A Mom's Year

Creating a comfortable life one moment at a time

A Morning Ritual and Organizing Idea

I love my friend Patti’s daily ritual: every morning she makes her coffee and moves the “frame” to the next day on her calendar. It’s possible she needs the frame to remember what day it is, but I like to think she’s saying, “Welcome to a wonderful new day full of possibilities and opportunities! Who knows what exciting things might happen today?”

Next to the calendar (and posted in strategic locations throughout the house) is this “Before you ‘play’ list.” I’m a big fan of visual reminders (and need lots of reminders myself), so this would work great around here. If your child hasn’t started reading yet, you could make a list using clip art or photos of your little one doing daily jobs like brushing her teeth, putting her dirty clothes in the laundry basket, putting away her toys, and so on.

Patti and I have been friends since we were six, so she’s been giving me great ideas like this for, well, let’s just say a long time.

Iced T-Shirt Game

At a party recently, our lovely host, Lauran, had an awesome “Iced T” game for all the kids (big and little) to play. Here’s how she did it (by the way, Lauran said she saw the idea in an American Girl magazine). Before the party, Lauran gathered a bunch of her dad’s old T-shirts. She got them good and wet, wrung them out a little so they wouldn’t turn into frozen blocks of ice, folded them up, and put each one in a plastic bag. And then she froze them for about four hours. I’m sure you could freeze the shirts overnight if you needed to.

When it was time to play the game, Lauran had the kids pair up into groups of two. She gave each set of partners one of the frozen T-shirts. The teams then had to work together to thaw out the T-shirts enough for one of the players to put it on.

Will and Hannah pulled hard to break up the ice. They may have even hit the shirt against the wall a few times. This is why you want to use old T-shirts for the game. I wonder if you might need a firmer set of rules if you’re playing this with teenagers, like “no using fire allowed” or “you can’t put the T-shirt in the hot tub.”

They did it! Very refreshing on a hot day. Thanks, Lauran, for such a great time!

DIY Nautical Napkin Rings

My grandma gave me a stack of magazines the other day and I came across these nautical napkin rings while paging through Country Living. I don’t know what it is about nautical design—the colors, the simplicity, the romance of the high seas—but I’ve always loved it. You can find directions for making the napkin rings here. They could be a fun little hostess gift if you’re invited to a cabin or lake home or even aboard a boat. Just make a bunch with your host’s first or last name stamped on them, like S. S. Montgomery, slide a cute napkin through each one, and put them all in a basket (maybe with a bottle of wine and something good to nibble on).

{Image by Miki Duisterhof}

Summer Reading

Are you reading any good books this summer? My book club is reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett this month. I’ve read it before, but I’m enjoying it even more the second time around. Ms. Stockett did an amazing job with this book, and the fact that it took her five years to write it doesn’t surprise me. But it does make me a little tired. Five years. And that’s nothing compared to the ten years it took Rebecca Skloot to write The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which was our June book. Have you read it? Rarely do all the members of my book club like the same book, but we all thought this one was brilliant. Our book for August is Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. I read it earlier this month and loved it. A small village in England, marvelous characters, humor, and romance in the face of adversity. Just my cup of tea.

For our family bedtime reading, we’re taking a break from The Warriors (a series I’m strangely enamored of that follows the adventures of four clans of wild cats in their forest homes) to read The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan. It’s the second book in The Kane Chronicles series and I’m feeling fairly lukewarm about it. The kids are perfectly happy with it, but I’m just waiting for the next book about Percy Jackson to come out in October.

Our daytime “porch-swing book” is Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright. We’re only a few chapters into the book, but we’re all in agreement that Ms. Enright’s a great writer and the story is off to an interesting start. We’re reading it as a possible candidate for the 90-Second Newbery Contest. The other candidate is Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. It’ll be interesting to see which book the kids pick.

So that’s what we’re reading these days (not counting the Harry Potter books, at least one of which is being read by someone in the house at any given time). Do you have any recommendations you’d be willing to share? I always love to hear about a good book.

Puffy Paint

Have you ever made puffy paint? It’s really simple and you probably already have everything you need to make it. And it’s funny how practicing numbers and letters is a lot more fun with paint.

For each bottle of puffy paint, you’ll need:

2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup salt
2/3 cup water
1-2 TBSP. washable tempera paint
Squeeze bottle (I used plastic candy-making Wilton bottles that I found at Michaels)

In a bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and water. Add paint until you get your desired color. Pour the paint into a squeeze bottle.

You’ll want to use heavy paper like thick construction paper or cardstock to paint on. Even then, the paint soaks in a little, so be sure to do this on a safe surface.