So many projects, so little time!

We had a huge milestone this week! My little Sirenita rode in the stroller without her car seat for the first time, and loved it! Big deal, right? The weather is beautiful this week and I was planning on taking her on as many walks as possible (72 in January. I love Oklahoma, but the weather is like Calypso, as changing as the sea, so you really have to take advantage of it while you can!). I cloth diaper when we're at home and since she is only four months old, cloth is a little bulky on her. Too bulky for a car seat, so I decided to try putting her directly in the stroller. Low and behold, not only is she fine with sitting in the stroller, but she loved it! A whole new world is now open to her, she gets to see where we're going.
This opens a whole new world to me. She's not quite ready to sit on her own yet, but within a month or two she'll be ready for high chairs, and shopping carts, and swings at the park. So exciting! But so very germy... I'm now working on a cart cover with built in seat belts, and one of those cool "Anywhere chairs" that are a highchair you can roll up and carry with you. On top of that I'm about to convert useless little receiving blankets into light weight sleep sacks, and still whipping up headbands, and bows, and little skirts. Aaaaand, as if that wasn't enough, my brain is swirling with ideas for children's books (I know, right? Baby books? But why not. Maybe I'll be a famous published author.), and things I want to draw and make and sew for my etsy shop, Sweet Sirenita.
I love creating things. More creations means more tutorials and more posts, and more things to share! The funny thing is that I feel most of my creativity has been hidden for so long. I make things all the time, but I don't like to show people. I don't like to expose my creativity, be it written, drawn, etc. So this is a huge step I am taking, trying to make things, sell things, etc. I still feel like my stuff isn't good enough, but maybe I'll get past that. We'll see. But that's one of my "More"s for this year. More creativity, and I need to be less selfish and share my creativity. There should be lots more coming.
The great thing for my blog is while I haven't posted much this week, I've worked on my photography skills and I feel advanced by bounds. So stay tuned; more posts, and prettier pictures coming soon!

Failing in order to Succeed

When I started a blog, I was terrified. I’ve had this idea on my mind for years. It comes and goes, but I hadn’t really had the time until now. I am not sure which terrified me more, the idea of failure, or the idea of success. It’s easy enough for me to write cute little tutorials or stories about learning to be a mom, or how I clean my house. But there’s more to blogging than that, isn’t there.
Many, many years ago I had a blog. This was back in the day, where it wasn’t a business, and there were no pictures. It was raw, unedited, emotion. It was your diary online. Like everything else, it seems that blogs have become sugar coated. It’s easy now to hide behind your foil panel and perfect natural light, and make all your images look so perfect. That’s what draws people’s attention, a pretty picture. It’s easy to hide behind your cute tutorials, and make it look like you’ve got it all together. I was reading yesterday in “Knowing the Heart of God” by John Eldredge how the Pharisees had it all together, they were so “righteous,” but the kingdom of heaven belongs to the humble. Not to those who have it all together. To the meek of heart. It made me think. Honestly, it hit home kind of hard. There’s a song by Casting Crowns about how we all go about our “Stained Glass Masquerade.” We pretend that we’ve got it all together. I don’t have it all together. But I sure don’t want to let that show. If you were to ask me, I’d laugh, giving what I think is a humble show, and tell you I don’t have it all together. I’d walk away feeling pretty proud that you think I did, though. It’d probably inspire me to write about how to clean something, so other people can “get it together.”
I don’t want to be a Pharisee. I want to be the humble in heart. I want to be real. I haven’t got it all together. I’m a mess, just as much as you are. We all are. Isn’t that the point of grace, the point of salvation? Some might have a mental checklist going, “Does a daily devotional, check. Talks about grace and salvation, check.” Don’t compare yourself to me. It’s easy to get carried away like that. You don’t see the behind the scenes. You don’t see that this is the first time in years where I have done that, or that I’ll inevitably find myself playing catchup. That I had to buy a “daily devotional” by one of my favorite authors to help get my lazy butt in gear so I’ll actually be consistent. That I’ve asked God to give me a new concept of spending time with him, because my old one doesn’t work.
I’m not sure why the blog came to mind as I was reading yesterday, almost in the afternoon, being honest. No, I don’t get up at 5 am to do it. There’s another failure, right? Aren’t we supposed to do this “first thing?”
I guess the deal is this. I can write. I know I can write. I know I’m good at it. My spelling and punctuation need a little tlc usually, but my content and ideas can catch people’s attention. I can put out a pretty, fake little surface thing about how I’m learning to be mommy and clean the house. I can sugar coat everything, I can be safe. I can leave my heart out, and have it “all together.” I can be a Pharisee. But that isn’t what I’m supposed to do. I’m afraid of failure, of never being good enough. And generally afraid of people finding that out, and seeing into the real me. But if I’m going to do this, that’s exactly what I have to do. I have to fail in order to succeed. I have to put my heart into it. To be real, and humble. I’m not sure what that looks like, but I guess we will find out.

How not to decorate a Onesie (and a better way to!)

On my post about Why I love a good Pinterest Fail I mentioned a disastrous attempt at painting a Onesie for my daughter. Let me tell you about my epic fail.

Last year I decorated this cute tea towel. It came out wonderfully. I followed a tutorial on Pinterest on how to make acrylics permanent for fabrics, and voila! Cute towel. When I decided to decorate these plain Onesies for Sirenita, I didn't even consider what paint medium to use. I sketched up some cute designs and got my materials together. See, here they are just begging to be used.

I used the pencils to draw my design. I had puff paint there, juuuust in case. I lined the Onesie with wax paper so it wouldn't go through, mixed my paints with the fabric medium, and away I went!

 Hello! There's a reason dinosaurs went extinct! This fellow was an epic fail! Here's my design. He was supposed to be a she, and cute! He became neither. So much for a cute girly onesie.  Time to rethink.  After talking to The Accountant, I hoped online and looked into options. My hand drawn designs are so much cuter than.. uhm... That. 

