Spring Break

Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go...

I woke up at 6:15 this morning.  On the first school day of Spring Break, when hopefully Big and Little will sleep in.  What was I thinking?  Obviously, I *wasn't* thinking.  Or maybe I was thinking too much since my to-do-list for today is way too long and seems to keep growing every minute.  Writing this blog post wasn't on that list, by the way.

Something that is high on the list is packing for a short visit to the grandparents'.  Fortunately, both sets live within 90 minutes of each other so knocking them both off with a single trip North is totally doable.  Big and Little are excited.  Little already started the process, as you can see -

We drive a minivan, but let's be realistic.  I managed to help her whittle things down to what she can fit in the backpack, plus the pillow pet in the bottom right hand corner (the purple blob...if you turn it over, it's actually a light up unicorn, a must have for any over night trip!).  She was surprisingly agreeable about it.  Oh, did you notice that there aren't actually any clothes in that pile?  At least not for a human-sized child, since there are a couple of cute doll outfits included.  My kids have their priorities.  Clothes, toiletries, basically useful stuff, are Mom's problem.

I'm ready on that front, though.  In anticipation of the trip, I spent a good part of the weekend hauling up the boxes of spring/summer clothes from the basement closet, unpacking them, and sorting the stuff into the girls' dresser drawers and closets.  You know this means we'll have snow next week.  That's ok, since  I left the boxes that I repacked with the fall/winter stuff upstairs for easy access.  I'll wait until July to bring them down two flights and force them into the closet.  And all the while I'll remind myself that's not laziness, it's being prepared.

Speaking of weather related things, did you have a lot of snow days in your school district?  We missed 11 this year.  Just found out last Friday that the school board has voted to extend the year one more day to account for all of them.  We now get out of school on Wednesday, June 25.  Crazy, if you ask me.  Since the original school calendar had the final day as Friday 6/20, everybody has vacation and camp and other plans that next week.  School is going to be a ghost town.  Big and Little can be the Sheriff and Deputy, because we're here so they're going.  Another entry on my long list of "Mother of the Year" qualities.

It's going to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood today.  I plan to try and spend some of it outdoors, exhausting...I mean entertaining!...the kids.  Maybe knock a few things off my to-do-list in the process since a big one is all new photographs of the jewelry and I'm doing that outside.  Big was an amazing photographers helper yesterday when I got started.  Here's a sample, using the pendant she designed for me -

But if I don't get much done, though, that's ok, too.  It'll all still be there later but Big and Little won't always be home for Spring Break wanting to hang out with me.  I'm going to grab onto that while I still can.

Have a wonderful week!

Cinderella

Proof that a new pair of shoes can change your life.

I took my life in my hands today.  Well, maybe not literally, but still...I braved the mall on a Sunday afternoon and that's pretty close.

Although, I must have earned some good behavior points because things went pretty smoothly.  The goal was new shoes for all of the ladies in the family.  I didn't end up getting anything because I know what I want, and the best store for buying them doesn't have a location in this particular mall.  The girls were successful and two out of three isn't bad.  Plus I'll probably enjoy shopping for my own shoes more when I don't have an entourage.  I got the part done that requires other bodies, since I can't take their feet shopping without having the rest of them along for the ride.

We walked right into the store, immediately found something both Big and Little agreed on (which is near to impossible most of the time), and barely had to wait for an associate to be available to help us.  Miracle of miracles, they had both girls' sizes in stock!  I am NEVER this lucky when shoe shopping with the Misses Picky.  Not ten minutes after arriving, we're out the door with these -

LOVE THEM and can't believe how easy and perfect that was!  Especially since there were requirements here...these sandals are for the girls to wear in their aunt's wedding this summer.  They have gorgeous flower girl dresses, ivory with a colored sash of their choice, pale blue for Little and pale pink for Big.  On a side note, it turned out to be very appropriate that Big gave herself and her sister stealth pedis this morning.  I only had to clean up one spot of polish off the floor once I found out about the goings on.

