Foam Valentines

Valentine's Day is right around the corner! I had bought a package of rectangle-shaped foam sheets months ago for a different project we never did. When I came across a packet of foam heart stickers at the dollar store the other day I thought what a cute Valentine it would make, to put the stickers on the rectangles and use foam markers to draw pictures. So today the kids and I made Valentines, and as you can see from the picture even Bill jumped in and made a Valentine! (can I get an awww?) :)

They had a lot of fun doing these, and we didn't even notice until afterwards that the foam heart stickers are GLOW IN THE DARK! I thought the kids' heads would explode...they love nothing more than anything that's glow in the dark!

In the picture, I laid the Valentines out on a piece of poster board, to give you a little perspective on size. That's M you see still working...

My Feline Fiasco

Bear with me, this will be long.

My former roommate and I adopted my kitty Callie from the pound almost 7 years ago. Initially, she was more of my roommate's cat than mine.

Callie is really sweet but she has a long history of poor decision-making skills. A few years ago she managed to get herself picked up by Animal Control and taken to kitty jail, the kind where they put strays to sleep if no one has claimed them in three days. My roommate and I were desperately searching for her and fortunately found out where she was the night of the 2nd day, the night before she would have been euthanized. Oh, and we also had to go to Night Court and appear before the prosecutor because apparently in that city it is against the law to have a cat off-leash. Giggle. Fun times.

About six months after that, she managed to somehow get herself stuck on the second-floor window ledge of my next door neighbor's house. I'm still not sure how she got up there as there's nothing like a tree nearby. Naturally my neighbors were out of town, and I only had a six-foot ladder (she was about 20 feet high). Four hours later she was still crying up there and we could not figure out how to get her down. Did you know that firefighters do not rescue cats out of trees anymore? Apparently that is a myth, at least in University Park. So our final solution was for me to stand on the ladder with my arms stretched up holding an empty litter box and trying to convince her to jump down into it (about a 4 foot drop for her). It took about half an hour of cheerleading before she finally got the nerve.

About a year after that, my alley neighbor ran over her with the car. We were SO lucky that her only injury was a badly smashed back leg. So shattered in fact that our only option was to amputate. Her surgery and the three months of nursing her after that were awful...truly, it was a heinous wound and she required a significant amount of careful nursing. This is the time when Callie and I bonded and she became mine.

For obvious reasons she has been an indoor-only kitty for 5 years now. She has been perfectly healthy and very sweet....until...

About eight weeks ago she started sneezing, a lot. In big fits, like 100 times in a row. I took her to the vet after two weeks of this. He thought it was nothing to worry about, he said she definitely wasn't sick and didn't have a disease, he wasn't sure what it was but thought it would resolve itself.

Well it didn't, so this week we went back. He got concerned about the possibility of a cancerous tumor in her nasal passage, or bad teeth causing problems because it's all so connected in that area. So he sent us off to a specialist who could take x-rays and so forth.

We took her to the specialist who put her under and ran a bunch of tests and sure enough it's BOTH a tumor in her nasal passage, and three bad teeth. He said the teeth were so badly deteriorated that she must have been in significant pain for quite some time :(.

At 4:00 on Thursday she had surgery to extract the teeth and take a biopsy of the tumor, and they sent her home that night. Since then it's been another round of nursing and I'm having flashbacks to the time after her amputation....we're having to give her pain meds via syringe which she hates and fights every step of the way, and she has trouble eating even soft food. She bleeds, which they said is normal but is hard to watch. I feel so sorry for her! Her eyes are continually dilated from the pain meds she is on. (Funny: when I worry that she is in pain, Bill laughs and says "Look at her, Wendy, she's high as a kite!" and she is). Despite all this, when we're not shoving a syringe down her throat or trying to help her eat she's actually very happy. The one thing that is better this time than last is that all her wounds are in the inside of her mouth, so I don't have to worry about an exposed wound like I did with her amputation.

But another set of flashbacks is occurring. When I was married before (eons ago) my ex was a man who believed pets are an accessory not a member of the family...the dogs were relegated to the back yard rarely to see the inside of the house, and he did not believe in spending money at the vet on pets. Once when his dog broke her tail he would not allow me to take her to the vet. It gave me great anxiety, pain, and anger towards him for treating his pets that way. At the same time I internalized this deep anxiety about spending money on animals because it made my partner so unhappy.

Well needless to say we have dropped a LARGE amount of unexpected money on Callie this week. I'm talking in the several thousands. Which is a major setback for us because we were SO close, about a month away, from paying off our last consumer debt. Sigh. So I've been worried and stressed all week, that it's so much money for "my" cat and that Bill will be mad at me or hold it against me. I should have given him more credit and not underestimated him, because he didn't even blink an eye and his attitude was "of COURSE we'll take care of her, she's OUR cat, I don't want her in pain, don't worry about the money!" He is wonderful. And he's also helping me with the nursing, which is such a huge blessing. Still, I have this residual guilt about the money...and I really, really hate seeing my precious little kitty in pain.