I decided to try iron on transfers. It was a bit of a bummer. Since I ordered them from Amazon I had to wait several days for them to arrive. Meanwhile, I drew up some new designs. Once they were ready, we scanned them, and because I was using a cream colored drawing pad I asked The Accountant to help me remove the background prior to printing (I didn't exactly want my printer to waste ink on printing a background I didn't want in the first place).

The transfers work great! They're pretty easy to use. Just make sure to flip or "mirror" your image before you use it. I wasted an entire sheet because I figured The Accountant had done it and didn't pay attention when I set them up to print. I was about to iron them on and realized they were going to be backwards. Oops! 

If you aren't sure how to mirror them, you can insert the images in Microsoft Word. Go to the Format tab. On the top right, there should be an option for Rotate. Under rotate choose "flip horizontal." Voila! Now you're ready to print your text reversed so it will be the right way once transferred.

Trim around your image as best as you can.  Be careful not to get too close to the edges, though! My first transfer was slightly messed up because I got too close to the printed image. 

Prior to ironing on you will want to read all the directions carefuly. My transfers say not to use any steam, to press as hard as possible with the iron as hot as possible. Each sized transfer requires a different amount of time.  Make sure you position your transfer how you want it before you iron!

Voila! Aren't they cute? They are a little time consuming because of the hand drawing, scanning, background removing process but I love how these came out! They look super cute on Sirenita. 

If you would like one for your own little one, you can purchase them on my etsy store: Sweet Sirenita

Mom Stuff: The boogie vacuum

At 12 weeks, the Sirenita got her first cold. She woke up one morning her usual sunny, bubbly self and smiled at me, all the while breathing like an ogre through her poor stuffy little button nose. I got out the trusty "Snot Sucker;" the blue bulb that they gave us at the hospital. I have another that we were given at one of my three baby showers that is still in the packaging.  I distinctly remembered the nurse telling me, "These are so much better than the ones from the store, they're much more heavy duty."
Trusting to the nurse, who should know, I got out the blue sucker and commenced operation De-Ogre-fy.  Squeeze. Suck. Squeeze. Suck. Squeeze. Suck. Are you kiddding me?! Nothing. I got nothing out with the "much more heavy duty" snot sucker bulb. I found it absolutely useless.
Frustrated, I turned to the internet. I looked up ways to de-congest a baby younger than 3 months. I would love to give some blog credit, but everywhere I looked said the same thing a friend told me before Sirenita was born. Nose Frida.
On a blustery winter day we stopped at walmart. I went in and bought a Nose Frida, some baby saline, and extra filters. Wow. Let me tell you about some Ghost Busters going on in here. Sirenita has had two colds now. The second one was much worse than the first, but we have a far happier baby, because The Accountant and I have been playing Ghost Busters.
Let me explain a few things about Nose Frida. First of all, it's a team project. There is no "I suck the snot out of baby's nose." Nose Frida shows a cute little cartoon picture of a mom sucking the snot from her smiling baby's face. Your baby will not smile when  you suck the snot out of their head. Baby will scream like you are trying to suck their brain out through their nose. Be prepared.
Sirenita hates the Nose Frida. We try to use the element of surprise. One of gets ready to suck the snot out, and the other holds the vacuum end for the sneak attack. It takes both of us to coordinate the attack while she screams, but Nose Frida works! It's disgusting. I won't show you a picture. Just think Ghost Busters and Slimer.
We have sucked adult sized nastiness out of that tiny little button nose. As soon as we quit and Nose Frida is out of sight, Sirenita calms right down and lays happily breathing through her nose and playing. Ogre breathing is gone. And no, Nose Frida will not cause permanent mental scaring of your child. My daughter doesn't scream when she sees it. She screams when we suck stuff out of her nose. It's normal, babies generally hate having their noses messed with, be it to wipe with a kleenex, or suck ghosts out.
This thing is amazing. I wish someone would use it on me when I'm sick. If you have a kid, you have to get a Nose Frida.

Why I love a good Pinterest failure

Anyone who has been on Pinterest or any social media has by this time seen the posts of Pinterest fails. Demon Easter Bunny rolls, screaming kids sitting in sludgy pumpkins. So many fails. I've even seen a blog post about the evils of Pinterest. They say it makes readers think that the blogger lives a perfect life in a perfect house. It squashes peoples dreams when they plan the perfect wedding or nursery on Pinterest before their is a fiance or a baby in the near future. It makes people think that  they are failures when their muffin tin cookie cups slide off into the oven and set the smoke detector off, and their demon bunny bread makes all the children at the table terrified.

As much as I wish I was, and strive to be, I am not perfect. Perfection is as illusive as the disappearing Roanoke colonists and just as intriguing. One of my favorite Bible verses is Jude 24, now unto him to is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. Ahhh, take that pressure off! Oh, I wish I was perfect, alright. But this is about failure. Failure is important in our lives. Here are four reasons why I love a Pinterest failure.

1)New creations
Failure has been around a whole lot longer than Pinterest. I admit, I sometimes look over pictures of perfectly sculptured cakes, and peoples neatly photo shopped items and wish I could do it. But who would create new recipes if we didn't fail sometimes? Most of us have heard the story of the accidental creation of Toll House Chocolate chip cookies. St. Louis is famous for Gooey Butter Cake, which was also a "failure." The creator inverted the amount of butter and one of the other ingredients. These recipes may not have come out as expected, but what a sad world it would be without chocolate chip cookies!

2)Funny stories
One year when The Accountant and I were newly weds, I decided I wanted to make him sugar cookies for Valentines. The Accountant really loves sugar cookies. I was working two jobs at this point, teaching English in a high school, as well as working part time at the accounting firm The Accountant worked at. My routine at that time was to make up a week's worth of baked goods and freeze the dough on Monday, making it easy for me to pull out whatever I needed and cook it during the week.  One day a few weeks before Valentines day I made up sugar cookie dough and put it in the freezer.

