So a couple days ago, my husband, my Anglican priest husband, came home from a meeting and said,

“We need to decide where we want to live the rest of our lives.”

I can’t really explain the circumstances that prompted this, partly because I wouldn’t actually know how and partly because if I did it would be long and boring to most of you, and I try (try, mind you) to avoid being long and boring.

Note: Nothing bad happened. He’s not fired or anything. And we aren’t leaving tomorrow, but in the next few years.

But it wasn’t a joke. He was serious. He is serious. In the next few days, weeks, we need to bust out a map of the US of A and pick our ideal place to… settle down. Raise our family. Live.

This is nuts – nobody gets to do this.

I kind of like where we are now.

But it’s a little boring here – as soon as our kids grow up they’re going to jet, and fast. That’s why I said “jet”. And it does get a little isolated.

And we don’t have any family here. But I don’t really like the places we do have family. And our family isn’t likely to be there forever either.

So we just need to pick a place.

Nuts.

But fun. Fun for sure. And nuts.

Umm… anyone have any suggestions? Did you choose where you are, or did life just take you there, and either way, do you love it? Tell me you love it.

It’s a brilliant fall morning here. I thought I had the flu on Sunday, but it was either a really fast flu, or some sort of short-lived food poisoning/aversion, or just another lovely pregnancy side-effect. Either way, I feel better and I’m really happy about that.

My stomach is feeling better, but for some reason my head is spinning in forty different directions this morning. Just look – this is seriously what’s going on in there.

1. I love the smell of Pam spray for Baking. It smells like cupcake mix from a box. I think. Whatever it smells like I really enjoy it and am very glad someone made it up. I have to make a concerted effort not to spray it just for fun when I’m not actually baking anything.

2. I am unbelievably fed up with debating in my head whether or not to track down the H1N1 vaccine for me and my kids. How do people make decisions like this? You don’t get the vaccine and one of your kids gets really sick and maybe that could have been avoided or you get really sick and can’t take care of your kids or there are pregnancy complications that result. Or you do get the vaccine and one of your kids gets really sick and maybe that was caused by the vaccine or you get really sick and maybe you would have been fine without it. Am I going crazy here?

3. I have eaten about 30 baby carrots this morning. I have eaten about 30 baby carrots this morning because I keep compulsively getting up from my desk and walking to the refrigerator every five minutes, and once I’m there, the choices are to get a handful of chocolate chips, swipe a bite of cream cheese frosting out of the container with my finger, or grab a couple baby carrots. I am trying really really hard to choose the baby carrots. I know some of you are going to say I could always just close the refrigerator and walk away, but honestly, that does not seem to be an actual choice today. I think I’m turning orange!

4. I am no longer capable of hula-hooping. I don’t know if it’s because my belly is getting too big or because I am just old or because I have no coordination whatsoever right now, but I can’t do it. Maybe that’s not really a bad thing, and better to know now than after entering a hula-hooping contest.

5. Bon Iver is my favorite band ever. Today. But ever. I might listen to For Emma, Forever Ago at least 73 times today. And love it every time. Music is so good.

6. I have to log on to work in 4 minutes. Blech. If I had more than 4 minutes I would make a list of the top 100 things I would rather be doing than working. Let me just say that going to the dentist to get the pain in my jaw inspected and scaling the mountain of laundry in my room would both make the list.

7. There is a tupperware container on my counter into which I put scraps for the compost pile. Last night when I was cooking dinner (chicken tikka masala – my favorite dinner ever) there also happened to be a similar-shaped (although entirely different color) tupperware container sitting on the counter into which I had put some delicious sugar cookies. It was into this sugar cookie container that I placed all the onion skins I had after dicing onions to begin my masala sauce. I did not notice this until this morning.
Onion-flavored sugar cookies are not going to be breaking out in any cookbooks anytime soon.
At least it means I didn’t have cookies for breakfast.

8. My kids are adorable. And sweet and perfect and fun and smart and interesting and adventurous and wonderful company. I can’t wait to have another. Their dad is pretty great too.

