Back online

Well, it's been quite a while since i last posted. I've had a run of bad luck in the electronics department which began with a laptop full of milk, but I'm sort of back online and am looking forward to blogging this fall about Ethan's first year of kindergarden and Rueben's first year of flying solo with me at home. We're heading to the BC lakes district this weekend for the annual family and friends fishing derby. Fish On!!

Train Conductor hats

At our house, trains rule the toy box. Ethan loves building extensive, complicated tracks with our wooden train set. We started with a simple wooden set from IKEA and it quickly grew to fill one of the extra large buckets in the toy shelf. Rueben also likes playing with trains, but I'm more likely to find him driving the trains into the barn set or onto the play parking garage. They each have their favorite engine which makes joint playtime more enjoyable and pleasant.

Since they spend so much time playing with their trains, I thought it would be fun if they each had a little train conductor hat that they could wear while playing. I had an old pair of jeans that I wanted to use for one of them and some seersucker material for the other. A quick google search led me to this tutorial. It was so simple to measure and cut out the pieces. I decided to have the straight pleats of the cap on the inside of the hat with the angled pleats on the outside. The first hat I made was the denim one and when I put it on Rueben, I felt the brim was a bit too long, so I shortened it by an inch for Ethan's hat. I love the way they turned out and they were so easy to make. I ended up making 3 more for Ethan's preschool class to play with at school. All aboard!!!

Wordless - Octopus anyone? An afternoon at Lonsdale Quay

A fishing we will go

Labour day long weekend for our family means it's time for the annual Sheridan Lake family and friends fishing derby. Since Andrew was in town and we had a sunny afternoon, we decided to head down to the river to hone our fishing skills. I know that labour day is a ways away yet, but what's the harm in getting in a little practice???

Ethan learned how to tie the line...

...and cast...

and a few other things with technical names that are lost on me now.

Rueben was up to his usual shenanigans.

And we forgot to bring a change of clothes so the boys rode home in their undies.

Fashionable Life

Diane Von Furstenberg's top 10 rules to live by. 1. Trust yourself. "The secret to feeling attractive, and to being attractive, is the confidence that comes from knowing who you are and what you believe in." 2. Accept the passage of time. "The older you get, the more you should learn to love life and appreciate the beauty that comes with age." 3. Document your days. "Carry a camera and create an inspiring visual diary of your life." 4. Your suitcase symbolizes your life. "The best way to know a woman is to open her luggage. If she knows how to pack well, it means she understands, and cherishes, how to live a simplified life." 5. Fashionable friends. "Choose fashions that make you happy. I hope the clothes I design will become my clients' best friends. That way, when they open their closets, they will always encounter someone special." 6. Dress your personality. "Always choose styles that also accentuate your personality. Don't use fashion to try and project a different persona. Authenticity is key." 7. Use your feminine power. "My mother taught me that being a woman is a privilege because the world revolves around us! It is a precious gift, and its power should be used in a subtle and respectful way." 8. Your handbag is your guide. "Before leaving home, check your agenda and organize your bag according to what you have to do that day. keeping everything in order makes life easier." 9. Indulge yourself. "If you are like me, and don't want to resort to Botox, book regular massages. I'm sure it helps to keep everything firm and in its place." 10. Lead a balance life. "The best regimen is to keep moving! Never stop working, travelling and seeking adventure. Drink plenty of water, limit alcohol and sugar and get to your yoga class!" (From Elle Canada June 2010)

Rebecca Black - Friday - RKB Productions Parody - Game Day (NOW ON iTUNES!)

I'm officially on the wagon with this song/parody/anthem. Go Canucks Go.

In the works

I see lots of toddler T-shirts in my future!

Link Love

I thought I'd share some of the blogs that have inspired me along the way.

Food blogs that I read:

Aimee from Under the highchair is also the food editor at Simplebites.net
(I also read simple kids and simple mom)

Craft blogs I read:

Where have you found inspiration?

My New Moto

A New Direction

I've been contemplating for a few weeks now what I want for the future of this blog... what kind of focus or direction it should have. Lately I've been surfing craft blogs thinking how creative and crafty I used to be in my younger days and how much I miss making things for myself and my friends. I have really felt inspired lately to create more things with my hands and I would love for this blog to take on a more home-made kind of feel. So, in the future, look for more blog posts and maybe even tutorials about crafting and cooking.

What I don't want to loose is the 'journaling' of life with the boys in our little corner of the world, so you'll still be reading about music, books, outings and milestones in our lives. Looking forward to new directions.

First: "mum" - A valentines gift

At last, my love has come along
my lonely days are over
and life is like a song

At last, the stars above are blue
my heart was wrapped up in clover
the night I looked at you

I found the dream that I could speak to
a dream that I can call my own
I found the thrill to press my cheek to
a thrill that I have never known

You smile, you smile, and then the spell is cast
and here we are in heaven
boy you are mine at last.