A week or so before Valentines days I made Quiche. I really ought to make it more often, it's so good. I make mine with Poblano peppers, corn, and cheese. Yum... So good. I was really looking forward to my delicious Quiche. I remember sitting down to dinner, taking that first bite, and... something was wrong with my quiche. Very wrong. The Accountant couldn't detect anything odd. I found it disgusting; for some unknown reason it was sweet. I used regular pie dough, it shouldn't have been sweet. It was too sweet for me to eat. The Accountant ate both my portion and his. After dinner, as I thought back over cooking the quiche I realized what I had done. I had pulled a ziploc bag with a ball of  what I thought to be pie dough out of the freezer. None of the bags of dough in the freezer were labeled.  I made my Poblano pepper quiche with a sugar cookie base, instead of pie crust. Dinner and dessert in one, So gross! After Valentines I confessed my error to The Accountant. We had a really good laugh about it, and still do. He insists it was delicious. I refuse to ever make Sugar Cookie Quiche again.

This year we were invited to a picnic for labor day. I wasn't sure what I wanted to take, we had limited time to cook before hand so I thought I'd go with something easy. I found a recipe for adorable lettuce wedge salads on a stick on Pinterest. What's cuter for a picnic than food on a stick? They were super cute and super easy! Theoretically. You know how when you cut up a head of lettuce it doesn't hold together anymore? Yeah... I don't even know how the blogger took a picture of theirs, mine ended up being a few pieces of lettuce on a stick. I'm guessing the whole thing was photo shopped. I didn't have time to make anything else, so I showed up to the Labor Day picnic with a bag full of iceberg lettuce, a bag of tomatoes, a container of bacon, ranch dressing, and a whole bunch of pointy sticks. Hello Pinterest fail! Did my life end over a bag of lettuce and pointy sticks? No, but we sure got a good laugh out of it!

3)Trail and error
I recently decided to paint designs on some Onsies for Sirenita. Last year I found a tutorial (on Pinterest) on making tea-towels using fabric medium. I figured it would work on the Onsie since my towel is adorable. Apparently painting a towel and painting a Onsie are incredibly different.  I was trying to paint a dinosaur, but it was so bad I painted "Dinosaurs: Epic Fail" on it, and stuck it in the "Just in case bag" that we carry in the trunk of the car. Unless there is a poop-splosion while we're out and don't have the diaper bag, it'll never get worn.. Haha, can you imagine donating that once Sirenita has outgrown that size? I mean, it's a perfectly good Onsie. Just that my painting is an epic fail. I had a bunch more plain onsies, and a bunch of cute ideas, so we tried something else that worked beautifully. I figured out one way that definitely did not work, but I also found a way that I never would have considered if I hadn't tried and epicly failed first.

 4)Finding new skills
 I am creative, so I browse Pinterest looking for ideas. I also browse various stores and get ideas from them. I love to make things, most of my home decor is DIY. I draw The Accountant into the creation process too. We try all kinds of crazy new things. Inspired by what I see on Pinterest, I look up tutorials or figure out how to make things myself. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes they come out amazing.

 We've done the foil over glue decor thing. Mine looked like a little kid did it. The one on Pinterest looked like an antique made of real metal. I tried the Sharpie mug decorations. Mine wiped right off. I tried a mug painting tutorial, even baked and cured my mug just like they said. Not only did the paint wash off, but it stuck to some of my other dishes and has never come off of them. Go figure. I tried creating decor using a chalkboard. Who knew I am so good at lettering and designs? They come out so nicely that I hate to wash my chalkboard.

Once I found a cute tree shaped shelf that I thought would be adorable in our nursery. When I found out I was pregnant with Sirenita, I asked The Accountant if he could make one. He watched tutorials and studied online quite a bit, and churned out an amazing masterpiece that is so much cuter than we expected. He didn't know he could do carpentry like that, but he gave it a try.

Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." I may never make lettuce wedge salads on a stick again, but I had fun. Be inspired to try new things. Don't live your life vicariously, drooling over Pinterest while trying to avoid failure. It may offer you a million different ways to fail you never would have come up with on own, but you may just find something new you never knew you could do!

Attack of the Gender Neutral Onsies Part 2: DIY knit skirt

The other day I  made Sirenita a super cute bow from this little girl's tank top from Walmart. They cost $1.68, regular price. You can't beat that, right? Especially when you plan on destroying it!

I picked the first one up as an experiment. The bow came out very cute and the color is great on my little Sirenita. Since I only used the bottom four inches of the shirt, I figured I could make a matching skirt out of it. How better to dress up those boyish gender neutral onsies than with a matching skirt and headband?  If you don't know how to sew, you could easily do this with some stitch-witchery, or something of that nature, so don't despair! This is the easiest skirt I have ever made, and only took about 10 minutes.

You'll need a shirt and some elastic to do this. If you have an old shirt laying around that you don't want you could use it, or swing by Walmart for one of these cami's. I used a little girl's size 14/16. For a larger child, you could spend a dollar or so more, and use a lady's sized cami. I think they cost about $2.86. Of course, if you don't like Walmart, you could try Forever21 for cheap cami's, or wherever floats your boat.

First measure and cut your elastic. I cut mine about an inch longer than I needed. 

I used the size chart from thepinningmama to figure out how much elastic I needed. She also has a great tutorial that I have used for making a tutu, so if you have leftover elastic you can swing over there and make a tutu too! If you are doing a no-sew version and plan on tying the elastic in a knot make sure you cut your elastic longer so you can knot it!

 http://www.thepinningmama.com/diy-no-sew-tutu-for-little-girls/

Lay the elastic near the bottom of your shirt and fold the hem over your elastic to measure how big a casing you need to make. You can either flip the raw edge under so it is completely hidden, or leave  exposed. Either way, it will be on the inside of the skirt, and knit does not ravel so whatever is easiest for you is fine!

Pin the hem over your elastic, leaving at least 1/4 inch extra so you will have room to sew.  Remove your elastic. Sew along the edge of the fold to create the casing. Make sure you leave a small hole to slide the elastic through!

I ran out of bobbin thread and had to take a brief intermission. It reminded me of 80's Saturday morning cartoons. "After these messages, we'll be riiiight back!"

