It's hard to believe but I've been at home full-time for four years now (April 4 was my 'anniversary') and for three of those years, I've been working for myself.
As most of you know, I started working for myself because I wanted to stay home with the kids and because 'hey, I can write so maybe I can pick up some work'. Honestly, other than wanting to be a stay-at-home mom, there wasn't much planning put into this career change.
And so, over the last three years, I've slowly built up a part-time business while being a stay-at-home mom -- something that has been, at times, quite a challenging balancing act.
And over the last year I have put more thought into 'the future' of my business. I've decided to try to make a (mostly) full-time go at it. I say mostly because, starting September, the kids will both be in full-time school but I intend to pick them up at 3ish instead of putting them in after-school care -- so that means I'll have, at most, a 6-hour work day.
But deciding to make a-go of it and actually doing it are two different things. And then suddenly, a whole lot of work fell onto my lap. And then a whole lot more. And then even more. And now, starting next month, I find myself in position of having about 25 hours a week of work from now until the end of the year -- four months ahead of schedule.
Great! Four months early is better than sitting on my butt doing nothing for the first four months of school. Except four months early means there isn't going to be enough hours in the day to work.
And so, starting July 1, I've hired childcare three days a week (May and June will be painful in terms of finding enough hours to work, sleep and be with the kids -- which means I'll likely cut out enough sleep and re-introduce movie afternoons several days a week. But I really wanted this particular girl to do childcare and she's only available as of July 1).
I'm excited about these new work opportunities -- but it's a little bittersweet because in a way, I feel like I'm missing out my last few months with the kids. In Summer, when there's so many possibilities of things we can do together every day, I'll only get to spend Mondays and Fridays with the kids.
I know, I know, I'm lucky that I got all these years with them. So many parents I know don't get to be so lucky. I guess that as excited as I am by these new work opportunities, I'm a little sad to see this chapter -- the stay-at-home mom chapter -- of my life come to an end.
But hey, I hadn't exactly 'planned' on being a stay-at-home mom and that turned out pretty great...so here's to exciting times in the next chapter!
Monday, April 23, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
A princess cake for my birthday princess
Last Tuesday was Alex's fourth birthday and we had her birthday party this afternoon. And since it was a princess party, and Alex loves everything to do with princesses, I made a Belle cake.
It was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. First, I baked the cake in a Pampered Chef measuring bowl following these directions. Then, I coloured a whole lot of icing yellow and used an icing tip to pipe it onto the cake.
This was the best decision I made. It was super easy to put on and avoided the crummy mess you get from trying to slather the icing on top of chocolate cake.
Next, with a some help from Ryan, I added a little detailing to the skirt with a darker shade of yellow icing.
And finally, I added the piece which brought it all together -- the doll. But first she needed some clothes. So, using a glue gun and yellow ribbon from the dollar store I wrapped her in a dress. A little extra white ribbon, some beads from Alex's bead collection, the crown from her Belle Barbie and voilà....Belle:
It was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. First, I baked the cake in a Pampered Chef measuring bowl following these directions. Then, I coloured a whole lot of icing yellow and used an icing tip to pipe it onto the cake.
This was the best decision I made. It was super easy to put on and avoided the crummy mess you get from trying to slather the icing on top of chocolate cake.
Next, with a some help from Ryan, I added a little detailing to the skirt with a darker shade of yellow icing.
And finally, I added the piece which brought it all together -- the doll. But first she needed some clothes. So, using a glue gun and yellow ribbon from the dollar store I wrapped her in a dress. A little extra white ribbon, some beads from Alex's bead collection, the crown from her Belle Barbie and voilà....Belle:
Most importantly, Alex was absolutely thrilled with her Belle cake.
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
A Great Aunt
I lost someone special to me this week. My Aunt Joan was 82 years old and last week she had a massive stroke. She died on Monday.