I’m very sorry to have subjected you to this rambling, but lucky for you I have to go to work now. Maybe that’s why I have to work…it’s all for you. : )

It’s Halloween! I have pumpkin muffins baking in the oven and my two little peanuts are preparing for an exciting night of trick-or-treating as Dora and Boots by taking a nap. So I thought I’d put up a post about some sea shells.

It made sense in my head at first.

We stopped by the beach a few evenings ago to collect some seaweed to dump in the garden. Seaweed is super smelly (and heavy, by the way) but a great natural fertilizer.

This particular beach, after a lot of rain and storms in the last couple weeks, was chock full of washed up shells. I don’t know why I love them. I have never successfully made a useful (or even pleasant) craft out of them. I always pick them up and they end up in a junk drawer somewhere. So this time I decided to try and take a few pictures instead. It was…um…let’s say mildly successful? Oh what do I know – you can see for yourself.

This one is kind of ho-hum. I thought the color of the shell was so much more vibrant in person. And why did I put it up in the corner of the picture like that?

Ditto to this one (ditto? I’m sorry I think it’s still 1991). The setting sun was making some spectacular colors on the beach, and I pretty much failed to take advantage.

This one I like because it kind of looks like it’s glowing from the inside out. A seashell jack-o-lantern! See, I know it’s Halloween.

I feel like this one might be showing you some leg. Or it just has some sea stick stuck in it.

This was one of my favorites. Until I remember that whatever was living in this before it was pried open was probably a seagull’s dinner. Actually, that doesn’t bother me so much., except I might wish it would have been my dinner instead.

Doesn’t this look like a curled up snake winking at you? It doesn’t? Look again, I would swear it was a curled up snake winking at me except I picked it up and it is definitely a shell.

Happy Halloween By The Sea,

Amber

Worry not, my friends: this is not a post about childbirth. If it was, the title surely would not have anything to do with “100 hours” of anything. It would be more like “the time my first baby snuck up on me and got herself born in five hours” or “the time my second baby was almost born in a Camry.”

Side note: for this third baby, my husband and I are planning on camping out in the hospital parking lot from about a week before the due date.

Anyway, it apparently takes me about ten times longer to finish my average crafting project than it does to bring a child into the world. Doesn’t that make this craft seem so much more special?

I blame this 100-hour-loss-of-my-life on Jill from Homemade By Jill. She made this super adorable quiet book for her son, and whipped out about a page a night, so I (naively) assumed, even with my inferior crafting skills and occasional lack of motivation, that I could pull off a couple pages a week.

I started this about six months ago, originally planning to make two at the same time, one for my nephew, and the other in time for my daughter’s first birthday (July). Clearly, we missed that, but don’t worry – she got other presents.

Now, in my defense, in the middle there I went through 10 straight weeks of morning, noon, and night sickness, and then we decided to build a bathroom in our basement, and summer on the Cape isn’t really a great time for crafting projects, blah blah blah.

But I was suddenly remotivated about a month ago because my sister, her husband, and their 10-month-old are going on a serious car trip in a few weeks and I really wanted to finish this for my nephew before the trip. So I abandoned the “two-at-a-time” idea and set to serious work on one book.

Almost every page is a direct copy of Jill’s or an adaptation of her ideas (some modifications were required by my sewing skills, available time, materials at hand, or current level of annoyance at hand-sewing).

Behold (cue choir of angels)…

This is the outside cover. It’s pretty simple because it was the last thing I did and I was so tired of looking at my sewing machine that I thought about dressing it up as something else, like an ice cream cone. But it does the job – holds the book closed (velcro)!

These are the first two pages. Page one is stolen directly from Jill (although I think my bird is a little different).

Page two is also straight from Jill’s book (sans embroidered windmill – she’s out of her mind). The barn doors open and inside are three little finger puppet animals! I think this is my daughter’s favorite page.

Pages three and four are modifications of pages in Jill’s books (yep, she’s made two).

For page three, the center of the sunflower flips up and there’s a picture of my nephew underneath. I printed it on regular photo paper (because I couldn’t get Jill’s “print on fabric” trick to work) then encased it in iron-on vinyl and craft-glued it to the page before sewing the petals around it. I abandoned the other two flowers in Jill’s page, partly because I’m lazy and partly because I wanted the picture (and therefore the sunflower) to be bigger.