Back to work! You have now sewn almost all the way around the skirt. You've created the casing, and left a hole to thread your elastic through. Now it's time to add elastic. The easiest was is to pin a saftey pin to one end of the elastic, and stick it into the casing. The pin will make it easier for you to grab the elastic and work the end all the way around to the other side of the hole. 

Once you've worked the elastic all the way through your casing, you can sew the edges of the elastic together.  If you are doing a no sew version, you can tie the elastic together in a knot, or use your fabric glue.  

Once you sew the elastic together, you can finish sewing along the edge of your casing to close it. You now have a skirt with edges that look like a new gothic fashion gone wrong. 

The great thing about knit is that it doesn't ravel. So just chop those weird edges off. You could do a waterfall skirt, longer in the back and shorter in the front.  You could scallop it, or just chop it off straight. It's completely up to you. Whatever you choose to do, just run your fingers along the edge to stretch it slightly. It'll roll up, and you're done! 

If you have a full shirt to start with, you could also use the original hem at the bottom of the shirt if you don't want raw edges. 

Attack of the Gender Nuetral Onsie Part 1: DIY headband

My little Sirenita is four months old now. We were very blessed to have three baby showers for her, and haven't really had to buy any clothes for her yet. Until now all her clothes were pretty girly, but the size she is currently wear at least half of the Onsies are "gender neutral." It's not a big deal but, most people assume a baby in "gender neutral" colors is a boy. I considered sewing some pink ribbon flowers to them, or painting some pearl necklaces. Then I had a Back to the Future moment, and realized I may someday use those for my son. (Someday, far, far into the future.) Thinking of a son I may one day have leaves me no choice but to find another way to "girl up" these Onsies.

 My first thought was to make a bunch of tutus. I made one. It's cute. It's very cute. It sure doesn't look comfortable. It's something I would put on her for pictures, but couldn't expect her to wear all day. Time for a new plan. I thought I'd make a bunch of headbands and bows.

I checked out tutorials on Pinterest, found there were lots of cute options, and decided to go for it. Somewhere I saw that they used an old t-shirt to make headbands for a baby. So I headed over to Walmart for a cheap shirt. I looked all over the baby section at Walmart and the cheapest I found cost $3. I didn't want to spend that much to chop it up. I checked the cloth section but the colors they had for knits weren't very good, and since I was there early there wasn't anyone to cut it. I had nearly given up when I found this Spaghetti strap tank in the girl's section for $1.68.

I can afford to destroy a shirt that cost $1.68. With my destroyable t-shirt now in hand, I looked up my tutorial on Pinterest. Low and behold I couldn't find the T-shirt tutorial! Grrr. Magically, all the tutorials now called for panty hose or required me to sew a tubes. I hate sewing tubes.I decided to give it a whirl and came up with this design.

Start by cutting a strip about four inches wide off the shirt. I started at the bottom, and then cut off the bottom hem.

After removing the bottom hem, pull on the fabric to stretch it out. It will roll up like in the picture below, just like making those t-shirts all the girls used to wear in the 90s where we chopped the bottom off and stretched it out to sew a braid up the sides.  Cut this strip in half and remove the hems.

   Now grab yourself a sheep. Or something that you can use in the place of your child's head. My daughter was sleeping while I did this, so this 30 year old sheep stood in for her. We have a long standing friendship, this sheep and I. In any case, you probably don't want to use a live child for this as it may take a little while.
Tie one of the strips of cloth around your subject. This part is the band, so pull it till it's about the size of the child's head. Knit will stretch some, so it's ok if it's a bit smaller than your little one's head.

Now it's time to create the bow. Take the second strip of fabric, and fold a third of it over.

Fold the other side over so that the raw ends overlap slightly in the center. I tucked the edges under the sides just slightly. 

Pinch the edges together to make a bow.

Lay your square/bow on top of the sheep's headband. Take the loose end of band, and wrap it around the bow. Tuck it behind the headband and pull it through so that it hangs loose, like the end of a bow. 

Now it should look like a bow. I pulled the rolled edges of the center piece apart just enough to sew between them. I did it by hand, and just sewed straight through front to back several times.  You could slide this off your sheep and sew it on a sewing machine, sew it by hand, or  even glue it. The key is just to make sure you get bow and headband stuck together, and don't sew/glue it to your sheep.

Here is what the back looks like as you're sewing it. It looks a little crazy, but that will be against baby's head anyhow.

Once you've finished sewing, pull the edges of the center piece back together. Snip off any spare threads, and trim the dangly edges of the bow so they are the same size. Now it's ready to wear! Isn't it cute?  The band is very versatile and can either be spread out for a wide band, or left rolled up for a smaller band. Since it's made from knit it's very soft and doesn't feel bulky on baby's head! 

So sweet!

"Freeing" cleaning plan; My New Year's (Not) Resolution

I never set a New Year's resolution. I haven't since I was a little kid, back in the days where I had a little girl's "Diary" that had writing prompts about things I loved or hated. (That never worked out too well, but that's another story.) I usually set myself 10 goals for the year. I didn't bother this year, I never keep them or remember what they were by the end of the year anyhow.

 Before you think I'm being swallowed into a hopeless hole of gloom with no aspiration to personal growth, I will say that rather than a goal I have an aspiration of what I want for this year. It can be summed up in one word: More. I want more creativity in my life. I want a more orderly, and organized home. I want to spend more time with my daughter, and be focused on her and not on my "Que haceres." I want more out of life and I want to enjoy it more.

 This is my first year as a stay at home mom. It's my first year as a mom at all. I am learning to juggle my sweet Sirenita, who is almost four months old now, find my identity outside of being a "top performer" at work, and figure out how not to let my house go to poop. That last one is the hardest for me, I confess that I am somewhat OCD. Somewhat, by the grace of God, because I know I could be extremely OCD if it weren't for him.

 That being said, I like a spotless house. It's already impossible. Just when I get the whole house cleaned, the bedding washed, and the baby dressed super cute, curdled milk gushes forth from the depths of my child like some kind of hidden spring, bubbling all over my bedding, my child, and cascading onto the carpet only to hide while I desperately search for it with carpet cleaner in hand and be found later by my foot. *deep breath after all that* I am coming to terms with the impossibility of a spotless house. There are things that are out of my control. While spotless is impossible, clean and neatly organized is not.