I want to tell you all a little bit about her. For starters, she wasn't technically my Aunt. She was my Great Aunt -- meaning she was my father's Aunt and my Grandmother's sister. She was 15 years younger than my Grandmother (my Grandma was the oldest of 6 and Aunt Joan was the youngest) and she was always Aunt Joan to me and my sisters (and to many, many, many others in the family). And in a way, for me, having Aunt Joan in my life was like having another grandmother.
To be honest, I don't remember much of her from when I was a child -- but that's to be expected. I was a child and, since I said she was 15 years younger than my Grandmother, when I was born, she was still busy being a mother.
It was only after my family moved to Ontario when I was 14 and she and Uncle Chris followed a few years later that I really got to know her. My family spent a lot of time with her and Uncle Chris and two of their three children who lived nearby with their children. We were all one big family.
And sometime during those years, I remember sitting with her at a family gathering and chatting about family genealogy -- about how exactly everyone at this family gathering was related to everyone else. There were first cousins and second cousins and first cousins once removed and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and grandmothers and...you get the point. And she said to me "you all call me Aunt Joan but really, I'm Great Aunt Joan but that's because I'm a great aunt". (Can you see her face light up as she's saying that?)
Great as in extraordinary, magnificent, wonderful, awesome.
That sums up exactly who she was to me -- to us all. For me, especially as I got older and moved away, I was always happy when we were both at the same family gathering. She cared for everyone so deeply and was never afraid to show it. Her family included everyone -- no one, regardless of how distant a relative they were, was left out. When my sister published her first book, Aunt Joan proudly came to the launch party. When I got married, Aunt Joan danced the night away as if it was her own grandchild's wedding. When my other sister had her first baby after an extremely difficult pregnancy, Aunt Joan snuggled that little boy with such relief and gratitude.
There are countless other stories I could tell; as could everyone else in my extended family. Whether we were near or far, she cared for us all; remembered our birthdays and anniversaries, cherished every visit and listened enthusiastically when we told her what we were doing.
Goodbye Aunt Joan. You will forever be loved and forever be remembered. You truly were a great aunt.
I want to tell you all a little bit about her. For starters, she wasn't technically my Aunt. She was my Great Aunt -- meaning she was my father's Aunt and my Grandmother's sister. She was 15 years younger than my Grandmother (my Grandma was the oldest of 6 and Aunt Joan was the youngest) and she was always Aunt Joan to me and my sisters (and to many, many, many others in the family). And in a way, for me, having Aunt Joan in my life was like having another grandmother.
To be honest, I don't remember much of her from when I was a child -- but that's to be expected. I was a child and, since I said she was 15 years younger than my Grandmother, when I was born, she was still busy being a mother.
It was only after my family moved to Ontario when I was 14 and she and Uncle Chris followed a few years later that I really got to know her. My family spent a lot of time with her and Uncle Chris and two of their three children who lived nearby with their children. We were all one big family.
And sometime during those years, I remember sitting with her at a family gathering and chatting about family genealogy -- about how exactly everyone at this family gathering was related to everyone else. There were first cousins and second cousins and first cousins once removed and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and grandmothers and...you get the point. And she said to me "you all call me Aunt Joan but really, I'm Great Aunt Joan but that's because I'm a great aunt". (Can you see her face light up as she's saying that?)
Great as in extraordinary, magnificent, wonderful, awesome.
That sums up exactly who she was to me -- to us all. For me, especially as I got older and moved away, I was always happy when we were both at the same family gathering. She cared for everyone so deeply and was never afraid to show it. Her family included everyone -- no one, regardless of how distant a relative they were, was left out. When my sister published her first book, Aunt Joan proudly came to the launch party. When I got married, Aunt Joan danced the night away as if it was her own grandchild's wedding. When my other sister had her first baby after an extremely difficult pregnancy, Aunt Joan snuggled that little boy with such relief and gratitude.
