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Goodbye Swagger Wagon, Hello Peace Cruiser

On Christmas day we could have been the hottest new advertisement selling Honda minivans. Who needs tricked out reversible seats when you just take them out so your dog can ride first class?

For years we traveled with our old dog Blair, who we had to put down last month. Waiting in the ranks was our young whippersnapper dog, AKA “Loony Lulu,” for her first trip to Georgia since she was six weeks old.

Blair always just rode in the back, with the seat folded down, next to our oldest daughter. But the whippersnapper dog is not trusted to be let loose in the car because she has been known to get motion sickness and puke in cars seats.

So after a long morning and afternoon of present opening, packing, lunch and all cramming our way into our minivan we call Betty the Bus – all the girls, including 55 pound Loony Lulu in her large size crate – settled in for a late afternoon nap as we hit the highway.

Over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house we went – a dog in a crate, three sleeping girls and two parents who were VERY thankful to find a Starbucks open on Christmas day. Because they DID wake us up at 5:15 on Christmas morning.

Next we’ll be looking into getting Lulu her own headphones so she too can enjoy the movie on the road while mom and dad have a rare, peaceful conversation without worrying if the dog is going to puke on the kids.

Don’t you think that would make a great ad for Honda? Move over Swagger Wagon, here comes the Simmons crew on the Peace Cruiser – dog crate, Starbucks and all!

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Meet our wool eating, wood chomping organic dog that is in need of a few good sheep to herd

During the last night of old dog Blair’s life I sat on the floor helping him get water and soothing him with pats on the head, while our young dog Lulu got her first bout of freedom sleeping without being locked in her crate.

While sitting with Blair, Lulu nuzzled up to me with her cute little beady brown eyes and looked at me in a way that I knew she was trying to tell me something. It was time. It was time to let him go.

With tears streaming down my cheek and with a crackly voice, I said, “Ok Lulu. Are you ready to be top dog?”

Since then this young whippersnapper dog of ours has gone up in the four-legged ranks of our family. And with more freedom to roam about the house, she (who will be two-years-old this spring) has become the top chewing dog of all things organic and natural.

This dog of mine has chewed the hands off of a wool Waldorf doll, the wooden feet off of two wool unicorns for fairies, and the wool turnip, tomato and cabbage from a set of large organic wool play food.

She has also snacked on wooden play eggs, wool and jute rugs, and took a bite out our Christmas doormat. I find that last one very metaphoric, as I found the mat with a bite taken out of the word Joy. Lucky for her, I just laughed it off.

There is something in me that just really wants my children to grow up with pets. They add so much fun-loving life to our family, and I have felt that way since I was a little girl when I would venture out to find stray cats in the woods to bring home. With that said, I’m a pet lover. Which is why I have so much tolerance for our wool eating, wood chomping, book devouring dog.

She goes for art supplies too – crayons that are whittled out of sticks from nature, ones that were melted and made into new shapes, paintbrushes, and pencils. Really, we should get her into some art classes to release all this artistic energy!

My oldest daughter had a Christmas present under the tree that she made for her middle sister. It was a bracelet made from wool beads that she felted in an art class.

Our “top dog,” also affectionally known as “Loony Lulu” and “Wacko Head,” sniffed out the present and devoured the whole thing leaving only shreds of paper and the metal parts from the bracelet.

Aside from my daughter being distraught, this made a light bulb go off in my head. My whippersnapper dog is part (or more) Austrian Shepherd. I have concluded she is longing for some sheep to herd and therefore sniffing out every last piece of wool in our house.

It’s a good doggone thing that this loony dog and me have this special bond – which began during her puppy months of me, her, and baby number three sitting under the stars during our nightly 2 am potty breaks/nursing sessions.

I know what you’re thinking, who gets a puppy with an eight-month-old baby? Words cannot explain it, other than I was sad about Blair getting old and adopting a new puppy seemed like the fun, spontaneous thing to do on the first day of summer break.

It was nuts. I am nuts. And she is nuts too!

But we love her, despite the town’s top dog trainer telling us Lulu is the most “stubborn dog” she has trained and that “Lulu is lucky to have us” – and you know what that means! It’s also a good doggone thing I have such an awesome husband who loves me enough to love my crazy dog.

