Forgotten Photos

Today I was going to write either about Adelaide's parent teacher conferences, a tree in our front yard, or some of my garage sale finds from this summer, but I got bored writing all three posts, and I figured if I'm bored writing them, chances are you're going to get bored reading them.

Instead, we're going through some old photos that I meant to post way back when, but just never got around to it.



See this?

That, my friends, is the wallpaper we found on the kitchen walls when we tore out our old cabinets last spring.  Most of those are pastel-colored kitchen tools, but some of the stuff I can't even identify.  Like the curved knife-thingey in the upper right-hand corner.  See it?  It's the one with the violently pink handle.  Maybe an old bottle opener?  I'm also not sure what's in that serving dish on the bottom left.  It's pinkish with green leaves growing out the top.  Maybe some kind of jello salad?  This seems like a jello-salad-era type print to me.  You know, the kind with suspended fruit in the middle?  The stuff that's hardly been touched when the rest of the buffet has pretty much been demolished?  See, you do know what I'm talking about!

A layer deeper, we found even older wallpaper:

(See the wicked-looking pink-handled knife again?  What IS that?)  

I have no idea how old that green and black wallpaper is, but I do know they must have put it up when people were really into textured wall hangings, because that stuff isn't just ugly, it's velvet flocked ugly.  I wish you guys could have touched it for yourselves.

If, by chance, you actually like that green stuff, never fear!  I found something similar that you can buy today:  

That's right:  Victorian Flocked Velvet Wallpaper!  Yours for the bargain price of $63 a roll!

I'd like to submit this whole wallpaper conversation as evidence that I do not like just anything that's old.  I do have some standards, low they may be.



Our next forgotten photo is of Adelaide's birthday cake.  Derek's mom gave me one of those little grocery store checkout aisle booklets that has all kind of kid-themed cookies and cakes that are fun to look at, but which I know I will probably never actually do.

Well, unless Adelaide looks through it and decides that she must have the Candy Land cake featured on one of its pages.

Here's what it looked like in the magazine:


 Photo credit:  Taste of Home


Before I show you what mine looked like, may I just say that the above cake looks deceptively simple, when in fact you needed half a bajillion ingredients to make it look like that, including Valentine's conversation hearts and mini candy canes that you can't exactly find in your corner store during the month of May, and that Taste of Home's cake is actually two sheet cakes laid out next to each other to make space for that giant game board, and I had no intention of feeding our children cake scraps for the next two months.

Brace yourself, now.  Here's the beauty that is my cake:

Nailed it.

It actually gets worse the longer you look at it.

In my defense, I didn't get around to decorating the cake until the very last minute (as in, we're about to light the candles and sing to the birthday girl), so I had three over-eager helpers decorating it along with me.

And with that, I have spread enough beauty around the internet for one day.

The end.

I Should Probably Start Wearing Thicker Gardening Gloves

One of the fun things about living on an older property are the things you find while digging in the soil.

Did I say fun?  I meant dangerous.


Perhaps, when you think of treasures found in the dirt around an old home, you imagine cool old glass bottles and other interesting artifacts of a time gone by.  Maybe you think about that one time you were digging in the dirt at the teeny tiny house you lived in when you were really young and you found an old, small toy truck.

And by "you," I mean "me."  I wonder whatever happened to that truck?


When the weather's nice, I do quite a bit of digging around here.  I love planting flowers, and although the previous owners had done some landscaping, it's been a joy to add it.

At this point, I really can't remember what all I planted over the course of the recent summer and spring seasons, but I know I planted a couple drumstick primroses, an english primrose, several purple coneflowers, some asters, alaska shasta daisies, and a few pink astilbe.

And I think I tripped and fell and planted seven mums.

And I just planted 74 tulips bulbs a couple weeks ago.  I'm pretty anxious to see how they'll come up in the spring:  ten pink impression, 14 white and red and pink ones whose name I can't remember, and 50 of the new orange impressions I spied in the Breck's Wholesale catalog.  That thing will be the death of me.

Curiously, the only thing I could think about while digging all those holes for the bulbs was how comforting it will be for Derek and the kids to have these beautiful flowers with which to console themselves in the spring if I die this winter.

I'm not sick or anything.  You just never know.

New mums!

Digging holes, contemplating tulips and death, I found the newest stash of broken glass and rusty nails in one of our flower beds. 

That's right.  Nearly every time I get to digging around the perimeter of the house, I come across broken glass, rusty nails, or broken glass mixed in with rusty nails if I'm particularly lucky that day.

On the rare occasion I'm not playing it fast and loose with tetanus, I'm hacking away at tree roots that sprawl just under the surface of the yard, stretching out from the GIGANTIC conifer in our front yard that I just know is going to crush our house someday.

Which I'll write about tomorrow.  (Depending on how Adelaide's parent/teacher conferences go tonight.  If anything fun happens there, I'll be sure to let you know.  I wouldn't count on it, however; she's a good student, which creates zero fodder for the blog.  So ungrateful.)

\

Their New Favorite Chore

I've been trying to see things from my neighbor's perspective lately.  Put myself in his shoes, so to speak.