Shoes purchased, we stopped for sustenance in the form of a Mocha Frappuccino, then hit the Lego store where we'd agreed earlier to meet their dad. For reasons that boggle the mind, he chose to forgo the shoe buying experience and spend his time in the Tesla store ogling cars.  Anyway...whenever we go there we make a beeline directly to the back corner of the store where the Lego Friends are displayed.  If you aren't familiar with them, they're a line of Legos specifically for girls, basically a bunch of structures that together form a place called Heartlake City.  In another bonus for today, we entered the store to find out that if you bought any product in the Lego Friends line, you got a free product which turned out to be a small snack bar.  We bought.  Who can turn down free Legos?  I mean, I always need more small pieces buried in my carpets to step on, right?

This is Big once we arrived home, putting together the Turtle's Little Oasis set she chose -

Construction done, it was time to find a place for it in Heartlake City.  Did I forget to mention that we actually *have* a Heartlake City in our house (aka a corner of Big's bedroom...please forgive the unmade bed, that's a battle I've chosen not to fight on a regular basis)?

Yeah, you see correctly.  Those Lego Friends have their own private CRUISE SHIP, people.  With dolphins.  And a sundeck.  Plus a high school and riding camp.  And a house, camper, sports car, hedgehog hideaway, outdoor bakery, and various other places to visit.

And that's not all.  I have to share that we also have a Heartlake Town, which is our version of Heartlake City's younger, smaller, sister.  In this corner of Little's room you'll find the neighborhood pool, tree house, speed boat, bakery, pet salon, bunny hutch, roadside picnic area and there's a pony in there somewhere, too.

But not a shoe store to be found in either location.  Somebody needs to write to those Lego people and get that situation rectified.  :-)

Hope you enjoyed whatever it is you did today!

Science: It's a Girl Thing

Girls can do science!  Putting together a tri-fold board presenting your results, on the other hand, is something of a challenge.

- me, last night (and in reality, probably more rudely put than that)

Big has a science project due next week.  She came up with a topic, made hypotheses, came up with a workable procedure, and conducted the experiment itself just fine.  Now it's time to summarize the results, type everything up, and put together the presentation.

This process was accompanied by much growling and complaining and gnashing of teeth.  And that was just me...I'm not sure how Big felt about it.  I assume close to the same since the evening ended with a mess in my living room and a kid who locked herself in her room far, far away from anything resembling either the experiment or her mother.

It's morning now.  Just after 7AM on a Sunday, which is an hour no one should ever have to see, in my humble opinion.  But here I am because my brain didn't get that memo and has been racing all night.  Major thoughts about the science project debacle, minor ones about a custom jewelry order I had all ready to ship out today but decided wasn't quite finished.  So I had to completely unpack it, make the change, and box it all back up.  Shredded packing material is nice and cushy, but gets EVERYWHERE, by the way.

Mission accomplished on the shipment (I like to get the small jobs out of the way so I can focus all of my energy on doing my best worrying about the big ones!) so now I can get back to telling you about last night.

We left off with Big locked in her room.  I was sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by various pieces of paper that somehow had to find their way onto a display board.  The gold standard trifold (the mere mention of which strikes terror in the hearts of most of my mom friends!) was too large for what Big had planned.  She hated having all of that empty white space so we'd tried something different, and basically it backfired.  As the architect of that particular plan, the outcome was obviously all my fault, as was everything else from her hatred of broccoli to the melting of the Polar ice caps.  When I screw up, apparently I don't mess around according to my kid.

Slowly it occurs to me that my child's love of and aptitude for science was being overshadowed by the fact that she fails Glue Stick 101.  A perfectly good experiment about which she'd been completely excited just five minutes prior was in pieces around me because she's can't attach one piece of paper to another piece of paper and make it look pretty.  Really?  Not on my watch.

I'm not proud of it, but what I ended up doing was reprinting the messed up pieces, fixing a few poorly cut and/or glued spots, and laying everything out so that it sort of filled the board.  All Big needed to do was actually glue everything in place.  Which I then went up to her room and told her I would help with in the morning.  Earned me MAJOR mom points, I even got hugs out of the deal.

It's done now.  Looks good, if you ask me.  But more importantly, the science part is solid and she still wants to work in a related field - marine biology - when she grows up.

I'm working on a custom piece right now, a charm necklace celebrating a young lady who, to quote her mom, is "a viola playing fencer who wants to be a malacologist (they study snails) and play with the National Symphony."   I'm having the best time working with that!  Who wants that kind of creativity squelched by a two inch tall tube of glue?  So keep on doing science, and all of those other unique things you do, girls...Mom's got your back when you need it!

