suzyness.com

Fruity beverage in hand, I write to you from the depths of vacation. We headed to the mountains for a few days of relaxing – renting a cabin with some friends and enjoying time away from the norm. Even with only working a few days a week, I still feel that sigh of relief that comes from a few days off. Our friends have a small child as well, so C and J have kept each other entertained for much of the stay, and where that’s not happening, the parenting forces are doubled against the wiles of active toddlers… whatever variety they might be.

The days have passed by too quickly – chopped up by accommodating nap schedules and bed times. Yesterday, we had an early bird dinner at a local favorite, Sunnyside, then collected the girls to get them to bed at a reasonable hour. Here they are, plotting as they walked up from the beach. Can someone please tell me what goes on in the minds of a two and three year old? Man, they are going to be trouble when they’re older.

Today, we went for a fantastic hike and got some awesome photos of the lake. The girls even held up their end pretty well – trudging along with minimal complaint and just a bit of slipping and sliding on the hill. The payoff at the top was worth the hike – simply amazing views of the lake, mountains and trees.

Hope your weekend has been as awesome as ours!

I <3 ikea. They have great storage solutions at affordable prices and, for the most part, their products are well thought out.

The underbed storage boxes we bought didn’t meet this “well thought out” criteria. Although they fit perfectly under ikea beds in the showroom, where all the floors are flat and hard, they just don’t fit when your bed is in a carpeted room.

My solution? I took the boxes apart and trimmed them down. Here’s the play by play project:

1. Turn the boxes inside out (your cut will be on the inside of the box). Use an exacto blade to cut the nylon about an inch from the edge. For the sides that are flaps, cut on the side that will be hidden when the box is assembled, and cut close to the “hinge” side of the flap.

2. Inside, you’ll find a corrugated plastic material. Pull this out.

3. I needed the box to be about 1 1/2 inches shorter than they were, so I measured it out and cut the plastic. At this point, it probably would have been a good idea to check the fit by placing it under the bed – I lucked out, and my trimming worked great, but I’d suggest this step for next time!.

4. Slide the trimmed plastic piece back in to the nylon.

5. Pull the nylon edge back over the plastic so it’s concealed.

6. Use packing tape to secure the cut edge. Repeat this process for the remaining 3 sides.

7. Here’s where I finally checked the fit. Phew! It fits! And now, fill it up!

Tired of pulling rock hard butter out from our fridge, but not thrilled about buying a spreadable butter filled with a bunch of unpronounceable ingredients, I came up with my own solution… a homemade spreadable butter.

It’s really quite simple…

1. Grab some room temp butter & oil. I like the flavor of grapeseed oil, but you can use whatever kind you like best.

I use a ratio of about 1 to 1 butter & oil. More oil gives you a softer butter, less gives you a more buttery flavor.

2. Blend together. I’ve used the Magic Bullet for this, but my hand held blender also did a nice job. My guess is that plain ole egg beaters would be fine, too.

3. Put in the container of choice, label it (if you’re so inclined) and refrigerate. When you’re ready for some spreadable butter, just pull the jar out of the fridge, plunge a knife in and spread away! It’s really quite lovely to spread on toast.

I haven’t priced it out, but I imagine the cost is lower than buying the tubs of imitation stuff from the store, and I like knowing exactly what went in to it! The added bonus to this is that the blend gives you a lower cholesterol butter option.

Sorry for the annoyance of the password on certain posts. As this blog has gained more followers recently, I’ve removed C’s real name everywhere I could. However, in the videos, C’s name is still quite obvious, thus, the password protection, limiting most videos to friends and family only. Sorry blogosphere, gotta draw the line somewhere.

Standard password is ben’s last name and my former last name smushed together as one word (yes, this is a memory and spelling test as well). Know us personally, but still need the password? Email me at suzyness.com@gmail.com.

My apologies for the onslaught of old posts coming through as new… I had no clue so many would show up!! Reference the post date to see if it’s new or not. (hint… anything wedding related is really, really old.)

Another installment of favorite things friday. Really, just an excuse to tell you all about things I love while meeting my once a day posting quota.

- macadamia nuts. Yummmm.

- burt, you and your bees have done it again. I love, love, LOVE this lotion. Amazing stuff.

- crazy straws. Can anything else make you feel five so quickly again. Need I say more?

Just a short one today. Happy Friday!

