Look Ma!

I'm sure you all can guess I had nothing to do with this.  These are the things that happen when Bean hangs out with Hubz.

Ugh.

Pin Tested, Pinkie Approved - Pumpkin Cheeseball

My oldest friend recently had a birthday bonfire party and we were all asked to bring a dish.  I had no clue what I wanted to make but I knew it had to be something relatively easy and quick.

This cute pin showed up on my Pinterest dash just in time.  I knew I had found the one.

It is from BlueberriesandBlessings.com.  It was very easy to make and I thought it turned out so cute.  

I did not have any type of stem like in the original pin so I took a piece of pasta and colored it green with food coloring.

Note to self:

Wear some gloves the next time you decide to play with green food coloring.  Duh.

This was a very easy pin to make and it tasted very good, too.

Pin Tested.  Pinkie Approved!

Get on your broom and ride!

Witch's Broom Revamp

This Halloween Bean wanted to be a witch.  I have no idea why because she doesn't watch anything with witches in it.  But I was just glad she didn't pick out anything that reminded me of Hooker Spice so I was fine with the witch idea.

We went off to Party City in search of an acceptable witchy costume and Bean found one called Miss Matched Witch.  It is all different colors (my fave) so of course that was the one.  She also wanted a broom to go with the costume.

We found one but thought it was kinda plain.

No fear!  Mommy can slap some crap on it and call it pretty!

Excuse the pictures because 1) I remembered I needed to pretty it up around 9pm the night before she needed it for her school carnival and 2) do you know how hard it is to take a picture of a long, tiny broom?  It's hard.

I started off by spray painting the entire broom black.  At this point I wasn't really sure what exactly was gonna get slapped onto this thing so I figured I might as well spray paint the whole thing.  I used Krylon Short Cuts in black because I knew I didn't need a whole bunch of paint.  Then I sprayed the bottom part of the broom (what's that called?  The wiskers, wisk, part I don't use much?) with Krylon Glitter Paint.

Can I just stop a moment and tell y'all that I have found my new best friend in this Krylon Glitter paint?  It is amazeballs and I love it.  This weekend I think I'll spray it on everything in my house.  Maybe even the dogs.

Pardon this crappy picture.

God's gift to glitter lovers.
Thank ya, Jesus!

After all that fabulousness dried, I wrapped the handle in wide purple satin ribbon.  Then I used this cute Trick or Treat ribbon to dress it up.  This ribbon really goes well with Bean's costume.

Eat Rick?  Is this Walking Dead ribbon?

It still needed something more than paint, glitter and ribbon, I thought.  So I wrapped the top of the wisky part with orange baker's twine.

This is the best picture I could get of the finished project.  I know you can't see the whole thing but just use your imaginations, kids.

Ready to ride.

When I showed it to Bean the next day, she loved it.  And here is the Miss Matched Witch herself enjoying her new ride.

An Anglophile dresses her kid...

I couldn't come up with a better title than that to share a funny little story with you all.  Some will find it funny.  Others will say "and...that's all you got?"  If you are part of the second group, I'll go ahead and apologize for your lack of entertainment now.

Some of you that know me know that I am a huge Anglophile.  For you rednecks that read this blog and don't know exactly what an Anglophile is, here is the definition.

From Urban Dictionary:

1. anglophile

Someone (more often than not American) who holds an extremely romanticised view of England and the English. 

In other words, I fancy myself a Brit.  I know I am not.  I know I was born in Atlanta, Georgia and I am proud of that.  But part of me does wish that I had a completely different accent than the one I do have.  I wish I had the by-birth-right to complain about the Queen instead of a President.  Not that I would ever complain about anything ole Lillibet ever did though.

I love all things British.

I love the Royal Family.  I love grey, rainy mornings.  I love Earl Grey tea.  I love watching BBC America.  I dream in British accents.  I want a closet full of Burberry crap.  I want a house in the country and a flat in London.  I want to take O levels and go to boarding school (preferably Hogwarts), and ride the Tube.  I want all of that.  But alas, I am a Southern gal who lives in the semi-country surrounded by pick up trucks and gun nuts.  And no there isn't anything the least bit wrong about any of that.  Not one thing.

All of those things make up who I am at my core.  But I do romanticise about being British.  I like to think of myself as a Southern gal with a British sense of humor.

So now that you know all of that about me, it should not come as any surprise that on my cellphone, under the iPhone's weather app, I have a listing that shows me what the weather is in London every day along with a listing of the towns we live and work in.  I often scroll through to see what my fellow Brits (if I was actually a Brit) are experiencing on the weather front each day.  Will they need their umbrellas?  Will it be a rare sunny day?  I just like to know what Tom Hiddleston or Benedict Cumberbatch will be facing each day, just like everybody else does.  Y'all all wonder that, don't you?

Usually every morning I check the weather app to see what the day will bring and how Bean should dress.  This morning was no different.

Well, that's not true.  It was a little different.  We woke up late.

We were running around trying to shove PopTarts in our mouths, jump into our pants, brush our teeth with our hairbrushes, all that crazed energy that happens on mornings when you are short on time.

I grabbed the phone and quickly checked the weather.  61 degrees and rainy!  Sheesh, I thought.  That's quite a big drop from yesterday when it was 73 degrees.  A cold front must be coming through.  And look this weekend is no better at 63 and 61 degrees.  Brrrrrrr!  Chilly!  Might have to break out the heater, too.

