I have sweetest son. This morning, as I was hobbling around the house trying to get everyone ready, Alek told me that I should just stay home and he could go to work in my place. He told me that I should just stay at home and take it easy, and he would "take over my classes."
I wonder how my students would have felt about that??? A little 8 year old version of me.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Silk Screening
I've been dying to do some silk screening. I have some great ideas but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to easily and cheaply replicate the process that I used in University. Then I found this tutorial. Amazing! Cheap, easy, and no chemicals involved. Ah, the opportunities are endless.
Thank you Kristy for the awesome tutorial. Oh, the things that I'll ink...
Thank you Kristy for the awesome tutorial. Oh, the things that I'll ink...
Dry Fried Cabbage
OMG I must try this! It looks so good. I love cabbage, and am always looking for ways to enjoy it that doesn't involve the arduous process of making cabbage rolls, or eating it an a cabbage salad. Plus, I love anything that is carmelized. I'm so happy that I stumbled across the Sustainable Suppers Website! One more awesome website to check on a constant basis.
Dry Fried Cabbage
~Sustainable Suppers~
Enter olive oil, an application of dry heat, and a beautiful little thing called caramelization. The recipe couldn’t be more simple: preheat your oven to 375-400 F. Shred your cabbage. (I shredded a green one that came in our farm share a few weeks ago.) Spread the cabbage on a baking sheet or jelly roll pan. Salt it. Oil it. Roast it. BrownitEatitLoveitLoveit.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Happy Mother's Day!
I hope that all the mommies out there had a wonderful Mother's Day. I sure did! Lev, Lukas and I went out for breakfast with Lev's grandma, his aunt and his cousin. It was so nice catching up with them. Then we came back home and Lev did most of the cleaning around the house. Which was so nice! I wiped out yesterday and scraped the skin off one knee and totally buggered the other ankle. So I'm hopping along and he's been taking excellent care of me.
His mom and step-dad had taken Alek and Mikah for the weekend and they brought them back this afternoon in time for a few drinks in the backyard and a chicken and ribs BBQ. I outdid myself! Alek came home with a beautiful Mother's Day cake that he and his grandma baked for dessert.
Plus, they brought the boys home tired, so everyone went to bed early and easily. Ahh, happy Mother's Day to me!
His mom and step-dad had taken Alek and Mikah for the weekend and they brought them back this afternoon in time for a few drinks in the backyard and a chicken and ribs BBQ. I outdid myself! Alek came home with a beautiful Mother's Day cake that he and his grandma baked for dessert.
Plus, they brought the boys home tired, so everyone went to bed early and easily. Ahh, happy Mother's Day to me!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
I'm a Raccoon Mom
Finally, some validation that I can't be the only mom who sacrifices sleep for precious "me time." I came across this article from the Globe and Mail that talks about Raccoon Moms. I'm just going to paste the article because I know that I'll want to refer to it again.
Dawn of the raccoon moms
Desperate for private time, bleary-eyed mothers are forgoing sleep to work, shop and instant-message in nocturnal peace and quiet
ADRIANA BARTON
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
February 24, 2009 at 9:35 AM EDT
VANCOUVER — Kimberley Da Silva is all too familiar with the mind-numbing, eyeball-searing, headache-inducing tortures of chronic sleep deprivation. She has a daughter, aged 3, and a seven-month-old son who is nowhere close to sleeping through the night. For Ms. Da Silva, however, the rude awakening of motherhood was not the diaper changes at midnight or the 2 a.m. feedings, she says. It was the utter lack of alone time.
So, instead of following the usual advice - "sleep when the baby sleeps" - Ms. Da Silva puts her kids to bed at about 7 p.m. and then stays up until the wee hours.
Basking in her interruption-free zone, the 31-year-old Vancouver mother watches TV until midnight or studies for her licensing exams as a clinical psychologist. Sometimes she cleans the house. Other nights, she lays out her scrap-booking supplies, knowing they won't be grabbed by tiny hands.
Ms. Da Silva says she gets by on about five hours of shut-eye in a 24-hour period - a broken five hours at that. At times she's "really exhausted," she says, but her nightly chunk of free time is "precious and worth missing sleep for." Without it, she adds, "I just feel ripped off."
For women who spent years travelling, studying or building careers before having kids, the relentless child-minding and domestic chores of motherhood can come as a shock. After hours of doing laundry, wiping grimy hands and whipping up purées, some mothers are so desperate for "me" time that they become nocturnal. They turn into raccoon moms who rob themselves of sleep so they can write in their journals, update their Facebook profiles or do a little contract work sans kids.
