Caty-Pillar

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When I was a kid, I was a pack rat. (I’m not that way now, oooooh no. Erm.) I kept so, so, so many of my old toys and knick knacks and random doodads. Boxes and boxes of this stuff has been living in our “workshop” building for the the last seven years. When Anya fell in love with My Little Pony this spring, I decided it was past time we went through those boxes of my childhood because I was sure I had at least one MLP in there somewhere.

It’s amazing to me how I can look at these things now and most of them mean nothing to me anymore. I remember them and know they did mean a lot to me when I packed them up oh-so-long ago. These were things I could not bear to let go. These were things I had to keep and treasure and lug around for 15 years. On that day when I was going through those boxes, though, most of those things had become just things. Phew. What a feeling of relief I could let this stuff go!

But then there is the other stuff that still means a lot. It’s probably still too much. Too many boxes. But it’s nice to see these toys of mine being loved again.

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And not just by me…

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(Yes, I did find the pony.)


With the Power of Shapes….

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She is Super Shape Girl!!!

I love the library, and I love summer. I really love the library in the summer. I love the library so much, we go to TWO libraries. Oh yes we do. We can’t get enough library goodness from just one library. Sometimes, I’m afraid to admit this. I don’t want our local library to feel left out or to think it’s not good enough or to be sad. Our local library is great. Our second library, though, it’s great, too! Why should we limit the amount of library greatness we get?

The first summer program we went to this year was at our “other” library. SHHHHHH! But how could we resist? It was a SUPERHERO party. Dude.

First, the superhero-in-training decided her super power and made a shield or chest plate with their symbol on it. Anya had the power of shapes. So like, if someone needed to cross a river, she could make a giant rectangle across the river to be a bridge.

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Next, the superheroes tested their strength and skills to determine what areas they needed to work on a bit more. Even superheroes can improve! They tested their super-breath….

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Their super hand-eye coordination…

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And their lava puddle jumping techniques.

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Then everyone ate mini-cupcakes and fruit snacks and went home and drove their parents nuts with their sugar-induced invincibleness.

(Note of Disclosure: In the spirit of truthful advertising/blogging/whatever, in the first picture, Anya is wearing her Super Shape Girl mask she made at a friend’s birthday party and not at the superhero library event. So, if your child went to the library event and did not get an awesome mask, please do not call the library and complain. Instead you should call Anya’s friend’s mom because why didn’t she invite you to the birthday party?)


Last Day of School

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At the end of May, Anya celebrated her third Last Day of School. It was, in my opinion, the best last day of school yet. This year, when parents arrived they were asked to wait just a wee bit while things got finished up, and then their kids came and escorted the parents across the field to the entryway to the celebration area. Before they passed through the entryway (two tiki torches holding rhododendron blossoms), each family was given a magnet with a kindness quote. Then the kids seated their parents under a tent/canopy thingy that the students had decorated. It was fun, festive, and organized, and we didn’t have to sit in the blazing hot sun for an hour. (That last part was pretty much my favorite.)

After the director did her opening stuff, each class took a turn “crossing over” to the next year. This is a Montessori tradition that we decided to adopt because it is cool. (Although every time I heard someone talk about the kids crossing over, I kept wondering if we needed a bright, shiny light at the end. And maybe a ouija board.) Each child said (or had read by their teacher) three things they had learned that year that helped them cross over to the next level of their education.

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On the other side of the bridge, their teacher gave them a gift to thank them for being awesome students.

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And no, my kid is not wearing pants. It was another swimsuit day, and I decided that the long shirt was in reality a “t-shirt dress.” We are trend setters here at Loafkeeper. (Also, no, I am not picking my nose. I don’t think.)

When the ceremony was over, there was the traditional potluck, and Anya’s class had a book fair of all the books they made during the year,

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and then the music and the sprinklers and the running and the shrieking,

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and finally a last minute picture of the Chess Club (this is them all being very, very serious).

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I know I wrote an entire post about Chess Club, but I’d like to take a minute here to say how happy it makes me to see my kid in her pink tutu swimsuit in this picture with a bunch of boys. I love that she doesn’t care everyone else in the club is a boy, and I love that all the boys in the club don’t care that she’s a girl. (There were a few other girls in the club, but they didn’t become regulars.) [I totally acknowledge that if there were a Pretty Pink Princess Glittery Tiara Club, she’d be in that, too. It’s good to be well rounded.]


Happy Anniversary!

