - two different types, four times a day. My blood sugar numbers are excessively high, even with that. We keep adjusting the dosage but it hasn't helped so far. I'm starting the South Beach diet today, in hopes that this will help me. I'm dusting off my old profile on SparkPeople.com to chronicle my health and weight issues there. Feel free to find and friend me there if you're interested in following along.

I'm tired a lot. It makes it really hard to get things accomplished. Right now I'm really trying to just focus on my health, get that back in line at least a little bit, and then let the rest fall back into place again.

Pronunciation Station, What's Your Motivation?

Regional dialects are funny things.

My son, a kindergartner, occasionally brings home word lists as his homework. The word lists are comprised of 10 two or three letter words; we, the parents, have to read each word to him, and he has to listen to what we say and then write the word down on a separate sheet of paper. He's pretty bright and is already ahead of the curve as far as reading goes, so up to this point we haven't had any trouble with the word lists. Tonight, though, we hit a minor snag.

Me: "on"
Drake: "on. O. N."

Me: "men"
Drake. "men. M. E. N."

Me: "bun"
Drake: "bun. B. U. N."

Me: "leg."
Drake: "lehg?" Drake gives me this funny look, like, 'what's a LEHG?' "LEHG or LAIG?"
Me: "LAIG. Except it's really LEHG. I mean, we say it LAIG, but it's actually LEHG."
Drake: "LAIG? or LEHG?"
Me: "LEG. LEHG."
Drake: "leg. L. E. G."
Me: "and what is a LEHG?"
Drake points to his leg (LAIG!) and rolls his eyes at me like DUH MOM.

LAIG. Rhymes with AIGG. That's how we roll up in Chitown.

Parenting Lessons From Bing

It's been a hectic couple of weeks, what with trying to get my house fully decluttered by next weekend for this holiday potluck we're hosting, and with lots of crafting for the several craft fairs I'm in, and with lots of exciting things going on with Heritage Makers and my new clients, plus all of the usual craziness which abounds in my life. And don't forget it's the holiday season, and the kids are old enough to start hitting that CRAZY-EXCITED level... but then the weather is also turning colder, and everyone's stuck in the house, and boredom sets in; especially when mom's attention is otherwise occupied. And my attention has been everywhere but on my kids lately, thanks to the factors I mentioned mere moments ago. So they've spent a lot of time behaving exactly like you'd expect a 3 and 5 year old with limited parental interaction to behave; which is, to say, like a pack of wild animals. I do a lot less intervening and a lot more yelling than I'd like. As a result, I set myself down yesterday and had a nice chat with myself, at the end of which we decided that we... I mean, I... would make a concerted effort to banish yelling from my repertoire of disciplinary actions. After all, Michelle Duggar never seems to speak above a whisper, and look at how well-behaved those kids are! The crazy baby-making homeschooling mom hiding inside me wants so badly to emulate her family at times, you see.

The problem is, I'm not sure I'm wired to be a Michelle Duggar. Yelling is something I grew up with, something that seems to come naturally to me, a family trait, if you will. Most of the people in my family communicate primarily with raised voices; I'm not sure some of us know HOW to talk softly. Whispering is a lost art amongst my clan.

Then comes problem two: if I can't yell at my wild beasts, how DO I discipline them?? Beat the hell out of them? That doesn't exactly fit the vision of "kinder, gentler mother and happier family" that frolics in the fragrant meadows of my brain. This is how it's SUPPOSED to work: I stop yelling and communicate with them by speaking gently and politely requesting things of them, and they immediately appreciate my soft demeanor and pleasant tone and behave like lovely little Duggar clones.

