Happy Monday

Ahh... wholesome afternoon activities for the kiddos.  Hopefully there are some good lessons in Toy Story 3, like how it doesn't pay to be a mean bear.

I'm reaching.

Lovely day outside, though.  I'm going to have to squeeze in some outside time after work today and before dinner.

Happy Monday!

Thoughts...

Is it bad that working makes me think of everything that's not work?  I mean, I don't spend nearly as much time thinking about things non-work-related as I do when I'm working.  Good thing I'm used to my mind working in 13 directions at once or I'd get nothing done.

* * *

In my reading world, I'm picking at Jane Austen's Persuasion.  Lovely story about a girl who lets friends and family have far too much influence on her decision making when it comes to the love of her life and regrets it.  This makes me think about my decision making and how I let people in too much when I shouldn't have and shut them out when I shouldn't have.  As a Christian I should always ask God which way I should go more often than I do, but now that I've entered my 30s, I find myself doing this more than I did in the past.  Thank you, experience.  What or who influences you?

* * *

My Google Reader list is starting to look positively gluttonous with blogs.  I will have to update my blog roll on this blog so you can see some of the cool blogs that are out there you may not have already been aware of.  The thing about the blogs I like -- design blogs, food blogs, travel blogs, craft blogs, photography blogs -- is that they are all in cahoots and let you know about each other's blogs, which give you more awesome reading and photographic material than you can possibly know what to do with.  The villains.  


Three to check out:

Birch + Bird Vintage Home Interiors

Posie Gets Cozy

Wayfare Magazine

* * *

I'm getting a lot of inspiration and ideas lately.  Unfortunately I have no idea what to do with it.  Hmm...

See America First

Dreaming of vacations recently...  I can't imagine why.  For some reason the ad for Southwest Airlines keeps popping up in my brain while getting the kids cleaned up from dinner.

Or dealing with another mess from the last child refusing to be completely potty trained.

Or dealing with a major five year-old going to sixteen year-old attitude who apparently has been cursed with one of the absolutely most incompetent human beings on the planet for a mother.  You should hear her explain common household objects to me like I speak another language.  

Wanna get away?

YES! 

Now, that's good marketing.

All throughout my childhood and my single, pre-kid years, I dreamed of going places, seeing things, meeting people, much like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, but without George's eventual massive community involvement and neighborhood impact.  But while I still hold dear my dreams of international travel within the next 50 years of my life, within the next 20 or so is most likely another story.  One mama toting four kids out of country?  Uh-uh.  Maybe when we're all grown up.  Or when they're grown up.  I make no promises for my own maturity.  

Family vacations are the new goal for the time being.  And what better place than our own backyard?  I'm getting excited about visiting parts of America I've never seen before, revisiting old favorites, and creating traditions in cool places close to home here in lovely Florida.  

And I'll be bringing the kids of course.

Probably...

I believe a lovely summer Charleston trip is in order very soon.  

Yay!

Are Those Crickets I Hear?

You know those times when you are going along, making plans, thinking life is getting super beautiful, and you think you have an idea of how things are going to go for a while, and you start to relax, all while getting excited about all the lovely things you're going to be able to accomplish in this new time of finally having life figured out a little bit and knowing you're going to be able to start making the most of it like you always knew you'd eventually do, and then something totally (well, almost totally) unforeseen happens that makes you have to change everything around and re-balance and re-juggle and re-pray for your sanity so that you can start figuring things out, or at least try in your usual futile-type fashion to figure things out, until you realize again for the 40 bazillionth time that you can't actually figure things out, and only God will be able to figure it all out because He's the only one who can see it all, and you wait and wait and wait for things to even out again while wondering how you can possibly have that waiting feeling since you also always feel a bit like you're running around with your hair on fire, but then you get these lovely God-given moments of peace and realization of gratitude for all that He's blessed you with all while letting your poor, starved baby blog eek out an existence without nourishment or love because you can't possibly imagine how you're ever going to get back to doing all those lovely things and plans that you were thinking about when you thought life was starting to balance out and get super beautiful?

Yeah... it's been kind of like that.

I knew you'd understand.

P.S.  Here is a picture snapped by my dad.  It's our friendly, neighborhood alligator.  Seriously.  This pond is in front of our house.  I'm kinda hoping he'll move out before he gets much bigger... or friendlier... 

Can I interest you in a larger pond much, much further away?

My Swedish Kid

I haven't posted in a couple days, because I've been working on, well.... work.  When it rains, it pours. 

I've also been working on silly things like this, because it's Rose's birthday tomorrow, and I would like her to have some stylish, crafty things in it.  So I was up late last night mostly working on this:

You can't really see it, but we're having a mermaid-themed party, because Miss Rose likes mermaids for the moment.  I thought this would be pretty and fun, and I really am liking the idea of having festive decorations you don't have to throw away.  She can hang it in her room after.