 Usually in January, I go on a mad de-cluttering rampage. I take out bags of garbage and give away bags of bizarre trinkets that have built up throughout the year who knows how. I don't even know where this stuff comes from. Most of it hides so well no one but me would ever know it's there. I always feel better once it's gone. I admit I despaired of ever having a junk free home again when I began to think about trying to rampage de-clutter my home while caring for my child. Then the revelation came; Just do what you can do.

 When Sirenita was born I would stress about getting the regular cleaning done. The first Monday I was home alone I tried to clean the entire house between feedings and ended up showering at 3 PM, eating lunch at 4 PM. Thankfully, I had lots of food in the fridge and didn't have to cook dinner. It was obvious to me that cleaning like this wasn't going to work. I couldn't clean the house first, then take care of my own needs. I couldn't get the entire house spotless in between feedings and naps. One day, as I was fretting over it, I had this revelation. Just do what you can. I know it sounds obvious, but it was freeing to realize that if I couldn't dust the whole house or clean the shower twice a week the world wouldn't end. Eventually I'd catch back up to the next time it was "supposed to be done," and it would get taken care of.

Maybe it seems stupid to some, but it made such a difference to me. I started to relax, and enjoy my daughter more. The more I relaxed and spent time with her instead of time trying to get her to sleep so I could be away from her, the happier we both were. I've learned to do my cleaning around my little Sirenita now. We have a pretty good routine going, and if something doesn't get done, it's turn will come around again. I've learned to break up my housework into little manageable bites.

 This year, instead of binge de-cluttering, I am taking it in bites. I've broken my house up into 6 segments. Last week I actually de-cluttered our entire Study. Our study is infested with Junk Gnomes. Junk Gnomes are a relative to the packrat. They bring in shiny things, "useful" things, cute and fun toys, junk mail, etc. and jam it all into the closet, the bookshelf, and the desk. It usually takes me about four hours to de-clutter the entire study. This year I did it over three days. Each day I focused on a segment of the Study. It took a good deal less time since there was less to deal with at a time. I probably spent no more than an hour and a half over three days on it, instead of my typical four hours.

Turns out a clutter free home is not impossible with a small child. It just has to be taken from a different perspective. To help me stay on track, I've created a weekly cleaning plan, and a 6 week rotating cleaning plan to help conquer the Junk Gnomes. I've even scheduled dog grooming in my plan. We've had this miniature sheep wandering the house for months and when I got out the sheep sheers I found it is actually our toy poodle. Oops.

 I believe people have a natural tendency to feel plans are binding. The reality is that a good plan can be freeing. What goes around comes around. Just do what you can" - meaning if something on the to-do list doesn't get done, oh well. It's turn will come around again, but this day with the family will never come back.

Here's my Freeing Plan. Feel free to adopt or adapt my cleaning strategy. I know for a fact that it works!

Weekly plan:
Monday - Kitchen, Bathroom, and mop floor
Tuesday - Vacuum and Dust (pick up bedrooms and study while dusting) , Give the dog a bath
Wednesday - Conquer a Junk Gnome task
Thursday - Laundry
Friday - Kitchen, Bathroom, mop floor

Junk Gnome Battle Plan:
Week 1 - Study
Week 2 - Hall closet and Laundry room
Week 3 - Master bedroom
Week 4 - Kitchen
Week 5 - Nursery and guest bathroom
Week 6 - Garage (and dog grooming)

 I plan on keeping up with this rotation through the year. The only (or at least best) way to eat an Elephant is bite by bite. The only way to keep things going with a little one is chipping at it little by little. Don't stress about it. If you miss something one week, you can get it next rotation. Having a schedule helps! There's a time for everything. Keep it in it's place, and don't let it take your family's place. Enjoy the freedom of maintaining a plan and not feeling you have to do it all at once. If it doesn't get done, it's ok. Just do what you can do.

The Quest for the Ultimate Brownie

Back "in the day" before I moved to Mexico, my roommates and I used to go to this local coffee shop. The atmosphere was fun (that's usually the biggest thing about a coffee shop, right? How's the atmosphere?) the coffee was great, and the desserts...Wow. For $2 you could get an enormous, thick, fudgy, heavenly brownie. They were the best brownies I had ever had. And I moved away from them. In fact, I moved away from Brownies all together.
When I moved a village in Oaxaca, Mexico, I gave up a lot of things. One of them was chocolate. Chocolate is expensive in Mexico. Most of what is produced in Mexico is shipped out, and then imported back in, causing the prices to double or more. That being said, brownies are not common in Mexico. Food is one of the most distinctly cultural things in existence. Especially desserts. The desserts in Mexico are amazing, but so different. I love to try new foods. I am fascinated by other cultures, but when you want a brownie, arroz con leche just doesn't cut it. When I did find brownies, I was not willing to pay the price of an imported brownie, much less when it's probably Betty Crocker. No offense, but I've never been one to cook from a box when it takes the same amount of time to cook from scratch.Thus began my quest.
Early in my marriage I began to try recipe after recipe. I was a new wife in a culture that expected a three course meal for dinner every day, including a dessert. I can make flan, and arroz con leche, and gelatin's, and mango pudding. Sometimes you just want a good brownie. The whole recipes on the internet thing was really just picking up. For someone living as an ex-patriot in another country, the internet is amazing. It can provide a little slice of home when you most need it. For me, it provided endless brownie recipes.
For years, I tried recipe after recipe. I could never find anything to equal the Super Brownie. I found good brownies, healthy brownies. We tried coco brownies, we tried sour cream brownies, zucchini brownies. I even tried brownie recipes for my particular altitude in the state of Queretaro. The Accountant can attest that there were months where I tried a different brownie recipe every week. Yet I never found the elusive Super Brownie. I gave up for a time when we moved back to the US.
Enter Pinterest. A plethora of brownie recipes ever taunting me. I stood, like Indiana Jones, attempting to choose the holy grail of brownies. Thankfully, the failure recipes didn't cause the angel of death to come and whisk my soul away, they only caused The Accountant to groan and wonder if his brownie pergatory would ever end. And then I found it. On a cold, snowy day last winter, I clicked on a pin. It took me here to Sweet Anna's blog, where at last, after many years I found what I sought.
These are the best brownies I have ever made. They taste just like our local coffee shop's huge, fudgy super brownie. This is a find as dangerous as the Holy Grail. I make these, and freeze most of the batter so that I can have them whenever I want. I've never put icing on them yet, but I just might put them in individual muffin cups, ice them, and put season sprinkles on them one of these days...
If you have been seeking the ultimate, fudgy brownie, seek no further my friend. Your quest can end here.