This tent page is from the second book Jill whipped up. At first I just had the zipper in the middle, but realized my younger daughter (and therefore my nephew also) is quite a ways off from being able to unzip it, so I included the two flap windows. It occurred to me when I was making the bears that finding two bears in your tent might not actually be a great thing, so I tried to make them look really friendly. The stars are just knots of some thick silver thread I had.

Pages five and six are two more non-original ideas! The friendly little robot has elastic legs for pulling, pipe-cleaner arms for bending (because after doing the legs I was fed up with elastic) and a little zipper pocket.

The rocket zips along the ribbon to blast off to the moon.

And here are the last two pages.

The balloons are all velcro. I saw a page like this in a quiet book a while ago, but the balloons were not held on with anything, and every single one of them was lost, so I’m hoping my ric-rac strings hold these together! Won’t it be fun for my sister to untangle them?

The flag on the mailbox spins, and the mailbox opens to reveal a post card inside. The stamp is velcroed on (and can be lost – oh well).

And on the back is a little note for my nephew from his cousins!

I had plans for two more pages before sending this off, but just ran out of time. Luckily when Jill posted her finished quiet book she included the idea of binding it on rings so pages could be removed or added. I used metal grommets instead of the buttonholes she used, because I am terrible at (and therefore terrified of) buttonholes and because I love metal grommets. So if I ever get around to the last two pages, they can be added in.

And even though I didn’t get a book done yet for my daughter, I figure this way after my nephew plays around with his for a while I’ll get some feedback from my sister and make the next one a superior Version 2.

Thanks for your great ideas (and templates) Jill!

Every once in a while, my point-and-shoot camera and my free photo editing software actually decide to work together to produce something I don’t hate. Like this little sunset we watched over the beach last night.

Obviously, it’s not the greatest sunset picture ever taken by man, but it reminds me that I like the beach and I like this little piece of land we live on and I like having the ability to get out and enjoy these things with my family and no matter how frustrating work and housework and kids and potty training were that day, I actually really like where I am.

Ultimately, this world is full of beauty and things are good. And luckily sometimes I get to witness a little sunset that gives me the kick in the pants I need to stop feeling sorry for myself because “I work too hard.”

I spent the day being, as we say in my house, a Whiney Pants. And it turns out, a brilliant sunset works pretty well as a Whiney Pants Cure.

I wonder if it would be as effective on coworkers…

If there’s one thing you learn (or remember) when you live with young children, it’s how to have fun with the little things.

That, and how to clean up bodily fluids, but that’s not something I want to get into on a Monday morning.

Here, my toddlers would like to offer a brief tutorial on how to have fun in your daily life.

1. Dance. Just go ahead and do it. A fluffy tutu is not required, but highly encouraged.

2. Try a new perspective on things.

3. Wear a hat.

If you don’t have a hat at your immediate disposal, a Halloween candy bucket, or any other sort of bucket, makes an excellent alternative.

4. Play some music. Again, costume (dog or otherwise) is optional, but really brings things to a new level.

5. Use an umbrella. Why don’t we get to use umbrellas for the sun anymore? Well, you can, and may.

6. Wear some bandaids, and not those sad, beige skin-colored ones. And while you’re at it, put some barrettes in also.

7. Sit in a basket. Look at her face – you know you want to try it.

8. Call a friend. Actually, go ahead and call two friends.

And for crying out loud, make sure you spend ample time playing with your sister(s). They love you.

I’m ignoring the fact that it’s grey and cold and drizzly.

Please pardon the interruption: do you spell “grey” with an “e” or with an “a”? I usually put “grey” because “gray” looks too menacing.

I’m pretending like I didn’t have to turn my heat on. I’m telling myself that I love to wear sweaters and fuzzy slippers and sip tea all day long. There’s so much fun stuff to do between now and January – why focus on these little inconveniences when you can do things like play with pumpkins!!

I happened upon some Mr. Potato Head pumpkin kits that include the necessary Potato Head pieces to turn pumpkins into…Pumpkin Heads. But there were like $20 each, and I have two kids, which means two pumpkins, and I really didn’t feel like spending $40 on decorating pumpkins.

