Invites Are Out

Less than a month til my Lia Sophia party so I'm getting in to the details of the party planning The advisor has made the invitation to go with my theme - Bubbles & Baubles. She's sending them out with a mini catalog so people can see the jewelry (and hopefully get motivated to come). I love that she's doing that. The last time I had a party the advisor just sent out those tiny 3x4 generic invites and sent them 2 weeks before the party, so turn out was pretty low.

I came up with a list of 37 people to invite - friends, neighbors, and people I know from my kids' schools who I'd like to get to know better. Now is when I start to get anxious. Aside from our Super Bowl party we don't have any parties, partly cause our kids are still little, partly cause it stresses me out, and partly because I am pretty insecure and always wonder if anyone will show up. As much as I know some people hate these home parties, it is a good excuse to get people together. I mean there are people who hate these home parties and never attend, there are those (like me) who will attend if they like the product because they know they want to buy something, and then there are those who will attend any party if they are available.

The advisor is sending me some of the invites to hand out myself (to neighbors) as well as a few extras if I come up with more people. I plan on just dropping them in the mailboxes as we walk to school. She is also setting up an event on Facebook for me and will send little teasers and pictures of popular pieces and notices about specials as we get closer. She's already tons better than the advisor I worked with last time (who to the best of my knowledge is no longer working with LS. She also doesn't do any cheesy ice breaker games, just one easy one kind of a good "hot potato" where you pass boxes of jewelry based on a text she reads about Lia Sophia and every time a celebrity is mentioned, you pass the box. Whoever has the box when she's finished wins what is inside. She does a couple of demonstrations of some of the more versatile pieces and then leaves people to shop and chat.

My kids are excited cause it means that they get to go out to eat just with their Dad, and will probably watch a movie when they get home to keep them out of the party area.

I have no idea how best to set up the party in terms of flow and seating for the presentation. But I guess I'll work that out once I have a final count. I am having fun trying out new recipes though to figure out what I am going to serve.

So far I'm planning
- raspberry swirl mini cheesecake cupcakes

- baked brie bites (in phyllo dough)

- Cheesecake stuffed strawberries

- Kahlua chocolate cake

- Raspberries with white or dark chocolate chips

I'll probably also include a cheese tray and fruit tray and maybe also Katherine Hepburn's brownies or Nutella fudge

Drinks - All sparkling for the sake of the theme

- Limoncello champagne cocktail (I've had a bottle of Limoncello in the freezer for ages that I used a small amount for a recipe and since no one liked the meal, never touched it again, time to dust it off)

- Bellinis

- Prosecco - probably Cupcake
- St Hilaire sparkling wine (recommended by a friend who like me loves Veuve Clicquot) This is not officially champagne so is cheaper, but still French
- Regular red or white wine
- And just in case there are any pregnant ladies (I think at least 2 on my guest list are), I'll have raspberry ginger ale or sprite

Obviously the final menu will depend on how many people plan on coming, but I figured since the party starts at 7 and most of the women I am inviting have young kids they may eat dinner before they come and just want some desserts or savory treats.

Anyone have an suggestions to add to my planned menu?

Jack o Lanterns & Jack o Peppers

As I've mentioned one of my favorite parts of Halloween is carving pumpkins. Luckily as each year goes by the kids are willing to do more of their own.  A couple of years ago I would end up carving 3 pumpkins.  My husband would do his own, I'd end up doing the kids cause they didn't like touching the goop and weren't able to use the sharp tools.  After everyone was in bed I'd carve my own.  Not ideal but we always wanted everyone to have a pumpkin.  Anyway, here are this years jack o lanterns....

My husband's is the top one.  He does the same face every year, but I guess now that my daughter's are following my lead and going away from traditional face jack o lanterns, it's ok.  The mummy is mine.  Little Reader did the witch and carved most of it herself.  Little Hugger did all the stenciling and prep work on her cat, but I had to do the carving.  Little Man didn't do much aside from tell me how he wanted his carved, but that's ok he's only 3.

We got lots of compliments on our collection from the trick or treaters and Little Man especially liked pointing out his scary pumpkin to anyone who commented on them.


The night before Halloween I decided to make a Halloween themed dinner that I saw on Pinterest.  I wasn't sure if my kids would eat it as they're not really fans of stuffed peppers but they ate them this time.  Here are our "jack o peppers".

Here's a link to the recipe I used.  I didn't time it right to use the crockpot though, I put them in the oven at 375 for about 30 minutes and they came out perfect.  The only change we made was adding some shredded cheddar on top (I may mix it in next time)

Why I love Pinterest

When Pinterest first started I resisted joining.  I was an early Facebook adopter and have since become quite addicted.  I was afraid of a similar time suck from Pinterest.  Friends joined, offered me invites (back when that was still necessary) and I declined.  Finally one day curiosity got the better of me, and I requested an invite from a blogger I followed at the time.  At this point I never admit to my friends I'm on Pinterest.  I use my blogging name and keep it separate.

