More Thanksgiving Crafts

We host Thanksgiving at our house and I have to say, after 6 years of doing so, we have a pretty good system going on. So much so, that I usually get a good run in the morning and have plenty of time to do my favorite thing – watch the Macy’s Day Parade with a few cups of coffee.


After years of growing up in a house where my mom hosted 35 people for Thanksgiving, we, my mom included, relish the relaxed atmosphere. But we really try to kick off the holidays with family in mind and we try to do something special or different every year. Last year, we made these adorable napkin rings and I am telling you, they were the hugest hit. We laughed our heads off (no pun intended). Unfortunately, they were such a hit that people wanted to take theirs home and we don’t have them anymore – kind of a bummer when we host the same people year after year.

But I feel like this is a good opportunity to share Family Fun as a kid’s craft resource. It’s been around forever in magazine form but when I found it a couple of years ago on-line, I thought I had uncovered a hidden gem. Turns out, I was just late to the party. But my guess is that there may be others who don’t know about it either - especially new moms - so if you’re one of them, this holiday season, check it out. They are such a great resource for crafts and recipes geared toward kids and you can search by type and by age, which is really great when you want to do something WITH your kids. Also, people who have actually done the projects can comment on whether it worked out or not and sometimes will say whether or not it was actually appropriate for the age recommended. I will do a post of my favorite go-to craft sites in the near future but this one saves me all the time when I’m doing something for the kids and I have never been disappointed with the results. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

--Crafty Mom

Thanksgiving Crafts

My mother has put me in charge of decorating the Thanksgiving dinner table and coordinating a few projects to keep my daughter and my cousin’s daughter busy – both under 4. So, why not kill two turkeys with one stone…here’s what we’ll be doing…I hope.

• “Thankful” Turkey : My daughter will be thrilled to spend a lot of time cutting out construction paper turkey feathers so that each of our guests can write down what they are thankful for this year. And, I’m sure her younger cousin will have fun wrapping the polystyrene balls in yarn.
• Place Cards : We’ll have 14 people for dinner, so place cards will come in handy. We love fingerprint art, so this is sure to be a hit.
• I have wanted to do something with the beautiful fall leaves we have had this Fall so this leaf lantern will make a great decoration for our table
  
  I have lots of glass jars leftover from the canning I never did this summer (well, I did some, but not nearly as much as I thought I would). I can get the Mod Podge, brushes and tea lights all at the craft store.
  
  How to make a fall leaf lantern:
  
1. Cover a side of a glass jar with Mod podge.
   
2. Place a pressed leaf (pressed for at least 36 hours – we’ll collect the leaves this weekend and press them until we can do the gluing on Wednesday) on the Mod Podge.
   
3. Cover the leaf with Mod Podge. You can layer the leaves on top of each other as long as you have the Mod Podge on them.
   
4. After the leaves dry put another coat of Mod Podge over the entire jar to seal the leaves.  (If we don’t get our act together in time, Plan B is to use fall colored tissue paper rather than leaves. Knowing me, my guess is that we’ll use tissue paper…)
   

Wish me luck – I may be committing to a lot more than we can handle. Hopefully, I won’t be posting an update next week that I did all of the crafts by myself while the girls ran around the house or played with dolls, or about our plain glass jar lanterns, plain white place cards and the unused polystyrene balls that never turned into a turkey.


Gobble gobble gobble.

--Commuter Mom

Halloween Wrap-up and Other Halloween Ramblings

Well, I did it. I finished the costume with plenty of time. In the end, she surprised me by choosing to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I was concerned she might switch to the Wicked Witch (aka Elphaba from Wicked) but I was not expecting Dorothy. The good news was that the pattern I bought had a Dorothy dress in it as well and I had not bought the fabric for the Glinda dress.


I can’t say I was able to follow the pattern perfectly so once I had the size right, I did end up improvising a lot. But my daughter loved it and seemed genuinely happy to have a dress made especially for her. The little one was tracking to be Dorothy as well but in the middle of the week (and middle of dress construction) she received a dinosaur costume for her baby doll from my Mom and she decided she wanted to be a dinosaur, too. Lucky me, we actually had a dinosaur costume in the dress up trunk. Honestly, a Dorothy and happy dinosaur are quite apropos for my girls.