Romantic Grass Stains and Washing My Wedding Dress

My husband and I met on a missions base, in Oaxaca, Mexico. I was living there as a missionary when he arrived to help straighten out our accounting. He arrived at the beginning of December, just when I was contemplating moving to a convent, or a jungle to live a celibate life like Mother Teresa, or something.  On January 1, 2008, he asked me to pray about our relationship. I may have though he was a little crazy, but I agreed. I can honestly say there was something of love at first sight on my part. (Ok, second sight, but can you really count a 10 minute encounter when you have dengue and could care less?)  I remember feeling a strong desire to get to know him when he was introduced to the base staff. I thought he looked like a nice guy, and would be a good friend, but I really expected him to be too high and mighty to ever notice me.

Fast forward to July 7, 2008. We're standing on the unfinished fourth level of a building on the base, watching the world around us flood. Turns out The Accountant wasn't so high and mighty as I expected him to be. He shook like jello when he asked me to marry him. I of course said yes.

We were married six months later, at a beautiful house his parents owned in Queretaro, Mexico. Our wedding was perfect despite a few bridezilla moments and cultural differences. In the US our tradition is that the bride's father pays for the wedding, and the bride plans it. In Mexico, the groom's family pays and the groom plans the wedding. We were all prepared to have a small wedding here in the states. and being the DIYer that I am, we were going to make everything ourselves. My father-in-law stepped in and offered to pay for our wedding if we would have it in Mexico. We agreed, but there was a minor problem - they hired a wedding planner.

Ugg... She was awful. She changed my colors. The table cloths looked like hospital gowns. She put bamboo and paper lanterns everywhere in spite of my having expressly forbid them on the first meeting with her. Despite it all, our wedding was lovely. I can't say that any of that matters too much seven years later, what matters most is the seven years since then.  But back to the story.

The weather was perfect. We held the ceremony in the "garage" area, a courtyard with a fountain and ceramic tiled platform. The reception was held in the back yard.  The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Even in Mexico December is cold. Typically it's a cold, yucky, rainy month where everyone hides in their concrete ice box houses and huddles up in their giant winter coats since there is no heat anywhere. Our wedding day was sunny, gorgeous, warm, and the last perfect day before the yuck season hit!

My dress was gorgeous. It had this long train on it that I call the dragon tail, I had to keep kicking it around behind me when we danced. I'm short, too, so even though we hemmed the dress, it still dragged on the ground. I don't know how many times it was stepped on, dragged through the dirt, etc. One of my Mother-in-law's good friends is an amateur photographer, and unbeknownst to us had decided to shoot our wedding. All I knew is that as we floated dreamily away from the cake we had just cut, hand in hand, something jerked me up short, and "that lady with the camera" had stepped on my train!

That was just one of the many minor accidents my lovely dress suffered. It wasn't as bad as the stain remover commercials where they slow motion spill grape juice on the bride, but it was obvious my dress had been worn and well worn. Being the happy bride I was, at that time I didn't care. The next day my dress was jammed into a garment bag, and left at our new love nest while we ran off on our honeymoon. There it stayed as day passed into night, night to day... Weeks slipped away into months, months into years. Grass stains, mud, makeup and other grime all slowly became one with the fibers of my beautiful once white wedding dress.

It was probably when we moved the first time and emptied the cave that was our spareroom/storage room that we thought about my dress. By that time it had already been jammed into the garment bag for months. It was never dry cleaned. Of course we felt the need to salvage the poor dress, which at that time was probably the most expensive item I owned. We checked into dry cleaning prices. The cheapest we could find was 500 pesos (about $50 USD at that time). The Accountant and I were very poor when we were married.  500 pesos was the grocery budget for a week. We didn't have that kind of money to throw away on dry cleaning a dress I had no immediate plans for. And so my dress sat, gathering dust, crumpled up in its garment bag.

Fast forward. The Accountant and I have been married for 6 years. 10 days before our 2nd wedding anniversary The Accountant was granted his US Visa, and we have lived in the states for 4 years. I can't even remember how my wedding dress got to the states. We were so poor when we moved that we had no car. We crossed the border on foot with what we could carry and our toy poodle, who walked across on her own four paws. I can't imagine that I had jammed my wedding dress into one of those suitcases, but somehow or other it made it here. It had been sitting in a closet, transferred from apartment, to rental house, to the first home we owned. At one point we had vaguely talked about dry cleaning it, but in the hustled of moves, furnishing our home, renting and buying and moving again, all those ideas got swept away. So there it sat. On our "Someday when we have an extra $50 bucks we don't have anything better to do with" list. At this point, dry cleaners were not confident that they could remove the stains, the best they could guarantee was that it would be clean.

By then I had Pinterest. One day, as I spent moments of boredom swiping through screen after screen of random pins I stumbled across this post on "Loving Life with The Martins." The wheels started turning in my head, and I decided to try it out. After all, six years later my dress was already ruined. It would have been hard to ruin it more than it already was.

I considered and plotted for a while before I actually made my move. Is this a good idea? Maybe.,. It might save my dress and some money. But it might destroy the dress. It's already destroyed anyway, balled up stained in the closet.