This is how it works in reality: I politely and softly ask my children to do something, say, be quiet and occupy themselves at my parents' house while I finish the last bit of crafting I need to do for the craft fairs this weekend. They don't even acknowledge that I was speaking to them, and immediately start getting into things. They chatter nonstop and bicker and nitpick and knock the Christmas train off its tracks and we've been there five minutes and I have an hour's worth of work to do and already my parents are asking me pointedly "um, SO, how long are you staying today??" with a 'please get the hell out of here with your demon minions' tone to their voices. I am growing exasperated when, like magic, the kids settle down for a little while. I start working frantically and suddenly they want snacks, everyone wants snacks, multiple snacks, hot chocolate and ice cream (the MOOOON one!) and peanuts and rolos and pudding and kit kats and naturally, Grandma has all of this, and it's all stocked within easy reach of my children, who are adept at helping themselves. But they are NOT so adept at remembering that they now have to eat in Grandma's kitchen and can no longer eat downstairs while watching TV because Grandma has a new rug. AND IT'S WHITE. So then I find myself repeatedly asking my darlings to eat at the kitchen table, and I check on them periodically and all is going well until I realize that the plate of Cheetos, BRIGHT ORANGE PUFFY CHEETOS, that I just made for them a second ago is NO LONGER AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, and neither are my angels. "ARE THOSE CHEETOS DOWNSTAIRS??!" Crap. I just failed my self-imposed 'no yelling' rule. But I knew it would take work to break a lifelong habit, and the good news is I caught myself and remembered that I was making a concerted effort to be MLM (More Like Michelle). I correct my children, more gently this time, and the Great Cheetos Crisis of 2009 is successfully averted. But Drake is eating a giant grape Tootsie Pop (yes, at the same time as his Cheetos), and for some reason Grandma allows him to finish it downstairs. 'OK,' I think, 'it's HER rug after all.' But then a few minutes later Grandpa catches him wandering around on the new rug, dropping sticky grape sucker-bits all over, and nearly blows a gasket. Grandma quickly advises that she allowed this to happen, but clearly it was a bad idea, so Drake is ordered back upstairs. By now my stress levels are rising, all I want to do is finish my damn craft tiles so I can get the hell out of here, and my children are getting antsy again. My son wanders into the kitchen for yet ANOTHER snack and I tell him no, NO MORE snacks, you've had plenty and we'll be leaving in about half an hour and it will be dinnertime, you don't need anymore snacks. He argues with me and though I'm not yelling yet, I can feel the tension in my jaw and the snap in my voice as I begin to contemplate, once more, exactly HOW one is supposed to discipline children that never listen, and that argue and beg and whine and plead, if you can't scream at them when you've finally reached the point where debating with them is no longer an option. As he's arguing with me, he pulls a bag of marshmallows out and asks me if he can have some, and AT THE EXACT MOMENT I AM TELLING HIM 'DRAKE, NO, I TOLD YOU NO MORE SNACKS', he DUMPS A LARGE PILE OF MARSHMALLOWS OUT ON THE KITCHEN TABLE. The kitchen table, unfortunately, is where I am super gluing ribbons to the backs of my craft tiles, and he dumps the marshmallows RIGHT ON TOP OF SOME FRESHLY GLUED TILES. I fly into a rage, screaming at him about how I JUST TOLD YOU NO GODDAMNIT AND YOU DID IT ANYWAY, and in the process I inadvertently glue two of my fingers to the bottle of super glue.

My first day of MLM training is NOT going well.

We managed to get out of there relatively unscathed, although I AM missing a few layers of skin on some of my fingers now. In the car I decide that fast food is the dinner option for the evening, and I let the kids decide where we'll feast tonight. They are both unanimous in their choice of the Golden Arches. Hooray, no fighting, I think. Oh, how stupid of me. For when I ask them each what they want, they start fighting about EACH OTHER'S choices. Drake wants apple dippers instead of fries; Oksana wants fries. She screams at me, or him, I'm not sure which, "NO APPLES! FRIES!" Then she wants chocolate milk, but he wants apple juice, and they begin bickering about their drinks, and it doesn't stop even when i REMIND them that they both get to choose whichever they want and they don't need to have the same thing. Then she's trying to talk to him and he's making monkey noises over her, which prompts her to scream at him, and I lose it and scream over both of them. We've become one of those "she who screams loudest, wins" families. It's god awful. Time outs aren't even an option when I'm driving. At home, I can just send them to a time out whenever I'm about to lose my cool. At Grandma's, when I'm involved in a project, that's less easy, but still doable. On the road, or when we're out and about (for instance, when my daughter screams at me at the playground by my son's school for no good reason), time outs are not exactly feasible. Screaming at my children isn't always the best option either, especially when it's in public, but I'm at a loss as to how 'normal' parents discipline their children consistently. Yelling has become a good friend to me, but it's a bad friend, an unhealthy friend that runs with a bad crowd, and pretty soon I'll be chain-smoking and wearing hoochie clothes and riding home after curfew on the back of an older man's Harley, and then where will my children be?