I got the pattern from Little Lizard King.  Very cute if I do say so myself.  The fabric is from Nauvoo Quilt Co.  These two shops are lovely and speedy with tons of cute stuff, which basically will eventually translate lots and lots of -- well, let's call them necessary -- purchases.

But let's go back a bit.

First, I love this place:

And of course a good part of the reasoning for this is it's a cool store with furniture I can afford.  I actually had a brief moment of insanity where I almost bought TWO cute craft bins at Joann Fabrics -- two at $17.95 apiece!  People need organization, right?  Right???  But can you imagine?  Then I came to my senses and remembered to just jot it down on my running list for a future Ikea visit when I had enough on there to rationalize the amount of gas to get to the store.

Phew.

Another part of the reason is the cafeteria is actually pretty darn yummy.  And, once again, economical.  Sometimes, I can feed my kids there for free.  I don't usually plan it that way, but sometimes you just get that extra happy grace.

What I usually get there (except for breakfast, because it's woefully unavailable) is this:

But as I haven't been there in a while, I decided to make my own and experiment on my family, because what are family for except the leeway to experiment on people who have to love you no matter what?  I had made Swedish meatballs before, but this time I used this guy's version:

Because when I make his recipes, they usually turn out awesome.  (For recipe, see:  Alton Brown's Swedish Meatballs.)  Also he doesn't use sour cream in his gravy, which is good because me mum does not care for the stuff.  And while she's family and, as aforementioned, therefore well-placed for experimentation, it would not do to experiment with things you know they don't like.

Unless your kids have a fatal aversion to vegetables, and then it's just tough noogies.

In my opinion, the recipe was much better because of it.

This is my sous chef.  Or at least my sous chef for the evening.

She apparently, judging by her shirt, had some sort of Italian dish at school that day.  Nevertheless, she's good to have in the kitchen.  Whereas Lily is good for serious culinary training, Ivy is good for morale.  For me, anyone three feet tall who can fall off a two-step step stool and laugh about it is okay in my book.

So here is my sous chef on the floor.  It's so easy to find good help these days.

Side note:  My kids are a motley cultural blend of Welsh, German, Mexican, Norwegian, Lithuanian, and a little bit of Swiss and Irish just for fun.

Ivy is now all of this and half Swedish.  She ate enough of the resulting Swedish meatballs to be practically fluent in the Swedish language.  She's been listening to ABBA ever since.  She's planning a viking raid that I'm not supposed to know anything about.

Actually, I think she was doing that anyway.

I'd have taken a picture of the actual meal, but min familj inhaled them too quickly.

I shall have to explore more Swedish cuisine in my off time from now on.

Have a lovely day!

Girlish

Sometime's I'm too practical (and sometimes not).

I've been called a cynic once or twice (but mostly an optimist... I hope).

In the past I've been able to talk myself out of the frivolous or unnecessary, but I've found that as I get older and responsibilities get more pressing, it takes an added effort to make sure to include the fun and silly and "unnecessary" things of life.

So in celebration of having three little girls,  I have decided I'm going to throw girly birthday parties, paint tiny fingernails, continue on my search for pixie dust retailers, embrace pink, pink, and more pink (if they want to), and continually seek ways to help them celebrate their girlishness in as much as it goes with their personalities.

Rose's family mermaid birthday party is this weekend.  Yayyy!  Shhhh.  It's a surprise.  

So in that vein, I'm in the middle of making tutus for all of us.  Well, the tutus (and ensuing dress-up madness) are for them; the pictures will be for me.  

They like tutus.

And pink.

Crafts are fun; girl crafts are girly fun.  

I'll let you know how they turn out.

Don't worry.  Leif won't be left out.  We like all his boyishness, too.

Arrrgghhh.

That's my manly sound.


Never mind.

Of Gardens and Guns

Garden & Gun is my new favorite magazine.  Why?

Well, it might be because I do enjoy a good garden.  A beautiful garden is enough to stop me in my tracks and make my heart do a little dance.  Of course, I enjoy many beautifully-crafted things in this way.

It may also be because, though I am not enough of a gun enthusiast to actually subscribe to a guns publication, nor even devote a single thought to munitions in any sense in a given day, I have enjoyed a trip to the shooting range on occasion.  I was actually a pretty decent shot at one time, but it's been a while.

It may even be because, since having moved back to the semi-North for a couple years and then coming back, I have a whole new loving appreciation for the South, and I now consider myself an adopted Southerner.   I never, ever want to leave ever, ever again.

These consequential reasons aside, the absolute reason this is my new favorite magazine is that they had the perfect good sense and good taste to exhibit Wine Guy's and Chef Girl's noteworthy and beautifully handcrafted Old-Fashioned on the cover.  Can a cocktail be art?  Obviously, it can.

Of all the accolades they've received -- and The Gin Joint has received a few -- this is one of the coolest.

They also placed first in the Woodford Reserve Manhattan Experience for South Carolina with their Tobacco Project Manhattan.

But now I'm just bragging.