Awesome Things From Around The Web

While killing time instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing: scraping Israeli couscous out of my rug under the kitchen table thanks to three very naughty toddlers, I thought I would compile a short list of awesome things I have seen lately.

1. I got my Restoration Hardware catalog quite awhile ago, and while I love almost everything in it, this piece spoke to me.  Like literally the clouds parted and the angels started singing the hallelujah chorus.  The combination of rustic with those pulls totally rocks my world.  Think of all the stuff I could put in those drawers....



And then I saw the price, $1300 and peed my pants a little.  And over time I forgot about it.

But then one day while stumbling around the internet I came across this blog  The House of Wood.  Her blog is new to me, but I think I am going to become a regular.  She made a version of this.  Here it is below.

What an amazing job.  It cost $350 which almost puts it in my price range. Almost.  Problem is I don't have the room for it, but I think I would rearrange a lot of things to get it here.  Please go and see the how to:  The House of Wood

2. Homemade Pumpkin Steamer with Homemade Pumpkin Creamer (say that 3 times fast)

Could anything else sum up autumn/fall (why are there two names?) better then this picture?  For the recipe go to the blog The Proper Pinwheel.  And then maybe I could stop dumping money down the toilet buying McDonald's mochas.

3.  Infinity Scarf Tutorial

Okay, so I realize that the infinity scarf isn't anything new, and perhaps a tutorial seems unnecessary (you just sew it together, right?) however, if you are like myself, visuals make it all good.  Plus, a plaid infinity scarf would go fantastic with my pumpkin steamer.  And my gray wool jacket that I bought in August because it was an amazing price and I figured it would be sold out by the time I actually need it.  Go here to loop it up:

Infinity Scarf Tutorial  

4.  The blog Camp Patton

A friend told me about this blog.  I have no idea how she found it, but this woman is hi-la-ri-ous.  I am talking laugh a ton until there are tears in your eyes.  Seriously, you should check it out.  She is pregnant with her third and her other two littles are still quite, well, little.  Plus hubs is an ob/gyn in what I think is his residency.  And I absolutely love the fact that I have stumbled across another woman who takes her kids to Target when hubby is away for her own piece of mind.  

5.  The blog Pinterest You Are Drunk

If the title of the blog doesn't tip you off to the subjects then let me expound upon it a bit:

This may be the first cupcake that I don't want to eat.

A hilarious website to see what happens when people go crazy and then pin it.

Remember way back in school when you thought it was amazing to play Oregon Trail?  The internet has come a long way, baby.

Turn Me On Wednesday (I know, Tuesday was yesterday, but I forgot)

Seeing as I tried to start a normal thing where I post what I like and then pretty much have sucked it up at keeping up at it, I promise to try a little harder.  I do have one friend who says she really likes these, so for her I will keep on truckin'!

Here's what I have seen that is new.

1.  Mahogany Teakwood Bath and Body Works scent plug in

I apologize for the humongous gaps around this, I couldn't fix it, and yes, I know that this is a picture of the candle and not the scent plug in.  The scent plug in was so boring to look at and I really wanted the candle but it costs $19.50 and was out of my budget.  But the scent thing was only $6.50 so I had to go with that.  I love this smell.  It is more masculine, which I tend to be drawn to.  I saw it over on In the Fun Lane, and she said that it smelled exactly like Abercrombie and Fitch, which I can't really say since I don't go into that store, but since the kidlets and I were out and about yesterday we stopped in and brought it home.  FYI, B&B Works is probably not the best place to bring 5 kids when they have all of their fall candles out.  Candles in glass containers.  Enough said.  

2.  Axe Men's antiperspirant in Anarcy

Keeping with more masculine scents, and I promise I didn't do it on purpose, I recently bought this antiperspirant for myself.  I wanted something for when I couldn't get my clinical strength on fast enough and I found this.  I swear that men's deodorant works better on me then women's.  And again, I love this smell.  Poor Chris, he hates that I am wearing men's deodorant.  For whatever reason it is just hard on him.  He always imagined that he would marry someone dainty and super feminine growing up.  I wish you could hear how hard I am laughing right now.

3.  The Art of Instruction

To prove that I am not a complete tomboy I present this beautiful book to you.  I am obsessed with vintage (or new) educational charts, mostly of the botanical variety.  And while I would really love one of these from the Evolution store mainly because they are huge and would be an awesome focal point, they are so far out of my budget at $198, it almost makes me cry.  However, almost all of the ones at the store are in this book, just much smaller.  So I am going to take apart the book and frame and hang several of them.  A good alternative if I do say so myself.  Especially since the entire book is only $22.40 at Amazon.

Here are some of the pictures up close of prints in my house and then how they look from afar.  My only regret is that perhaps the frames are a little too small for the wall, but that can be changed in the future.