I am contemplating the discipline problem as I drive home from McDonald's, my children still sniping at each other in the backseat, 93.9 (the Christmas Lite!) playing merry holiday tunes that I surreptitiously turn louder and louder so as to drown out the din from the backseat, when it happens. "You better watch out... you better not cry... you better not pout... I'm telling you why..." HOLY CRAP. I am missing out on a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY here. My children are now, finally, both old enough to understand that Santa only brings presents to GOOD girls and boys! I haven't been making use of the time-honored holiday gift that Santa brings to parents every year: the gift of FEAR. It may be cliche to threaten your children with a lump of coal, but with god as my witness, I LIVE MY LIFE BY CLICHE. Thank you, Bing Crosby, for teaching me how to discipline my children this month. If anyone is qualified to give parenting lessons, it's you.

Post-Christmas, I will once more be struggling with the best way to discipline my darlings, and endeavoring to follow in the Duggar's footsteps. Until that jolly day, I will be using the big fat man with the long white beard as a tool of guilt and fear - just the way my parents, and their parents before them, did.

By God, I love the Christmas season.

Heritage Makers Digicrop, Events, and Specials

Man, there is a LOT of exciting stuff going on with Heritage Makers right now. I'm thrilled to share it with you! Here is what's happening this week:

1) There is still time to send out your custom holiday greeting cards - even easier using DIRECT SHIP from the website! Contact me if you are interested!

2) Our month of Holiday Hits specials keep coming! This week it is buy one, get a second half price on our GORGEOUS canvas posters. See this link for more details: http://www.heritagemakers.com/comm/go/2009/holidayHits/week3.html (If you've been coveting our posters, this is a great price!)

3) I will be exhibiting at a couple of holiday bazaars this weekend. If you're in the neighborhood, please feel free to stop by and see me!

This Friday evening from 5PM-9PM, I will be exhibiting at Art 4 Soul in Homewood IL, during the Homewood Holiday Lights festival.

Art 4 Soul
18135 Harwood Ave.
Homewood IL. 60430
708-206-1026

And on Saturday from 9AM - 2PM I will be at the Welch Tiger Bazaar and Kids Holiday Shop in Naperville, IL.

Welch Elementary School
2620 Leverenz Road
Naperville, IL 60564

4) Finally! I am hosting a digicrop out of my home in Lansing this Sunday from 10AM to 2PM.

RSVPs are necessary, especially if you would like to reserve one of our two computers. First come, first served so call me as soon as possible if you need one!

Cost for the event is $5 if you will be bringing your own laptop; $10 if you are reserving one of our machines.

If you have never attended a digicrop, it is the perfect opportunity for you to work on your projects (and finish up those holiday projects! Ordering deadline is next week to have them by Christmas!) AND to share ideas with other participants AND to get all your questions answered. I will be here to assist all of you the entire four hours at an extremely low cost! Snacks and drinks will be provide as well. Please RSVP to me via email or phone (both available on my Heritage Makers website) if you plan on attending. (At which point, if you need my address, I will provide it to you!)

I hope to see some of you this weekend! Please contact me if you would like any assistance with your holiday projects!

Holiday Hits, Week One

The holiday season is starting to get into gear, what with Thanksgiving this week and all, and it's about time you did your holiday cards, isn't it? ME TOO. Heritage Makers' fabulous sale on customized greeting cards ends tomorrow at noon (MST)! You can get your fully customized, personally designed greeting cards for as low as 79 CENTS if you order through me before then!

You do not need to have the cards CREATED by then; you just need to purchase the credits. They will be active on your account for a year, so even if the 100-card pack is most attractive to you but you don't send 100 holiday cards, you can still use those card credits throughout the year for birthdays, anniversaries, thinking of you's, get wells, sympathies, or any other occasion. This is a GREAT DEAL; don't let it pass you by!

(If this is your first purchase, remember that I can also get you a free month of our premium artwork, which means you can make your holiday cards EXTRA gorgeous at no additional cost!)

Call me before noon MST tomorrow to place your order! 773 860 1108.




Some folks have asked me what the cards look like... since they're completely customizable, they can look like anything you want! But if that's a little overwhelming and you prefer to work from a template, here are just a few examples of the MANY templates you will find in our gallery. Just drag and drop your photos in place, change out any elements you don't like, put in your own text and you're done! (Also, don't forget you can always call on me for assistance.)

Anissa Is The Best Pickle You've Ever Had

Yesterday I was shocked. Today I am grieving. Yesterday I heard the news that one of my blogging friends, Anissa Mayhew, had a stroke (and then another) on Tuesday and is in the ICU.

