Hi guys, this is not really related to anything, except that perhaps it is helping with the moving stress. I have watched this about 15 times and it cracks me up every time (my favourite line is when he knocks on the doorbell...and rang it). I went through a few others and they are also amusing, but for some reason, this one just gets me!
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Things I never thought I would say
You know, it's hard out there for a blogger. Any time I see something funny and cool I want to pass on, I scroll down my Facebook feed and see that it has already been sent around 20 times. But whatever, I am posting these posters anyway, cause they are damn funny.
I know everyone has had at least one moment with a child where you say (or, more likely, yell) something outrageous at your kid. It's only then, once the words have left your mouth and you have heard yourself say them, you stop, slightly surprised, and think "Wow. That's the weirdest thing I have ever said." Then you post it on Facebook and file it away to trade with other parents at a later date.
Well, Nathan Ripperger is WAY more industrious than that. He takes the crazy and insane things that come out of his mouth and turns them into really cool posters. And then sells them in his Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/nripperger. Wish I'd thought of that.
I have definitely said the toilet seat one. Actually, let me think of some of the things I said this week:
- No penises on the table. (How many times do I have to say it??)
- Why is there toothpaste in both your eyebrows?
- Just because your brother is sitting on your head does NOT mean you get to stay home from school.
- Yes, you can bring Giraffy the Turtle to the dentist.
- Everybody has to wear their OWN underwear.
- No scissors in the bath!
- Yes you can take a bath with the farm animals.
- Stop wiping your nose on my arm.
Do you have any memorable "I never thought I would say that" quotes?
Crayon Hearts
This weekend the hubby went away and the boys and I had some Quality Time together. I would just like to say how much respect and admiration I have for actual single parents, especially those who have to work one or more jobs. I knew my husband and I were a good team, but you just don't realize how much you depend on each other until your team mate skips town.
Anyway, we did do a few activities besides Netflix... I had bought a silicone heart mould at the dollar store before Valentine's Day and the boys have a bucket of crayons they never use - they are straight up marker dudes. I had seen lots of tutorials about melting down crayons and when I suggested it they were pretty excited. I won't describe the whole process, since there are lots of tutorials online, but the essentials are:
- Take paper off crayons: this is kind of tedious and your kids will abandon you and your nails will never be the same again.
- Break crayons into little pieces: or not so little, depending on your hand strength.
- Put them in the silicone mould: if you want hearts that are actually shaped like hearts, you may want to skip the dollar store and invest at, say, Walmart. (Our mould was promptly chucked in the garbage after this craft, and I am relieved to say that none of it remained in the oven.)
- Back up 3 steps and set the oven to 200 - 250 degrees.
- Once your oven has heated, put the mould on a baking sheet and pop 'er in. Plug your nose and watch them melt, slowly, for about 15 - 20 minutes. Open windows. Wonder how many toxins are in crayons and look worriedly at your children.
- Put them on the back porch to cool down.
- Ooh and Aah as you pop them out of the mould and watch your kids colour diligently until they remember they don't like crayons, get bored, and go watch Netflix.
The weird thing was how the pigment sank to the bottom and all the extra (filler?) wax pooled at the top. I assume that these were probably not top-of-the-line crayons... I didn't remember anyone mentioning this online.
Me being me, I took out a paring knife and shaved off the extra wax. Then I noticed the shaving were kind of pretty so I took photos. Then I went and got my hair dryer and experimented with melting the shavings onto paper and canvas. They looked sort of pretty until they got quite liquidy and the green overpowered all the other colours. The result sort of looked like someone barfed on a canvas. I didn't take photos. But it was kind of fun to get my hands dirty and play around. I also noticed that the heart crayons made it into their stories and play for the rest of the weekend (I think at one point they were alien space ships) so I am calling it a successful craft. :)
The dawn of a new reality
Did you all like that one post I put up this summer? It was awesome, wasn't it? Yeah...
