A Mom's Year

Creating a comfortable life one moment at a time

Bridal Shower Bunting

Over the weekend, the girls and I attended a bridal shower for our lovely young cousin Kate, who will be marrying the man of her dreams in September. I got to help with decorations and decided to try my hand at homemade bunting. There’s something about bunting that seems so festive and carefree and cheerful. I’ve seen mini-bunting on cakes, but thought it would be fun to stick the bunting in little plants and use them as centerpieces.

We didn’t need a lot of decorations because the Klub Haus has ivy-covered walls and gardens and planters filled with beautiful flowers. Have you ever been to the Klub Haus? This was my first visit and it was like finding a hidden jewel. It’s on Rice Street in an older area of St. Paul not far from the Capitol. The owner, Bruce, is a charming fellow with white hair and an impressive handlebar mustache. We enjoyed perfect weather and all the fun and warmth you’d expect from an afternoon spent with friends and family you’ve known forever.

I also made a banner out of larger triangles. One thing I realized when I saw the photo is that light patterns don’t show up very well. Next time I’ll stick with bright colors. If you catch the bunting bug, you can go to Creature Comforts to download templates for mini-bunting. For the larger triangles, I used a template from Ruffled. They have pennants in beautiful colors with all the letters of the alphabet that you can download for free!

Does your family have silly traditions like making a bouquet or hat for the bride out of bows and ribbons from her gifts? I think Kate’s turned out quite well.

A Reminder to Live in the Moment

Marta Writes is one of my favorite blogs. Marta beautifully chronicles the simple joys of life and motherhood, and she always has lots of great, usable ideas. Recently, Marta wrote about a day she and her son spent at her sister’s house. The kids had been allowed to help plan a schedule that featured the milk art project that I shared with you earlier this week, charades, a nature scavenger hunt, and lots of other fun things. Marta posted photos of the kids happily immersed in busy-ness, but she also included a photo of an Anna Quindlen quotation in a pretty frame that her sister keeps on the window sill above her kitchen sink.

I love this quotation and the idea of displaying it in a prominent place. So this morning I printed out the quotation and put it in the pretty daisy frame that a friend gave me for my birthday. I placed it on the kitchen sink window sill, just like Marta’s sister. It will be a good reminder to pause in whatever it is I’m doing and really look at my children (my husband, my friends, my grandparents, my parents). What are we talking about? What do they look and sound like? Who are they in this moment?

How do you remind yourself to slow down and notice what is happening in your own life?

How to Organize Library Books

Big Books Bag

Yesterday on Facebook, a friend suggested that I write about library fines and how to avoid them. He happens to be married to one of my best friends, who—like me—was not exactly born organized. For people like us the key to survival is to come up with systems and then stick with them. Or we just might discover our keys in the freezer one day. Seriously.

So how can we organize library books and avoid fines? I see this as a three-step process:

Step One: Designate an official “Library Bag” such as the one above. (Isn’t it cheeky?) Find an official spot for it, preferably out in the open so you don’t forget where it is. We keep ours on a hook in the mud room. You might need more than one bag depending on the size of your family and how many books you check out.

Step Two: Visit the library, check out some books, and put them in your official Library Bag(s). Now this is key: when you get home from the library, dig out the receipt and write the date that the books are due on the calendar. Do it right away before you forget and lose the receipt. As an extra precaution, put the receipt in the book bag.

Step Three: Designate a special location in your house for library books. We keep ours on the lower shelf of the living room coffee table. Your spot could be a bookshelf, a basket, or the library bag itself. Although with the latter you might forget you even have library books until you look at the calendar and realize they’re due and you haven’t even read them. I think it’s best to have the books somewhat out in the open.

Train your children (and yourself) to put the library books back in their official location. Whatever you do, don’t put a library book on a shelf with your personal books. It took us a year to find a book from school once because it had slipped behind other books on the shelf. Luckily, our librarian was very understanding.

So there are some ideas for organizing library books. Hope this helps! How about you? Do you have more ideas for keeping library books organized and avoiding fines?

{ Here’s a tutorial for making your own Big Books Bag at eighteen25 }

Will’s Science Lab: Milk Art

I saw this Milk Art experiment on Evie S‘s blog yesterday and had to let Will try it out. The wow-factor is huge, but please believe me when I say it’s incredibly easy. I’ll let Will take over now.

This is Will speaking. The first thing to do is gather your materials. You need a shallow plate, milk (preferably whole milk because it’s the fattiest), food coloring, and dish soap. Pour milk onto your plate so it fills it up without spilling over. Then add a few drops of food coloring in as many colors as you want. Then pour a small drop of dish soap in the middle of the food coloring and watch what happens.

The colors start to move all over the place. This happens because the milk is a lot more dense and fatty than the food coloring. So the food coloring just floats around, suspended, in the milk. But when you add the dish soap, it breaks up the fat. As the fat molecules expand and move around they cause the milk to move, too. And the food coloring comes along for the ride.

Mom here: Thank you, Will! The best part about this experiment is the surprised and delighted reactions. When you add the dish soap, the colors dance all around making different patterns. It really is gorgeous to watch. Give it a try!

{originally spotted on Household Hacker}