(We are Southern, remember?)

So I immediately ran to Bean's closet, pulled down the lined raincoat she has, grabbed some very thick blue jeans and a long sleeve shirt for her.  I almost grabbed the sweatshirt she likes but passed on it.  Grabbed some of her thicker socks and ran back to hand it all over to her.  Bean looked at me like I was insane.

"Honey, it's going to be 61 degrees outside and rainy all day.  I know you don't understand what 61 degrees really is but trust me when I say you will get cold today."

So says the cold-natured mother to her hot-natured child - the one that gets hot playing outside in that ever-elusive snow stuff.

So she gets it all on without another word cause you know, she trusts her mother and all that jazz.  She is bundled up as we are walking out to the car - still no rain in the sky though.  Hmmm.  That's weird.  

No rain at all on the drive to school either.  Sun in the sky, in fact.  Hmmm, again.

When we get to school, as I'm walking her in I say, "now make sure you keep up with your raincoat cause you will probably need it this afternoon."  

As I get back in the car and grab my phone to turn on my audiobook, the weather app is still opened on the screen.  That's when I notice it.

LONDON

61

Hmmm, indeed!  I dressed her for Tom Hiddleston's weather, not ours.  She will be burning up today.  

Poor little thing having a dumb anglophile for a mom.  

"I'm just a horrible kid."

"I'm just a horrible kid!"

That's what Bean said to me after I picked her up at school one day last week.

When I heard her say this, my heart just sank.

Nobody ever wants to hear their own child say this about themselves.

To give some background on why this was uttered, when I picked her up from school that day, she was sitting at the head table with a teacher.  Sitting there instead of being allowed to run around and do your own thing is never a good sign so I already knew something was up.

The teacher informed me that Bean had been in a slapping match with a little boy.  One of those kind of things were they were each hitting the other's hands in the way only little kids or girlie girls can do.  Something akin to otter high fives.

These two were separated but then later on, Bean got in trouble again for getting upset with the same little boy and picking up a wooden block and throwing it at him.

I have no idea where she gets this temper from.

But really, that's just not like Bean.  She doesn't normally get that frustrated with other kids.  But this was the second incident (slapping a cousin being the first) and I just had no idea where it was coming from.

When we got in the car, I stood next to her while she was getting in her seat and I asked her why she had acted that way to the little boy.

"I guess I'm just a horrible kid!"

That was her answer to me.  My husband and I are no saints or perfect parents.  We do let curse words slip and we have been known to raise our voices at each other in front of Bean.  But neither one of us has ever put her down.  We would never call her horrible so this response floored me.  I asked her why she said that about herself or where she heard that.

She never could tell me where she heard it but she must have picked it up someplace.  But that really doesn't matter, I guess.  What mattered most was that this was how she was feeling about herself that day.  And that's not how I ever want her to see herself.

I know we all get down on ourselves and we all have bad days.  Understandable.  But she's 5.  She shouldn't ever feel that way about herself at this age.

I talked to her about what had happened that day, about what she could have done differently and how to help herself when people are getting to her.  Then I explained to her that I didn't like hearing her talk about herself that way.  I said that Mommy and Daddy never once thought she was a horrible kid so she wasn't allowed to think that about herself either.

She got a lot of cuddle time that evening and I think it helped her.  I know I enjoyed it!

Now hopefully the next time someone "crowds up her space" she will have more choices on how to handle the situation than to throw a block.

Boo to You!

Once again I was not really happy with the design I installed last time so I decided to change again.

This time I decided to get into the season and this background from The Cutest Blog on the Blog let me do that.  But for some reason, I could not get their header to work.  I created this one using PicMonkey and their Halloween designs.

I am definitely no programmer and I've never mastered Photoshop so I am still plodding along trying to figure this all out.  So for the time being, enjoy the boo-tiful design.

Tooth Fairy Printable

Last week, before The Tooth fell out, I thought it would be a cute idea to send Bean a letter in the mail from the Tooth Fairy.  She's at that stage now where she loves getting mail.

I created a printable using PicMonkey and a clipart image I found online.  I never could find where that image came from or how to get permission to use it so before sharing it here, I went in search of a clipart I could use and not get my pants sued off.  Nobody wants that.

I found a very, very, extremely, very cute digital scrapbooking kit called Tooth Fairy Kit made by Sweet Pea Designs.  I emailed to find out if I could use the image and Penny from Sweet Pea emailed me back and gave me the okay.  If you are into digital scrapbooking, I would really recommend them.  They have very cute designs and you can get a lot of freebies on their blog, too.

Isn't it cute?  I'll use it to make some scrapbook pages of her new smile.

Here is my free printable.

If you'd like a copy of the Tooth Fairy letter printable, you may download it here. 

Since the one I sent to Bean had personal information on it, I won't post a copy of it here.  But I basically used PicMonkey or you could use Picasa or any photo editing program you want.  I used the Text feature and wrote a note on the right hand side.  You could do something like

I heard you have your first wiggly tooth.  That means I'll be visiting you very soon. I am very excited!

Be sure to keep brushing and helping Mommy keep your teeth pearly white!  See you soon!

Your little one will love receiving this in the mail or finding it under their pillow.