The first time I went on, I repinned a few things checked out my friends pins (but didn't follow anyone) and followed a few bloggers.  Over time I started using the bookmarklet and actually find that I use that more than repinning.

What it comes down to is that I know myself and my talents and limitations.  There are some beautiful things and delicious recipes on Pinterest that I will never pin because I will never actually attempt them.  It's like Gourmet magazine.  I am intimidated by it, have never bought a copy and would never attempt a recipe from it.  It just seems beyond my abilities and I'm ok with that, because I know there are enough things I am capable of that I don't need to reach for that level.  That's not laziness, that's just knowing myself. 

I like the simple stuff.  I pin recipes from magazines and websites I like, but I don't follow the actual publication.  I don't want to be inundated with ideas, but if I see a recipe that sounds good in my Better Homes and Gardens magazine, instead of ripping it out, I'll find it online and pin it for later.  I also am a little annoyed that corporations are trying to get in on all the social media.  I understand why they do it, they want to make money, but supposedly this was started by some computer geek whose not very techsavvy grandmother wanted to be able to share recipes and knitting patterns with her friends - and don't blame me if that's wrong, I didn't factcheck it, just heard it somewhere and it makes sense.  

When it comes to crafts I stick to easy things I can do with my kids (not for my kids).  If you check out my pins you'll see what I mean.  If I see a cute picture, I'll check out the tutorial.  If I only need to buy one easy inexpensive item to do it, I'll pin it.  If there's a long list of tools I need, forget it.

I have two separate boards for recipes.  One for recipes I want to try and one for recipes that I tried that worked.  When I try something new, I view the recipe on my iPad as I cook.  If it was successful, it gets repinned as a recipe that works and I print it out.  If it didn't work, I delete it. 

The other thing that Pinterest has a ton of is organizing tips.  When I first started reading blogs I found a lot of homemaking sites.  Some had helpful tips once in a while, some made me feel overwhelmed, and some made me feel like a failure.  I no longer follow the blogs but I have pinned a few of the things that I liked and maybe follow that pinner so I can quickly weed through their lastest posts.  As useful as I found one series a blogger did on the multitude of uses of vinegar (and I mean it, I use a bunch of the "recipes" now), it wasn't the type of stuff I wanted to read everyday. 

So to sum up, my Pinterest tips are
1. Follow selectively.  You don't need to follow your friends, if they tried a great new recipe or made a cool new craft they'll probably tell you about it.
2.  If you don't want to follow a blogger constantly but don't want to lose sight of them completely, follow them on Pinterest.  You'll get the highlights and can always check their blog for more stuff if you want. 
3.  Install the bookmarklet on all devices.  Like I said, I get emails from Real Simple and BHG with recipes, if I find one I like I pin it.
4.  Purge your pins on a regular basis. I love that Pinterest tells you when you originally pinned something.  I recently deleted a bunch that I had pinned 8 months ago.  If I haven't it done it by now it's not happening, away you go.  
5.  Have at least one board of things that make you smile.  For me it's cute pictures of animals, pictures of places I have been and have fond memories of, and pictures of places I want to go someday.  Sometimes you just need to go to your happy place, and visuals that I have pinned help me get there. 

And in case you're curious, here are my pins

Pinning Success

Awhile back I found a pin for a gift wrap organizer using an upended stool and sewing an organizer for the outside. Didn't seem too hard, (here's the link if you want to try it) but I kept putting off the project. Now that we're getting closer to the holidays I started thinking about it again.




 Then I came across a link to a Martha Stewart pin that was much easier, cheaper, and to my son's delight required a trip to Home Depot :)

A paint bucket $3.98 plus a Husky tool caddy $6.98. Done. The pin suggests a tension rod for ribbons but I skipped that as we don't use a lot of ribbon. I am thinking of adding one though to help separate the wrapping paper. The rolls do flop around a little even though I put them on either side of the handle.  My tool caddy has a ton more pockets probably cause it's meant for regular hand tools and the Fiskars one on the left is meant for gardening tools.  I really like that it has lots of little pockets for different pens/pencils.




 Either way I like this so much better than my old tall Rubbermaid organizer. Stuff would get stuck at the bottom never to be seen again. Some rolls were to long to allow the lid to be on it. It has now been relegated to the garage as a new home for baseball bats and lacrosse sticks.

What are you doing to get ready for the holidays?

Purging

I love getting rid of things. I don't know what it is, I'm not into Feng Shui or anything like that, and I don't have an extreme minimalist house, but whenever I can get rid of something we no longer need it just makes me happy. Recently we've gotten rid of a lot of things - changing pad and Diaper Champ now that Little Man only wears diapers at night, the extra toddler mattress - since Little Hugger does not roll out of her bed, and of course the big one - the crib.