There are countless other stories I could tell; as could everyone else in my extended family. Whether we were near or far, she cared for us all; remembered our birthdays and anniversaries, cherished every visit and listened enthusiastically when we told her what we were doing.
Goodbye Aunt Joan. You will forever be loved and forever be remembered. You truly were a great aunt.
Friday, March 23, 2012
A crazy Saturday morning idea
Three weeks ago, I started the house painting project. You know the one I've been talking about wanting to do for years...to paint the front hall, living room, dining room and hallway. Because for at least 2 years I've hated the paint in those rooms.
Aside from the fact that I didn't love the colour (it's a yellowish-beige and it was there when we moved in), all those rooms were painted with a flat paint. So it showed every, single mark. It was covered in food stains and boot stains and finger prints and probably toe prints. It had yellow crayon on one wall, and puke stains on another. And in one area, the paint had been put on so thinly that you could see the colour underneath (it was pink, by the way). To put it bluntly, it was gross and I hated it.
And so, 3 weeks ago I got started on what I anticipated being a multi-month project. I figured the only way I would get it done is to paint in little bits -- a wall here, a wall there. I started with the first coat on the baseboards and door frames in the hall. They were all the same flat colour as the walls and we decided they should be white -- and semi-gloss so you can actually wipe the finger prints off when you need to. And because there's 6 door frames in that hall -- just one coat took me 3 hours.
Flash forward 2 weeks to last Saturday morning at 9 a.m. while Ryan and I are sitting in the family room drinking coffee:
Me: Can you finish the caulking on the baseboards this weekend so I can finish painting them?
Ryan: Sure.
Me: I'm just really motivated right now to get going on this project. One of these days I'm going to be tempted to have a painting party and just get it done.
Ryan: So why don't we?
Me: Today?
Ryan: Sure.
And so, we did.
We called up some friends who wanted to help and they said they were free after 2ish, Ryan got to work finishing the caulking and taking shelves and pictures off the wall and I went and bought the paint (we had, by the way, already chosen the colour).
Just after 1 p.m., I started painting. The kids even pitched in for awhile.
Our friends were over by about 4 and it was an all out painting party. Their daughter played with our kids downstairs while we painted. We breaked for pizza and by 11 p.m., the hall, dining room and living room had been completely repainted.
The next morning, Ryan put the second coat on the 'feature' walls -- two walls in an accent colour -- and I finished up the second coat on the baseboards and some touchups.
By 2 p.m. we were done and still had time to go for a bike ride with the kids.
So what's left? The front hall and the small area that leads downstairs. But the 'big' parts of the job is done. Something that I thought would take months to do ended up taking a day and a half -- all because I had a crazy idea at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
Oh yeah, and the house looks awesome now!
It's hard to really show in pictures, but here's an idea of what my house looks like now.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Aside from the fact that I didn't love the colour (it's a yellowish-beige and it was there when we moved in), all those rooms were painted with a flat paint. So it showed every, single mark. It was covered in food stains and boot stains and finger prints and probably toe prints. It had yellow crayon on one wall, and puke stains on another. And in one area, the paint had been put on so thinly that you could see the colour underneath (it was pink, by the way). To put it bluntly, it was gross and I hated it.
And so, 3 weeks ago I got started on what I anticipated being a multi-month project. I figured the only way I would get it done is to paint in little bits -- a wall here, a wall there. I started with the first coat on the baseboards and door frames in the hall. They were all the same flat colour as the walls and we decided they should be white -- and semi-gloss so you can actually wipe the finger prints off when you need to. And because there's 6 door frames in that hall -- just one coat took me 3 hours.
Flash forward 2 weeks to last Saturday morning at 9 a.m. while Ryan and I are sitting in the family room drinking coffee:
Me: Can you finish the caulking on the baseboards this weekend so I can finish painting them?
Ryan: Sure.
Me: I'm just really motivated right now to get going on this project. One of these days I'm going to be tempted to have a painting party and just get it done.