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Andy and I haven’t had a trip away on our own since before the kid came along. I think that is breaking some cardinal rule of coupleness, but hey, we’re still married so it must not be too cardinal! (Maybe more like robin or bluejay?) When my folks came out for spring break, Andy and I somehow convinced them to watch Anya for two days while we went to D.C. for an early anniversary vacation.

During our trip we ate yummy food,

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and went to monuments,

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and ate more yummy food (nary a chicken nugget nor mac and cheese plate to be seen),

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and went to museums (not once having to leave due to a temper tantrum),

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and ate more yummy food (never being interrupted to take someone to the potty),

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and visited even more museums (where we were able to read the stuff about the exhibits),

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and then ate some more yummy food,

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and finally ended up sitting in Union Station for several hours waiting for our bus back home. (I could have done without that last part.)


Swap Update

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I had a difficult time coming up with an idea for my next swap item. I felt like it needed to be something new — something I’d never tried before. I’d set the bar too high for myself trying all sorts of new stuff with my first two, and I was just hitting a wall made of crafter’s block and The Busy. So, I did what any self-respecting procrastinator would do, and I didn’t do my cards for two months.

Thankfully, a recent crafty weekend gave me a chance to get caught up and to let that guilty weight of card IOUs go. I stared at the “something new — something I’d never tried before” cards I had started back when I wasn’t behind on the swap, and then I got cranky and glared at them and stuck out my tongue and said “NERFLEBLUFFLER!” (I did these things in my head because there were other people there, and I want them to keep inviting me to crafty events.) In the end, I made cards that were “something new — something I’d never tried before.” They weren’t, however, super complicated or time consuming. They aren’t novel for most folks. They aren’t cards I felt any need to take step-by-step photos of. But, I like them, and almost everything I used to make them, except the card base, came from my swap packet. That was pretty awesome.

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This “Thank You” card was made using a (mostly) simple weaving technique. I admit I put the glue on the wrong sides of the strips a few times. Luckily I had lots of extra paper. Next, I did a birthday card.

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I took the photo of the card with the best bow. I don’t tie very good ribbon bows at the best of times, but at 1am…well. Sorry to all my fellow swappers whose bows were less than awesome. I tried.

I have two more weeks to get my June swap items done before I am once again tardy. Maybe I can have Anya make them?


Not Your Mama’s Crafty Book

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It’s been a while, but I went to a crafty weekend a few weeks back. The second day I had a dire need for adhesive (“How can you need to buy more stuff? You have tons of stuff!” Andy asked. He obviously doesn’t understand adhesive.) I made a run to the craft store, and of course (since I was there ALL ALONE) I had to spend a few minutes or maybe thirty looking at EVERYTHING. It was nice to peruse, but I’m pleased to say the only thing I bought that was not adhesive was a two-pack of 8×8 scrapbooks on clearance for $3.

I thought about using the books to make some gifts, but then I figured maybe Anya would like one. When she saw it, she squealed. And then she claimed BOTH of them. I should not have been surprised. I let her use my funky scissors and gave her some old adhesive tab thingies I got from the free bin and pulled out my paper scrap bag and donated unused pictures from my last book. She worked on her “Crafty Book” for hours. Or at least maybe half an hour. It felt like hours to me. When she got her pages just right, she had her Daddy do the journaling for her, and I made the title for the front: “Crafty Book by Anya.”

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After she finished her book, she began assembling her “Crafty Bag.” Into a small tote bag she put the funky scissors, adhesive tabs, picture bits, extra book, some markers, some crayons, some colored pencils, part of an old calendar, and basically half of the contents of her until-then-mostly-organized craft bins.

Today I was talking to one of my crafty friends at lunch about a convention we are going to in August, and Anya demanded to go, too. I said no because I am the Mean Mommie, but it was sort of hard to say it because, dude, she has her own crafty bag!


Miss Fancy Pants

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Anya’s aunt sent her a pretty dress and a zany swimsuit for her birthday. When Anya’s teacher told the class they’d get to play in the sprinklers the next afternoon, Anya knew right away what she was going to wear.

I’m not a big stickler about what Anya wears out of (or in) the house. My requirements are that whatever it is be mostly clean and mostly fit and not be so out of season as to cause fear of heat stroke or frostbite to rise in my heart. So, when Anya came out of her bedroom that morning in just her swimsuit, I paused for a bit. I really did want her to wear a bit more than a swimsuit to school, but I wasn’t sure how to say it without making a big deal out of it. Eventually I somehow managed to convince her that it would probably be nice to wear a dress or something over it until that afternoon when the sprinklers came out.

This is what she came up with.