And there you have it – the story of my perfect little Montessori/Waldorf dog who has very expensive tastes in toys, artistic talents and who can devour a book in no time, literally.

Below are scenes from Lulu’s most recent destructions. It happened while she was accidentally left home alone and not locked in her crate, one morning while I volunteered in my daughter’s classroom at her Montessori school.

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Snapshots from the making of a merry Christmas

I hope everyone had a merry, merry Christmas! After presents were opened we had a pancake breakfast, packed up and hit the road to Georgia where we visited with family. We are back now, and I’m here to tell you all about it.

Below are some snapshots into our last minute makings from Christmas Eve to Christmas morning. I do believe, it’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Having my husband home all day was lovely – and a lot of help too! Bread was baked, cookies were made for Santa, dog treats were made for the reindeer, fleece toys were made for our dog Lulu, and jars of pear syrup were wrapped up from our own backyard as last minute gifts.

For a fun Christmas Eve dinner I knew the kids would eat, I made pizza in she shapes of Christmas trees, snowflakes and a bell. We did our annual reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas and set out the goodies for Santa and his reindeer.

And after that, just when I thought we were ready for bed, my oldest daughter decided to leave her dolls out by the tree, with the gifts she had prepared and wrapped for them – plus a note asking Santa to leave the dolls some presents too.

I told her that was very last minute and I’m not sure if Santa would have anything in his bag. Come to find out, Mrs. Claus tucked in some extras for these “just in case” situations – made in the very the nick of time! The extras was a breakfast set with toast, jam and yogurt for all the dolls to enjoy.

The girls got us up at a very early 5:15 AM!!! My memory is foggy from there. But as I wrote here, the morning played out quite nicely.

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Santa lightened his load and a lesson was learned

For the past, oh three years, I’ve been trying to clean out my basement that is a land of misfit toys and activities. It’s where the loud, battery operated, messy, and too-big-for-our-living-room toys go to live.

Every time I get motivated to weed out just one tiny space down there, I’m reminded of how difficult it is too get rid of things. About a month before Christmas I went though one of these binge phases that resulted in two measly trips to Goodwill.

Also, every time I do this I go on an anti-buying anything except toilet paper kick because I don’t want one more blasted thing to step over, pick up or find that the dog chewed it to pieces.

So standing in my basement that spans the entire footprint of our house, I started to dread buying my kids anything for Christmas when they already have way too much as it is. I ruled out giving them anything big. And I decided to resist my own ideas that Santa had to produce some awe-striking amazing gift and leave a room full of loot overflowing around the tree.

Christmas could still be magical, in a kid’s eyes, without all the stuff – I hoped!

I gave in to some of the things my oldest daughter asked for in her letters to Santa, which she wrote for her and her little sisters. It was sweet. And I want her to believe in Santa.

At our house we have a large red Santa bag that gets left with the gifts. Never have all the gifts even come CLOSE to fitting in the one bag for three kids. This year they all fit!

My husband was a little hesitant of my plan of not having some big shebang for them to find on Christmas morning. There was no trampoline waiting outside, or playhouses or new bikes.

Instead there was a vintage Underwood Olivetti blue typewriter for my oldest girl and a box I decorated for her stories, as well as two sewn bags for extra typewriter ribbon and white eraser pencils.

For the little girls we added a new market stand to their kitchen play area. Then I spruced up the old kitchen set up with newly sewn curtains, tablecloths and a liner in their grocery cart. Plus I rearranged all our play food and dishes, and set up the market using most of the food we already had. (There is a photo in this post.)

Many of the presents under tree were handmade items. They were trinkets from this project and that drawing, or just bits of cut up paper – five-year-old style – put into reusable gift bags from previous occasions. Then there was boots and books all about snow, for our upcoming trip to visit my brother who lives in Aspen, Colorado. Buying five plane tickets was our big Christmas shebang!

But would the girls see it this way? We still wondered nervously about how Christmas morning would all play out, considering how they were used to being showered upon by Santa.