4.  Hulu.com

Okay, no pretty picture for this one, and many of you probably already know about this, but I am always slow to the game especially when it comes to internet, tv, technology, etc.  Anyway, at this site you can watch new tv shows and have all the episodes right at your fingertips.  This works great for me in several ways.  One, I don't generally have time at night to watch tv, but I can do it during the day when the babies nap.  And two, even if I did have time at night, not every thing in a show is child-appropriate and we are very cautious with what we allow our kids to watch, so I don't have to worry about them coming in at the wrong time or the commercials which are very often inappropriate.  Remember last spring when I watched 22 episodes of Once Upon A Time in one week?  All on hulu.  This time around for Season 2, I will go once per week, like I should. 

That's about it for this week.  Once again, I feel like I had a fifth thing, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

Pica in kids?

Okay, so I faintly remember reading about the term Pica when I was pregnant.  Which for those who may not know what that is means the desire to eat things that aren't actually food.  Like lotion and toilet paper.  I have decided that there is a child form of this.  And Truitt has it.

Every time, without fail, when that kid sits down in the sandbox he will happily take the closest little pail, scoop some dirt and drink it down like kool aid.  Every.single.time.  I don't get it.  It cannot possibly taste good.  But he does it anyway.  Sometimes several times a day.  I am trying to decide if I should be concerned about this.  At least it is not peacock poop like this summer at my parents house.

Maybe when we go into his 15 month appt. I will ask, but I feel like it's such a parenting novice question.  Excuse me doc, do you think my child has some type of problem if he eats dirt all the time?  Truly, I know that every child under the sun has probably eaten dirt at some point in their life time.  But I have never seen a kid who eats dirt like Truitt does.  I make myself feel better about it by thinking about how awesome he is making his immune system be.  But then of course, the ugly microbiology background rears its head and I find myself what would happen if he ate anthrax.  I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the mean time, I will just continue to wipe it off the outside of his mouth and scoop what I can that makes it up his nose cavities.  And then just marvel at how cleaned out his system must be.

I tried to find something funny on Pinterest to show here since I couldn't get a good pic of Truitt, but alas, could not find any kids-eating-dirt humor, much to my surprise.  I did however find the following, and since I have a minor in chemistry (and nerdology) I thought I would share this instead.  Also, dirt comes into play so it sort of fits.

Funny videos

We had some friends over the other day for supper and I have no idea how we got onto the subject but we started looking at videos that are told by kids but acted out by adults and they are hilarious.  The more tired and late at night at it is, the funny the videos are.  I would recommend watching them with your kids.  They will crack up.  This one is about 8 minutes, but so much fun.  (On youtube look for "bored shorts" videos, and make sure the title either shows something about kids talking or something like the picture below, otherwise you just never know what you may fine)

Now my kids are addicted.  Because what they need is more tv/internet in their lives.

Epic Fail

Do you see this gross, disgusting bowl of dirty water?  I am super ashamed to admit that this is what happened after I cleaned my hallway walls from the bottom half down for the first time in, oh, as long as I can seriously remember, so at least 5+ years.  Disgusting.

And then the wall was looking brilliant and fabulous, like I had just given it a new dose of paint, and what do I decide to do?  Try to free-form paint a pattern on the wall in black because it might just turn out cool and give me what I was looking for down the hall.

Here is what happened:

The smudges are because I got seriously ticked off at how ug to the ly it looked, and in my frustration I decided to graffiti my already crappy wall.  Owen, sweet boy that he is, tried desperately to tell me that it "looked pretty good except for the messy, smudged parts".

And now because his momma is a  m.o.r.o.n   I have to repaint the hallway for real, which definitely isn't happening today, and Chris is going to freak out when he comes home.  I am thinking about emailing him to give him a fair warning because he probably would go into convulsions if he came home and saw it immediately upon entering the house and not even I will be able to somehow convince him that it is abstract or something equally artsy along those lines.

Why can't I leave things alone?  I am pretty sure when he asked me last night what our weekend plans were he wasn't expecting me to say paint.  And now, instead of doing something in the glorious outdoors, I have to quick rack my brains on what I want to do with the hallway, because I am not going to repaint and turn around and decide that I want to stencil.  So actually, when I think about it, I need time to decide what to do, so the wall will be around for at least a week.  Brilliant, hubs will love that.  (sarcasm, sarcasm, drip, drip, dripping)

It's a good thing Chris is pretty easy-going, but even this may tax him just a smidge.  Or two.

PS: Totally different subject but I just finished season 2 of Downton Abbey and am insanely jealous that the Brits have already started season 3 but it's not coming to the US until January 3rd.  I am actually so pathetic that I found some British blogs that have reviewed it so I can know what is happening.  I totally recognize that this is like jumping and reading the end of the book, but I don't care.  It will still be fabulous when I finally get to see it.  Do you know how far away January 3rd is?  Like forever.

Cha-Cha-Changes

Well, Ava started public school today.  I know I said that I was going to give it the rest of the week, but after another 2+ hour math morning I made the decision, and I think it was the right one.