Ryan: So why don't we?
Me: Today?
Ryan: Sure.
And so, we did.
We called up some friends who wanted to help and they said they were free after 2ish, Ryan got to work finishing the caulking and taking shelves and pictures off the wall and I went and bought the paint (we had, by the way, already chosen the colour).
Just after 1 p.m., I started painting. The kids even pitched in for awhile.
The next morning, Ryan put the second coat on the 'feature' walls -- two walls in an accent colour -- and I finished up the second coat on the baseboards and some touchups.
By 2 p.m. we were done and still had time to go for a bike ride with the kids.
So what's left? The front hall and the small area that leads downstairs. But the 'big' parts of the job is done. Something that I thought would take months to do ended up taking a day and a half -- all because I had a crazy idea at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
Oh yeah, and the house looks awesome now!
It's hard to really show in pictures, but here's an idea of what my house looks like now.
BEFORE:
Random blurry picture of me on the living room couch in front of the shelves
AFTER
A view of my living room...the left corner of the left couch is where I'm sitting in the above photo
BEFORE:
This is a random hallway picture I found among our pictures.
AFTER:
A sample from the hallway (Ok, I know it's not the same spot in the hallway, but it makes a nicer photo)
The dining room. This room will be finished off shortly by the addition of a new dining room table. Sorry, couldn't find a before picture.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
It's March, right?
I wasn't planning on blogging today but then at the last minute I decided to write a mundane post about the weather.
Yes, the weather. And the fact that it's March 22 and it was 27C out today. And the fact that I had to break out the summer clothes for the kids. And the fact that while playing outside with friends this afternoon, the kids honestly came to us and said "can we go inside and play for awhile, it's too hot out". In March. Sometimes mid-summer days aren't this hot.
Oh yeah, but what really reminded me that it's a hot day in March was when I realized that I posted this almost exactly one year ago. If you don't actually feel like reading the post, I'll give you a hint: it was cold and snowing that day, and there's a picture to prove.
So let me make one thing very clear -- I. Am. Not. Complaining.
So to all my Ontario friends and readers, get out there and enjoy the summer-like weather.
Yes, the weather. And the fact that it's March 22 and it was 27C out today. And the fact that I had to break out the summer clothes for the kids. And the fact that while playing outside with friends this afternoon, the kids honestly came to us and said "can we go inside and play for awhile, it's too hot out". In March. Sometimes mid-summer days aren't this hot.
Oh yeah, but what really reminded me that it's a hot day in March was when I realized that I posted this almost exactly one year ago. If you don't actually feel like reading the post, I'll give you a hint: it was cold and snowing that day, and there's a picture to prove.
So let me make one thing very clear -- I. Am. Not. Complaining.
So to all my Ontario friends and readers, get out there and enjoy the summer-like weather.
Friday, March 09, 2012
A cake to make my birthday boy happy
This year's cake for Austin's birthday ended up very similar to last year's cake -- by request. Austin specifically asked for a Lightning McQueen cake with the number 6 on it...sound familiar?
So to make it a little different than last year -- and to avoid having way too much cake like we did last year -- I decided to use the icing to make the number 6. It was a good idea, but in the end, was actually a lot harder to do cleanly than last year's laying of a number 5 on top of a sheet cake.
First, I iced the cake all in blue -- which I learned from last year is the crumb coat. I think my icing was too thick because it wasn't easy to do.
Next, I iced a large rectangle in chocolate icing and then outlined the number 6 with white icing and filled in the 6 with Oreo cookie crumbs. (To look like the road of course!)
Next came another coat of blue icing. This was the tricky part because I had to 'cut' the icing in around the chocolate icing 6 and blue doesn't easily spread on top of chocolate brown! (So, if you're keeping track, that's three coat's of icing in some places. In case it isn't obvious, my technique to icing a cake is to keep putting more icing on until it looks more or less the way I want.)
