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Three. Oh it’s a magic number. Yes it is! Vests & purse above compliments of Joules. Sneak peek from my post for Monday (yes, Nell did a photoshoot in her backyard and showered.) We are three strong now and boy sometimes the days are long loooooong long. You know what I mean. I cannot complain {just did} but wow. The 12 hours my husband is gone can really stack up. I’m very glad he has a job and one he loves. All the same, my job kills me somedays. I love it too. But death. Chocolate. Whining. Crying. {me & them}. You know. But I digress. The day! The day! How we get through it! Grace just did a great post on a day in her life. I was inspired. You won’t be by mine. My girlfriend Kate is doing a great series interviewing moms with children aged 7 & under & over. That magic age when they’re more involved and helpful. Check it. And my dear friend Cynthia reminds me these are the three toughest ages to have, with the oldest only just 4 this summer. I sure hope so. Carry on. 6:30am. AA kisses me goodbye as I roll over to nurse the le bebe and I bleary eyed whisper DON’T FORGET YOUR LUNCH OR YOUR GLASSES before nursing said bebe back to sleep. 6:59am. SuperBoy bounds into our room shouting triumphantly It’s 7 O’CLOCK! I convince him to play with his baseball cards while I “care for…
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So the quinoa craze. Everyone and their mother eats it. Do many of us like it? Let’s be honest. It’s like kale. Though my girlfriend Katie includes an amazing kale recipe on her beautiful food blog —> hoppppp on it like a bunny rabbit. Back to quinoa. AA hates it. Loathes it. SuperBoy is four now and smart enough to not like it either. SweetPea, well you know, she’s a great eater so everything gets shoveled in eventually. The trick to feeding my family quinoa? RED quinoa. Don’t ask why this somehow tastes better?? Well apparently it does. Here’s my quinoa: Green bell peppers, sausage, cheese, black beans, walnuts, red quinoa, lime juice, extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, done. {Take a weekend away from your big children and go to your family home in Wisconsin. Use your mom’s dreamy stove.} Drain the beans (or if you work from dried beans do whatever that is . . . errrrr . . . canned beans over here). Chop the cheddar. I love Prairie Breeze. Chop the bell peppers. Green. From the garden. Dole out the walnuts. Unsalted. Raw. Cook the quino with a 2/1 ratio either with water or chicken stock. I always use chicken stock and throw in a tablespoon of butter for flavor while cooking. Bring to boil, dial down to low, simmer until cooked–it will taste cooked or crunchy. Cooked is not crunchy. Usually 15-20 minutes. Chop up your sausage & cook it in a cast iron skillet (increases…
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No, I’ve not yet started bilocating though I wish I could. Every time I go to nurse the le bebe down for his nap, the big kids are supposed to play nicely in their rooms, with each other, or by themselves, just not screaming. You guessed it. They scream. She screams, and he cries. It’s really quite a chorus. BabyLoves wakes up, and we’re back to square 2. So because my brain is stretched so far in three crazy directions, I can only direct you to two others places to find me on the internet today: Blessed Is She: really great new daily devotional site that I’m a contributor to. I wrote on success today based on the readings of the day from Mass. It’s a struggle for me to feel successful about my day–unless you count no one going to the ER and most people eating and napping. I crave affirmation! I want to feel a big pat on the back that’s not my kid swinging his wooden bat at me! But those feelings aren’t really the point, are they? Excerpt from the original {because I’m fancy}. We have the opportunity to seek God, truth, beauty, goodness as our final destination. Not that we shouldn’t enjoy success, but it’s a means to an end, not the end itself. Jesus is calling us for something beyond what we are comfortable with. Jesus asks us to leave our habits, our ways we know, and reach for something that is beyond the…
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And . . . news! Apartment Therapy featured our playroom!!!! Which led me to ponder as of late, will I ever have a really clean house? The answer? No. I won’t. Because that would mean my children weren’t here. At all. That’s not (ironically) because they’re all that dirty. That’s also not because they create that much of a mess. It’s because my time spent with them means I’m not cleaning our big big old house. When they’re sleeping (all three at once? pppshaaaa yah right), okay, when the bigs are sleeping and the baby just woke up, I might clean the kitchen, or prep for dinner, or design a new blanket for my etsy shop, or do laundry. But dust? Vacuum? Catch up on all my sewing projects? Probably not. When Design Mom featured our home, I dusted around the frame of the lens of my camera. And with Apartment Therapy, I may have run a vacuum before these pics were snapped. But the day-to-day? It’s a little dirty and filled with cobwebs. But the kids still romp around, oblivious to the dust. They still play chess. They still run up the front stairs shouting “last one’s a rotten egg” before nap time. They still love me, despite my poor housekeeping abilities. I don’t want to look back at this time and think wow my house was so clean. I want to look back and think wow my time was so full. Whether it’s spent volunteering in our local awesome birth& parenting world as an associate…
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A fellow crafter asked: where do you get your great yarns and threads?? I thought, is she talking about my clothing because these are all maternity hand-me-downs from Molly. Then I realized oh, no, she means my fabric & yarn. Like she said. When it takes you that long to process this much in a live conversation . . . problems. Right here in River City. Ginny from Small Things does a read & yarn post on Wednesdays if you’re looking for inspiration. Lydia from Small Town Simplicity is an AMAZING yarn craftswoman. I mean, I swoon over her stuff for her kids. But back to me and my sourcing: Threads! Fabric! Oh, my flaming passionate love affair with fabric. I am making a concerted effort not to buy new until I’ve used my copious stash up. I *may* have picked up two little fabrics when I was in my favorite local shoppe the other day getting fabric for an actual order. I sewed as a little girl. Atrocious things by hand. But then never did again until my mom bought me a sewing machine as an engagement present. To say I was dubious is an understatement. Somehow we shuffled through the lessons that accompanied the purchase and although she dropped by the wayside (who was going to watch the children so I could sew??), we did learn the basics of the machine. The rest, as they say, is history. But really, I wanted to make beautiful things for me…
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What I think my day looks like: What my day really looks like: So now I’m on instagram. WHOOOOOAAAAA NELLY! It’s all because of two ladies: Jacqui & Grace. Follow them & their blogs/social mediums? Better or trouble! But I need your help. How do I operate it? How do I connect? How do I find other things I’m into? What the helllllo are ###HASHTAGS###? Come be my friend? Maybe when I figure it out I’ll get the old grammar whammer up here on ye old blog. It’s crowded. Speaking of that, what would you like to see/not seen on the home page around here? Can you be my consultant? Won’t you be my neighbor? Punchy mom after long day with kids. Forgive the iPhone photo dump. X to the O. Best line of the day: SuperBoy shows me his finger complete with long booger adhered: “MAMA WHERE CAN I PUT THIS? In your nose?” Um. I have enough of my own. #dutchnoseproblems #peoplewithbignoses #bignoseshavebigboogers –see what I mean about the hashtags? She’s not too sure about this boy bonding going on here.
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