But here are my two complaints about Halloween:

1. Why does every woman whose daughter dresses up as princess feel the need to tell me that their daughter “isn’t really into princesses but for some reason she just wanted to be a princess so I let her”? Aaaaaaaaaack! Your daughter wanted to be Belle? You mean the one who can’t stop reading and falls in love with a hideous creature? The horror. I have two girls and let me tell you, unless you live in a bubble, you cannot avoid the princess thing. And while sometimes it can be overkill, when your toothpaste is princess, your pull-ups are princess and your fruit snacks are princess, isn’t fantasy what Halloween is all about? I think it is so sad that our society has gotten to a place where a child wanting to dress up as a princess when they are three is embarrassing for mothers. It’s not like they are asking to be Britney Spears. Get over it.
2. News flash!! Kids eat candy on Halloween. And I know it’s shocking but sometimes they like it. This is another one. Why does everyone keep telling me that their daughter or son doesn’t really eat candy or even better, doesn’t really like candy? Why are people so defensive about their kids eating Halloween candy? We have all gotten ourselves so crazy that people feel like they are going to be judged because their child likes candy on Halloween. People like chocolate and you don’t have to eat it every day to like it. It’s like somehow if they imply that their child actually LIKED the candy on Halloween then I must think they give their child candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So every conversation was like, “Yes, we had fun but you know we don’t really let them eat candy so they didn’t really know what to do with it.” What??? This makes me crazy. And I’m not talking about really little children and babies. I get that some of them actually have never had candy before. That said, my neighbor’s two-year-old was opening it faster than they were handing it out. And she was loving it. I never once thought, God she must eat candy every day if she likes it this much. Again, get over it. It was Halloween.

--Crafty Mom

Crib Notes: Safe Halloween

A safe Halloween acrostic for you. Enjoy and have a happy and safe Halloween.

Ladybug Girl

My daughter’s bedtime routine consists of 3 books, a short snuggle, and a back rub for three songs. Most nights, she chooses at least one or two of the same books we read the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that…you get the idea.

So, I’m always happy when she fixates on a book I enjoy, too. Our current favorite is Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy. 

Amazon product description:
At the playground, Lulu asks her friend Sam if he wants to play with her. Sam likes Diggers, while Lulu thinks Monkeys is the best game. Sam suggests playing under the castle, but Lulu knows that the top is the most fun. They just can’t agree! And then Lulu asks, “Have you ever played Ladybug Girl?” As Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy, Lulu and Sam save the playground from hairy monsters and big mean robots, and have their very own parade on the bouncy dinosaurs. They figure out that when they work together, they can create fun games that they both like to play.

We both love the book (and the original, Ladybug Girl) so much that her ladybug Halloween costume is just like Lulu’s!

--Commuter Mom

Crayon Crafts

We made our foliage “stained glass” and it adds so much color to our windows. We get the best light in our kitchen and we just tape the finished products right to the window. I have been making these since I was a kid and honestly it is such a fun, easy thing to do. And I love anything that gets us outside to prepare for a craft.

1. Collect your leaves.
2. Shave some crayons. We used a lemon zester this year and it was great. My six-year-old was able to do all the work.
3. Arrange leaves on a piece of wax paper.
4. Sprinkle crayon shavings around.
5. Lay another piece of wax paper over it.
6. Iron them together.

In the past I have put a towel over the wax paper but this year, I put the setting on medium and just ironed right on the wax paper. We didn’t have any issues. But definitely test it out – especially if you have a Rowenta iron, like the one I want so badly. I did put a towel on my ironing board because sometimes the crayons can bleed through and to be safe, make sure you wipe your iron off after you’re done.

And then, we had some leftover crayon shavings and a lot of little crayon pieces so we made crayons discs. We put all the little crayon pieces in a non-stick mini-muffin pan and put them in the oven on 225.

15 minutes or so later and we had these and the girls colored some pictures with their funky new crayons. If you make these, just let them cool completely and they pop right out of the tray. It’s a great way to recycle broken crayons.