I call her a blogging 'friend' even though I only met her a handful of times at the BlogHer conference last summer. Yet I call her a friend because she is one of those people who instantly becomes everyone's friend. She is the kind of woman who would toast us all with a "here's to those who love us well, and all the rest can go to hell!". She is vibrant, warm, funny, sarcastic, energetic, raunchy, sassy, and strong. She is a fighter. More importantly, she is ALIVE. You can feel the energy pour forth from her when you're around her. Hell, you can feel it pour forth from her blog entries.

I don't remember the first time I encountered Anissa's blog at hope4peyton.org, a blog about her youngest daughter's fight against leukemia, but stumble upon it I did, and I was instantly touched. Not just touched in the way that any of us would be for a family with such a fight ahead of them, but also impressed by her energy, her humor, and her strength. I was what you would call a lurker, but lurk I did, for quite some time. When I decided to go to BlogHer this year, Anissa was one of my personal 'celebrity' bloggers that I hoped to meet. Would I have anything to say to her? Would I even have the courage to approach her if I saw her? Probably not. But I was excited about the possibility nonetheless! Then I happened across a guest post she made on Karl's blog, Secondhand Tryptophan, and was compelled to leave a comment. She replied to me and told her I had to stop her if I saw her at BlogHer. Sure, no problem, right! (Secretly expecting myself to chicken out anyway! Because THIS WOMAN IS A LEGEND, y'all.)

And then I found myself at the Ford Ride 'N Drive event, a pre-BlogHer activity where many of us went on a fantastic tour at the Ford plant. And I found myself in a group with a vibrant, loud, sassy, funny lady who looked really familiar. Could it be? THE Anissa? Was it really her? Oh god. IT IS. I'm pretty sure it is! Isn't it? Do I dare go over and say hello? DO I?

I did. And she REMEMBERED MY COMMENT TO HER. And she was nice, and sweet (but still salty! like the best pickle you've ever had!), and friendly, and warm, and open, and everything that I'd imagined her to be from her blogs, AND MORE. And I know for sure that the world is a better place with Anissa Mayhew and her family in it.

Anissa has fought for so much in her life already that it is a shame, a crying shame, that she has another huge fight ahead of her now. But I know she will fight, because the very core of this woman is strength. I know she will overcome obstacles the rest of us could barely dream of tackling. I know this tiny powerhouse will work wonders, and I know she's due a few miracles by now; but at the same time, my heart grieves for her and her family that they HAVE to fight this fight. Anissa is only 35 years old. She has a husband who loves her and three young children who adore her, who NEED her.

God bless you and your family, Anissa. I am not much of a praying woman but I am praying for you all right now. Thank you for being the wonderful you that you are, and thank you for enriching my life.

For those of you that would like to help the family, and can, here is a link to do so:


Her husband will be posting updates on her progress at their family blog, and there may also be additional updates on her group blog, Aiming Low.

Please join me in praying for the Mayhew family.

Craft Fairs This Weekend

Hi everyone! Just a quick note to let you all know that I'll be exhibiting at two different craft fairs this weekend. If you're in the area and have time to stop by, won't you please come in and visit us? I'm sure there will be lots of lovely gifts for the season, and we'd love to see you!

Thanks for supporting local artisans in your community!

Sat Nov 21, 10AM - 3PM
Kahler Middle School
600 Joliet St / Route 30, Dyer IN

Sun Nov 22, 10AM - 3PM
The Community House of Flossmoor Community Church
847 Hutchison, Flossmoor IL


This is one of the craft tiles I made using Heritage Makers scrapbook pages, a ceramic tile, and Mod Podge. Quick, easy, beautiful!

Just Call Me Carleton Sheets!

There are a lot of homes in foreclosure in our neighborhood. The other day, OJ raised the possibility of purchasing one of them, one of the ones at a ridiculously low price, fixing it up, and either renting it out OR moving into it ourselves and renting this one out (the deciding factor being, of course, which house we like better and which suits our family's needs more at this time). We haven't really had a chance to discuss it since but this is not the first time this possibility has been raised for discussion in our married life (though I think it might be the first time HE has raised it, which you know means I'm chomping at the bit to MAKE IT HAPPEN, naturally, since it's been a dream of mine for years now!).

