I am not necessarily the most adventurous gal when it comes to decorating  Oh, I love the wild ideas. I pin all of them. I’m like the chick up on the high dive, all confident and “I got this” and then mid bounce I freak out, don’t want to high dive anymore and start clinging to the end of the wobbling diving board.

But not this time. Somebody high five me.

Truthfully, I just wanted my entryway to have more “punch” and the blue I’d painted it wasn’t doing the job. I had a killer roll of wallpaper, but let’s face it, I can’t sew or follow a simple recipe. Wallpaper would have been a disaster of gargantuan proportion.

So I started sorting through the cajillion paint cans in the coat closet and found a pint of chalkboard paint. I’d chickened out of doing anything with it in our previous house, mostly because I’d read that if you ever want to paint over it you have to sand it and use oil based primer.

But this time I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it was the thrill of spring air and yellow daffodils popping up all over the yard.

Or maybe it was just because I was out of money and this project was free and right in front of me.

Either way I’m glad I did it. Happiness today is totally worth the sand paper and oil based primer tomorrow.

And by tomorrow I mean in a decade.

 

I love when I read a good book. I love it even more when I can recommend a good book. I love it triple times more when I read a good book, get to recommend said book, AND get to call myself a friend of the author. I’m so proud.

Jerusalem is one of those women that makes everyone feel at home in her house. She takes people under her wing. She makes you feel like you could confide something shocking to her and her response would be, “Huh. Been there. More cake?”

She threw a party at her house this Saturday. She’ll never know how much I needed to be there, out of my house, not cleaning, not changing dirty diapers. It was lovely. 

Now on to her book.

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of her book. It’s for sale April 1st, and you can pre-order your copy here.

Those tiny purple flowers, that look like miniature hydrangeas (and smell awesome too), what are they? They’re popping up in the yard. But just as soon as they make their beautiful introduction into the fresh air and sunlight, Jane ferrets them out and goes all Hannibal Lecter, picking them apart tiny bud by tiny bud, mashing them against her nostrils and sighing, “MMMMMM.”

I was inspired to find a romantic mirror after getting my hair cut here and sitting in front of  a real life “mirror mirror on the wall.” This one is much different, and smaller, but I love it so. I hung it in the chalkboard entry hall. You know, that I painted with chalkboard paint with the sole intention of drawing my own wallpaper and then subsequently had the equivalent of a home decorating writer’s block and didn’t draw my own wallpaper, but instead twisted my hands and said, “But I don’t know now…” I think I’m settling for something easy and simple, like some olive branches or stars.

Also, does anyone know what’s blooming in this last picture? These guys are popping up everywhere, but so far now flowers. I so appreciate all the work the previous owner did in the yard. Now if I can just not kill everything I touch…

 

You don’t hear much about the up-side of being a working mom. The topic is usually full of complaints, tears, sad stories, warnings, criticism, and frenzied emotions. And some of these bad things are true, sometimes, for some people. But not for all of us. Allow me to share one of the good things, a good thing that happens to me every single day.

It’s this. It happens at the end of every day. She sees me. She breaks into a run. She’s smiling and squealing. Then we hug and she kisses me. She whispers, “Mommy hair” and strokes my head. She breaks into a stream of part gibberish, part words. She talks about colors and her friends, “Noah, Kateeee, Maggieeee, puhpul, bwew, wed, gween…”  Her little sunny heart bursts with positive energy and happiness. She doesn’t care that I’m not home all day. To her, I’m just Mommy. She loves me, and I love her.

I think there’s a nagging fear among women that daycare children aren’t as bonded with their mothers as stay at home kids. There’s a nagging fear that somehow we working moms aren’t doing quite as good a job. And to this, I present these photos as evidence, and I say, “Phooey.”

She makes every day so worth it. She makes working worth it. I do it for her. I do it so she can live in a house, eat good food, and have good health insurance. I also work because I like it. Because I’m good at it. Because someday she’ll be good at something, and I want her to know that she can do it.

I hope one day when she graduates college, or beauty school, or basket weaving school (because we want her to be who she is meant to be, not who I think she should be) and discovers the working world, I’ll have been a good example of hard work. An example that yes, sometimes women work the same as men (some want to, some have to), and that’s OK, and we can do it, and life is still good and happy and right. And one day if she has to work, or chooses to work, and has a little one of her own, I hope she gets the gift of evenings like this.

Every. Single Day.

For anyone who read my book, you’ll understand the irony of what I’m about to tell you. For those that haven’t, you should know a few basic things. I grew up in a family where hiding behind doors and jumping out and yelling boo at your siblings/parents was a sport. We were good at it, and as long as you weren’t on the scared end of the process, it was good fun.

Truthfully, I would never try out “boo” forays on a little kid. I mean, I don’t have a lot of practical joke standards, but I do know that any little two year old who gets super angry with me for not responding quickly enough when she hands me her Tinkerbell phone (see pictures above) probably won’t take to being spooked very well. Even though it would be hilarious, and her sense of humor is good, it’s probably not good enough to handle the concept of “boo.”

Or, at least that’s what I thought.

The other morning we were all getting ready for church. Jane usually hangs out with me in the bathroom, pulling every bobby pin and rubber band out of the drawers, getting in and out of the bathtub, hanging on me… generally wreaking havoc as I do my best to get ready as quickly as possible. But on that particular morning I was putting on my mascara and suddenly realized everything was quiet. Too quiet.

I peered around the corner into the hallway. No Jane.

I checked her bedroom down the hall. No Jane.

I walked the entire upper floor and then downstairs. No. Jane.

I started the panic a little bit, running from room to room, and finally into my dressing room.

“Jane! Come here to me right now!” I called, crouching down to look under the desk beside my closet.

And that’s when she pounced.

Out of my dark closet, behind the lower clothes rack, she sprung towards me, part cat, part demented child.

“Hahahahaha,” she cackled in that high pitched voice that can only belong to toddler girls and grown men sucking helium.

I fell backwards, stunned, because let’s just face it. Small children crouching in the dark, plotting, is the stuff horror movies are made of.

“What, in, the,” I sputtered, trying to pick myself up off the floor.

Her little face spread into a huge grin, and she wrapped her arms around my neck in glee, giggling.

And that’s when it hit me.

She’s inherited the boo gene.

And she got me good.

And she knew it.

“You scared mommy,” I tried to shame her, but I couldn’t stifle my own laughter.

“I scare you,” she squealed and jumped back into the closet to reenact the scene again.

A part of me is proud. But I won’t lie, a part of me is a little worried. She came up with this concept all on her own, and executed it with scaring precision.

My girl is an untaught boo prodigy.