Since I'm not even ready to give a sneak peek at that necklace, I'll leave you with another charm I just shipped out (not the one that had me up all night!).  This one shares more of those positive vibes I'm constantly sending my girls' way, hoping they'll sink in via osmosis or something.

Wishing you a day full of dreams, life, hope and love!

Ban Bossy!

When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a "leader."  Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded "bossy."  Words like bossy send a message:  don't raise your hand or speak up.  By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys - a trend that continues into adulthood.  Together we can encourage girls to lead.

- from www.banbossy.com

One of the main reasons I decided to turn my metal stamping hobby into a small business was the chance that a piece of my jewelry could reach out to a young girl and encourage her to find the modern-day princess inside.  The part of herself that not only was strong and brave, but wasn't afraid to show it to the world.  I wanted my daughters and girls like them to grow up confident in themselves and their ability to do whatever they put their minds to.

So when I came across mention of Ban Bossy, a public service campaign sponsored by groups like Lean In, the Girl Scouts, and many others (you can find a list here if you want to join me in supporting these pro-girl organizations! - http://banbossy.com/partners/), I was thrilled.  Anything that promotes girl power definitely gets my vote.  I knew I had to share it with as many people as possible.

Please check out the Ban Bossy website at the link below the quote.  You'll find wonderful tips for girls, parents, teachers, managers and troop leaders.  And take the time to spread the word.  Tell everyone you know about it.  The more support girls have, the more likely we can raise a generation of strong and confident women who know they are capable of anything and aren't afraid to lead!

Big and Little

Sisters are different flowers from the same garden.

Right now, I'm thinking it's more of a jungle than a garden.  My two little hooligans are upstairs arguing over Lego sets...it's definitely not coming up roses.  Hard to believe sometimes that I actually wished for this!

If I haven't mentioned it before, I have two daughters.  Big is 10 and Little is 7 (and would definitely be giving me the stink eye if she knew I'd called her "Little").  When Big was born, I was so glad she was a girl because I knew absolutely nothing about little boys.  My nephew was only four months old at the time and we lived several states apart, so I didn't have a whole lot of experience with that flavor.  "Snips and snails and puppy dog tails" frightened me.

When Little finally came around, again I hoped for a girl.  By this time I knew plenty about little boys, and while they still scared me it was now for different reasons and not because I was worried about taking care of one.  Why I wanted another girl had everything to do with my own sister.  Sure, we spent a lot of years as the "crab grass of each other's life", to borrow a phrase from Charlie Brown, but eventually we grew up and for a long time now I've been proud to call her not only my sister, but my friend.  I wanted that possibility to exists in my own girls' lives.

Sometimes I see glimpses of that possibility.  They were four and seven here, and a little put out that I'd managed not only to catch them holding hands, but to have everlasting photographic proof of their momentary lapse in reason.  We were in "The Happiest Place on Earth" (if you can get past the thought that there's a giant talking mouse in the house!) so they were feeling pretty friendly.  That's not the norm.  Even now, a few years later, we're still definitely talking crab grass.  But it took me until I hit college to figure it all out, so there's still hope for them. (By the way, did you know you could ferment the seeds of some crab grass to make beer?  I didn't!  Always gotta look for the up side; after all, I make stuff aimed at encouraging strength and love, right?  But I digress.).

The reason all of this sisterly love business is swirling around in my brain is that my current jewelry project is a necklace for my own sister.  She saw a piece I'd made and asked if I could modify it a little for her.  I love custom work.  It's fun to bring my own designs to life, but I like taking someone's vision and seeing if I can turn it into reality for them.  Plus, there's an added bonus.  I don't get to see my sister much these days.  Making something for her that encourages love and hope and life and dreams, knowing she'll wear it close to her heart now and again, is sort of like being able to hold hands with her for a little while.  Someday, hopefully, my girls will grow up to realize the amazingness of that.

Girl Power

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.