--Crafty Mom

Fall Manifesto

Can you believe October is here? This month I resolve to continue some of my most beloved fall traditions and create a few new ones. I plan to:

• Sneak in one more fair or harvest festival before the season is over
• Make these adorable necklaces
• Make these corn husk dolls  that remind me of my Nana
• And make these little apples which are just too cute 
• Take the girls to a Friday night football game at our local high school  
• Have a “pumpkin day” like the one featured in this book where we will eat pumpkin pancakes, pick out our pumpkins, make pumpkin muffins and roast pumpkin seeds
• Go on as many hikes (loosely speaking) as we can before the foliage disappears
• Collect the brightest fallen leaves to bring home and press between wax paper with crayon bits
• Let the kids decorate the house for Halloween however they want
• Visit every craft fair I can so that I can support handmade products and give unique gifts this holiday season
• Rake the biggest leaf pile possible…strictly for playing
• And finally, finish the Halloween costumes with time to spare.

--Crafty Mom

Great Pumpkin Pancakes

Growing up, I was a big Peanuts fan and I waited patiently each year for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!  to come on TV.  My daughter is already a budding Snoopy fan like her mom and recently received the Halloween classic book from a family friend.  Now, I’m looking forward to watching the TV special with my daughter and I think we’ll have “pancakes for dinner” night. Good thing we already have a family-favorite recipe for the occasion.

Great Pumpkin Pancakes


YOU NEED
2 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
2 eggs
1 ¾ cup milk (or as needed)
½ cup pumpkin puree
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon oil
Cooking spray

MAKE IT

1. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and pumpkin pie spice. Set aside.
2. Whisk together the eggs, milk, pumpkin puree, sugar, and oil until well combined.
3. Pour the “wet” over the “dry” ingredients. Stir until just mixed together. Lumps are okay.
4. Carefully heat a griddle or frying pan on medium heat. Grease with cooking spray or a pat of butter.
5. Ladle some of the pancake batter onto the pan to form 2-3” disks. For fun, spoon a little batter at the top of the circle to make a stem so the pancake resembles a pumpkin.
6. When the bubbles start to pop on top and the bottom is slightly brown, flip with a spatula. Remove from pan when under side is browned.

--Cooking Mom

Handmade Halloween Costumes

Come with me to the Emerald City. No, not really! But how about on a journey to sew a Glinda the Witch of the North Halloween costume from a pattern? I don’t know why but I have a thing about making my kid’s Halloween costumes. I haven’t made them every year for the same reasons that most people probably don’t. You can buy pretty good ones now -- not like the crazy plastic ones they had when we were kids -- and honestly, sewing a costume can take a lot of time. But I like to make things when I can and to me, Halloween is the best time to try and sew garments because if they don’t come out perfect, who cares?

So this year, we are in a make-your-own year, and we are doing Glinda for my six-year-old. I’m a little concerned about the commitment factor for my two-year-old so we’ll get to her costume when we get closer to Halloween.

However, Glinda is a constant passion for my oldest. She loves the Wizard of Oz and the musical Wicked even more, so I know there will be no turning back. She’s been talking about being Glinda for Halloween since January when we saw her descend from the sky in Wicked.

We’re going to do a tweaked version of the dress on the bottom right.


Two years ago we made a princess costume – no princess in particular – just a straight up yellow princess dress. Let’s just say it was challenging and didn’t quite look like the picture (ahem). With two more years of sewing under my belt, I’m hoping for better success. And she is really into the process this year so that makes it so much more fun. But it already looks daunting - - so that is why I’m starting in early September.


First lesson learned from princess dress #1: Start way earlier than you think you have to.

Second lesson learned from princess dress #2: Buy the pattern in advance and write down exactly how much fabric and what notions (elastic, ribbons, buttons, etc.) you need. Do not try to read it and calculate the measurements in the store with two kids begging you to buy random buttons and candy. You have been warned that no matter how good a multi-tasker you think you are, if you do this, you will be back in the store several times.

Next up, buying fabric and cutting the pattern pieces. Stay tuned.

-- Crafty Mom

A Butterfly Birthday

My oldest turned six last week. I am amazed by the grown-up girl she has become, always with a notebook and pen in hand, writing not only heart-felt songs but short plays. Yes, plays! Whenever I am able to get my hands on them I quickly snatch them and put them away for a day when they will bring her as much happiness as they have brought me and her Dad. But on this 6th birthday, there were no performances, just butterflies and flowers.

First the cake.

Did anyone know that the food coloring people have expanded their palette? I didn’t. For some reason, it has been a long time since I have had to buy food coloring. But they did, and they now have “neon” colors. So pretty! I always make our birthday cakes from scratch and I always use Martha Stewart’s classic butter cake from her Baking Handbook. In the description in the book, it says something like this classic cake is the stuff of which birthday memories are made and Martha’s right! It’s delicious. Plus, I usually end up having to shape the cake with a knife and it has a great density for doing that.