Luckily, happily, fortuitously, I stopped into A.C. Moore over the weekend to pick up some grommets (I’m currently in love with grommets) and they had a whole wall of spare Potato Head pieces for a quarter a piece! So we grabbed a basket and filled it with ears, noses, eyes, lips, arms, earrings, a purse, a mustache, and a hat, and we had the makings for two Pumpkin Heads for something like $3.50. And I had two happy toddlers.

I was a little apprehensive about the pumpkin carving/decorating with two toddlers because they are clearly too young for knives and I wasn’t even looking forward to getting out a bunch of paint. The Pumpkin Head was a great solution – they LOVED this (and so did I)!

My older girl helped poke the holes for the pieces (we ended up using an instant-read thermometer – it was the right size and sharp enough to poke through the pumpkin without being overly dangerous). They both helped push in the pieces and we made some hair out of spare yarn for Mrs. Pumpkin Head.

Easy. Fun. No clean-up. And now we get to enjoy the company of Mr. and Mrs. Pumpkin head at every meal, because my girls will not for one second entertain the idea of them living on the porch. They would get cold, my girls says, because we didn’t get them any coats.

I try, I really do. My kids’ grandparents all live far away so I do my very best to keep them updated with news, stories, and tons and tons of pictures, both candid and “portrait.”

But I might be done.

I have to admit I don’t have a ton of talent for taking pictures to begin with. The subtleties of good composition and light usually escape me. But my children aren’t helping me out any here. Have you ever tried to get a portrait shot of two toddlers? Well, let me just share with you how our usual “sitting” goes.

“It’s not too bright right here – why don’t you both sit down on this step so I can take a picture?”

The kids actually comply, but immediately give me the “cheese” face.

I ask for something that is not the cheese face, and I get looks of confusion.

Then my daughter tells me she’d prefer to sit on the other side of her sister.

Ok, fine. I say something that in any other situation would have them doubled over in laughter. The older one tries to resist a smile, and the little one? Genuinely bored.

I finally get a decent smile from one, but that little one again…totally distracted. Rocks? Grass? A flower? Could be anything.

Negotiation mode. She wants to go back down to the beach instead of back up to church, where we were headed. And I’m quickly realizing the little one just is not in the mood for picture taking.

Oh look! An unexpected and very sweet contribution from my oldest. Too bad there’s something about her sister’s eyes in that shot that makes me think of the movie Gremlins. (I know, I’m terrible. I’m sorry.)

Well, I think they’re both wearing normal faces in this one, but I can’t tell for sure seeing as how neither of them is looking anywhere near the camera.

Oh dear…this time I know she sees a bug. Time is running short, just one more short, pleeeeeeeease look at me…

And she’s out. No portrait shot today.

But can we please all just take a moment to look a little more closely at this hair?

The Cape Cod winds are, um, less than ideal for her big curly mop.

This is not a crafting blog.

I will not be posting detailed tutorials of crafty projects so you can take part in my crafting genius, not because I wouldn’t like to be generous like that, but because I don’t have any crafting genius to share. All signs indicate that whatever part of my brain houses all the creative ideas has been locked up since birth and the key is no where to be found.

On the other hand, the calculating, perfectionist, analytical part of my brain works overtime and I really enjoy occupying it by executing the projects born of other people’s crafting genius. This is why I love Jill.

If you like crafts, especially awesome clothes sewing projects and baby/kid crafts, you need to visit Homemade by Jill. She is one of those infuriating delightful people that just oozes creativity; it doesn’t even look like it’s work for her. Luckily she enjoys sharing this creativity so I can pretend it’s mine and my kids get to participate in fun crafty gifts also.

Enter the Homemade Board Book. We have some friends who recently had a new premie baby, and I remembered seeing this on Jill’s site a while back and thought a black and white board book would be a great gift. So I ordered a set of blank books and labels from Blank Slate Books and set my toddler on picking the shapes and pictures she wanted to include.

My daughter had a wonderful time helping me choose pictures (although I did veto a couple of her ideas, like making every single page a picture of a duck), decide where they would go in the book, and stick the labels down. She’s very proud of her finished book and wants to hand deliver it to the “new brand baby” (by which she means the “brand new baby”).