Callie is a mess! She always has been. But I love her. And soon enough when the stress goes away and she has healed I think I will be able to laugh at how goofy she looks, missing her front top canine teeth. She's going to be one funny-looking cat with all the body parts she is missing!

Weight...

My stepson had his 5-year-old check up today. It seems he needs to lose a little bit of weight! He's in the 93rd percentile for weight but only 77th percentile for height.

How on earth this is possible, for him to be "overweight", I have no idea---this is a kid who is always the LAST to finish every meal, picks at everything and says he is full, and is extremely choosy about what he will try. If I had a dime for every time I've heard "it's yucky" before he even lays EYES on a dish, much less tasted it, I would be a rich woman. He is the slowest eater I've ever seen, and it regularly makes me nuts when we're all done and just sitting there watching him pick pick pick at his plate. How in the world could this child be overweight?!

We do our best at our house to eat good food. I even regularly sneak pureed vegetables into their food via the Sneaky Chef Method (I LOVE those cookbooks and have a freezer full of a huge batch of purees I made). But we did get a little lax about the sweets during the holidays...they had a lot more candy, a lot more often, than usual. And the last few months have been so extraordinarily busy that I find us eating out more often, and turning to pre-packaged convenience foods than I would like.

Bill and I both have been saying we need to start really making an effort to eat more fruits and veggies, and cut out some of the unnecessary carbs. Looks like this is our wake-up call!

Frugal Gifts

Bill and I are sooo close to paying off our last consumer debt, and being debt-free except for the house! Woo hoo! We've been working really hard and he asked me not to give him any birthday presents. That of course was not going to happen, so I decided to come up with some very frugal handmade gifts. All in all I spent less than $40.

First I made a eucalyptus sugar scrub, for the dry skin on his feet. Here is the recipe I used, with eucalyptus oil from the hobby store added. It smells divine! (btw, I followed a reviewer's advice and used extra-light olive oil instead of extra virgin...it doesn't smell as strong, and it was a good way to get rid of most of the bottle Bill accidentally bought a while ago). I also embroidered two washcloths to go with it.

Then I got a cute heart basket from the dollar store, and filled it with six single bottles of beer I picked up from Central Market (Bill's already tried some of them so I only have two in the picture!). Central Market has a huge variety of unique imported beers by the bottle, and knowing nothing about beer I just randomly picked some out! He's enjoyed trying new ones that he might not have chosen himself.

The dollar store had a great double-sided picture frame that I painted and put two pictures of us in.

I also got a couple of cute little figurines of lions and a penguin, because those are our cheesy "special" things that we collect together.

And, I made him the obligatory "romantic coupon book" on pretty paper, only this one has a twist: I made up an alphabet code and each coupon was a "code" that he had to crack to know what it was. If you want to know the truth (TMI alert) I did this because I couldn't bring myself to actually write anything naughty on a piece of paper...having a code saved me from that kind of embarrassment :). He did seem to enjoy cracking the codes!

All in all I think he had a great birthday, and it felt great to be able to give him things he liked that did not break our budget.

Salt Dough

I don't want to scoop myself, because the instructions for this salt dough craft are coming out in the February edition of StepMom Magazine.

But this craft was so easy, so fun, and so CHEAP! Seriously, it's just flour, water, and salt to make the dough, and paint/paintbrushes to decorate the shapes. And the best part about this was that it was almost an hour's worth of entertainment for the kids twice: first to make the shapes, and then to paint them after they were baked. Now that's what I call a great craft!

Among many other things, M made this cute pizza!

Great Wolf Lodge

This past weekend my in-laws generously sent us to the Great Wolf Lodge to celebrate Bill and my stepson's birthdays this week. Wow, what a mini-vacation! Although expensive, this place is incredible!

It consists of a heated indoor water park, lots of fun activities for the kids, and a specially-themed hotel room that had the kids "camping" in their own "tent room" separate from the adults.

At times over the weekend I thought the kids would explode with excitement and then exhaustion! We had so much fun. And despite the fact that I don't particularly favor being wet (seriously, it's an effort just to shower every day, I really don't like to be wet), I ended up having more fun than I thought I would.

What an amazingly generous gift! We are so thankful.

I've included a few pictures...one of my favorite parts was the giant bucket of water that came crashing down about every 10 minutes....luckily I managed to never get caught in the deluge myself!

Thanksgiving Placemats

In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme, today I'm posting pictures of the placemats I helped the kids make for their family members for Thanksgiving. These are just simple sheets of craft foam that I let them draw on with foam markers and decorate with stickers. They also dictated to me what they wanted to write about why they were thankful for each member. (The black splotches you see are their names blacked out).

I'm sorry the pictures aren't the best quality...we accidentally left ours at my in-laws', so I asked my mom to email me pictures of hers to post.

For my mom, their Mimi, L was thankful for all the buttons she keeps at her house for him to play with, and M was thankful because she made me (can I get an awwww?) :) Underneath that M drew a purple quilt, because my mom is a quilter. They are also thankful for my parents' dog Nellie.

For my dad, their Pakapurk (that's a long story), M was thankful for him getting splinters out (he's a retired doctor) and L was thankful for his banana pudding recipe. M did a great job drawing a stethoscope on his, but I'm not sure exactly what the brown things are that L drew.