She wanted to do crafts at the party (love this girl). And having more “best intentions moments” than I’d like to admit, I worked REALLY hard to find two crafts that were appropriate for 5 and 6 year-olds to do mostly themselves (in our allotted time) and that they would find a little special. First, we made frames. I bought these great frames at the craft store that looked like they were made out of brown paper bags. I gave them tons of markers and butterfly and flower stickers and those girls went to town! Easy and satisfying, and once they all drew their newly-mastered butterflies and flowers, they were really adorable. If I was really good, I would have sent out copies of the photos I took at the party.



The second craft was more ambitious. We made butterfly mobiles and they were a huge hit. Do I have a photo of a completed one? No, because my daughter wanted to keep hers hanging in the garden and when I went to take a photo after a few recent thunderstorms, it just look more bedraggled than I want to share. But hopefully you’ll get the idea and I really encourage you do this if you have a butterfly lover.

You need:

1. Some type of ring to anchor the butterflies. (I ended up buying sheets of that sticky foam at the craft store. I cut it into strips and left the adhesive backing on all but an inch at one end and then I just overlapped the edge to create a ring. You could use cardboard though and staple it or the old mobile stand-by coat hanger. )
2. String cut at varying lengths to hang the butterflies. (I used yarn but only because I wanted something totally hassle-free. In an ideal world, you would use fishing line or clear thread but I don’t live in that world!)
3. Pretty, colorful tulle. (Cut into whatever lengths you think work. I did some short and some long and let the girls choose. I actually think it looks prettiest when it’s kind of messy.)
4. Butterfly bodies. (I used foam pieces that were the shape of popsicle sticks.)

For a successful party craft:

Get the rings already. Punch two holes on two opposite top-sides to attach a string for hanging the mobile. Punch several holes along the bottom of the ring and tie-on strings of varying lengths.

Get the bodies ready. I chose those foam “popsicle sticks” because I could cut them. I folded them in half (end to end) and then cut two slits about 1.5 inches long lengthwise in the stick to create something akin to a belt loop. I had them all cut and ready to go in advance of the party.

I let the girls pick their tops and some wrote their names or stuck stickers on those. Then they all picked out their tulle and began “threading” through the slit on the body. Some of them put faces on the bodies, too. You want them to pull enough piece of tulle through the body so that it looks full and it stays in place.

Once they made all their butterflies, they went and played some more and I attached them to the strings I had already put in place.

-- CraftyMom

In Boston, the Rain, Rain Won’t Go Away

Maybe you’ve heard that in Boston, we’ve just had the rainiest June on record since 1903. And the first few days of July have not shown any improvement. I simply can’t look at the pool as half full right now. All I want to do is rant, so here it goes:

1. At first we made the best of it. We built forts, baked cookies, visited the local museums. Now we are simply stir crazy. Our new play structure is teasing us through the misty windows; our hammock looks like it will take three years to dry out.
2. My son asked me this morning why the clouds haven’t stopped crying.
3. I used to live in Seattle. If I wanted grey skies and frizzy hair every day I would have stayed.
4. I am tired of my friends in other parts of the country complaining about the heat. I would rather be looking for ways to escape the heat than trying to come up with yet another rainy-day activity.
5. My kids are going to grow out of their bathing suits before they’ve even had a chance to wear them.
6. We were going to camp out in our backyard, make s’mores, and explore local hiking trails this weekend. Instead, we will probably be making forts, baking cookies, and exploring local museums…again and again.

So please, please, if you have any ideas of how we can brighten our spirits that have become so very dampened, let me know!

-- Modern Mom

Crafty Mom: DADcoupage

Father’s Day is right around the corner and I was looking for a gift that my girls – well primarily my five-year-old – could make for Daddy this year. We love presents as much as the next family but in our house, the real “present” on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is that the honored parent gets to pick what we do as a family for the day. I tend to mix it up a bit on Mother’s Day but my husband always chooses the zoo. So, I thought this year it would be fun for them to make a zoo-inspired gift that he could actually use.

