A Mom's Year

Creating a comfortable life one moment at a time

Making Wells / A Reason to Blog

{ Nita Jatar Kulkarni }

Years ago I read a story in Sojourners magazine about a woman from a small village in Africa who was visiting a big city in America. She was baffled by indoor plumbing and asked where the town’s well was. Her host explained that the city didn’t have a well and that water came directly to people’s homes through underground pipes. The woman was aghast. “But then how do you know what’s going on each others’ lives?” she asked.

If I had been there I would have said that while we don’t have a central well to gather around nowadays, we create wells all the time.

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Happy Weekend and Happy New Year!

I love this old photo from the first time the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, 1907. Have you ever been to Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Would you want to go? When I was younger I dreamed of ringing in the new year there with the masses, but nowadays I’m happy to stay in. For the first time in ages we were planning to venture out to a couple of kid-friendly parties this year, but we’ll have to wait and see how the pup is doing.

In the meantime, here are some fun New Year’s ideas for you:

I hope you have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve, whether you’re staying in or out partying in full sequin-and-sparkle mode. See you in 2012!

Something Unexpected

We’re having a hard time at our house right now because our beloved golden retriever, Gunther, is very ill with liver disease. We’d noticed a few small changes in his behavior, but attributed them to his getting older. But then he really started to go downhill (not eating, needing to go outside a lot more, being listless) in the last week or so.

I have to admit I wasn’t prepared for such bad news, but we have a very good veterinarian and we’re all doing everything we can to keep him happy and healthy and around for as long as possible. I know that we have to do what’s best for Gunther even if that means letting him go, but for now he’s still Gunther. I’m bringing him to the clinic this afternoon for a treatment that we hope will give him more energy and get him eating more. After that, we should have a better idea about his prognosis.

In the meantime, I’m trying to ignore the painful knot in my stomach and keep busy at home. Lexie’s been staying at friends’ and grandparents’ the last few nights, but Lily’s been my big helper. We’re taking down all the Christmas decorations so we can start the new year with a clean slate. I don’t know about you, but we all have to jump right back in on Monday. My dad helped Tim take down a big, dead tree in the yard yesterday, so he and the boys are busy dealing with that today.

I’d love to write something poignant about dogs and what they mean to us, but it’ll just make me cry and I’ve done enough of that already. So the best thing to do is keep going—none of this will be easier if I let the laundry and dishes pile up. And as we keep saying to each other whenever one of us starts to lose it: “He’s not gone yet!” But please say a little prayer for our wonderful old dog and if you have a pet you love, give them an extra squeeze, okay?

DIY Pinecone Fire Starters

I spotted these pinecone fire starters in Hallmark’s The Christmas Book by Heidi Tyline King. Even though they looked simple enough (there was just a photo and some loose instructions), it took me awhile to get everything together. Which is why I’m posting about the fire starters after Christmas instead of before. But now we have a head start for next Christmas, plus I think these would make a great hostess gift any time of year—for the fireplace in the winter and for bonfires the rest of the year.

I’m sure there are different methods and materials you could use, but this is what I did and our fire starters work like a charm. So here’s what you do:

Step 1: Gather your materials
pinecones (I got the last two bags our local Walmart had this year)
paraffin wax (from Cub grocery store)
white twine (from Home Depot)
large glass canning jar (I used a huge Mason jar)
cupcake liners and cupcake pan and/or ramekins
Pam spray

Step 2: Make the fire starters
The first thing to do is put as much paraffin wax as you can fit into the glass jar. Place the jar into a pan of simmering water until the wax melts. Meanwhile, prepare the pinecones by wrapping a length of twine around them. The twine should be long enough to go around each pinecone about three times, with at least two inches of twine hanging loose from the pinecone at the end.

Next, place the pinecones into cupcake liners (placed in a cupcake pan) if they’re small or a ramekin lightly sprayed with Pam if they’re large. Carefully pour the wax over the pinecones. I first poured the melted wax into a glass measuring cup to make the process a little less messy. When the wax has dried, you can tear off the cupcake liners and remove them from the ramekins.

Step 3: Packaging
I packaged the fire starters in cellophane bags tied with ribbon because that’s what I had around. But for next year, I’d like to try to find little vintage wooden boxes like the ones pictured in the Hallmark book. The wooden box was wrapped up with a big white ribbon with long matches tied on. I also noticed, when I looked at the book to get the author’s name just now, that her pinecones look like they were dipped into the wax (instead of having the wax poured over them) several times so they turned quite white. I might try that method, too, just to compare.

Have fun and good luck!

Holiday Fun / Games for Groups

“Were there Uncles like in our house?” “There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles.”
—from A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

My favorite holidays are a combination of the old and the new. There are traditions I can’t imagine doing without, like the Advent Box and Grandma’s cornflake cookies. But at the same time it’s fun to add new foods or experiences to keep it all fresh and fun.

This year, my mom had a couple of new games for us to play at her house on Christmas Day. For the first game we split up into two teams and formed two lines. One person from each team raced to a table and put on a pair of gardening gloves (one for each team). He then had to try to unwrap a Hershey’s kiss and eat it before running back to the line so the next player could go. Not easy!

In the second game, we again divided up into two teams. On each team, several people were assigned to blow up balloons, one to tie the balloons, and the others to stuff the balloons into a pair of hose. Once again, not easy! The first team to fill up both legs won. Putting the tights on their heads wasn’t actually part of the game—that was Uncle John’s and Tim’s own idea. But they look awfully cute, don’t they?

What Grammy hadn’t planned on was the rampant cheating done by both sides. There was wrestling and, I’m sorry to say, some balloon-stealing as well. As Grammy put it, “It’s a lot different when you’re playing with a bunch of middle-aged women.” But we had a lot of fun, and I’m glad my kids got to see the grown-ups being so silly. I remember how much I loved watching my uncles and aunts acting like kids themselves at family get-togethers when I was young.