Boy Crafts: Binoculars

I am really enjoying this new practice of being a professional mom during the day and leaving the professional anything-else to the evenings and weekends.  It is certainly not easy to come down after finally getting the boys to bed about 8:30 and crack open the laptop, but separating the two has really lowered my stress levels and upped my happiness levels.  Unfortunately, a looming deadline this week has forced me to do more outside work during the day, and I can feel my blood pressure rising along with the boys' irritation levels. :(

I am loving my mornings with Cam.  This guys is just growing so freakin fast, it is kind of blowing my mind.  He is a real sweetie, with an ace sense of humour, and is a lot of fun when he can relax and not compete for attention (from me and from Will!).

We have all been keeping track of our friend the cardinal - a 'real loud guy', according to Cam.  As the buds are just peeking out on the trees, it is still easy to catch sight of his bright red body sitting up in a tree. Nonetheless, Cam thought we should really get some binoculars to get a better look (not sure where he got this idea from!).

They are pretty self-explanatory and easy to make: all you need are toilet paper rolls, construction paper, glue or tape, markers, and string or ribbon.  Cam wasn't happy with how his drawings were going, so he told me what he wanted and I drew it.  What looks like just a random pattern is actually lightening, wheels, lines on the road, exhaust from a truck (not a cloud), and rain - oh and a car, of course.  They have held up for a few weeks now, and Cam keep telling me that they "REALLY WORK!" and insists on wearing them out for walks.  Of course we had to make a pair for William too, but his kept coming apart and morphed into a telephone instead.  :)

So these were a pretty successful craft, but I have to say, the big winners are the parking garage and the whiteboard table.  They are used every. single. day. Hooray!

Any awesome crafts you have made recently?  Please share in the comments, I am always on the hunt for new ideas! Thanks as always for reading. :)

New living room photos

I may not have been blogging much lately, but I can't seem to stop tinkering with the house - I do it almost unconsciously!  One day I feel the need to change up the mantel, another day I am switching pillows around.  Our friend and babysitter came over on Friday after having been away for a while and couldn't believe how many changes I had made.  Because I have been doing them bit by bit and been so distracted by my work and business course, I really hadn't taken in the cumulative effect of all my little tweaks.

Anybody out there?

Holy Sweet Mother Of Pearl, switching internet hosts is not for the faint of heart*.  That goes double when you are originally on Blogger and don't actually know who is currently hosting your blog!  (It is eNom.com by the way.)  Trying to remember all my passwords (with a special character? without??), requesting unknown hosts to unlock domains, having secret codes sent to you by both hosts - I don't know how people get away with all the crazy stuff they do online when you have to navigate the cryptic-undercover-secret-handshake back alleys of the internet just to move a design blog.  Add to that the fact that all my recent online charges got my credit card blocked (which of course landed me in a whole other realm of security shenanigans), and you have the recipe for one confused and frustrated blogger, with a blog lost in the ether.

But lo and behold, here I am - I guess if you are reading this you found me!  And thanks to everyone who sent me panicked emails and texts wondering what the hell happened to my blog, it made me so happy to know you guys got my back. :)

I am still on Blogger for now, but with Bluehost.  I am planning to move over to Word Press eventually, once I get a business going, but I don't want to let go of this design I worked so hard on, at least not yet. :)

*Apparently you can pay people to figure this crap out for you, if you aren't cheap (and ignorant) like me...

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Yes, I am very, painfully, aware that so far Spring has been the mother of all disappointments.  Seriously Universe - ICE PELLETS?  Yeesh.  But, although the tulips are slow in poking out their heads, the Garage Sales have begun (Cue the music! Start the skipping!).  That is right my thrifty friends, yesterday my mother-in-law and I went to my first yard sale of the season, in the posh area around Old Mill.  We were there just at the end, which means we probably missed some good stuff, but got some great deals.  For example, this cheerful, hand-stitched wool shawl.  No holes, no snags.  $5.  Perfect to inject a little colour into a room or outfit. Love it.

Belgian Style Guest Post

Hi friends!  It has been even nuttier than usual around here lately - for some reason my life seems to follow the "feast or famine" philosophy.  For a while I was able to find some space, really concentrate on the business course I am taking, and focus on being an RSM (Rock Star Mumma).  Then, suddenly, I landed a lovely marketing contract with a very short deadline, got started on some graphic work with a very short deadline, and am struggling to keep up with the course and all the reading.  Thank sweet merciful heavens my wonderful mother-in-law is here for a visit and has been able to take on full time kid care, leaving me to reacquaint myself with the joys of hours upon hours behind a desk.

I have many half-started-but-not-near-publishable blog posts in the hopper, but the universe decided to cut my blog a break and sent me an email with a complete guest post from Arcadian Home, all about calm, steady, grounded-in-history Belgian decor.  That bedroom with the velvet bed cover is going to be permanently stuck in my imagination - to think I had once decided that I didn't like purple!  Thanks universe (and Arcadian Home) - I owe you a solid.

Hiding the Kitchen Clutter

I am quite thrilled with my kitchen; it was renovated over two years ago and I wouldn't change a THING about it - I love love love using it.  The only thing that was missing from it was a message centre or place to keep notices, tickets, adorable kid drawing, etc.  Our stainless refrigerator doesn't take magnets, which is fine with me - believe it or not I am a fan of clean lines and lots of space.  However, the piles of paper were growing and driving me nuts, so I picked the lesser of evils and hung this metal board from Ikea on the front of Dad's cabinet. While it did corale the bits and pieces, I didn't like that it marred and obstructed the beautiful cabinet, that it bonked the door every time you opened or closed the cabinets, and that it never looked tidy.

Boy Crafts: A Parking Garage

When I stumbled across this great parking garage craft on Spoonful, I got ridiculously excited.  Seriously - a craft my guys would love to make, love to play with, and that would use up some of my out-of-control stash of toilet paper rolls.  Major score.

The full instructions are on Spoonful, and I won't bore you with the details (not surprisingly their garage also looks way more profesh).  It is a pretty simple craft - cover toilet paper rolls with coloured paper, cut one side off a cereal box, draw on parking spots, glue rolls between the two sides of the cereal box, and add ramps.  It was a short enough activity that Cam and I could do it while Will was at school, which meant that Cam could actually get to participate in all the making (Will is a little... um... enthusiastic when we all do stuff together).  I have to say, he is a pretty fun co-crafter.

I'm Still Kickin' !

I know, I definitely have lost my blogging mojo lately, but I have good reasons... honest.

1) As the clock ticks down on to these two crazy cats both starting full time school in the fall, I am more grateful than ever to be able to be home with them right now.  I realized that I was often getting sidetracked by the internet (ahem, and blogging) instead of being fully present with the kiddos - I would  be playing with them but thinking of what I wanted to do online, or be online, thinking that I should really be hanging with the boys.  Talk about a recipe for stress - it was a no-win situation.  So I had a heart-to-heart with the mirror and realized that I needed to treat this stay-at-home gig like a real job (I even wrote myself a job description... super crazy but it worked!).  I now spend my days completely focussed on what I am doing at home - in fact there have been many days when I didn't even turn on the computer until 8:00 pm when they were finally in bed (I do check emails from time to time on my phone, I am only human).  The result is that I am less stressed, getting more out of life, the boys' behaviour is better and they are happier, and my blog is empty.