Rueben finally said "mum"... which I'm claiming as mine. I've been waiting too long to hear him say mom, or mommy, or mama, or any other variant, so when he uttered 'mum' at bedtime on Sunday night, I couldn't have been more thrilled.

Mumford & Sons - The Cave

This was hands down the performance highlight of the 2011 Grammy's.

Celebrate the BOY

This month, the amazing craft blog MADE is celebrating all things boys. If you like to craft, you'll know that most of the craft blogs on the net tend to focus on girly craft and sewing ideas. That's why when I logged on to MADE this afternoon and found this post, I was super excited. Can't wait to see what kinds of crafts will be presented, and to see how long my 'to craft' list will become. Time to Celebrate:

The running lady

Heck no, not me! My dear trainer is already giving me heck because I don't always get my one hour daily exercise. I have enough to think about with all these new food guidelines. My kitchen is supposed to close at 8pm for the night... hard to get used to when your previous regular routine consisted of a 1am fridge raid. But I digress.

Yes, there is a running lady. Ethan has preschool Tuesday and Thursday mornings and without fail, on our way to school we pass by a running lady. I would guess that she's in her 60's. But man is this woman dedicated. She's always wearing the same black pants and headband and she's always jogging along. She's not going super speedy, but you can tell that she's been running for a long time. We've seen her running in sunshine. We've seen her running in rain. We've even seen her running in snow!

And every morning when we pass her, I'm silently cheering her on.

photo credit: fotosearch.com

2011 - year of the health nut

I've gone and done it... I hired a personal trainer.

I finally made the plunge when our tap costumes arrived to the studio and we had to try them on... yes, the costumes are gorgeous but i just wasn't happy with the way it looked on me. So, I bit the bullet and called up a friend who also happens to be a trainer and a weight-loss success story herself.

I started two weeks ago. In my first week of changes to my food and exercise levels, I lost 10 pounds! It feels pretty good too! And to be honest, I haven't changed much about my diet...besides swapping my lunch for a hefty salad, the only major change I've made is to stop eating after 8pm and to eat smaller meals more frequently.

I've also increased my physical activity, but not even by a big stretch. I train with my GF Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings for an hour, and then I try to get out and walk Lilly everyday or do some kind of physical activity everyday (even if it's just racing around the dinning room table with Ethan).

Hopefully I can keep up the success. I've been derailed by a nasty cold this week so haven't had much energy to be active. Time for another cup of tea.

A little hard work never hurt anyone.

We had a big dump of snow last week. It fell overnight and accumulated to about a foot. The next morning, we headed out to buy a snow shovel so I could shovel the sidewalk in front of our house (it's the law here, don't you know!) when, at the the store, Ethan saw some shovels that were just his size.

"Can I get a shovel too?"

"Of course. Are you going to help me shovel the snow?"

"Of course!"

So, we started with the driveway, then shoveled the sidewalk. Here is Ethan, proudly displaying is shovel. Then we discovered that when you drop the handle into a snowbank, it makes a cool shape. So, we spent 15 minutes dropping our shovels... sigh.

After all that shovelling, we warmed up inside with hot chocolate and a movie night and listened to .50 clang around inside Ethan's allowance jar.

Brooke Waggoner - Fresh pair of eyes

I could listen to this song over and over again and never tire of its achingly beautiful melody. I think I'm in love with this song.

Cause I want to be seen
with a fresh pair of eyes.
The single white tree
in a black hood of disguise.

I want, I want to be seen
with a fresh pair of eyes.
The single, the single white tree
in a black hood of disguise.

I miss God, I miss God
I miss God, I miss God.

How To... Clean Up Your House

So, Christmas has come and gone and in the space of about 4 days, my house has gone from 'we're expecting 20 people for Christmas dinner so the house better be clean' to 'Andrew has repeatedly told me to relax, don't worry about the mess. We'll clean it later.'

You know, we've been married for 6 years now, so my hubby knows a lot about me, but I guess he still hasn't figured out that it's the mess that stresses me out. When I see stuff laying around, and dishes piled up on the counter, and recycling piling up next to the front door, and toys strewn about the house... how can anyone kick back with a book on the couch surrounded by such chaos and be expected to relax? Now granted... I'm not the tidiest person in the world. But I'm definitely starting to feel the effects of 4 days without tidying up. So, I thought I'd do a little blog post about how to handle the post holiday clean up.

Step One: Gather your supplies.

For me this includes a garbage bag for garbage and items that can't be salvaged, and a box for items that I want to donate. depending on the room, I also have a vacuum cleaner, a swiffer and mop, and an all purpose green cleaner and cloth. I also have a huge glass of water with me. Cleaning makes me thirsty. Now put on some Tunes.

Step Two: Pick a room and start there.