Well, I did write many more of them in my head, usually at 2 am, but obviously none of them made it into the computer. I even took photos specifically for blog posts, and then sort of shuddered at the thought of opening Photoshop and ran outside. And that is where I spent pretty much every day this summer - outside (see photos above)! With the boys, of course, and family either Out East or Out West - and yes I realize that my life is kind of ridiculous, and I am spoiled absolutely rotten. I thought I would throw together a few of the look-how-awesome-my-summer was shots into one big clump to get them out of the way. :)
My comeuppance has come this week, as both boys start full days at school. Suddenly I am none too fond of Mr. McGuinty and his full-day kindergarten (the very thing I was crossing my fingers for when I was a working mom paying for childcare). It's like the end of the most glorious, happy, unbelievably-amazing vacation - a two-year vacation at that.
Two years of being at my kids' every beck and call, of crafting, colouring, drawing, breaking up fights, kissing owies, twisting the chicken timer on the time-out spot, and developing an amazing respect for the phenomenon called 'quiet'.
Two years of days at the park (feeling incredibly guilty as I facebooked and instagrammed my brains out), listening to toy cars discuss red lights versus green lights, denying TV, and then binging on 10 episodes of Max and Ruby (usually with a chaser of Caillou).
Two years of tantrums at the grocery store, book store, cafe, halfway to the park, halfway to the car, in the car, outside the car, upstairs, downstairs, and especially on the time-out spot - many of them thrown by yours truly. Two years of spontaneous hugs, puzzles, stories, bike rides and snuggles.
You get the idea. It only hit me last week that days like these will now be confined to two months in the summer, if they still want to hang out with me that is. For the rest of the year I will have to make due with those fun hours around dinner and weekends, like regular folks. It was a tough realization to come to terms with, but being grateful for those two years really, actually (Cam's favourite word) did help. There some sobbing, gulping-for-air tears (all mine) last week to be sure.
But this week things seem to be shaking into some sort of new reality. I am trying to take it easy on myself and not demand that I find a job STAT (which is how I feel). I am happy to report that I am still gunning to do interior design, I will keep up with the marketing consulting, and the encaustic project is still a go.
So there you have it, my life in a nutshell. I am sure you really didn't need to read it, but for some reason I needed to write it! I seem to have been putting off blogging until I had all this stuff squared away, and now I hereby give myself permission to get back into it. :)
Watch this with the kid
Hooray! I have finally stumbled across something in the internet that I was compelled to share - just like in the old days of this blog. Somehow in the last few months I seem to have gotten all confused about why the heck I was doing this blogging thing, and who I should be writing for, and what I should be writing about, and if it should be tied into an imaginary business I have not yet started or even fully narrowed down... and so I just didn't write anything. That and I have been so, well, not really crazy busy, but just not online. Some days I don't even open the computer (which is bad cause then I don't look at my email or calendar and that's just not proper adult behaviour).
Anyhoo, here's the thing I loved so much I had to share*: This blog The Kid Should See This. This blog is an incredibly diverse compilation of cool, inspiring, and educational videos that were not created specifically for kids, but that make for wonderful and imaginative viewing for kids as well as adults. There is an excellent article on Design for Minikind about how mom Rion started the blog after trying to find an example of jazz scat for her son. They were both thrilled with the 1969 video she found of Ella Fitzgerald doing it like no one else can (holy MACKINAW she is good - it is super hard!), and when her son spent the rest of the week scatting everywhere he went (such an unfortunate homonym...), she knew she had to share it.
The videos are grouped under Science, Technology, Space, Animals, Food, DIY, Art, Food, Music, and Animation, and forget the boys, I could spend my entire day on here. The world is just so damn full of cool and interesting people! If that isn't a great lesson to learn when you're young, I don't know what is.
I especially love the art category, but they are all amazing. I am including a couple here, and had to post the Oliver Jeffers one because I love his books and he's so dreamy...
And considering the amount of hours Will and I have logged watching films on space and the planets, and my obsession with Chris Hadfield, I thought I would add these as well:
Seen anything cool online lately? ;p
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.
Cam's new "vintage" big boy room
Cam has been having sleep troubles lately (ergo, we have all been having sleep troubles lately). In an effort to entice him to stay in HIS bed, we pulled out the turned-wood bedframe I bought at an auction in New Brunswick. I had intended to paint the frame, but I actually like the worn walnut colour. Of course this prompted some full-on decor strategizing, and before I knew it I had the boys watching Netflix and was opening a mostly-full can of the paint left over from the basement.