I guess I've developed a habit of starting my blog posts with a quote.  Not shocking to those who know me.  I've been collecting quotes, mostly about love, for years.  I'm a life-long reader (I learned when I was three, and my third grade teacher told me once that I was the only student she'd ever had to ask to *stop* reading!).  My bachelor's degree is in English with a focus on 19th Century British Literature.   When you think about it, not only the quote business but the whole interest in love and gender issues definitely tie in to my background.  Makes sense that one of my passions would be empowering young women to start with loving themselves, and to break some of the gender issues that have faced them throughout history.  To put it simply..."Girl Power"!

It's coming soon to the Etsy store!

Anyway, getting back to the quote I used to introduce this post.  It's from the book All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.  And I think it's so true!  Fulghum reminds us that when we were back in that sandbox, it wasn't all fun and games.  We learned some important stuff while we built castles and pushed around dump trucks, things like share everything, say you're sorry when you hurt someone, be aware of wonder, live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Those lessons apply just as much when you're 60 as when you're 6.  I love the idea of reminding our kids about these basic ideas, keeping them part of their lives as they grow up.  It seems that so many adults I've come across have forgotten the simplest ways to be happy and live that balanced life.  I'll admit right up front that I'm one of them.  I mean, Fulghum reminds us to take a nap every afternoon...where did that one go????  Got to get some of that back on my daily to-do list!  Maybe I should make a pendant reminding us all to take the occasional time out (does anybody else call it that when they lock themselves in the bathroom to escape the kids long enough to take a deep breath?  Does anybody else ever lock themselves in the bathroom, or is that just me?).

If a piece of jewelry that I make reminds just one girl to remember those things, to feel loved and brave and strong and happy, then that's all I need.  I'll consider my "little business" a huge success.   My own bit of Girl Power!

Throwing like a girl.

Fight like a girl!

A friend from high school used to tell me I "threw like a girl".  My response was "sounds good to me, since I am a girl!"  Besides, why is throwing like a girl a bad thing?

My last post got me thinking about that, and a few other things as well.  One was the fact that I'd mentioned not being sure why I tried jewelry making as a hobby, other than that it seemed like a good idea at the time.  But looking back more closely I've remembered that's not entirely true.

The process started a little over a year and a half ago, with my older daughter.  When people ask what her hobbies are, they're often surprised to hear that Tae Kwon Do is up there at the top of the list.  They're even more surprised to find out that she's a first degree black belt.  Yep, she could take me down in five seconds or less if she wanted to...makes me think twice before asking her to take out the garbage or do some other icky chore.  :-)

Here she is at black belt graduation.  Not the greatest picture, I know.  But hugely important to me.  She's bowing in respect to a fellow student, the pair having just sparred for two minutes.  She'd probably use some of those skills on me if she found out that 1) I'd posted her picture here, and/or 2) I mentioned that her opponent (who was a good six inches taller and two+ years older) knocked her on her butt twice.  I was never so proud as when my kid stood right up each time and got back into it.  She held her own.

This is a kid who, in general, is the shy, quiet type  She rarely calls attention to herself if she can help it.  Put her in the dojang, though, and she's a different person.  I wanted to recognize that when she graduated to her black belt by getting her a necklace listing the five tenets of Tae Kwon Do:  courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit.  All of the qualities that were emerging in her as a result of her participation in martial arts.  But I couldn't find anything like what I wanted out in the marketplace.  I even contacted a few jewelry vendors asking about custom work.  While their initial response was "What a great idea!", in the end nobody ever followed through with a workable design.  I ended up giving my daughter a collage of photos from her various colored belt graduations, and making her a photo book of the black belt graduation afterward.  She loved them, but as she approached the time when she'd be ready to start preparing for graduation to second degree black belt, I still wanted that necklace.  I decided I had plenty of time, so I'd try to make it myself.  I ordered a stamped metal starter kit and had at it.

Stamping turned out to be more fun than I'd thought, and I ended up making a lot of other things.  Initial necklaces for my cousins, charms for my girls in the shapes of their favorite animals and accented with their birthstones, bracelets for my mom.  And I enjoyed every minute of it.  So much so that I gave myself a rotator cuff injury before Christmas, from repetitive motion (in other words, too much hammering!) trying to finish up a bunch of projects.  The bad news is that I haven't been able to make many new pieces since then.  The good news is that I graduate from physical therapy next Friday and get the go ahead to work as long as I'm careful and don't over-do.  That means just over a week until the jewelry-making will be gearing up.  Hooray!