Aside from being awoken at 5:15 IN THE MORNING and watching them happily opening presents for thirty minutes before I even had a chance to get my FIRST cup of coffee – I must report the morning was wonderful and did not lack in any big shebang.

My middle girl, in her constant quirky ways, reminded me again that really it is the little things that make us happy. The thing she wanted most from Santa was her “own” beach ball. Santa deliverered a box of 12 small beach balls and she was absolutely thrilled about it.

So who would have guessed? A box of mini beach balls, some rearranged play food and an old typewriter made Christmas morning a success.

Yes, sometimes less is more.

I try to teach my girls, and show them by example, that not everything has to come from a traditional store – and in fact most of the best stuff comes our hearts and from our hands.

So that night at our Christmas dinner table, I got my Christmas gift when my oldest daughter said, “I really like giving gifts better than ‘retrieving’ them because when I give them it makes two people happy instead of just one.”

She went on to add, “I really like giving homemade gifts. Especially when people appreciate all the hard work I put into it.”

So if you see me soon, I’ll probably be wearing a finger knit scarf made by my seven-year-old, who wrapped it in a birthday bag and was over the moon happy about getting a vintage blue typewriter that really worked.

Her thoughtfulness and insight made my Christmas one big shebang.

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These days it’s about downtime and doing less

These days, this week, in what could be a furry of doing before the big day – we are doing as little as we can. The rain has brought all of us to a slowdown on this late (now yesterday) afternoon. I am enjoying a mama’s treat of a coffee and Baileys (again) while the girls quietly play school, that was sparked by bringing an old kid’s desk up from the basement for my middle girl.

She asked Santa for “my own desk.” Bringing up the old one was my solution to that request and a movement towards my efforts to pair down this year, to buy less gifts and have less stuff to manage in the house. She was thrilled to have a place for her own scissors, paper, glue and pencils. I love when it’s the simple things that make us happy.

The rest of their Santa presents have been wrapped. For the next two days and evenings, post bedtime, I will be sewing and making gifts for them that they know were done just for them, with thought and love by me.

Other presents are going under the tree as they get wrapped this year. In them are snow gear for our upcoming trip to Colorado to visit my brother’s family who live/work in a ski town. It is a gift I hope the girls will recognize as a gift of experience versus a gift of stuff.

I think they get it. Yesterday we took a trip to East Tennessee Children’s Hospital to donate unopened birthday presents from two weeks ago. For my middle girl, the big exciting gift was a party with 19 of her friends. So when the gifts still sat unopened, I explained that we could donate them to children who were in the hospital on Christmas day. And that the nurses would wrap them and give them to the children to brighten their day. She was eager to do it and wore a proud smile on her face walking back to the car empty handed.

That experience left us all feeling very fortunate to have such healthy, awesome kids.

So mostly, these days, we are focusing on the presents of our presence, with each other, with family and taking time to stop and watch the rain and sip some coffee. The girls are busy making, running upstairs and downstairs, crafting, wrapping and telling secrets of what is happening – as more and more of their handmade presents get added under the tree.

And so now my friends, I’m jumping in to joining them.  I’m signing off from this site for a few days, to slow down, and take it all in one big breath at a time.  I hope your holidays are filled with joy and cheer!

For the most part, these days I have left my camera on the shelf. But today I leave you with snapshots of a few things we’ve been up to these days – A piano recital from my oldest girl, peppermint candy cane bath salts for friends, handmade beeswax candles, a skirt for my middle girl sewn from the sweatshirt I wore in the moments after she was born, and last year’s holiday paper made with care. Have a merry one!

 

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The joy of spending one-on-one time with my girls

Last night was night one of two, where I took one girl ice skating downtown at our Holidays on Ice outdoor ice skating rink. Tonight will be part two in the making, with my oldest daughter getting her turn at an outing with just mom.

I must say, Knoxville does it up right during Christmastime. Downtown is filled with lights. It is beautifully festive, bustling with shoppers, diners and holiday cheer. I was most cheery about taking my five-year-old out just me and her, for an after dinner treat on the ice.