The bed required a new mattress, so I headed to Ikea. While I was there...I realized we would need a new duvet, and why not this young-but-not-too-cutesy duvet cover? It's a dangerous place, that Ikea.
Other than that, the room cost $0. All the big artworks on the north wall were feeling a bit too heavy for me, so I took them all down (except for Yara's of course!). Suddenly I remembered these wooden figures were sitting in the garage, waiting for the perfect spot. My neighbour had them out for a garage sale a few years ago (he's an antiques dealer) and when I asked about them he gave them to us. I love the style of them - they look straight out of TinTin to me. I have no idea what they were originally used for - they are all two-sided.
I flipped up the Expedit shelf, and got rid of the little dresser - meaning all Cam's clothes had to go in the baskets (the white dresser is actually full of my husband's clothes!). The artwork is mostly the same - Chris insisted that the elephant stay - and I love this photo of Chris and his brother when they were little. I grabbed these un-used curtains and although they aren't very 'kid's room', I like how they go with the grey and white furniture. I have a bigger, more substantial curtain rod I would like to put in, but it didn't get done - YET!
So to recap, it went from this:
to this:
to this:
And I might be done. For now.
DIY whiteboard coffee table
I have to say, while not being the most aesthetically-pleasing of projects, this guy has to be one of my favourites, based purely on the fact that it is a raging hit with the boys. It could actually be a very beautiful project, I just didn't have the optimal bones to start with, since I found the coffee table on the street on garbage day. The table looked pretty solid (it was damn heavy) so I squeezed it into the back of the car while taking the kids home from school one day.
The run-of-the-mill heavy machine-turned legs are not really my style, but the price was right, as was the shelf underneath. It was in pretty rough shape, with peeling veneer, chipped and cracked paint, and creaky legs. It looks like it was someone else's up-cycling project at one point, but they must be even more impatient than I am (I didn't think that was possible) because it definitely wasn't sanded or cleaned before the paint went on in glops and dribbles.
I sanded the table for the better part of a weekend - next time I would definitely try to scrape off more paint before the sanding stage. Then I filled in the cracks and split veneer with wood-filler, and tried to fill in the routed "detail" on the top. I also hammered in some nails around the legs to secure the wobble. It was at this point that I hit a creative roadblock - should I just leave it white? Paint it with blackboard paint? Get the fancy expensive white board paint? I tweeted about my indecision and was surprised and thrilled to hear back from Steven at Smart Wall Paint. He offered to send me a tester of their white board paint and I jumped at the chance! When it arrived by DHL, the cost of duty was as much as the paint would have been from Home Depot, but I was excited to try it. It was also a great chance to make use of the Scotch blue tape I had been sent. I painted the bottom a light grey with the paint left over from my bathroom redo, and there was just enough smart paint for the top.
The paint was an interesting process - you have to mix part A with part B (much like DIY hair dye), make sure your roller passes over every section 5 times, wait 5 days, and then use. We had to open part B with a knife as the top wouldn't come off, and it was pretty stinky stuff. I carefully followed directions and waited patiently to use it. I don't know if I didn't clean it off properly, but I was disappointed that the surface wasn't a smooth glossy finish - instead it has lots of little tiny bumps - but the kids don't seem to care and you can't really see it. I call it a win.
The table has been in heavy use since the moment I put it in the sunroom. I had bought some whiteboard crayons a few years ago to go with a book Will had, and they work perfectly. I also bought some washable whiteboard markers, imagining every shirt and bit of exposed skin being covered with ink, but the crayons give better colour.
We have had roads, towns, shapes, words, animals, and games drawn on the table. My favourite was the whole zoo they made with Děda, complete with a polka-dot hedgehog! They each have their own collections of cars and trucks - the table is the perfect height for driving - and I have been keeping them in white Ikea baskets on the bottom shelf. Looks good and functional: score!
I do wish it had more modern lines, but all things considered, it doesn't look too bad in front of the sofa. As a bonus, we now have somewhere to put our feet up and rest a coffee mug (when we're allowed). So what do you think? Have you used white board paint before? I love that it fits in my favourite colour scheme (white and wood), and am contemplating a whiteboard wall in the kitchen...
*Thank you to Steven from Smart Wall Paint for reaching out - gotta love social media!
*Thank you to Laura Stratton for the Scotch Blue Painter's tape - it's awesome.