Remember when you were in school, what an awesome feeling it was to get homework done early? Not just on time, not at 2 a.m. the night before school, not minutes before the bell, but actually finishing it early? By several days. Or a week. Or doing the assignment immediately when you got it. Yeah, it didn’t happen much, but man, when it did, I was on top of the world. “Homework done, sweetie?” my parents would ask. “Yup,” I’d reply confidently.

Maybe that was just me, though. I was a bit of a nerd in school. If a teacher made the mistake of giving us all of our assignments at the beginning of a semester, and I found myself with spare time, I would do it all and have it queued up in my binder ready to go. It felt great to know that I was on top of things and that I could push that worry from my brain. Hell, I even did this during the masters program I was in a few years ago. I guess I’m still a nerd.

I’m discovering that’s a great bonus to writing out draft blogs and scheduling them, instead of releasing them immediately. The delayed gratification has some perks. It’s like my “homework” is already done. Or, at least it’s near done. A variety of drafts in the line up, in various stages of completion, ripe for the picking. A new idea strikes? I create a quick post with a title and the jist of the idea. Some are skeleton ideas that I drafted weeks ago, still in the infantile stages that may never see the light of day. Some are nearly complete, but cover topics I’m not so sure I want to post publicly, so they may stay in draft form indefinitely as well. But, they’re there. Faithful soldiers that they are, standing strong and awaiting my orders.

It’s great to write again. It feels indulgent; I find myself writing sometimes when I probably shouldn’t be. While C is playing or eating, when I should be engaged with her. I try not to. I really try to only turn on my phone when she’s napping or fully distracted elsewhere. I try to be with her when I’m with her, ya know? Can’t be perfect all the time, though.

Thanks for reading.

My feelings about the Swype keyboard on my phone run hot and cold. Hit and miss. Love and hate. Throw in another cliche here if you wish.

Here’s the thing… it’s SO mind numbingly easy to write with the Swype keyboard. Using only one hand, tracing the path of the word, and most of the time, the correct word comes back. That most is the big caveat here, though, and the reason I sometimes despise the Swype keyboard. For example, when I tried to write “sometimes” just now? My keyboard thought I wanted to say “Dungeness”. Ah, yes, and flagrant typos abound. If I hadn’t caught it just now, and then missed it during review… well, you’d have the quality of posts that I’ve been achieving with the first versions that have gone live on my blog recently. Shameful, error ridden posts with incorrect words and typos scattered throughout. I know some of you have seen them. I assure you, these are not Freudian slips, but rather, Swype’s clever method for determining just what it is I’m trying to type.

It’s most likely user error. Sloppy fingering, incorrect spelling or some other reason that lays the blame squarely with me. But I’d like to lay at least some of that blame on the fact that Swype seems to be missing a critical common sense component. I mean, really, “Dungeness”? How often is that word really used in common conversation? Aside from crab fishermen, that is. Enough that it’s a more likely candidate than “sometimes” when a similar pattern is drawn? I highly doubt it.

I’ve tried other keyboards, and consistently return to this one. It fits me well, despite the time I spend correcting errors. Hey Swype developers, can you add a feature to help fix this? Maybe learning a user’s commonly used words? I love the keyboard, but see above for my gripe. Thanks! :)

If the title of this post is nonsensical to you, you either don’t have children or managed to avoid the resurgence of skain the nineties. Feel free to skip this post if you so desire.

Have you noticed that The Aquabats are guests on Yo Gabba Gabba a lot? Not that it’s a bad thing. I like the Aquabats. They’re a fun band and have some entertaining costumes. I remember seeing them in concert at UOP in the late nineties. Multiple costume changes during the show, great tunes, great energy. I imagine they’re a good band to keep kids entertained, too. The costumes can’t hurt for this.

I made this observation, because, obviously, we’ve been watching a lot of Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix recently. A quick wiki search revealed that, in fact, Christian Jacobs, the lead singer of the Aquabats, is a co-creator of Yo Gabba Gabba. He and his co-creator wanted to create a show that they could enjoy with their children. Adding to the all star team, I recently discovered that one of the creators of Homestar Runner is a writer and director for Yo Gabba Gabba. If you hadn’t noticed before, Homestar Runner secured a permanent spot on my “favorite links” page long ago. Love.