I don't know if this is something we are going to decide to explore at this exact moment or not. There is a lot of planning and work that needs to go into a decision like this and it might end up being the wrong time for us. I DO know that both of us are concerned about me being out of work and are looking for ways to bring in extra income once my unemployment runs out. (Yes, I know real estate and rental properties are not a 'guarantee' of income.) I DO know I have always wanted to buy real estate, own rental properties, and fix up houses. I DO know that it's been killing me that home prices are so low right now because I feel it is the perfect time to buy (because I DO believe home prices will rise again), and we haven't been in a position to buy.

It's been a while since I did any home-buying research because it kind of kills me to shop but not buy (this holds true for every kind of shopping, not just houses, heh; this is why I try not to GO shopping unless I have money to buy things). I know the internet is fallible, but I always turn to the internet to start my research because it's the easiest source - it's right in my living room, after all. Sorting through the muck can be difficult though, especially when it comes to something like foreclosures and buying homes. I love reading about people's personal experiences with things, so I'm wondering... do any of you have personal experience with buying foreclosed homes, fixing up homes, and/or being a landlord? Would you like to share your stories with us?

Here's what I'm NOT looking for. Comments like:
"Oh my god, don't do that!"
"you'll regret it!"
"buying a foreclosed home is a TERRIBLE idea!"
"fixing up homes is such a pain in the ass!"
"being a landlord is such a pain in the ass!"
and so on.

It should go without saying that those types of comments are opinions. As with ANY experience in life, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). Furthermore, what you deem to be a 'terrible idea' or a 'pain in the ass' might be something I love to do... the glory of life being we all have different opinions and different things we enjoy.

What I AM looking for is actual stories from folks with experience in this area, with pros AND cons they personally experienced. I love people's stories anyway (that's why I'm a Heritage Maker after all), and in this case your stories might help us, now or in the future!

Likewise, even if you have no personal experience in this area, but you have interest in it and you have a great resource to share (whether it's a blog or a great free foreclosure website or a TV show you like to watch), tell me about it! I might know it already, but then again I might not.

Thanks, everyone. Looking forward to this journey, whenever it happens for us.

photo by Gary Friedman of www.FriedmanArchives.com

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now!

Do you like free stuff? Do you like to win things? WHO DOESN'T?? Here's a list of giveaways and contests all around the 'net, as I come across them. If you are running a contest or giveaway, or have come across one you think should be featured here, please leave the URL in the comments! I will do my best to keep this list updated.

Contests / giveaway that you can enter daily are in RED.

Ends Dec 16, 2010, at 10pm CST

A Southern Fairytale's iPad Giveaway

Ends Dec 17, 2010, at midnight
Me As A Mommy's Kalorik Food Slicer Giveaway

The Baby Birthing Mama's Waffle Maker Giveaway

She's Mommafied's Baby Food Maker Giveaway

Mama B's Food Processor Giveaway

Baby Dickey's Steam Mop Cleaner Giveaway


Crunchy VT Mommy's Deep Fryer Giveaway

Ends Dec 21, 2010

Freddy In Space's Twisted Art of Jes Karakashian Giveaway

Ends Dec 24, 2010 at 11pm ET

Win a Carnival Cruise with BRET MICHAELS!

Being Thankful

It's time to fess up here and admit that I have another blog. Well, I have several other blogs actually, but the one in particular that I'm fessing up about right now is a livejournal account that I've had since 2001. It's primarily friends-only and at this point it's staying that way; I have cultivated a really great friends group over the years and it's become a great place for me to share a lot of my more personal details, my raw thoughts and emotions, and a lot more angst than I'm willing to share in this more public arena. I'll share a LOT here, but sometimes things are just too private for the entire world (yes, even for me, heh).

So yesterday morning I was feeling a little down and panicky for no good reason, and almost posted a real downer Facebook status (because one of the best ways for me to exorcise my mental and emotional demons is to WRITE THEM OUT and then I can move on)... but in a rare display of discretion, I decided Facebook was not the place for it. So I went to my trusty Livejournal and I posted "I'm really afraid I'm going to die before I am able to turn my life into the life I want to be living. And I just don't think that's appropriate as a facebook status so I'm posting it here instead. I guess I should probably talk about that in therapy tonight."

And in response, I got some really good thoughts, advice, and kicks in the butt from my awesome friends. Things like:

"I think most of us spend most of our lives trying to live the life we think we want. I try to focus on what's good now. Otherwise I would go crazy. When I do that, I realize I have it pretty good. Doesn't stop me from wanting to move home or wanting a professor job or criticizing my husband or generally wishing for more, but it helps."