I decided to go for it. One day, while The Accountant was at work and I was off, I got out my favorite "Miracle"stain remover - Dawn dish soap, baking soda and peroxide. I mixed up a giant batch because the stains on my dress were huge. My dragon tail had been trod upon, danced on, swirled through dirt and mud and squashed up scorpions all day prior to being crumbled up.
 On the smaller stains, I just dabbed the magical mixture on. For bigger stains I added more peroxide so that my potion was more watery and laid the dress in it. Then I let it soak for an hour or so while I went about my "Que haceres." (To-do's)

After I was confident that my stain remover had soaked in, I turned the dress inside out and threw it into my HE front load washer on delicate. I'm not the best at laundry, I just turn the nob to the load style that seems most appropriate and trust my washer to do it's magic.

An hour later came the moment of truth. I stood in front of my washer, staring into the blank eye that gave no clue as to what it held within. Would I be confessing to my husband that I had completely ruined the expensive wedding dress and it was now far from all hope of rescue? Or would this be a Pinterest victory? With a trembling heart, I opened the washer door. All I could see was tulle poofed out everywhere on the inside out dress. I carefully removed the damp dress from the washer. It was in one piece. So far, so good. I didn't see any beads laying around, so that was a good sign. Now, the proof would be in the pudding. What would I find when I turned the dress right side out...? If this were a TV show, I would put "To Be Continued..." and leave you in suspense.

Since it's not a TV show, here's my dress. White, and like brand new. All the stains washed out. I wish I had had the foresight to take a before picture of the grime and stains. The dragon tail is clean, shiny white satin again. And not a bead came loose. My dress was saved. For the price of a tub of homemade stain remover, a little bit of elbow grease, and an hour in the washer. I hung it up to dry, and when The Accountant came home I excitedly showed him my day's "travesura" (mischief).

 My dress now hangs proudly in the closet, waiting for a day it might be used again. Maybe some day we'll get around to having the wedding in the US that was promised to my family. We may renew our vows at 10 years, and I think I can still fit into the dress. If not, someday the Sirenita will be big enough to try it on. Either way, at least I now have a reason to keep it, and I'm not storing a bunch of useless satin rags.

I can't guarantee that this will work on any and every dress, but if yours has been sitting around stained for so long that it's already worthless it may not hurt to try it. I would prepare mentally for the worst, and hope for the best!

Mom Stuff: A dissertation on the deceptiveness of disposable diapers

My daughter, the Sirenita, is thankfully becoming a great sleeper. We don't have to fight and spend
hours rocking and walking, or cry it out now that I've learned her cues and she has learned her sleep routine. It's amazing. In fact, a little too amazing. She's always taken a good long nap in the afternoon. I usually wake her after 3 hours, I don't want her to get her days and nights reversed. I have been a little concerned lately that maybe she sleeps too much.  I was concerned until Saturday.

Saturday afternoon I started thinking her nap was becoming excessively long. I had gotten her up early, as I'm trying to get her used to regular nap and wake times. That means she went down fairly early for her first nap. After three and a half hours, I was concerned. I couldn't believe she wasn't screaming to be picked up. I opened the door, thinking I would go in and sweetly wake her. When my eyes adjusted to the nap dimmed room, I saw that my sweet little introvert was quietly recharging her battery with some apparently much needed "me time." Makes sense, we were out all day the day before. Not only was she awake, but she had 180 degrees on her back, and was laying there sucking her thumb and kicking her changer with her sleep sack webbed feet. 

I thought I'd go steal a smile. There's nothing like that first smile a baby gives you when you lean over them in their bed and talk to them. I didn't get two steps in the door before the smell hit me. It seems that Sirenita had been awake longer than I thought. Long enough to poop way more than her disposable diaper could hold, and roll around in it. Her sleep sack was saturated and crusty at the same time. Her bed was covered. I had to call in reinforcements. The Accountant came from the other room and threw her right in the bath while I cleaned the bed and the sleep sack.  I even had to spray my homemade air freshener in the room to clean up the smell.  It was awful. And all because I bought the lie. 

Flashback to 8 am that morning. I woke up and got Sirenita up. She was smiley, playful as always in the morning. It was snowing, a rarity in these parts. I wanted to shower and enjoy the snow with a cup of coffee. I changed Sirenita, and out of laziness, I put a disposable diaper on her.  I didn't feel like having to wash out cloth on a Saturday. Disposable seemed "easier." I remember fighting to make sure the tabs were in the right place, playing the "Did I actually cover both butt cheeks" guessing game.  You've already seen the dreadful result a few hours later.

If I had put her in cloth, that wouldn't have happened. We may, from the sheer quantity of it, have had a small leak. A smudge around the back and some moisture around the legs. But let me tell you, since I have started using cloth diapers (once Sirenita got big enough for them) I have never had a cloth diaper explode like disposables. Disposables seem so much easier. You put it on with "easy" Velcro tabs. I remember in the old days the tabs were like duct tape, once they were on they were on. You better hope that you got both cheeks covered. Now diapers have all kinds of benefits, stretchy elastic to let baby move better, re-closable Velcro tabs, drier than ever before! In spite of all those magical sounding words, I find that disposables tend to make more work for me. I do keep disposables on hand, I admit. More than anything it is because Sirenita is still so small that the bulk of a one size cloth diaper would not be safe for her car seat.  In spite of all the magical promises that disposable diapers boast, I find that they tend to make more work for me.

 I could lecture  on how bad disposables are for the environment. Landfills full of poopy bio-hazardous waste, and all that.  Then there are the chemicals. Potentially poisonous chemicals hiding in the super absorbent disposables.  Since I'm not a scientist what I could tell you is only hear-say, although I find that alarming enough. Financially, the savings you get by using cloth diapers are huge. I think I spent more on disposables during Sirenita's first month than my entire cloth diaper collection and accessories have cost.

I was skeptical about cloth when I first started looking into it. It hadn't ever crossed my mind that cloth diapers were a modern thing. I thought they were a thing of the past, only the Amish and Homeschool Moms use cloth. Maybe some hipsters. I only looked into it because I was asked what my opinion on it was. The more I researched, the more convinced I was that cloth is the way to go. Most of my cloth diapers were bought for me as shower gifts by curious friends who wanted to use my baby as a guinea pig. I was ok with that. I tried the "cloth diapering thing." It worked.