*thank you to Katrina at Pugly Pixel for the photoshop templates!
Glitter Card Production Line
I purchased a few holiday cards for the boys' classes, and never really got around to using them. When I mentioned filling them out to William, he asked if we could make cards instead, like we did for Valentine's Day. Wullll, yeah!!!
I had a ton of glitter around that I had picked up during one of my many excursions to the Dollar Store, and of course a bazillion sheets of construction paper. So we cut some little cards and I drew a few simple designs with glue. Then the boys gently tapped quickly dumped the entire container of glitter on the glue and shook off the excess. Thankfully I had the foresight to use some box tops to try to contain the glitter! Our little pot-scrapers also came in handy. They kept at it for quite a while and we had a real production line going before the glitter fights began... I think there will be glitter in our house until they leave for university - it is like living inside a disco ball. (I sort of love it.)
Christmas pinecone painting
The boys were a fabulous help with the Christmas decorating this year. One of our favourite projects was collecting pinecones at the park and painting them when we got home. We started by painting white on the edges to look like snow, but then the tubes of gold and glitter seemed like even more fun! When they dried, I put them just about everywhere - I especially love how they look on the mantel and in amongst my beach stones.
Mr. Dress-up
Thank you Apartment Therapy!
Despite the less-than-stellar quality photos, The fine folks at Apartment Therapy did a feature on the birthday party I pulled together for Will (the same week as the Steven and Chris taping). I love that they are always sourcing their stories from their readers, it's what makes the site such a great community!
I mentioned that the cupcake wrappers I used were ordered from Spaceships and Laser Beams, and they also did a feature on the party on their blog. If you are in the market for party ideas, you really should check out this blog - the imaginative ideas on there are constantly blowing me away - their staff must have SO MUCH FUN at work!
Thank to both blogs, and welcome to their readers!! :)
Ikea ideas for DIY
Will's Fireman Birthday Party
Hi guys, remember me? I haven't been around here for a while - life got kind of overwhelming (in a good way) and I have been so busy I felt as though I was incoherent by the end of the day. Because I was.
We had an amazing visit with my mother-in-law from Alberta, and while she was hanging out with the boys I even managed to get a bit of work in. I also had to clean, primp, and style every inch of my home for a little something coming up that I am ri-DONC-ulously excited for but can't tell you about yet. Exhausting. And I threw a little bash for my 5-year-old (still practicing that phrase) who had requested a fireman theme.
The above photo is of the front screen door, which is why it looks a little funny. In fact, in one of those hilarious ironies, I spent forever creating the table, food, and decor and then managed to snap just a handful of terrible photos before chaos descended. I almost considered not even posting about the party because the photos were so bad, but that seemed like a waste, so you'll just have to suffer through them.
Cam's room gets a big boy update
Above is a photo of my son Cameron's room a couple of years ago when we was a wee babe (cue wistful music.) Somehow, it seems he turned THREE this summer, and while he has grown in both height and personality, his room has not changed. Well, that's not true, it got WAY messier than this (as did he).
I had great plans for a whole new look for his room, but as I started plotting and gathering, my elder son got wind of it and insisted that HE wanted the new look. I debated a bit, since I don't want Cam to feel that he is always getting hand-me-downs and nothing new (even though that is the absolute truth) but at this point, he really doesn't care what's in his room, and Will does. Plus, I haven't touched Will's room in as many years, so I decided why not.
As a result, this weekend I moved many of Will's items into Cam's room, and took out all the baby stuff. Note to new parents: don't go too crazy buying all those cute baby items, because it won't be long until you are putting them in the Goodwill/Give-to-friends bag and shedding a tear over a) the insane adorableness of it and how quickly time passes, and b) the insane amount you spent on it.
First Day of School: Survived
Well, somehow we all survived the first day of school, despite the fact that my kids are clearly nuts. There were lots of emotions going on, and things began to fray around the edges in the late afternoon, but we did it. Will started French Immersion and came home speaking "French" with all his cars (Je m'appelle Corvette!). Cam found the huge bin of cars at his nursery school and was in heaven. They also painted with cars, which sort of blew his mind - he did 4 paintings. These photos crack me up, especially Cam's Zoolander face...
And another year begins... I am one lucky mumma.
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