My older daughter happens to be big into collages these days (more on that and why it’s a great family craft in a future post) so I proposed to her that we take it to the next level and suggested a few items that she could collage or technically decoupage with animal pictures and words. She chose a box for his dresser because when you’re five, you can never have enough boxes to keep all your treasures. But I thought I would share the other decoupage options we discussed and of course, any of these ideas could be done in a different theme – sports teams, pages from an old dictionary for a Dad who loves to read, nature themes. You get the idea.

You will need:
1) Old magazines (or new if necessary) Optional materials would be pictures from books, pages from dictionaries, tickets stubs, newspapers, etc. Really, the possibilities are endless so use your imagination and don’t forget that you can make copies of things if you don’t want to destroy something for this craft.
2) Mod Podge or other similar glue/sealer. Mod Podge works as both a glue and a sealer and is non-toxic. I’ve been using Mod Podge for as long as I can remember and it’s super easy for the kids, cheap and cleans up with soap and water.
3) Paint brush
4) Item to decoupage

Basic decoupage directions:
1) Get cutting. Cut out shapes, pictures, letters. Tip: Include younger children who can’t count in the hunt through magazines for good pictures and letters.
2) Tell your child to do a practice layout if they are particular/impulsive/cranky/tired because once it’s stuck, it’s stuck.
3) Apply thin layer of Mod Podge to backs of pictures/letters and position on frame/box in whatever way your child desires. Smooth out. Tip: It really looks best when the layers of sealer are thin. Otherwise you get bubbles and clouding. I say this in case an adult tries this project but don’t get stressed if your kid is doing it because it’s supposed to be fun and is a gift from the heart. Perfectionist moms need not apply.
4) Let dry.
5) Seal the decoupaged area by painting a thin layer of Mod Podge over the whole thing following the directions on the bottle. Tip: If doing a box, make sure not to have it closed because it will get sealed shut.
6) Let dry.
7) Repeat.
8) Give to Dad.

Dresser Catch-All:
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in our house. My husband is also a collector…of junk that ends up on his dresser. She’s making this for his dresser but this could be used at work or really in any room where Dad keeps his treasures. You can buy the boxes at your local craft store. My daughter is using a photograph of her and her sister with Dad at the zoo last year in the middle of the top of the box. Putting Mod Podge right over a photograph can get dicey, particularly if you are sensitive to maintaining the exact the way it looks. If you choose to use a photo, I would definitely not choose the only copy of your favorite photo but you may also want to laminate the photo first or only seal the area around the photo. We’re going to throw caution to the wind and seal the whole thing because we’re crazy like that.

Picture Frame
By far the easiest and least time-consuming. This is a great gift for a Dad that works in an office and has a place to display picture frames. Just buy a plain wooden frame, follow the directions above and insert photo. I have decorated old frames using this technique and bought the frames at Goodwill/yard sales for next to nothing but it’s hard to find old frames (especially last minute) that have a good surface area for a project like this so I think it’s just as easy to buy one at your local craft store.

Car/Truck Organizer
OK, I loved this idea of making a car/truck trunk organizer for a gift but I’m not a fan of the cardboard box suggestion here because it’s impractical – one loose water bottle top after softball or a day at the beach and it’s garbage – so I think this would be great to do with a wooden box like those that fruit gets delivered to the grocery store in. This photo represents some vintage ones that are actually quite collectable but I recently made some shelves for my mom and they are easy to get (for free!) at your grocery store. Just ask the produce manager. Had my daughter chosen this, we would have painted the box, cleaned off the label (as long as it wasn’t vintage) and done the decoupage on the wooden ends only. My husband coaches her softball team and keeps all the extra bats, balls and gloves in his car and this would have been a great gift, so I would have encouraged her to do a softball/baseball theme on this but…maybe next year.

Modern Mom: Loving Summer

There are ticks and sunburns and poison ivy, but summer is still my favorite time of the year. Here are the top ten things I love about being a mom in the summer:

1. “Cooling off” is an excuse to take the kids out to ice cream every night.
   
2. A few balls and some sidewalk chalk keeps them busy for hours.
   
3. Outdoor play is equally engaging for my 2-, 4-, and 7-year-olds.
   
4. There is much less of a need to divert them from the TV.
   
5. Running around outside tires them out in a healthy way, making the bedtime ritual much simpler.
   
6. Informal “play dates,” instead of the kind that you schedule a week in advance and have to clean your house before and after.
   
