Winter for Dummies...

Winter conditions do not maintain a constant temperature.  Occassionally, in the middle of a thaw, the temperature will drop suddenly.  This causes all the puddles of melted snow to freeze.  Likewise, all run-off from a house gutter will freeze.

Use extreme caution when leaving the safety of home to get the mail.  If you have a downspout right next to your mailbox, you likely will have a large, watery-looking patch of ice directly beneath your mailbox.

Warning: should you succumb to the ice, do NOT attempt to stay upright by grabbing onto your mailbox!  You will only injure your hand and look like an idiot.

Christmas Card solution

How do YOU display your Christmas cards? The Slapdashery saw this method in a Pottery Barn catalogue, and decided to be a copy cat. She isn't sure how she will keep the dashers from attempting to reenact Tarzan on them, but they are pretty for now.


PS: Don't you just love my surruptitiously flashy wall?

STOWAWAYS

I don't know about your house, but at mine, we occasionally find stowaways.

What's a stowaway?



Well, a stowaway is when you go to make the guest bed, peel back the covers and find a stuffed animal lovingly laid to rest. Or, when you open up your lunchbox at work, and find a truck parked perfectly so it can pull right out and go on its way.

One of our most recent and pervasive stowaways is this wall rock that you see pictured above.

Yes, a rock.

Some small child found this rock and brought it in doors. Another small child pilfered a piece of sticky-tack, affixed it to the back of the rock, and stuck it to the wall in our entryway. Walking down the stairs, a parent spied the new addition to the wall, inspected it, determined it to be what it was, and removed it.

It appeared again the next day.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

This stowaway is now a semi-permanent resident of our entryway wall.

I heard our daughter laughingly pointing it out to her friend a few days ago, and knew myself to be what I was:
A bamboozled, befuddled and bedraggled parent

Great Ideas...

Sometimes great ideas come when one is thinking about two entirely separate things.  Here's what was on my brain:

-Tiny Hands
-Cute way to efficiently organize our entryway for winter (hooks?)
-Design principle: Repetition.  Hanging many hooks of the same kind in a row can be sculpural.

So, I was doing my usual MO and searching the web (ohdeeoh, Martha Stewart, Anthropologie, funky toys, Umbra, etc), but thinking about how funny tiny hands are, and... voila!

What about hanging many hand backscratchers on the wall next to the door as coat hooks?

Now: how do I get hand backscratchers, and how shall I affix them to the (brick) wall?

favorite blog post

Confession: I don't read blogs, I read books that are occasionally based on blogs.  When I want ideas for a creative project, homeschool activities or the weather forecast, I search the web.  When I want to read something entertaining, I turn to books.

I picked up a book a long time ago that made me laugh outloud called Why Girls Are Weird by Pamela Ribon.  Further research revealed that the book was based on this woman's blog.  Now, most of you (who are probably blog readers; since you're reading my blog, I guess you figured out that whole dashboard thing--can you teach me?) are probably like,

"Duh!  Pamela Ribon is a pioneer in the blogosphere." 

And I'm like, "Pamela Ribon has published two books.  She's a guppie in the book world."

Anyway, one of my favorite pieces of written comedy was contained in that book (the book itself was kinda whiny when not really, really funny, but that's kind of discriptive of chicklit anyway), and I'd like to share it with all of you:

http://www.pamie.com/February99/01February99.shtml

Scroll down to the picture and start reading.  The writing is worldly, but not *too* profane.

I'm now interested in Julie and Julia by Julie Powell.  A book based on a blog that now has a movie out on DVD. 

I'm way behind the times.

Advent Buckets

We've been staying busy at the SlapDashery--busy with guests, and projects!
We got the Garnet Hill catalogue, and really, really loved their Buckets of Joy, but not the $68 price tag.

So, one trip to Hancock Fabrics, a stellar bucket find (3 for $1) at Dollar Tree and some funky Sharpie numbers later, voila!

Advent Buckets!

I wracked my brain for some clever yuletide items to put in the buckets that would point our minds to Christ, but ran out of brain power and time. Instead I filled each bucket with M&Ms--mint because I'm addicted, and peanut for variety--and we open each bucket as we read Luke 2:1-21.