And for the finishing touches -- a handful of cars from Cars, Austin's favourite movie and characters.
Me, the perfectionist, will say that it wasn't my most beautiful cake. But Austin loved it, and that's all that matters.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Something as simple as jam
About a week ago, Austin asked for jam with his peanut butter sandwich at lunch. A seemingly normal request except this kid hasn't asked for jam with his peanut butter in months.
So, I ran downstairs to my stash (yes, that stash of carefully arranged mason jars that sit on my office shelves full of the goodies I cooked last summer) grabbed a jar of what I thought was my strawberry jam and ran back upstairs.
And opened it.
That's when I realized that it was sealed with wax instead of the way I seal my jars (I can't explain the difference and I'm not going to bother for the purpose of this story). There's only one person that I know of who could've made that jar of jam if it wasn't mine. Ryan's grandmother. Nana.
Nana died less than two weeks before I opened that jar. She had given us an assortment of jam and sauces just this past Christmas yet this was the first jar we opened.
Now, she wasn't my grandmother, but for the last 15 years, Nana treated me as if she was. I was a granddaughter to her just as much as her other grandchildren. And she had many grandchildren -- and a handful of great-grandchildren.
So there was something very special in opening that jar of jam that day. It was raspberry jam by the way -- not even strawberry jam like I thought it was before I actually read the label. It was our last jar of Nana's raspberry jam.
And damn is it good. I enjoy making jam and have done so for two years now, but I could've learned a lot about jam making from her. It's just one of the many things I'll miss about her.
Austin, who was at the funeral and was alternatively fascinated and sad during that time, was a little confused at first as to why we had Nana's (or in his case, great-Nana's) jam. When I told him she gave it to us before she died, his matter-of-fact response (in only the way a 6-year-old can) was "well that was nice of her".
But raspberry jam wasn't her speciality. Peach jam was. Everyone who is anyone in the family (or newer to the family like me) knows that.
We have one jar of Nana's peach jam on the shelf from the presents she gave us last Christmas. I don't know when I'll have the heart to open it. Because when it's gone, she can never make us another jar.
I'll miss you Nana.
So, I ran downstairs to my stash (yes, that stash of carefully arranged mason jars that sit on my office shelves full of the goodies I cooked last summer) grabbed a jar of what I thought was my strawberry jam and ran back upstairs.
And opened it.
That's when I realized that it was sealed with wax instead of the way I seal my jars (I can't explain the difference and I'm not going to bother for the purpose of this story). There's only one person that I know of who could've made that jar of jam if it wasn't mine. Ryan's grandmother. Nana.
Nana died less than two weeks before I opened that jar. She had given us an assortment of jam and sauces just this past Christmas yet this was the first jar we opened.
Now, she wasn't my grandmother, but for the last 15 years, Nana treated me as if she was. I was a granddaughter to her just as much as her other grandchildren. And she had many grandchildren -- and a handful of great-grandchildren.
So there was something very special in opening that jar of jam that day. It was raspberry jam by the way -- not even strawberry jam like I thought it was before I actually read the label. It was our last jar of Nana's raspberry jam.
And damn is it good. I enjoy making jam and have done so for two years now, but I could've learned a lot about jam making from her. It's just one of the many things I'll miss about her.
Austin, who was at the funeral and was alternatively fascinated and sad during that time, was a little confused at first as to why we had Nana's (or in his case, great-Nana's) jam. When I told him she gave it to us before she died, his matter-of-fact response (in only the way a 6-year-old can) was "well that was nice of her".
But raspberry jam wasn't her speciality. Peach jam was. Everyone who is anyone in the family (or newer to the family like me) knows that.
We have one jar of Nana's peach jam on the shelf from the presents she gave us last Christmas. I don't know when I'll have the heart to open it. Because when it's gone, she can never make us another jar.
I'll miss you Nana.
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