Ok, I didn't entirely get rid of it. I kept the springs to use as a pin board (like this one I found on Pinterest from Iheartorganizing.blogspot.com). I kept one of the sides to hang fabric on after I've ironed it in case I have to stop working on a project. I would have loved to have made a crafting desk for the kids like this one (here's the original site) but I don't have the room. A friend of mine cried the entire time she was taking apart an hauling away her sons' crib when they were done with it. I don't get that. I understand it's a symbol of a part of their life that has passed and never to return again, but it's also a sign of the beginning of a new stage of life.

It's not that I'm not sentimental. I do keep things that the kids make for me (but not every one). I keep cards, have a ton of photo albums. Tons of the songs on my iPod bring back
memories of one kind of another. I just don't feel the need to keep a lot of stuff.

Little Reader is like me. She often asks me to help her organize her stuff and she weeds through papers and things on a regular basis. Actually her room is neater than mine was when I was a kid.

Little Hugger definitely is more of a hoarder. She'll keep little scraps of paper for a craft she has in mind, but often never gets to. Whenever I ask her to organize her stuff and throw some away she often ends in tears. We finally came up with a compromise. She has binders with sheet protectors in them that she can store her assorted crafts and drawings in. Anything too big (or something that is slightly less important but she still wants to remember, I take a picture of it and we put it in a photo album she has.

Twice a year I have them go through their stuff (toys, clothes, books) to find things we can sell at Kid's Sale. If they outgrow things at other times we put it in a bin in the basement until the next sale. It's become such a habit now, even Little Man came up to me with a baseball hat yesterday that no longer fits and asked me to put it in the bin for Kids Sale.

I'm not going to lie and say my house is devoid of clutter, but it's in pretty good shape, and unlike a lot of my friends homes, things have a place and even my junk drawers are pretty well organized.

Chalk Markers

I have been on a quest to find these markers since I discovered chalkboard labels on Pinterest about two months ago. I tried office supply stores, Michaels (as suggested by a blogger), Target (as suggested by another blogger), Archivers, and finally found them at Hobby Lobby (as suggested by a salesperson at Archivers).

It was getting ridiculous and yes, I could have ordered them on line but didn't want to spend $5 to ship something that cost $7 (I had a 40% coupon, so didn't pay the $11.99 price). I probably spent more in gas than that, but like I said, it had become a quest, and when I'm on a quest, I'm not always rational.

I was starting to worry that once I found them, they wouldn't live up to my expectations, but I'm happy to say, they were worth the effort.

So far I have used them to rewrite my chalkboard labels in my fridge (before I just used chalk and it wiped off too easily, and it's hard to write neatly with chalk), and to label the little whiteboard labels on my hanging organizer in the coat closet (previously done with dry erase markers - same problem with rubbing off easily).

The one thing I have noticed with the markers is that they do take a while to dry, but once the ink is dry they are pretty well set. The first ones I made smudged cause I touched them too soon, but once I let them dry they were fine. My daughter accidentally spilled milk in the fridge and got a couple wet, so those rubbed off, so I know they can be wet and rewritten.

Now I'm trying to think of other things I can do use them for, as I really like the way they look.

Upcoming Reads

This morning I went to Barnes & Noble to return some books.  After a very quick and easy return, I was on my way out the door when I stopped myself.  My daughters were in school, my son was at his drop off class, and I was in the rare position of being in a bookstore by myself.  Why was I rushing out?  I turned back around and wandered the stacks for a while.  I didn't buy anything but added a few potential reads.  I've added them to My Book Nook on Pinterest. If you've read something good lately, please let me know.  I'm always looking for new books to read and am finally making the time to do it again.

iPhone and Mommy apps

For a long time I put off getting an iPhone because I loved my Palm Centro. It wasn't fancy and didn't really have any apps but it was really sturdy and withstood a ton of abuse from my kids before it finally died. Last spring I made the switch to the iPhone 4 and now I wonder why I waited as long as I did. I am a list lover at heart and can't live without this wonderful device that I occasionally use to make actual phone calls :)

I don't have any games on my phone as I don't want my kids playing with it too much (I don't want them to break it) but I have a lot of apps that make being a Mom much easier. I use the Blogger app a lot, to write on the go and then I edit or add links from my home computer.

Cozi is my new favorite. Last year I would complain to my husband that I never was able to take time to myself as I didn't have access to his calendar. Now we have a family calendar on Cozi and he puts any evening or weekend appointments on it. I've added a couple of "Mom's Day Off" to it, and plan to try for at least one a month.

SplashShopper is a good grocery list app, but it was better when it was on the Palm. Still it saves all the items you have bought in the past so you can just check off items as needed instead of having to rewrite it every time.