We met her teacher today who seems very lovely and I had a list of everything that we have done thus far and she seemed pleased and confident that Ava isn't really behind.  Good to know.  Apparently, Ava will be the talk of the day because every little kid was talking in the hallways about how Ava was back.  I told her to be prepared to have to tell everyone today why she came back.  She told me she had three words for them to explain "brother, sister, annoying".  I told her that would work.

Hopefully, I will be able to blog somewhat regularly now that I have a lot more time.  Plus my laundry will get done and my house will be cleaner now that I am not devoting 3-5 hours a day teaching school.  I have to admit that after we came home I looked at the kidlets and wondered what in the world we were going to do all morning.

Let's see, on another note I read an article in Town and Country about narcissism.  (doesn't that just strike you funny and ironic?!)  Probably I should give the definition of narcissism: Excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one's physical appearance. It made me laugh, mostly because I agreed with almost everything they said about it.  I have lamented my disdain of Facebook before, and in the article they said "There are, or course, the plentiful and inane facebook status updates...It's nearly a cliche to say this now, but these frequent missives, taken together, offer a vast send up of the good life; they are more often tiny wishes sent into cyberspace then they are details culled from our lives."  Seems to be fairly accurate.  And then there was this statement "Then there is the confusing use of Twitter.  Is it meant to be a marketing tool?  A life coach?  A cry for help?"  Not a user of twitter, I have often wondered this myself.

And then we get to this one "And there are the ever multiplying blogs, assuring us that there will never be a single moment of unnarrated life out there".  Okay, so that one struck home a little more seeing that I, do in fact, blog.  But I hadn't really thought about it like that before.  Originally we started it as a journey of our adoption, and then that came and went and I kept going.  I haven't given much thought to why, although I do enjoy writing things down and use it almost like a journal, albeit it one that others can read.  And I would definitely agree that it can lead to narcissistic thought, especially if one is extremely concerned with comments and things like that.  But I do not write it to hope that others like me or what I have to say.  Mostly I think it is a good way to let family and friends know what is going on in life, and I have to say that it is fun to be able to talk about what I like/dislike in a public way that puts me in touch with others who may feel the same and I otherwise may have not been able to reach.  Perhaps I will have to ponder narcissism and my life for awhile"!

Now I should probably figure out what to do with my extra 4 hours of time today.  Probably laundry, as I truly believe that I have about 6 loads waiting to be done....

Homeschool Update 2

Well, things were getting along much better and then double digit multiplication entered the picture.  Today we spent 2+ hours doing this.  I.want.to.rip.my.hair.out.

Mostly this is because all of the miserable little triplets (my new nickname for them- triplets, not the miserable part, except for today) decided to essentially go crazy.  Yelling and screaming and clinging, to me, and to Ava.  Which in turn caused both Ava and me to yell and become befuddled and basically halt all learning capabilities.

And here is my conclusion:  I am 90% sure I will be enrolling her back into public school.  I am giving myself to the end of this week to come to a decision so I don't do something stupid because of a bad day.  What it boils down to is that while I like teaching Ava, and she does well with pretty much everything, unless it is a tough math concept she hasn't done before, the fact that the triplets wander around the home and cause all sorts of mayhem, plus the humongous distraction they are, coupled with the fact that unlike in reading where Ava can read and then do, in math I actually have to teach all these new concepts like division and fractions and word problems, etc. it is simply too much with the age of the littles.

Unfortunately, you cannot reason with two 2 year olds and a 1 year old.  I have tried having them do constructive things while I teach Ava and they eat the crayons or throw them.  Truitt mostly eats them and then decides to go and play in the toilet.  While funny if it is not your own children, it absolutely sucks when you are being teacher and you have to pause the lesson to disinfect your child.

Probably if they were two 4 year olds and a 3 year old, I would think this would be much better suited to us.  But I really don't think it is going to work.  I feel bad about this for several reasons.

1.  I don't mind it other than the crazy kids running amok, I actually really enjoy teaching her and as sadly, learning a lot of things I forgot.
2.  I think it is a bad example to let Ava go back to school after she begged for years to be homeschooled (and now wants to go back, by the way), it is a much better lesson to make her stay until the end of first semester to drive home the point that you asked for this, so you need to see it through (sort of), but the benefits of this lesson aren't going to outweigh the negatives which is general craziness, a child upset because she can't concentrate, a mom upset because she can't teach, or really be with the babies, high levels of stress, and the fact that Ava may get behind in her fourth grade year
3.  I look like a wuss for stopping.  But I know that's just pride so I should probably nip that in the bud immediately.

Plus, I really want to punch Mario, who I talked to around 5 times and told him about our situation, the kids' ages, etc. to make sure the program would work well for us.  He assured us it would because "4th grade is the year where the kids really work independently".  Maybe if their name is Einstein.  Not to mention that everyone I know who has done the program before said this year there are lots of crappy changes and requirements that have really messed with the program.

So, that's the update.  Part of me really wanted it to work, and maybe it still will, although looking back I feel like I have already made up my mind about it and it's not even friday yet.  But who knows, I could change, and Lord knows it's crazy enough all around for that to happen!