For the love of Pinterest

Why do the best ideas come at moments where you can’t do anything about them…like write them down? I had a magnificent idea for my next entry-something totally different than what I had been doing.  It hit me right as I was driving down the highway during rush hour. Kinda bad timing to whip out my Nexus and make some notes, ya think?  So, you are going to have to live with these random thoughts and blabberings about my obsession with Pinterest.

Anyways, I’m a huge Pinerest fanatic.  I love pinning things that I’m capable of doing and things that I’ll never get to in a million years but they look good on my boards. One of my favorite things to do is to make wreaths.  I saw a pin about using plumbing tubing from Lowe's to make your wreath base instead of buying the expensive wreath foam from the craft stores. Well, I’m here to tell you, I will just buy to expensive stuff, because clearly I’m doing something wrong.  When I cut my tube to the length I wanted to make the size of wreath I wanted and taped it together it wasn’t quite round. Convinced that I could disguise the wreath’s shape with the Christmas ornaments I’d bought to embellish the beautiful wreath I’d envisioned in my head, I proceeded with the time-consuming process of wrapping my wreath with the thin yarn you see adorning the beautiful wreaths all over Pinterest.  It became even more evident when the wreath was wrapped that it, definitely, wasn’t round. Intent on fixing the shape my Doc tried to help me re-tape the wreath and I wrapped over the new tape. Meh. Still not so hot. But I got my hot glue gun out and started gluing the decorations to the wreath.  Here is my final product.



Christmas Wreath Fail



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, the wreath isn’t thick enough. And it doesn’t hang properly.  This is actually a GOOD photo of the thing.  But I’ll show you that I can really make a wreath.  Here is one of my favorites.

Pretty Fall/All Seasons Wreath

But, to make up for the meek Holiday cheer the wreath gives, we decided to make and decorate sugar cones as trees…as seen on Pinterest. I didn’t go all out on supplies and decorations because I figured at Otter’s age, he was going to eat everything.  And as I suspected, he did. I just bought a box of sugar cones, red and green m&m’s, and a jar of frosting. I already had green food coloring at home.  Here’s how they turned out:

My Trees

 

 

 

 

 



Otter's Trees



 

 

 

 

 

 

On Display

 

What are some of your favorite Pinterest projects to do, with or without the kids?

NO!

“No! Mommy!” and “No, Mommy!” have become very regular phrases in our household. But they are driving me bat-crap crazy, as I mentioned in my last post. Accompanied with aggression towards Daddy and it is the biggest headache, EVER. Although, I have been reassured that this is very normal for a two year old, it didn’t ease my concern at all.

It all started when our Buzz kitty died.  Right after, Otter started screaming and pushing away Doc when he’d get home from work. Of course, after a long day, this hurt his feelings.  Otter just wanted me and me only (C’mon, kid! Can’t you see I’m cooking?!). After doing some reading online Doc explained that is normal and that the burden is on me to redirect Otter to show affection to his Daddy, again. So, I would show more affection to Doc and encourage Otter to do the same.  I’d have talks with Otter to explain to him how awesome Daddy is and that he can help him do anything that I can do, too. But, I think the biggest thing to redirect Otter was several events or evenings alone with Doc. He’s doing much better, now.  When Doc gets home he’ll occasionally shy away or try to push his daddy away but he is much more willing to go play with him while I cook dinner rather than attaching himself to me. But we are still working on the telling us “no” part.

This, to me, is humiliating. Normal but humiliating. There is nothing are few things worse than standing in the middle of Target and asking your child to stand up or stay with mommy and have him shout “No!” back at you. I can just feel the stares of disapproving strangers who think he’s probably nothing more than a snot-nosed brat who gets away with misbehaving (and there’s me who’s thinking “Are you kidding me, Kid?”). Not true. My little boy is sweet and caring. He just so happens to be testing his language and boundaries.  After fighting my initial urge of yelling, “NO! Don’t use that word with Mommy” I calmly get on his level, repeat my request and help him follow through. Let’s face it, telling a toddler “no” to get him to stop saying “no” really isn’t going to help things and it’s probably going to confuse it.  Sure, this tactic doesn’t always work and I often find myself wanting to wallow around on the floor with him, crying, because neither of us are understanding each other in that moment, but I pick us both up and head out of the store.

I know this is going to continue being an uphill battle.  What will probably happen is we will head out for the holidays with a nice, sweet boy who doesn’t use the naughty “no” and once we reach the grandparent’s houses “no” will appear again in the vocabulary, making us both look like wretched parents. But we love him!

Anways, we went and saw Santa and Mrs. Clause. Otter was pretty excited and even pulled me by the hand to go see them.  Now that I think of it, I don’t think Otter asked for anything. It’s a good thing we can tell Chip, our Elf on the Shelf, what he’d like for Christmas!