Pinterest is a new favorite.  It's great for recipes, crafts, decorating ideas, things to do with the kids, and just something fun and inspiring to look at when waiting for kids at pick up.

I'm always on the lookout for new apps and wish I knew how to program because I have an idea for one that would make life easier.  I would call it "onestopshop" or something like that. My kids are pretty good about coming with me to run errands but their patience wears thin the more times they have to get in and out of the car (as does mine with all the buckling and unbuckling). With this app you would enter your errands, and then it would find the strip mall where you could do the most (or all) of your errands in one place. For example, if you need to go to Target, the supermarket, Bestbuy and a bookstore - would you rather drive to 4 different places or go to one place get one cart and hit all the stores in one go and be done with it. I'd even be willing to drive further if it would make me more efficient.  At this point I know what stores are at most of the strip malls around me, but it took a few years to figure it out.
 

Pinterest

It's official I'm hooked. I knew I would be which is why I put off signing up, but I see now how it can also keep you organized and save time.

I used to be the type who when I get a magazine I would read it cover to cover and rip out any articles or ads I wanted to remember instead of keeping the whole thing. My Mom has piles of magazines everywhere that she saves just for one page, it bugs me (not sure why, it just does). The problem was that aside from recipes (which I do have a good system for) those ripped out pages never had a good home, and I would end forgetting about or losing them.

Bookmarks are great but I had bookmarks on my phone, two computers and the iPad. Not very practical. I tried using a page on this blog for keeping track of recipes I want to try but since the mobile version of blogger doesn't make it easy to add links, that didn't really work either. Anything I wanted to link I had to do from a real computer. I hope they fix that feature soon.

I was very happy when I got the pinning bookmarklet downloaded to my phone yesterday. Now I can capture anything I see on a website that I want to keep.

Also, if I see something in a magazine I just go to that company's website and pin whatever it is. I'm already at the point that I get annoyed if companies don't make things pinable. For example, yesterday I found a craft I thought would be fun for the kids in Parents magazine. I went to their website and tried to find it and couldn't. So instead I just took a picture of the craft and the instructions with my phone and uploaded it. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

At this point I'm only following a couple of people and haven't added much just repinned. I have to figure out how to watermark my pictures so I can start uploading my own stuff.

Snow Day

Well, sort of...the snow only started after I dropped my daughters off at school. We drove so I could do a couple of quick errands before going home. Then at 1045 I got a call from the school. My oldest wasn't feeling well. She said her tummy hurt and the nurse had her in the bathroom in case she threw up.

I bundled up my son and went and picked her up. She was sitting on the bed in the nurse's office looking all kinds of pathetic. She had not thrown up but said around 930 she had started feeling bad and her teacher sent her to the nurses office. On the way out I saw my youngest daughter's teacher who asked if we wanted to me her too so I wouldn't have to come back (especially since it had just started snowing and she only had 45 min left anyway). So we did.

We got everyone home and my oldest up to bed. She didn't have a fever but also told me that before she went to the nurses office her ears started ringing. I asked her if she had gotten light headed. She didn't know the term but once I told her what it meant she agreed, that her vision had gotten blurry and dark. I told her what to do next time.

She was home about 30 minutes before she did actually throw up, and spent most of the afternoon resting in her bed. So it was good she came home.

My son got a nice long nap that afternoon since I didn't have to leave for pickup. I did do a bit of shoveling and snow blowing, before it got dark . About 4 inches at that point and still falling. I unplugged the Christmas lights :( Admittedly we were among the last in town to have them turned on, and it does cost a lot in electricity to keep them on.

Back inside I had a beer and played Jenga for a while. First with my youngest daughter and then the older one came down to join us. Resting had made her feel better but it got kind of boring once she read all the new books she had in her room. She just finished the new Magic Tree House book about Abe Lincoln so was telling us all sorts of facts about him.

Dinner was tortellini with Alfredo sauce for my husband and I, plain for my daughter and a couple of chicken nuggets for the sick one.

As I was cleaning up, I saw that I had received an invite to Pinterest and started setting up the account in my phone. For some reason you have to do the initial setup from a FB or Twitter account (I guess to facilitate the following) but I didn't want to do it that way, since it's more to link to this blog that I want it. I unfollowed any names I recognized and then played around with it after the kids were in bed. I can definitely see how it can get addicting. I found some cool kid crafts, a couple of recipes, and some home organization/cleaning tips in a fairly short time. Those last ones will come in handy since I had to let our cleaning lady go today. She's been great and I hated doing it, but it's hard to justify $100 every other week when we have $90000 in debt. I kept trying to rationalize having her come one last time to give me a base line clean before I implement whatever new cleaning plan I come up with, but again that doesn't make sense either. So I figure this weekend I'll come up with/start the plan. Hopefully I can give the kids a couple of more useful chores too.