There are four blank board books in the set I ordered so I think I’ll let my toddler make one for herself and maybe the others will turn into more gifts. The ONLY thing that disappointed me slightly about this project was that the labels are a little different color white than the blank book, so it is pretty obvious that it was made by printing and sticking labels in a blank book (having a finished project that looks more like a “real” book would be nice). I asked Blank Slate Book’s customer service about this and they responded that they are testing some clear labels and hope to have some new options out in time for the holiday season.

Crafts that let me rely on technology – that’s right up my alley. This project is so nice because board books are SUPPOSED to be simple – no need to come up with elaborate stories or rhymes to produce something special. Of course, if you are one of those people with creativity dripping out your pores you’ll probably draw right in the books, personally illustrating your story that rivals “Good Night Moon” and putting the rest of us to shame. That’s your choice. I won’t forbid you from doing it out of jealousy, but I do reserve the right to copy your book and let my toddler believe I’m as cool as you.

No, they’re not from me (the words I mean).

The wise one here is my Aunt. She’s one of those very special people in your childhood that isn’t actually an aunt but is such a close friend of the family when you are growing up that you call her “aunt”. She was the coolest – always playing the guitar and telling us those super weird Bible stories that most adults avoid. I wish we lived closer now – my kids would love her.

Anyway, I waged this war on clutter in my house a couple weekends ago. I’m not sure who won in the end. I won a couple battles, clutter won a couple battles, and we both got tired at sundown and waved the white flag. But one of the battles I won was my kids’ top closet shelf. For years it has been a catch-all for things that otherwise don’t have a home. I found a broken (or battery-less?) baby monitor, a spanish Bible (?), stacks of kid art, and a large styrofoam cone that I’m sure I intended for some craft that never materialized.

Among the stacks of kid art, I found a card my Aunt gave me when when I was pregnant with my first. It is a folded piece of construction paper filled from top to bottom on all sides with “wisdom garnered from her girls.” After the first 2.5 years of raising mine, I laughed at how much is true and practical! Here are a couple of my favorites.

1. Always pack a snack in the diaper bag. Feed ‘em every two hours and they stay happy and you stay sane. Yes, YOU too will scan the back seat for a stray french fry in a pinch to feed yourself or the kids so relax, it hasn’t killed anyone.

This is not a joke. As long as you’re not feeding them oreos for every snack, they are not going to get fat. Only happy. Before I had kids I thought “I’ll never be one of those moms that uses food to distract her kids from poor behavior. Why can’t you just give them some crayons instead?” Oh the naivete…it ran deep.

2. Kids toys are too noisy and induce hearing loss in the kids and sanity loss for the parents. Drip some white candle wax in the sound hole till you get it to a tolerable level – magic!

I can’t believe I didn’t remember this from the first time I read this card! I’m sure a child safety guru somewhere is going to tell me I should never do this because eventually the wax will crack and fall out and my children will eat it. I think I’ll take the risk – it’s just wax after all.

3. When removing “no-nos” from a baby’s hand, smile and say “thank you!” sweetly – they think they are doing something great.

I’m always amazed at how easy it is to influence the mood of a young baby. You can “react” and just grab the thing (I’m sure you know how they feel about that) or you can make a little effort to control your attitude and the outcome is the same (you still get what you needed from them) but the RESULTS are completely different, at least from the baby’s point of view. Definitely worth the effort.

4. Keep a magnet with poison control’s number on the side of the fridge where you can find it. Never be afraid to call. On my 3rd call for my daughter, I asked “at what number does the caseworker visit?” She laughed and said “there’s one in every family – don’t worry about it.”

Oh my heavens – I don’t have one of these kids yet, but I think it would give me a stroke.

5. Three rounds in and out of the car seat for a morning or afternoon is the limit.

So true. So so true. Go ahead – try and test it. It’s like testing the patience of a caged lion. Regret will follow.

And there are your words from my wise Aunt. By the way, did anyone know it’s a holiday? Because one of you forgot to tell my job. Off to work! Have a great day!