Since we leave for Grandma's on the 17th, our Advent Buckets only go up to 17, serving as a real calendar, too. Just another plus of doing it myself--even if it is in a slapdashy way.

Halloween projects

Okay, I know that I'm blogging about my October projects in November, but:

a.) I've been too busy.
b.) I've been too lazy.
c.) I've been too uninspired.
d.) I've been too shy.

Anyway, you get to hear about it now.

Now the head slapdasher is not very fond of Barbie (much to her father's pleasure), not because the lady's a tramp, but because she's mainstream culture, and we like to be a tad counter-culture here.

So, when scouting for an easy princess costume, we found a pretty dress up dress with a Babie cameo on sale, we said, "Que gonga!" and snapped that puppy up.  Then, amidst much dissent from Chicken Lu, we hacked off that Barbie's head, and sewed on some cool pink flowers.

What a pretty butterfly princess!

Also, we aren't quite sure why families wait until Christmas to do all the fun crafts, but we see no reason why we can't start having our graham cracker house fun a little early.

We were going to make a replica of our new old home, which we didn't decorate for Halloween for fear that we would terrify all the neighborhood children and have to eat all the Reese's, Snickers and Milky Ways ourselves (oh wait--we did that too!), but then a Reformation Day brain wave struck and we did the Wittenberg church instead.

Happy Reformation Day/Halloween/Birthday Button!

Dining room improvements

We've been slapdashing our way to a prettier Dining Room here in Deeretown.

The lovely stained oak trim (original to our fancy-dancy home) has been twisting my brain up for months. Accustomed to cheap fiber board painted white, I was befuddled as to what color to paint the walls after we got rid of the dark maroon faux faux-painted wallpaper. What could I paint it that would lighted up our naturally dark room (which is also confusing: it faces south and west, and has large windows on both of those sides)? I went with my default color: light, light yellow. Though this same color looks just like what it is in the hall and stairway, in the dining room, this ended up looking like cream.

Back to the drawing board.

I ragged off a wall in our previous home in the now discontinued Ralph Lauren Duchesse paint (scored on the returned paint discount rack at Home Depot for $5) and loved it for as long as we lived there. Now Ralph Lauren has both a more subtle paint (Candlelight) and more not-subtle paint (Metallic).  Since the Metallic paint would have the exuberance of a Great Dane puppy, and we here at the SlapDashery prefer to be more adult Golden Retrieveresque, I went with the candelight, slapped it up on the wall, and was bored.

That night, I went down to the basement to practice with the wealth of paint leftover from all the painting jobs done in our house since 1920--seriously. I found a lot of sludge, and one can of "Latte" that was used in our living room. While the color is a little dark for my tastes, I thought, meh, let's try it in a color wash. Bella!

This morning, I tried the Candlelight over my latte color wash, and got just the blend I was looking for: grownup, but with a sneaky touch of hyper.

Just like us!

Next up: what to do with the strangers in these frames.

Midwestern Housewife

My Pransome Hince was teasing me yesterday about finally getting to be a Midwestern housewife. This was never a goal of mine.  Housewife, yes.  Midwestern, no.

As I sit here, my fingers numb from 60* interior temperature exposure (too cheap to turn up the thermostat), I contemplate the geographical direction my life has taken.  An Army Brat for the first 17 years of my life, I pride myself on being able to live anywhere for at least two years, even in some truly tough social/geographical/familial situations.

It occurs to me now, that other than a brief stint in Washington when snow was really fun, I've never lived this far north.  In fact, the last time I lived somewhere that had truly terrible winter weather, I vowed to go to college in Arizona.

I kept that vow. 
I wonder how many more vows I will take in the coming winter.

"Good! You look like a goat!"

I recently celebrated a bigger-than-before number birthday.

You know how some birthdays get noticed more than others.  It doesn't seem to be based on the significance of the number of additional years you have. 

Some birthdays warrant a casual, "Oh, it's your birthday?  Happy Birthday!"  Those birthdays are okay.  Your extra year gets noted, but it's no biggie.  Just one more day, right? 