Don’t think me a bad mom because we watch tv. I was pretty adamant about the “no tv” rule for the first year. Then, we discovered Baby Signing Time (thanks, Karri!). It’s a fantastic sign language program designed for babies and toddlers. C already knew some basic signs that I’d taught her, so by the time we started showing her these DVDs, around a year old, she ate it up. Lots of great music, bright colors and action (and don’t let the high price tag of the full package scare you off, we did just fine with just the DVDs by watching with C and learning the signs along with her, making it “together” time).

Once we made our way through the first four Baby Signing Time DVDs, and had watched them each at least a hundred times, we ordered some of the Signing Time series. It’s designed for older kids, but C loved it all the same. We got one called The Great Outdoors, which we watched before we went camping last June. While on a hike, C bursts out, “We’re on a trail! We’re on a trail!”, and signs ‘trail’. She was excited not only to know the sign, but to be able to relate the things she’d seen in the video with real life.

I think we have around 15 signing time DVDs all together now. C loves them and we’re happy to let her watch. She knows all of the basic colors, her letters and a whole lot of other signs, much of which I attribute to the videos we’ve watched together.

Signing times has saved us on a few inconsolable nights, too. When C hasn’t been able to sleep because of a bad cold, gas or teething, we’ve resorted to putting on a signing time video, and it’s distracted her enough that she calmed down and was able to go back to sleep.

From there, Sesame Street started feathering in to our watching, turning on PBS in the morning while I put breakfast together. Clifford and Thomas the Train eventually made it in to the mix, too. It just evolved… Netflix has some great streaming programs, and getting twenty minutes to switch out laundry or hop in the shower is critical sometimes. C is happy to sit transfixed while I do what I need to do.

I’m not the mom I thought I’d be, and I’m perfectly ok with that. I turn the tv on when I need a break, and as long as it’s educational and not all day long, I don’t feel bad. I never expected to feel this way. I thought is be much more rigorous about keeping the tv off. I turn on music during the day when we’re playing or doing art work, but sometimes Yo Gabba Gabba is the way to go. Yup, you never know what you’ll do until you’re there.

Lots of links in this post… Wikipedia and otherwise. Check them out and enjoy. And try not to judge. :)

If you caught the first version of this post, complete with it’s egregious typos, my apologies. They’re fixed now. Hopefully I got them all. For some reason they just don’t stand out to me until we’re live. Go figure.

Just too keep things interesting, I’m trying something new. Calling it "favorite things friday". It’s along the same lines as "my favorite things" post a few weeks ago. I initially thought it would be fun to just have this as a random musings type of post, including both the good and bad, but decided my energy is better spent on the positive things in life. My thought is that these will be nice fillers for the days/weeks I’m short on inspiration, which, fortunately, is not the case right now.

Here we go… my first official "favorite things friday" post:

- current favorite song: Something, by The Beatles. It’s just speaking to me right now.

- taking better care of myself. Whether it’s spending an extra five minutes in the morning to curl my hair, getting a pedicure or taking a long bath. It feels really good to spend extra time on myself. In the past two years, I’ve rarely worn make up, done very little with my hair and haven’t prioritized myself often, so it’s nice to indulge now.

- my new shampoo and conditioner – bed head, dumb blonde. Chemical laden, and completely opposite to the all organic stuff I’ve been using, I love it all the same. It makes my hair feel soft and look shiny, and really brings out my highlights. I’m not planning to use it daily, maybe weekly, alternating with my organic stuff, so hopefully that will reduce the negative aspects from the chemicals.

- C’s ever expanding vocabulary. She impressed me daily with new words and sentences. Yesterday when I got her up, I was wearing long green and red fuzzy socks and she said, "mommy’s got lots of socks on". Then she said, "I’m gonna go find baby owl, ok?" (one of her stuffed animals). "Ok," I said, And she ran off to find him. Hilarious.

- whipped cream vodka. So much fun. It’s best when it tops off another drink, rather than on it’s own. It’s a great addition to my current favorite drink, raspberry stoli with club soda. Yum!

- Seven jeans. Seriously never thought I would be convinced that a pair of jeans was worth $100. I’ve changed my mind. The fact that they’re rather kind with their sizing doesn’t hurt, either. :)

- my most favorite thing? all of your recent comments. It’s really nice to see and makes me happy to have people reading out there. Many thanks for that.

Happy Friday!

Update: Edited for rampant typos. :)