I don’t do these one-on-one date nights enough with my girls. But every time I do, I am reminded of how important it is. With three children, spending time with just one child doesn’t happen often. Not only do they ask for the one-on-one attention, I love giving it. I also love the lessons I learn from them during our time together.

This quirky, full of life girl with the bouncy curly hair teaches me to live big – just as she does. She has big emotions, big smiles, takes life by the hand and doesn’t look back. While skating she clung to holding my hand at first. Then she learned falling is not so scary and that it’s how we learn to stand on our own.

Of course she took it one step further to not only feeling the bump on her bottom of a fall, but scooping some of the powdery, snowy ice up from the rink and tasting it too. She laughed and said it was great. It was not exactly the kind of snow cone I had in mind. But sometimes we learn more when we “just go it,” as my feisty five-year-old told me recently.

Then, as she gained more confidence on the ice, she beamed with delight as she skated without holding my hand – being brave enough to do it on her own. This girl has eyes that burst with joy. Her smile goes from her lips to her toes and her heart rockets out of her soul with a love that is kind and bold.

It was a knock down, topple over, good ol’ wet time on the ice. And it was an eye opener, once again, that I need to spend more one-on-one time with my girls. It’s not always convenient, it usually has to be planned and last night it meant staying out way past her bedtime.

No mater the time, the cost, or the activity – one thing is for sure, I never regret doing it.

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Upcycled canisters and gifts from a special reader

My girls were lucky yesterday to be gifted an upcycled can of homemade and local goodies, from a friend and local blog reader. In it were some nice ideas I want to share.

I don’t exactly know where the canisters came from, but they are the cardboard variety with a metal rim on the top and bottom, like the ones our protein powder comes in for smoothies. Ms. Patte covered them in scrapbooking paper, cut outs and personalized them perfectly for each of my girls. These are a fabulous alternative to buying gift bags or boxes at the store. Plus they become a gift in themselves.

Among the treats inside this year (she has made these before for my girls) were items also fit for their personalities – locally made felt hair clips, homemade crocheted hats and sunglasses for the my middle child who LOVES sunglasses.

It was all so thoughtful. My girls were touched by your kindness sweet reader. Thank you!

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Behind these old window :: My office space

Behind These Old Windows is a series I do here, from time-to-time, to share repurposed and handmade ideas while decorating around the house. We live in a 90 year-old house with huge windows and the original wavy glass. They fill every room with character and inspiration.

My office sits in a big black armoire right smack in the middle of our dinning room that is grand central station in our house. While it’s not quarantined off as being my own space, it is so many ways. I put whatever I need in those shelves, behind those doors, store it, use it and hide it from all to see. Living inside of there is my computer (ahem, both of them), along with piles of magazines, school handbooks, a dry erase board of story ideas and deadlines, mason jars of pens, photo supplies and maybe a few items to be mended, given the day.

The fact that this space is in the middle of our house is why it works for me. This is where the girls run circles from their room, to our children’s library, to our kitchen and back around again. Sometimes it happens while bouncing on balls, sometimes on roller skates, sometimes in costumes and most recently sometimes on a pogo stick. Yes life is always interesting here! And while I am still being a part of their lives, I can sit right here and still have a part of mine.

Recently I added a bookshelf to the space that was refurbished by a local woman. I spotted it at the Side Street Market in a rustic state, bought it and had the owner’s daughter refinish it for me to match my armoire. She did a fabulous job. Much better than I, a wannabe DYI gal, could have ever done. Choosing the professional this time was the right thing to do.

And even though it is my bookshelf, you can bet there is a shelf of children’s books that I love – for crafts, cooking, sewing and more. This space of mine is one more glimpse into a mama’s life where my kids make up so much of what life means, yet I find a way to still define a little bit of it for me. I love this space. I could not imagine a home office any other way.

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Ginger bread loaf house was “the best project ever”

Making a gingerbread house is a tradition in our house for the holidays. But every year I cringe at the candy ingested while going about the project, and the frosting that turns to cement, and the gingerbread pieces that never actually get consumed. We have used the kits and I have baked a house from stretch using a large cookie cutter set. But there is always the balancing act of not having the walls collapse, and the long waiting time after the frosting cement dries to make the structure stable enough to decorate.