I'm choosing to start with my living room because that's where I'm sitting at the moment. Survey the room and take in the mess. Then open all the windows. A cool room motivates me to clean faster and the fresh air is invigorating.


Step Three: Remove things that don't belong.

As I look around my living room, I can see laundry piled up on the corner of the couch, my Christmas craft project that I didn't finish in time for Christmas, dishes from breakfast, an air mattress, and packing material from opened Christmas presents. It's time to move all these items out of the living room and put them where they belong.

Step Four: Put away the things that do belong.

I can see toys strewn about the floor, DVDs that need to go back on the shelf. I have already made a mental note of the toys which will be going into the donation box. The boys were so blessed this year and received so many wonderful new toys. However, we have a little rule that we can only keep so many toys that can fit in our two toy shelves, so some things need to go.

You could stop now, and you'd have a 'tidy' house with everything in it's place. But we're going for a CLEAN house, so it's time to bust out the cleaner.

Step Five: Break out the green cleaner.

At this point, you should have clear floors, shelves, and seating area. Now, it's time to clean any messes you might have missed. Rueben has a penchant for dumping out his milk, and I don't always catch all his little spills. He also decided to draw all over the wall last week so it's those things that we need to clean now. Cleaning tip: If all else fails, use a baby wet wipe. Those pencil crayon marks came right off the wall with a wet wipe, some baking soda and a little elbow grease.

Step Six: Clean the floor.

Nothing says clean like a sparkling floor. Even in my messy house, if all I do is mop the floor, my house looks ten times cleaner. So that's the last step for me. In the living room we have an area rug, so if I just want to do an OK job, I vacuum. If I want to do a good job, I roll up the carpet and sweep under the rug. If I want to do an amazing job, I'll move the couches too. oh look, more toys to put away!

Step Seven: Repeat then relax.

Depending on how long it's taken me to do all those steps above, and how much time I have left before Andrew comes home with the boys, I might tackle another major room like the kitchen, or do a few less messy rooms, like the library and the dinning room. Afterwards, I brew a fresh cup of coffee, shower (all that cleaning is like a workout you know!) and plop down on the couch with my current read.

See, I went from this:

To this:

A Nativity Song

Outerspace is out of space

I snuggled in with Ethan tonight at bedtime and began our nightly ritual of the bedtime story. The ritual began for us when Ethan was 2. I was pregnant with Rueben at the time and so we knew we would be needing to move Ethan out of the crib. We had taken one side of the rails off so he was using it as a sort of daybed. Thanks to the kindness of family, Ethan received brand new bunk beds for Christmas and it was finally convenient for me to lay down with Ethan and read to him at bedtime.

I really cherish the bedtime story. It gives us a chance to not only read a book (or books) together but to reflect on our day, talk about our adventures, and for me, to become more enlightened in the philosophies of the four year old boy. Tonight was no exception.

We pulled two books from his younger days off the shelf; 'Neighbourhood Numbers' and 'Mama and Me', both of which are baby Einstein books and have great rhythm and pictures. We got up to 8 which tells us that there are eight lighted windows in eight houses and eight stars in the sky. Well this led to a very interesting conversation about the universe and 'out of space' as Ethan calls it. He declared "I know a lot about Earth". He knew about oceans and mountains, rivers and trees and roads. He knew the sun was in the sky and the moon was in the sky and the stars to which I agreed and said yes, they are all in outer space. "No, they're not mom. At nighttime, the sun goes behind the walls of the earth. In the daytime, the sun blasts through the walls of the earth". So I now have a picture of what the concept of 'outer space' is to a four year old. It seems very obvious to him that the blue sky that we see overhead and which meets the earth at the horizon is like a wall. And the sun goes behind it at night when it's dark, and then bursts through it during the day when it's light. It makes sense.

We then move on to 'Mama and Me' which is a great little book about animal babes and moms. Each page begins "I am a baby (duck for example)" with a series of familial facts about how it interacts with it's mom. "I'm a good swimmer already, but my mommy leads the way. She knows the best places to swim". Each page also has real life photography of each animal. It's a great little book to get a conversation going. Ethan wanted to know what the tigers ate. Um, well, they eat smaller animals. "like ducks?" ah, sure. "What do ducks eat?" um, bugs and plants that they find... "what do bears eat?" berries and fish "Fish, eww, yuck!" you love fish!!! "eww, no I don't" you know all that sushi you love to eat... that's fish. "oh". Then he announced that his favorite animal is a giraffe because of their long necks, and mine is an elephant because of their trunks, and Rueben's is a jaggerbafersaul (um... a what?), oh mom, it's like a kind of dinosaur. What do dinosaurs eat?" hmm, how to proceed... well, some dinosaurs ate plants and some ate smaller dinosaurs, but that was a loooong time ago. They don't live on the earth anymore. "did they move into out-of-space?" I love how his brain works. And I look forward to many more enlightening conversations with him.