7. Cooking on the grill requires far less clean up.
   
8. No boots, hats, snow pants, mittens, scarves, and coats to put on and take off.
   
9. After-dinner walks.
   
10. When I’m with the kids I actually do take time to stop and smell the roses…literally.

New Mom and Commuter Mom: Happy Mother's Day

New Mom says:
Truth is, I don’t know what I want for Mother’s Day, except for my husband not to forget that it is, in fact, Mother’s Day. What I would really like, in general, is time to myself with no job to get done – no unfolded laundry in the basket, no bills to be paid, no lunches to make. But I don’t think I really want to spend Mother’s Day in particular without my daughter. I’m sure that may change in years to come, but for now I don’t think it’s this particular day of the year that I want to shirk all my motherly responsibilities. If it were possible to guarantee a tantrum-free day full of cooperation from my 2 year old, that’s what I’d wish for, but even if she got the memo, I suppose she can’t be expected to read it. So for now, I guess I’ll settle for sleeping in and reservations for brunch. It did just occur to me that I ought to send something to my own mother for Mother’s Day. See what you get after five children and eight grandchildren: you nearly slip their minds on the one day of the year that’s all about honoring you. Sorry Mom! I love you too.

Commuter Mom says:
Happy Mother’s day to you all. Hope you have plans to enjoy the day and be honored as a mother.

Here’s a fun Mother’s Day activity I found on Let’s Explore. I think I’ll make this a yearly tradition – it will be fun to see what she says year after year! Here is what my daughter had to say this year:
My mom is special
I really love it when my mom plays dress-up with me
My mom likes to wear some children’s clothes
My mom always tells me what I have to do
The best thing she does is clean up
It makes her happy when she buys something
My mom loves to relax by reading books
I like it when she writes notes
The best thing she cooks is sweet potato fries
When my mom shops she likes to buy stuff for me
My mom’s favorite household chore is clean-up time
My mom’s favorite TV show is Cash Cab
If she could go on a trip, she would go to Kindergarten
I love my mom because she loves movies

Modern Mom: My Heart Isn't In It

I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I admit there’s a piece of me that harbors hopes of being surprised with dozens of roses, a fancy dinner, and gobs of chocolate, but such fantasies aside, I could do without the holiday altogether. What little respect I can muster up for the big day is purely about romance. As for making it a children’s celebration, bah humbug. So I was a bit put off to receive class lists for all of my kid’s classrooms the other day with the expectation that each child would prepare Valentine’s cards for every child in the room.When you take into account my three kids, that’s more than 60 Valentine’s I’m being asked to provide – not to mention the one for my husband. I don’t want my kids to feel left out, so I’ll do it. But I’ll do it reluctantly. I find it to be an imposition and if that makes me a cupid-scrooge, so be it. President’s Day, on the other hand, now there’s a holiday I can embrace. A Monday off of work and off of school…makes perfect sense to me.

Commuter Mom: Snow Day

I thought I’d share our current list of snow day activities…there is only so much playing in the snow you can do before your nose gets too cold.

• Clean out the magazines. My daughter likes to help me decide what to keep and what to recycle then put them in the appropriate piles.
• Bake cookies. Chocolate crinkles are the current favorite.
• Paint our toenails…or toes --it really depends on who is doing the painting.
• Make play dough.
• Read a book.
• Go on a virtual trip to a zoo or museum.
• Wash dishes. It amazes me how long my daughter can spend washing a bowl.
• Watch home movies. My daughter loves to see herself on the computer.
• Have a tea party. For some reason that always includes me eating too much pretend cake and getting a stomachache.
• Build a pillow fort.
• Make a construction paper collage. Or, just cut paper with scissors into little tiny pieces.

Enjoy your next snow day.