So last week when I was racing down the isle in Target to get toilet paper and dog food – squeezing it into my day between nap time and school pick up time – and I spotted a ginger bread loaf baking pan that makes real gingerbread into the size of two real gingerbread houses –  I grabbed it!

Trying to stick to a more healthy, eatable recipe and avoiding buying the candy that makes me cringe every year. I decided to offer the kids some cranberries, dried dates, yogurt covered raisins and an organic version of sugar coated gummy bears/worms I bought in the bulk section of an organic grocery store. We made cream cheese frosting (I put it into two separate zip lock bags, snipping a bottom corner off the bag to make a decorator version of a frosting bag minus the fancy tip) and it was all a hit.

The girls LOVED it. My oldest daughter decorated her house for over an hour, intensely. In the end she sincerely declared, with the biggest thank you mom smile, “This is the best project ever!” And that fellow moms, makes a mom’s heart smile like nothing else.

For the gingerbread recipe I followed the one on the box, making my own adjustments. I used fresh flour from my flour co-op and fresh local butter – which always makes a world of difference in flavor. Also, I sifted the flour as I always do for cakes. I used less ginger and more cinnamon then it called for and substituted half the portion of molasses with honey. It turned out very tasty and is a gingerbread house that I actually, for the first time ever, can’t wait to eat!

Incase you are wondering: the pan I bought is by Nordic Ware and is a side by side double mold that makes two houses. Since it is a season item I  couldn’t find a link for it on Target.com. But there other others out there in a single form on Amazon. Just Google it. William Sonoma sells one too. There are lots of options out there in different price ranges.

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Letting the ribbon ends tie themselves

Lately I’ve made lots of mental lists (and a few real ones) of all the holiday projects I want to complete, to make, to tell you about, to do with the girls and so on. Us moms get a picture in our mind of the way we want to create holiday memories for our children, giving and taking from our ideas of it being magical now and from our own pasts.

Some people have memories of everything being perfect, with the ornaments hanging as if the tree is made for a magazine. Others were full of homemade style. While I’m the mom who tries to be in the middle, I must admit it is hard for me not to go behind the girls and gently replace the ornaments in a better spot – versus have five ornaments in a clump weighing down the branch to almost the floor.

This week I let go of the things I wanted to sew, gifts I had hoped to assemble with pancake mixes and canned pears from our pear trees, and homemade felt slippers from the Martha Stewart magazine that would have been so lovely waiting on the bed for my out-of-town guests. But this week I couldn’t be Martha. My kids needed me more. And I’m fairly certain that my in-laws feet will not get cold.

From the kitchen, a big batch of candy cane cookies and buckeyes from the freezer got stretched to the max – making it to a post recital cookie party, a toddler’s class cookie exchange, and inside nine teacher gifts that went off to school Friday morning. There were no jars of pears for all or cute sewn buckets to put them in. But you know what? Our baskets worked out just fine, and the contents in them were perfect for little hands to deliver. Which is what it’s all about.

And I did not stay up late in the night putting them together just as perfectly as I had planned. I fell asleep with my nursing toddler at 8:30. The girls made cards for their teachers and handpicked the cookies to go in the ceramic containers as we took our time getting ready for school.

They ware eager to do it and wanting to help even if it meant we arrived to school late. So we took our time. My husband, who usually handles the morning drop off  routine, was sick in bed with what I’m fairly certain is the flu. He was the only one in our house to get a flu shot, which I find very ironic. Hmmm, sigh, poor guy.

So unlike in years past, this year our gifts to tell their teachers how much they mean to us were quite simple, tied loosely with yarn and nothing fancy.

At home, sitting next to our tree is a tray of ornaments that no one has been inspired to hang, and the top was still bare. Then my oldest daughter brought home a three dementional snowflake she made at school and declared she wanted to put in on the top of the tree. GREAT! That’s just what it was waiting for. It fit right into my plan of making ornaments for our tree this year, in a round about way that I did not expect. But I had let go of my ideas of flowing streams of felt sewn together on our tree, and assume someone would be inspired to make something, or not. And they were!

And it all worked out beautifully, on so many levels.

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