I'm talking about that one neighbor that somehow always happens to be walking his dog in front of our house at the most inconvenient times.  Like when I'm waging battle against a thorny rosebush, or throwing a tantrum in the middle of shoveling snow.

Last week as he approached our house, he couldn't have failed to notice the two small children struggling to make their way across our front yard.  The boy had an easy enough time of it, holding two small trash bags, but the girl- she was half-carrying, half-dragging a trash sack as big as she was.  I'm sure he also witnessed the mom opening the window and yelling, "You can't drag it like that- you'll break open the bag!  Pick it up!  OH PLEASE.  It's not THAT heavy, Adelaide!"

Once the two kids made it to the trash bin that sits on the edge of our yard, I hope he noticed that those two kids were getting a valuable lesson in teamwork- the girl reached up to flip open the lid for her shorter brother, who threw the bags up in the air and inside the bin.  The two children then heaved and pushed, wrestling the larger, unwieldy and smelly bag up, over their heads, and after what looked like some major effort on both their parts, managed to tip it into the plastic bin.  Mission accomplished.

And perhaps he was more interested in our mums than in the sight that greeted those two children when their mother opened the front door.  "Good job, guys!  Now go take these boxes out.  Don't worry, I already flattened them for you.  Oh, Adelaide, stop.  It's not that cold out- just wait 'til I make you do this in the middle of winter!  Now that will be miserable!"


No wonder he never wants to talk to me.

Sister Suffragettes

When I said I was going to post every day, I should have taken today into account, and held off until next month.

Election day.

I'm not going to impart anything revelatory to you.  If you're an American citizen, you know you should vote. If you're a woman, you know that we haven't had the right to vote for all that long in our country, and you should really vote.  If you're a person of any color other than white then you know that you also haven't had voting rights for long, and you should really really vote.

Basically, if you're an American citizen, you should be out there voting.

And if you feel very strongly about a candidate, I'm really okay with you telling me why your candidate is the best person for that particular position.  I'll gladly listen to you.

But do you know what I don't want to hear?  Smear campaigns.



I feel like the past several months have been a steep escalation in My-dad-could-beat-up-your-dad-type antics.


"I hear Romney once ran a red light."

"Oh, yeah?  I heard that Obama has never donated blood."

"Well, Romney doesn't believe in the existence of unicorns!"

"One time Obama turned in long-overdue library books and DIDN'T PAY THE FINE!"

"ROMNEY BOILS LIVE PUPPIES AND EATS THEM FOR LUNCH!"

"OBAMA IS ACTUALLY UNDEAD AND ABOUT TO START THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!"


And I'm over here going, "Jesus, you're really going to have to help me out with this whole love-your-neighbor thing, because right now I hate everyone."



Happy Election Day!

The Newest Addition to Our Family

Derek and I are both blessed to have very generous families.

A prime example of this generosity is our house: much of the furnishings in our home are gifts from either Derek's family or my own.

An example within that example (there's a glitch in the Matrix!) is Caedmon's bedroom, which is entirely populated by furniture that was either mine when I was a kid and thus handed down by my mom, or was gifted to us by Derek's parents and my grandparents.

One of the hand-me-down's is a small dresser that was used by first me, then my sisters, then our older two kids when we were all babies.

But the thing about babies is they grow up.  When they grow up they get bigger.  When they get bigger they start wearing larger clothes.  And when they start wearing larger clothes, they need somewhere to put that clothing.

When I saw that we were going to need a larger dresser for Caedmon, I put the word out to my family.  My grandparents are big auction-goers, and you never know what forgotten furniture is lurking in some family member's basement.

Within a couple months, the fam (I'm still not clear on who got this, Mom- was it Grandma?  Did you say something about Sherry being involved?  I'm confused, as usual) came through:  my mom and Mark brought this beauty to us on their visit.

*Cue angelic music.*

It's old, and it has character, and I love it.

Obviously, it's not perfect.

Does it need to be refinished?  Yes.

Could the mirror afford to be re-silvered?  Yes.

Did I find a bar of soap in one of the drawers that had the unmistakable tooth marks of a rodent all around the edge?  Yes.

Did I vacuum no less than ten spider egg sacks out from the underside of it?  Yes.

But it fit nicely into our budget (FREE), the drawers all work (thanks, Grandpa!), and it's size provides some much-needed storage space.

Did I mention how pretty it is?

Oh!  And it also had this on the back:

I really have no idea as to the age of the dresser, but after Googling some of the info on the back, I know that the address it was shipped from, 925 Homan Avenue, Chicago, was home to the Sears Roebuck Company in the early and mid parts of the 20th century.  I learned that the railroad it was shipped on saw its heyday in the 1920's.  I was also able to find one Eliza M Rose that lived in Canton, Missouri and was born in 1870.  Is that the same woman whose name is on this packing slip?  I have no idea.  But it's a possibility. 

Any research/ antique buffs reading this can feel free to give me some pointers.  I am very much an amateur, here.  Obviously.

Yay for cool old junky stuff!

The Pumpkin Patch on the Frozen Tundra

As you may know, I've committed to post every day for two weeks.  This means I'll be posting more photos than usual; it's easier and way faster for me to just dump a bunch of photos on here than try to communicate actual stories and family events.