Some are secretive about their active night lives, fearing the judgment of the sleep-
hygiene brigade. But most insist that moonlighting as free agents is the only way to revive a part of their pre-mom selves.
Technology makes staying up more tempting than ever. While their husbands snooze, these women shop online, band together on parenting websites - such as the Nocturnal Mamas forum at Mothering.com - and instant-mess- age each other.
Annemarie Tempelman-Kluit, 40, started burning the candle at both ends about a year and a half ago, when she founded her Vancouver-based e-newsletter, yoyomama.ca.
Her daughters, aged 3 and 5, are up at the crack of dawn, but Ms. Tempelman-Kluit says she rarely hits the sack before midnight. She's too busy Twittering, writing for her website and replying to e-mails from clients and friends. "A lot of mom entrepreneurs are online at night doing the same thing," she says.
Ms. Tempelman-Kluit says she gets a second wind in the evenings, even though she doesn't nap. But she pays for her increased productivity with "extreme fatigue" and a toll on her marriage, she says. "It's hard on the relationship because I'm at my computer - I'm not hanging out with my husband."
Lisa Parsons, a 35-year-old mother in Edmonton, is so nocturnal that she practically hibernates for half of the day.
She stays up as late as 5 a.m. to putter around or watch old X-Files episodes, and she seldom gets out of bed before noon. Her children, aged 3 and 7, are natural night owls as well, she says; they usually slumber from 10:30 p.m. until late morning. Her kids are home-schooled, so their sleep habits don't conflict with scholastic routines.
But they do miss out on some activities because the family rarely leaves the house before mid-afternoon. "By the time we get ready and out the door, everything's starting to shut down for the day," Ms. Parsons says.
Most nocturnal moms say they do everything possible to ensure their kids get enough sleep. But they may fail to recognize the signs of sleep deprivation in themselves, says Nicky Cohen, a clinical psychologist in Toronto who counsels families on sleep issues. Symptoms include difficulty concentrating, poor memory, forgetfulness, anxiety and irritability.
Fragmented sleep is not good-quality sleep, she adds, and mothers with erratic sleep patterns may not be parenting at their best level.
"I'm a little skeptical that these sorts of sleeping patterns are sustainable," Dr. Cohen says.
Instead of missing sleep, mothers who need a break could ask a relative or trusted friend to help with the kids, or do child-care swaps with other parents, she says.
But nocturnal mothers say they need alone time more than once in a blue moon.
And some say they're well rested, even though they burn the midnight oil every night.
Julie Benoit, a 33-year-old mother of three, says that in a typical 24-hour period she gets two blocks of sleep that add up to between six and 10 hours.
Most nights, she's awake between 11 p.m. and 3 or 4 a.m. It's her time to shop at 24-hour grocery stores or call the friends she left four time zones away when she and her family moved to Bellevue, Wash., from Halifax.
Ms. Benoit says she has always been a night owl, and she sees few downsides to this.
"I get the most out of my sleeping and my waking hours," she says. But, she adds, "The longer I do it, I see it being harder and harder to stop."
Dawn of the raccoon moms
Desperate for private time, bleary-eyed mothers are forgoing sleep to work, shop and instant-message in nocturnal peace and quiet
ADRIANA BARTON
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
February 24, 2009 at 9:35 AM EDT
VANCOUVER — Kimberley Da Silva is all too familiar with the mind-numbing, eyeball-searing, headache-inducing tortures of chronic sleep deprivation. She has a daughter, aged 3, and a seven-month-old son who is nowhere close to sleeping through the night. For Ms. Da Silva, however, the rude awakening of motherhood was not the diaper changes at midnight or the 2 a.m. feedings, she says. It was the utter lack of alone time.
So, instead of following the usual advice - "sleep when the baby sleeps" - Ms. Da Silva puts her kids to bed at about 7 p.m. and then stays up until the wee hours.
Basking in her interruption-free zone, the 31-year-old Vancouver mother watches TV until midnight or studies for her licensing exams as a clinical psychologist. Sometimes she cleans the house. Other nights, she lays out her scrap-booking supplies, knowing they won't be grabbed by tiny hands.
Ms. Da Silva says she gets by on about five hours of shut-eye in a 24-hour period - a broken five hours at that. At times she's "really exhausted," she says, but her nightly chunk of free time is "precious and worth missing sleep for." Without it, she adds, "I just feel ripped off."
For women who spent years travelling, studying or building careers before having kids, the relentless child-minding and domestic chores of motherhood can come as a shock. After hours of doing laundry, wiping grimy hands and whipping up purées, some mothers are so desperate for "me" time that they become nocturnal. They turn into raccoon moms who rob themselves of sleep so they can write in their journals, update their Facebook profiles or do a little contract work sans kids.