Other birthdays somehow seem to get marked more.  Maybe you've been in others thoughts more, or the right person remembers and reminds others, or you move away and send address cards and people think about you more.  Suddenly, even though you're only 29, you've gotten scads of presents, you have difficulty fielding birthday calls on the actual day, you get birthday greetings in the form of cards (more work) or e-mails (a little less work) or Facebook Wall posts (the least amount of work).  Your family and friends come up with some really thoughtful and useful gifts that don't even have to be returned.  All of a sudden, you are uplifted above where you were the day before, the past year has been celebrated and the coming year is looked forward to now that you know others are looking forward to spending it with you.

This birthday was in the latter category.  Thanks to all who made me feel so special!

With friends like these...

A funny poem came my way from a beloved friend.  Wanna read it?


my coffee mug sits in my hand
so warm and aromatic
it gives me feelings of delight
it clears my head of static
the emblem slowly comes into focus
a green and yellow thing
it's a john deere mug, a present
it makes me want to sing -
a light, or a melencholy air?
i can't really decide.
it reminds me of our friends
and so makes me glow inside
it took away our friends
and so i want that deere to die!

(not really, it just rhymed...sort of)

 
:D

Repurposing Mt. Washmore

I was a bad flybaby and let my laundry get away from me and ended up with Mt. Washmore. 

Seriously, it filled the whole laundry area of the basement.  In my defense, we have a laundry chute, so I don't actually see the mess if I don't go to the basement.

I looked at my piles and thought: pile of leaves. 

"Chicken Lu!!!"

Sunshine in the Morning makes me ecstatic!

Christmas came early to the slap dashery this morning in the form of tree pruners!  The kids and I stood outside and watched the cherry picker, chainsaws and limb saws set to work freeing our house of perpetual gloom.

Hopefully Mike Mulligan and Mary Ann were right and an audience does make you work faster and better, because we couldn't stay away (though always at an appropriate distance)!

Watch out, Chicken Lu, the sky's falling today!

Now we're swingin'

My Pransome Hince redeemed his weekend by making us a lovely toy.

Aren't tree swings romantical?

Failed Gardener Tutorial

1. Go to Sams.  Get lured into the spring bulbs.  Forget all about black thumb's score (BT: Everything  Plants: none).
2.  Collect info on dividing plants. 

3.  Wait till naptime, get out huge shovel.  Spend 45 minutes digging holes and scattering bulbs.  Yell at the squirrel scout.  Pat back prematurely.
4.  Divide daylilies.  Decapitate a few.  Shrug and plant in holes anyway.
5.  Ignore audible crying from second story.
6.  Plant bulbs in second bed.  Yell at the squirrel scouts.  Start digging holes deeper.  Tersely answer myriad questions from escaped oldest child.  Continue to ignore noisy second story.
7.  Clutch back.  Belatedly remember past 4 years, 3 pregnancies and 3 labors.  Leave gardening mess for husband to pick up.
8.  Clean up poopy mess on second story.  Glance out window.  Yell at snooping squirrels.
9.  Limp downstairs.  Make dinner, set table, greet husband.  Glance out window.  Yell at poaching squirrels.
10.  Google daylily dividing.  Discover in dismay that you did it at the wrong time in the wrong way.
11.  Go to Teske's.  Buy more gardening things with hope in your heart.

The Slap Dashery

We love getting things done in the right way don't we?

There's nothing better than making a plan, getting everything out, accomplishing our tasks according to plan and in an orderly way with no interruptions, attaining a perfect product, and then putting all our things back from whence they came.

This is not the way of the stay at home mom.

Planners or not, cleanly or not, organized or not, creative or not, what we start out doing never ends up completed in a consistent process. The stay-at-home mom's life is of constant interruptions.  It's not a full time job, it's an all-time job.

Case in point: My three lovelies are currently gathered around my kitchen desk. Button is screeching for more cherrios, Chicken Lu is pleasing to have a book read and Boy wants to brush my teeth with a spitty toothbrush.

Why am I starting a blog?

"Screech! Screech!"
"Please Mommy, read this book to me!"
"Brush, Brush"

It's anyone's guess.