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In case you can’t tell, in addition to her swimsuit, she is wearing a tie-dyed tank top UNDERNEATH the suit and a froofy sparkly skirt pulled up under the tutu on the suit. This kid rocks.


The Cake Boss

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This year for Anya’s birthday party (which was over a month ago, yes), we shared the day with another little girl from school whose birthday is only a few days before Anya’s. They are in different classes, but nearly everyone Anya wanted to invite, the other girl wanted to invite, too, so it seemed like a good way to keep everyone from being over-birthdayed. It was sort of strange to coordinate with another family, especially since we parents don’t know each other all that well. Luckily one thing we two moms had in common was a fairly laid back approach to the event.

I’m not sure if we didn’t do a theme because it would have been tough to get both girls to agree on something or because we moms just didn’t feel like it. Either way, we didn’t have any sort of theme other than lets have some fun! We held the party at the school, and it was definitely nice to not have to worry about having a bunch of people over (no extra cleaning!). Plus there was lots of room for the kids to run around outside (until it started raining, at least).

If you are considering holding a joint birthday party for your child, I will warn you about one thing. Present-opening time is CHAOS. (Perhaps this is a look at what it’s like to have two kids at Christmas?)

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Each birthday girl had her own cake. I suppose (going back to the theme thing) if we’d had a theme, we could have made one giant sheet cake, but since we didn’t and since both girls had different ideas about what they wanted and since there were going to be a LOT of people there, we had two cakes. For about two weeks before the event, Anya insisted she wanted a strawberry cake. I even pureed up the last of our frozen garden strawberries to make one, but before I got to that point she changed her mind. She wanted a chocolate cake, of course. I had planned to make the strawberry cake from scratch, but when we switched to chocolate for some reason I felt the need to go with a box mix. We got to the store and, yup, she changed her mind again. She wanted a yellow cake. With chocolate frosting. And strawberries on top. So, I guess in a way all her ideas were mixed into one cake.

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We made a two layer cake, but I’d planned on a big sheet cake so we had extra batter. A few cupcakes and a tiny space ship cake later, the batter (GREEN) was in the oven. After it cooled, which took FOREVER according to Anya, we frosted it and went to sleep. What a day!

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The next morning, I whipped up some frosting and colored it according to Anya’s wishes. I filled up the decorating bags, and then Anya took over. I did help her squeeze the frosting out on the main cake, but she did all the designing. I was really impressed with how well she did. When she was satisfied with the frosting decoration, she added strawberries, and then TADA!

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Anya decorated the cupcakes completely on her own. I got distracted doing something else, and then I turned around and BOOM. She was done. The cake was awesome, but the cupcakes were even more fabulously decorated. Perhaps from now on I should have her make my birthday cakes instead of Andy?

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Her real birthday was on a school day, so we made some chocolate chip cookies to take to class.

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Then we skipped out early, and Anya, Gramma, Grampa and I did what every normal person does for a 6-year-old’s birthday. We went to a plant nursery. What? Don’t you celebrate birthdays with plants? (I remember one birthday of mine about ten years ago, some of my friends in MI kidnapped me and took me to a nursery for my birthday. One of the plants I got that day is growing right now in my backyard, and I think of those friends every time I see it.) This nursery had about a dozen greenhouses in two rows, each with a number on it. Anya ran from greenhouse to greenhouse (in order, of course!) and squealed when she entered each one. She picked out some tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, cucumbers, herbs, and a LOT of different kinds of flowers.

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That night we opened a few more presents.

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And played with some presents.

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And went to sleep happy.


Everything old is new again

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Last weekend I finished putting down the pictures for my 2010 scrapbook. (If you know anything about folks who scrapbook, you’ll know we are almost always behind. And we really like to talk about adhesives.) So, unlike most scrapbook folks I’ve met, I approach my books with an assembly-line mentality.

Step 1: organize all pictures and memorabilia chronologically
Step 2: put down all pictures with some decorative paper
Step 3: journal on all pages (that’s where you write the wordy stuff)
Step 4: add all titles

This works for me. I’ve found that each of these steps requires a different sort of thinking and way of working, and when I tried to do all the steps for each set of pages one spread at a time, I got bogged down. I’m going to say that learning this (how I work) is why I am three years behind. Yeah, that’s why. (Of course there are those rare people — I know only one — who are current on their books, so they can do one spread at a time, all parts at once, easy peasy.)