You see, a well fitting cloth diaper doesn't leak. There is no guesswork every time you put the diaper on. You just need to know which set of snaps you're using. Occasionally there may be a little moisture escape around the legs, where there are no inserts. Usually that only happens when the diaper is already very wet. Comparing the little bit of moisture from cloth to the ricochet effect of poop on a wet disposable which some how causes it to explode up the child's back in search of more absorbent materials, I'll take definitely take cloth.

During the month of December both sides of the family came to visit. We were in and out of the house all day every day visiting the zoo, museums, shopping - all the things you do while vacationing in your home town. We used disposable diapers since she was in the car seat most days. I washed more onsies that were victims of poop-splosions than I had since Sirenita was a newborn.

Not only does cloth keep the yuckiness in better but a well laundered cloth diaper will keep the smell in, too. I am often caught off guard when I think I am just going to change a wet diaper. The poop smell generally doesn't escape to give it away.

Probably most important of all, cloth diapers keep the baby so much drier. When I use cloth, Sirenita never gets diaper rash. Most of the time the inside is so dry that I can't tell if she is actually wet or not without sticking my hands into the pocket to feel the inserts. Since it won't really cost me anything extra, I prefer just to change cloth diapers rather than sticking my hand into the insert swamp to find out how muggy it is in there.

The ease of tossing the diaper in the trash is deceptive. It may seem more convenient, but would I would rather wash out a diaper while my child happily plays than wash my child, her bedding, her clothes, and still have to sanitize the air in my bedroom.  If you're on the fence about whether to try cloth, or you use cloth and think that disposables may be easier, I implore you to envision my Saturday and forget not cloth and all its benefits. At least give cloth a try. You may be pleasantly surprised. 

DIY cleaning wipes

I'm a little on the OCD side. (That might be understated, but I know people worse than me, so I'm good.) Even when I was working full time, I still liked to have my house spotless and make dinner at home. Anyone who has tried to work full time, keep a clean home, a well groomed and clean dog, good food on the table and a healthy marriage knows that it's a lot to juggle. I remember a friend once asked me, "What do you do on Sundays while The Accountant plays video games?" My answer, "I clean." She was less than thrilled with the answer, hoping that I would give some magical solution to a spotless home that allowed me to sit around and eat bonbons, perhaps. I wish there was one. I haven't exactly found one yet, and I don't know what a bonbon is in English. In Mexico they're Marshmallows, but I doubt that is what one sits around dreaming about in English. What I have found, however, are some helpful ways to keep things clean.

When we moved to the States and I started working full time, I discovered this magical new product, "Clorox Wipes." I used them for quite a while, because they allowed me to quickly clean my bathroom. Then I discovered that they leave everything smudgy, and looked for something else. Somewhere along the line, like every good hippie mom (I'm not a hipster, I'm afraid. I think I'm too old for that.) I started looking for natural products that would clean well while being safer for my family.

I had read a study years ago while living in Mexico on the benefits of cleaning with Vinegar. I tried it for a while, since it was cheaper than "real" cleaning products, but The Accountant didn't care for the smell. I don't have a very sensitive nose, so I couldn't really tell the difference. I knew it didn't leave my house smelling like flowers, but I didn't smell vinegar either. The Accountant's power nose could. So I quit.

Now, back in the US, I kept finding vinegar as a cleaner. It seems that almost everything can be cleaned with some combination of vinegar, baking soda, dawn dish soap, or peroxide. First I would bring a small tub of vinegar to the bathroom to clean with. The Accountant said the bathroom smelled like Chinese food, since it uses a lot of vinegar. Since he is not opposed to General Tso's bathroom, I continued to clean with vinegar. Having to retrieve it from the kitchen was inconvenient, however.  I started keeping a spray bottle of vinegar in my bathroom, handy for mirrors, sinks, toilet, etc. The problem was that a spray bottle is unpredictable. It seemed to spray too much on the mirror, not enough on the toilet. I was back to square one.

When my daughter was born, it was all I could do to keep things wiped down. Anyone who has children will understand. It does get better, but it's hard at first! I reverted to the chemical cleaning wipes. I know, I can almost hear your *gasp* and "booooo." Please, keep reading. I promise, it gets better. You see, while I was using the dreaded chemicals one day, I thought, "If only I could make vinegar wipes, it would be so much easier..." And then the light bulb came on.

It's pretty easy to make your own cleaning wipes. I'd seen people use paper towels for wipes, but I wasn't convinced that they'd hold up. So I used coffee filters. They work wonders. Coffee filters have long been used for cleaning windows, polishing, etc. They don't leave fuzz, and they don't tear when wet since they are designed to get wet.

The "recipe" is pretty simple. Find yourself a container. You can save and wash out a wipes container, use a Tupperware, or get real fancy and use a mason jar. I opted for this re-purposed wipes container. It's a little annoying because of the piece of plastic that is supposed to catch the next wipe in line for use. Since my coffee filter wipes aren't in a roll, there is no way to pull the next one into the plastic doo-dad. Regardless of the minor inconvenience, it gets the job done.

Open up your container. Place the dry coffee filters inside. Add your cleaning liquid. I used about 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 water so the smell isn't as strong. Leave them sit at least 24 hours so they soak up all that natural cleaning goodness. Voila! Ready to get your sink or toilet sparkly!

I also keep a smaller stack of dry coffee filters on hand in the bathroom, because these wipes will be saturated. You can wring some of the liquid back into the container if you prefer. I don't like streaks, but I love to know that everything got good and soaked with my cleaner, so I run a dry filter over any remaining streaks once I'm done.
When you run out of wipes, throw some more filters into your container. You can reuse any remaining cleaner.

The summary:
1 container big enough to hold a stack of coffee filters
Stack of Coffee filters.
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup water

Put all the ingredients in the container. Let sit 24 hours. You now have DIY cleaning wipes for use on windows, bathroom, kitchen, or whatever other surface you clean with vinegar.