New Mom: Snow Letter

An Open Letter to my neighbors, my postal carrier, the UPS delivery team, and pizza guy:

I am sorry, oh so sorry that our sidewalk and front walkway remain covered in ice. You see, during the last snowstorm, when the snow melted and refroze, my husband was out of town. I was home with a sick child under the age of 2. We waited too long, and by the time I had the opportunity to sneak out of the house while my daughter was occupied with a TV show, the ice was frozen solid. I couldn’t budge an inch of it. It has snowed again since that time, and my very kind next door neighbor did snow blow the sidewalk, and I shoveled the walkway. We removed many inches of snow, but still couldn’t cut through the ice below. Now the temperatures are in the single digits, and I fear it will be weeks before we can further clear the walks. We have sprinkled sidewalk salt, but to no avail. I know when I was on my maternity leave, in the middle of the winter, I used to curse those of you who shoveled your sidewalks to within a foot of the neighbor’s house and then stopped. You would clear a lovely, but unusable path, when I, stroller in hand, would have to walk in the street anyway because I could not maneuver through the remaining small pile of snow and ice. Now I see you walking your children to school in the streets and delivering the mail, packages, and take-out dinners with a great sense of adventure because you haven’t seen concrete in front of our house for more than a week. I feel your pain. I am truly sorry. Look for me to make amends with some fantastic contributions to the block party this summer. With my sincerest apologies, NewMom.

Modern Mom: School Daze

I will never forget the thrill of a snow day. It was so much better than a planned vacation day, providing both the surprise factor and the giddy anticipation as the newscaster read through all the towns that preceded mine alphabetically (back in the dark ages pre-Internet). So I feel a bit hypocritical now. On the one hand, I want my son to have the great feeling of finding out school is closed because of snow. I get so excited thinking about spending the day sledding together, drinking hot chocolate, and snuggling on the couch for a movie. But then I remember that just because he has a snow day doesn’t mean I do. My daydream gets interrupted by my nightmare of having to figure out at the last minute whether my husband or I is going to be the one to stay home from work, which meetings can be rescheduled and which can be done remotely. If only as parents, we could plan ahead for snow days it would all be so much simpler. We’d just have to make sure to keep it a secret from our kids so they’d still get to experience what it’s like to get a “pass” for the day.

New Mom: Christmas Passed

‘Twas two weeks after Christmas and all through the house, few presents were opened, just a plastic doll house…. So starts our first real lesson in holiday excess. The Fisher Price Doll House was such a hit that our daughter hasn’t opened any of the other gifts under the tree. The house comes with a family, a kitchen and a potty, and apparently the Mommy must have had a little too much fun in the kitchen, because our little one had her on that little plastic potty all Christmas morning long. We went to my sister-in-law’s for Christmas dinner and our daughter wanted to go home so she could play with her house. This morning was the first day ever that she didn’t want to go to school. She wanted to stay home to play with her house. Separating her from the doll house for dinner was a losing battle last night, even after we brought the whole Fisher Price family to the table with us. I’m sure tonight will be no different. She has no interest in any of the many more gifts, some from us, some from Santa, more from friends and relatives, all still wrapped in pretty paper and bows. After all, she has her house. I’m glad I tended toward practical gifts this year, the economy being what it is. I’ll just unwrap the clothes I bought her and put them in her closet and I’ll slot the books in her bookshelf to make them surprise discoveries. The gifts from friends and relatives may just get opened by Mom and Dad tonight so that at least we can send thank you notes. And all those gifts that remain from us and that jolly guy in the red suit will get put away in a closet and brought out on rainy days. It’s not that we can’t use the gifts. Probably like many kids with winter birthdays, ours was in desperate need of a toy chest overhaul. But I promise to remember the doll house obsession next year and wait for the post-holiday sales before loading up.

Commuter Mom: Birthday Bash

My daughter just turned 3. My husband and I had a long debate about whether or not we should have a party for her. We thought about the indoor playground theme: watch a group of preschoolers bounce off of the walls, literally. Then we considered the pottery painting route: watch a group of preschoolers paint their hands and try not to cringe every time they get close to the shelves of breakables. Last, we considered a party at our house: let a group of preschoolers trash our small house while we stand shoulder to shoulder with a group of parents we don’t know all that well…in our small house. Did I say our house is small?

In the end we opted for a small family dinner. My parents and my husband’s brother and sister-in-law came over for an early meal and some playtime. It worked out beautifully! I made all of my daughter’s favorite foods: macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, and tater-tots. I threw in a salad for some grown-up appeal. (I think that is the easiest meal I’ve ever cooked for a dinner party!) I even made a cake that looked just like Curious George. Our 3-year-old princess (she insisted on wearing a tiara and large fake earrings the whole night, in addition to the necktie from her Man in the Yellow Hat Halloween costume) was the center of attention and loved every second of it.

The next day her friend came over for a play-dough playdate. It was the perfect birthday for my daughter — and for her mommy and daddy.