"You can't do that & stay sane, I don't care how much therapy you go to. Live in the moment. Appreciate the eensy bittle things. Just LIVE every moment."

"Two of the quotes I have on my Facebook page:
"Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." ~ Omar Khayyam
"To dream of a person you would like to be is to waste the person you are" ~ Unknown
I really try to live those quotes each and every day."

I really appreciate the encouragement everyone gave me yesterday about that post. I needed a little kick in the butt. It's hard sometimes to be thankful for what you have, and I guess sometimes I blur the lines between appreciating the life I have NOW (which is a pretty good life, most days) and the goals I want to achieve. Sometimes I get so hungry for those goals that I lose sight of the present and I despair pretty quickly. The therapy is more for THAT... not for making me happy with who I am, because really most of the time I AM - but for trying to deal with this intense need for instant gratification and the fact that I have trouble setting limits in my life. I don't know if it's the therapy, or the blogging, or ten years of ruminating and working towards it, but I finally feel like a lot of pieces are coming together in my life and I really do feel like I'm making a lot of progress on at least one of the issues that has plagued me for so long. (My clutter issues.) And I do feel confident that, once I get that under control, I can deal with roadblock two (my weight) and roadblock three (my finances). I feel more confident than ever that it really WILL all come together, finally. I still have times though where I get really impatient about it, or times when I get scared... especially in terms of my health. I believe I've mentioned it here before, but in case I haven't, I have Type II diabetes. I was diagnosed almost two years ago. It is VITAL that I lose weight and exercise more and eat better to get healthier, and I really feel like my house clutter is tied into some of that (letting things go is as hard for me as letting pounds go, and preparing healthy foods is impossible for me when my kitchen is a mess), and I do feel like I can't tackle my weight and health issues without getting the house in order first. I work on both to a small extent, but I know from past experience that if my house isn't in order, I just plain won't be able to work past that and take better care of myself. I don't know WHY that is; I just know that it is. So I'm working on it. But then something will happen, even if it's not something big; I'll have a day where I feel lousy, or I have this phantom arm pain that we haven't been able to figure out yet (the doctor thinks it's a stress/muscle issue but I really think it's tied into my blood sugar because it happens most often when my eating habits for the day SUCK), and I get freaked out about my diabetes and my health and the damage this could do to my body and the fact that I'm only 31 and I don't want to leave my family mother/wifeless and the fact that I'd really like to have another baby in a couple years but that cannot happen with the state of everything right now, but most especially with the state of my HEALTH (I will not subject my body to that stress in the state it's in now, I just won't, nor would it be safe for the baby), and then I get hung up on dying young and that's when I REALLY start to feel like everything is taking WAY too long to accomplish and I start to despair.

So I need to remind myself... baby steps. The baby steps I've taken have gotten me pretty far, and get me a little farther every day, and a little closer to my goals. I have to keep doing my best, and have faith that the universe and the powers that be will guide me to my goals, and not kill me off too soon (I hope!). None of us get any guarantees in life and we just have to do the best we can with what we have. I've certainly made mistakes in the past; we all have. I'm doing my best to recover from some of those mistakes, and most days now I feel like I'm doing a good job, and doing my best. Most days are good days.

There's an exercise on Facebook right now to post a new status every day from now until Thanksgiving about what you are thankful for. It starts out easy, but I'm sure it'll get harder as the days go on. It can be really hard to focus on everything we have to be thankful for. I'm taking the challenge because it's definitely something I need to do.

I'd like to invite everyone here to take some time to tell me what you have to be thankful for right now. We could all use some positivity in our lives, and a little bit of perspective; seeing what everyone has to be thankful for would be a great place to start.

Do you have your 2010 calendar yet?

Have you decided on a calendar for 2010 yet? What about Christmas gifts for family and friends - have them all picked out? If not, then you should check out Heritage Makers' November Pick Of The Month! This month you can get some great savings on BOTH of our calendars... the traditional 11 X 8.5 AND the brand-new 11 X 16!

As a bonus, you can add three months of our Studio Premier artwork to your account for only $44.95 - a 40% savings!

Personalized calendars make great gifts, and the customization options here are nearly limitless. Contact me here or via email for more information or to place your order today! You can also check out my website for more information.



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