I also helped them make mats for my in-laws, and for their mom and stepdad and stepsiblings. They all turned out really cute and we had a good time making them!

Turkey Cookies

I still have lots of crafts we did last fall that I need to post! Today's entry is a little outdated but I just have to show off these cute turkey cookies! This was so easy to do!

I only had a few glitches: I couldn't find anything appropriate to use as "eyes", and the directions I used said to "glue" on a red hot (with icing) for the turkey's nose/wattle....I had a lot of trouble getting the red hot to stay on, so decided to just skip that; instead I drew eyes and a smiley face with the orange gel icing. I didn't realize until they were done how, umm, inappropriate a grinning turkey might be :)

Another glitch was that the orange gel I used for the face and feet never hardened, so even hours later if you touched the orange it would smear. Still, I thought they turned out surprisingly adorable!

My stepkids took these to their mom's house after our own Thanksgiving celebration...I don't know if they were a hit or not, but they were so cute and fun to make we will probably do it again next year!

Wrapping Paper

So, I had this brilliant idea (stolen from my SuperMom sister-in-law) that this year we would up the cuteness factor of our Christmas wrapping paper, by making our own. Specifically making our own out of my stepkids' hand-and-foot-prints in red and green paint, on plain brown paper. I've always marveled at how cute my nieces' prints were when I would receive gifts so wrapped from them.

I am in newfound awe of my sister-in-law. I thought, well, how hard can this be? I'll just lay down a painter's drop cloth, put the kids in paint clothes we don't care about, and let them have at it. We used washable paints and planned to just carry them to the tub as soon as the fun was over...

Yeah, pretty naive huh? Hahaha I laugh at myself now. I did just that, and the kids had a ball. I gave them two strips of paper to make pretty and then a strip just for them to do whatever "art" they wanted on. They really went nuts!

Despite the drop cloth, there is still green paint on my floor, red paint on my curtains (how did that happen?) and on the bottom of one of the socks I was wearing that day (how did I get paint on my sock, but not the floor?) and the "washable" paint didn't wash out of the towels we used.

Oh well, our wrapping paper was lovely and the grandparents all had a high level of appreciation for it!

I don't think we'll be doing this next year though! :)

White Christmas!

All my life I've hoped and dreamed for a white Christmas....since I live in Texas, it's been totally in vain. We are lucky if we get one good snow shower every winter, usually it just dumps ice without snow and makes us all miserable!

Imagine my surprise on Christmas Eve when I looked up to see large, fluffy, beautiful snow flakes coming down! They hadn't even predicted snow on the weather! I was sure they wouldn't stick, because they never do and it had been warm the days before. But after a few hours of steady snow, it did accumulate and turned out so beautiful!!

I had to take a few pictures for posterity. I still look at the pictures and awe at the beauty of it! Because it's a novelty, I'm sure...my northern friends are probably laughing their tushies off at my gushing! :)

Magic Reindeer Food

Every year I help my stepkids make Magic Reindeer Food for Santa's hungry reindeer. This year since they were going to be at their mom's on Christmas Eve, we made a special reindeer bag to hold the food, for each of them and their stepsiblings, and also three cousins we knew they would be seeing on Christmas Eve.

I thought they were so cute! The "food" consists of bird seed, rolled oats, and red and green sugar. They sprinkle it on the sidewalk on Christmas Eve. There's even a little poem:

Sprinkle on the lawn at night
The moon will make it sparkle bright
As Santa's reindeer fly and roam
This will guide them to your home!

We made the little reindeer bags using paper bags, cut-outs of the kids' handprints for antlers, wiggly eyes, and red pompoms for noses. The kids loved it!!

Borax is fun!

Long time no post! I've been meaning for ages to post pictures and descriptions of the fun crafts projects that the kids and I do together. Here is my first stab at it!

I wrote an article in Stepmom Magazine (January edition) that included instructions for crystal snowflakes made from pipe cleaners, boiling water, and Borax. It sounds complicated but it was actually much easier than I thought! And the crystals are truly lovely, the kids and I were amazed!

After writing the article I began to experiment with different ways of doing the craft, and I found that I could make gorgeous ornaments from a person's name initial! So the kids and I decided to do these as Christmas presents for a bunch of folks.

It's so easy! All you have to do is twist pipecleaners into whatever shape you want....snowflake, initial, heart, whatever. Then boil some water. You will add 3 tablespoons Borax (found on the laundry aisle) for every cup of water. You can add food coloring if you want, but the plain ones are a beautiful sparkling white!

Pour the mixture into a deep (hot-water proof) container, then hang the pipecleaner into the mixture. I used a deep Tupperware storage container and placed wooden dowels across the top, and used clear fishing wire to hang each initial on the dowel. You just need to make sure the shape is completely submerged in the mixture, and not touching anything (other shapes, the sides or bottom of container).

Leave it undisturbed overnight, and the next day you will have lovely crystals! Here are some pictures of the process. I will say I don't think the final picture does justice to how pretty, sparkly, and "crsystally" these turn out!!