Some are secretive about their active night lives, fearing the judgment of the sleep-
hygiene brigade. But most insist that moonlighting as free agents is the only way to revive a part of their pre-mom selves.
Technology makes staying up more tempting than ever. While their husbands snooze, these women shop online, band together on parenting websites - such as the Nocturnal Mamas forum at Mothering.com - and instant-mess- age each other.
Annemarie Tempelman-Kluit, 40, started burning the candle at both ends about a year and a half ago, when she founded her Vancouver-based e-newsletter, yoyomama.ca.
Her daughters, aged 3 and 5, are up at the crack of dawn, but Ms. Tempelman-Kluit says she rarely hits the sack before midnight. She's too busy Twittering, writing for her website and replying to e-mails from clients and friends. "A lot of mom entrepreneurs are online at night doing the same thing," she says.
Ms. Tempelman-Kluit says she gets a second wind in the evenings, even though she doesn't nap. But she pays for her increased productivity with "extreme fatigue" and a toll on her marriage, she says. "It's hard on the relationship because I'm at my computer - I'm not hanging out with my husband."
Lisa Parsons, a 35-year-old mother in Edmonton, is so nocturnal that she practically hibernates for half of the day.
She stays up as late as 5 a.m. to putter around or watch old X-Files episodes, and she seldom gets out of bed before noon. Her children, aged 3 and 7, are natural night owls as well, she says; they usually slumber from 10:30 p.m. until late morning. Her kids are home-schooled, so their sleep habits don't conflict with scholastic routines.
But they do miss out on some activities because the family rarely leaves the house before mid-afternoon. "By the time we get ready and out the door, everything's starting to shut down for the day," Ms. Parsons says.
Most nocturnal moms say they do everything possible to ensure their kids get enough sleep. But they may fail to recognize the signs of sleep deprivation in themselves, says Nicky Cohen, a clinical psychologist in Toronto who counsels families on sleep issues. Symptoms include difficulty concentrating, poor memory, forgetfulness, anxiety and irritability.
Fragmented sleep is not good-quality sleep, she adds, and mothers with erratic sleep patterns may not be parenting at their best level.
"I'm a little skeptical that these sorts of sleeping patterns are sustainable," Dr. Cohen says.
Instead of missing sleep, mothers who need a break could ask a relative or trusted friend to help with the kids, or do child-care swaps with other parents, she says.
But nocturnal mothers say they need alone time more than once in a blue moon.
And some say they're well rested, even though they burn the midnight oil every night.
Julie Benoit, a 33-year-old mother of three, says that in a typical 24-hour period she gets two blocks of sleep that add up to between six and 10 hours.
Most nights, she's awake between 11 p.m. and 3 or 4 a.m. It's her time to shop at 24-hour grocery stores or call the friends she left four time zones away when she and her family moved to Bellevue, Wash., from Halifax.
Ms. Benoit says she has always been a night owl, and she sees few downsides to this.
"I get the most out of my sleeping and my waking hours," she says. But, she adds, "The longer I do it, I see it being harder and harder to stop."
Making Moss
The back portion of my yard is a wasteland. The neighbor has a huge tree back there and, while it provides wonderful shelter for us around the fire pit on rainy nights, nothing grows. The ground is dirt. Leaves and dirt; dirt and leaves. I really want to make the whole yard kid accessible and kid friendly but haven't quite been able to figure out what to do. One of my brilliant plans involved making a nice moss bed out of that portion of the yard. How much fun would that be? A soft, spongy fairyland on which the kids can play. And it would be hard for them to ruin. Unlike grass. But I had no idea how to make moss grow back there. Then today I found this on my Internet travels.
Growing Moss
To start moss, take whatever you might be able to find around your yard and remove as much dirt as possible. Put the moss in a blender, add ½ teaspoon sugar and a can of buttermilk or cheap beer, blend until the moss breaks down, then spread the soupy mixture with a clean paintbrush over the patio blocks.
Now, between you and me, I don't know if I will actually tackle this strange idea of mine but, at least I now know how it can be done.
Growing Moss
To start moss, take whatever you might be able to find around your yard and remove as much dirt as possible. Put the moss in a blender, add ½ teaspoon sugar and a can of buttermilk or cheap beer, blend until the moss breaks down, then spread the soupy mixture with a clean paintbrush over the patio blocks.
Now, between you and me, I don't know if I will actually tackle this strange idea of mine but, at least I now know how it can be done.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Etsy Find
I stumbled across these fantastic cards today on Etsy. Frigging hilarious! Thanks to The Spotted Sparrow for the great cards. Check them out.
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