In other words, I'm lazy.

A couple weeks ago, my mom and her hubby traveled north to the frozen tundra that is Iowa to visit us.  (I'm kidding.  Kind of.  Not about my mom and Mark; I mean about Iowa- it's only freezing six, maybe seven months out of the year.)

(Okay, so actually I'm kidding again.  It's not frozen for that long; it's just a colder climate than what I grew up in.  That makes it, to my mind, a barren, icy landscape.  Plus the high is in the 40's right now, and today is one of those days where I woke up with a chill and haven't been able to shake it.  Do you ever have days like that?)

(I've decided to write the rest of this post in parentheses.)  

Where was I?

Right.  My mom.  Mark.  Frozen tundra.

During this visit, Derek and Mark went golfing while Mom, the kiddos, and I didn't go golfing.  We went to the pumpkin patch, instead.

What's that?  You want to see some photos of our little excursion?

I'm so glad you asked!

Caedmon and Grandma, lounging in the corn pool.  Almost as relaxing as a real pool, except you have to wear four layers of clothing and small, hard kernels of corn manage to wedge themselves into some highly uncomfortable places.

Atticus jumping.

Grandma and Adelaide jumping.

When my sisters and I were kids, my mom always said we had to take swimming lessons until we were strong enough in the water to be able to rescue her from the deep end of the pool.  She has apparently continued this tradition with her grandchildren.  It looks like a lot more fun than my childhood attempted rescue efforts.  In my defense, it took me awhile to learn that people don't like to be rescued by their necks.

Caedmon, delighted to find his own foot.

With her tongue sticking out and braids flying, this photo reminds me of a Norman Rockwell painting.  It would be even better if her mother were a decent photographer and could take a photo without cutting everyone's heads off.

Adelaide going down the giant burlap sack slide.

Right to left, that's Atticus, Grandma, and our new adopted son on the hayrack ride.  We're still tossing around names for the little fella, but we've narrowed it down to "Bubba" and "Little John."  

Atticus and Caedmon in the fake, miniature reproduction outhouse.  I'm not sure who it was that said, "You know what this pumpkin patch needs?  An outhouse.  But let's make sure it's just a shell with no actual 'facilities,' and that it's so tiny two small children can barely squeeze in together.  Kids will love it."

And you know what?  My kids did.

We also got some samples of fudge from the store, and I'm still thinking about the Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel fudge that I tried.  It was divine, and I don't normally care for fudge.  I didn't get a picture of any of that.  You're crushed, I know.

Console yourself with the thought of another post tomorrow about our new/old dresser.  (How are you ever going to sleep tonight!?)

The Darndest Things

Children have no filter.

I know a lot people say that about themselves, but it's not true.  Unless you have one of a certain number of certifiable mental disorders, it's not that you don't have a filter.  You're just rude.

But small children?  Oh, they are a different matter entirely.  Ask any parent/ person that spends lots of time with little ones- chances are they have either laughed uproariously or been completely humiliated by something a little kid has said.  It's part of their charm.

Our kiddos are, of course, no different.  They're always saying embarrassing crap.  In the past year or so, however, I've changed my response to the lovely observations they unerringly make (in the loudest voice possible) when we're out in public.

Here's an example of how our conversations used to go:



Scene:  3-year-old Adelaide, infant Atticus, and me playing at a deserted playground, when another mother and her young son approach and begin playing, too.

Adelaide:  "Mommy, why is that lady brown?"

Me:  Ignoring Adelaide, hoping maybe she'll stop talking.

Adelaide:  "Mommy?  Mommy!"

Me: (Speaking quietly) "Adelaide, we'll talk about it at home, okay?"

Adelaide:  "WHAT?  Did you hear me, Mommy?  I said WHY IS THAT LADY BROWN?"

Me:  (Through gritted teeth)  "Let's talk about it at home, my sweet, darling daughter!"

Adelaide:  "Okay!"



Honestly?  I don't know why I didn't just answer her right there at the playground.  It's pretty simple, right?  That lady is brown because that is the color of her skin.  That's how God made her.  Skin color is just one of many ways in which we are all different.  Done.

I think I was just so mortified and afraid of offending the other mom that I panicked.  That particular topic hasn't been an issue since; our kiddos have made friends that have many different colors of skin over the past few years (which is kind of ironic, given that we now live in central Iowa, which I don't really think of as being a culturally diverse place).


I now handle things differently.  When our kids say such things in public, I meet their enquiries head-on, doing my best to calmly and rationally answer each politically incorrect question I can.





"Mommy, why is that girl wearing shorts that don't fit very well?  I can see her booty!"

"Well, honey, some females sadly align their sense self-worth with the sexualization of their bodies.  She may also have some raging daddy issues."

"What?"




"Mommy, why does that lady have two bottoms?"

"Too much food and not enough exercise."

"What?"




"Mommy, why does that boy have those huge holes in his ears?"

"He needed a place to hang his dry-cleaning."

"What?"




"Mommy, why is that man so ugly?"

"He probably thinks you're ugly, too."

"What?"




My new approach may need some fine-tuning.