So yeah, last weekend I finished Step 2 on 2010. To prepare for Step 3, I printed out all my 2010 blog posts. What a great help that is for me to remember what was going on in all those cool pictures. Today I started journaling for 2010 and was all, “Yay! Happy blog posts to help me” and then I was all, “Damn, I’ve only written about 10 posts in 2012 and 2013 combined. What the bleep will I write in those books?” This is a realization I have every six months or so, and then I start blogging again really faithfully. For about a week and a half. And then I forget. And then I finish Steps 1 and 2 of the next book. And then I remember.

An interesting thing about this is that by writing this post about how I haven’t been writing posts, I am fulfilling an inner need to write a post. But I’m not really writing about anything that would help with my next scrapbook. Unless I decided to make a scrapbook about scrapbooking. (I just had to google “a scrapbook about making a scrapbook.” I didn’t really find anything, but I didn’t try too hard.)

If I made a scrapbook of scrapbooking, what would I put on the cover page? It’d be neat to take a photo of the finished book for the cover, but how can I take a picture of it if I need the picture of it to finish it so I can take the picture so I can finish it? This is harder than I imagined!

So, the first spread could be of me going to the store to buy a book. I could include my sales receipt and maybe a copy of the craft store flier for that week; a copy of the coupon I used. I suppose before that I could have a photo of me digging through my stuff to see if I already had a book I could use, but then I’d have to take a picture of me throwing my arms up in resignation after three giant bags of yarn and a dozen paint bottles fall on my head when I open the craft closet.

The second spread would be me picking out which pictures to send to print and then getting the package in the mail and then sorting the pictures. Again we’re back to the chicken and the egg thing because I’d have to wait until I was done with the book so I had pictures to print so I could take pictures of me printing the pictures.

What next? Perhaps a spread where I take a scrapbook hiatus and make cards for a few months? Or maybe a montage from all the times I missed scrapbook opportunities with my friends because I was (a) sick, (b) snowed in, (c) out of town, (d) busy with a school or other kid-related function, or (c) incredibly forgetful.

I’d definitely need to include a spread or two of me going back to the craft store a few dozen times to get the doodads I need. And some of me climbing through the craft closets and stomping my feet when I can’t find what I need (which, of course, means I need to go back to the craft store). Perhaps I could write a short poem for this section called, “Where the bleep is my adhesive gun?”

There’d be a few pages of me cropping pictures and cutting paper and staring at paper and cutting more paper and sticking pictures and paper on cardstock and holding the results in the air and blinking a lot and sighing and pondering and going to get a snack.

Of course there would be some pages about crops/crafty days with friends. I’d journal some of the gossip (names removed to protect the innocent). I’d rate the comfort level of the chairs at the different crop locations. If I was feeling particularly spunky, perhaps I’d even do something daring like snitch one embellishment from each cropper present to use on these pages. Well, no. I’d probably just ask each person for something, and they’d give me something because crafters are generally like that.

And there would be some really dark pages there towards the end. From when I hit that super bleak spot around the end of Step 3 when I realize all I have left (ALL! HA!) is cutting 30+ titles out on the cricut and then xyroning them onto the pages. These would be tales of torture. Of the taunting light at the end of the tunnel hovering just out of reach, and no matter how fast you run the tunnel keeps getting longer so the light is always the same distance away and it’s just you stuck in that tunnel with the mechanical whine of the cricut and then you put the letters in the xyron backwards or you lose the “o” for “Snow Day” and you are all out of the exact right shade of white that you used for “Snw Day” or even worse yet your letters get all mixed up and you forget what you spelled out and then you have to play a twisted game of “Wheel of Fortune” to try and figure out what you wanted to say. These pages would be on black card stock.

The next spread would be the one where I start to wonder if the book really needs titles at all. There’d be pictures of me sitting, gazing off into the distance, thinking very hard about calling the book done as is. But then there would be a photo of me with a look of resolve on my face and maybe a rainbow sticker over my head as I realize I just need to push on.

At the end, I’d probably need to do a page with gratitude and acknowledgement of all those who’d helped me. Perhaps a list of the supplies I’d used. Because that’s what scrapbook people do. “This is the Smooshie line of paper from X,Y, and Z company. And the flower embellishments came from Flibbertygibbets.” Of course my list would be more like, “I used some paper I got from the free pile at the last crop, and the flowers were from…oh wait, was I supposed to put embellishments on this thing? Crap! Does that meant there is a Step 5? Am I not done yet! What the FNURFLE?”

The very, very last page, the one at the end that isn’t a spread but is just one page…that would be a photo of me with a gleam in my eye as I hold a stack of photos and another empty book and there would be a thought bubble over my head that says, “YAY! Time to start a new book! I can’t wait!”

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