Uh oh! We need a tooth pillow!

What do you do when your first born looses his first tooth, and you don't yet have a tooth pillow? Do you:

A.) Run to the store (the day after a blizzard) and hope that they have tooth pillows there?

B.) Go to Etsy, find the closest makers of tooth pillows there, and drive an hour to get one (the day after a blizzard)?

C.) Tell them to forget about a tooth pillow, just put the tooth under the pillow? No, I don't care how much you wanted a tooth pillow, just put the dang tooth under the pillow!

D.) Say you've been bad, and the Tooth Fairy isn't going to come tonight anyway? or

E.) Search your house to see what kind of craft/sewing materials you have on hand.

I thought about "C", but went with option "E" instead.

Thing One lost his first tooth today. I didn't think it would come out for another week or so. He came to me this morning, and told me that he was playing with it, and look what happened! (He broke the front part of the tooth loose, so it was only holding on with the back.) I still thought it would be there for a while.

As he was eating his PopTart (yeah, great breakfast, I know...) he told me that he was chewing with his front tooth. I told him that he's supposed to only BITE with his front teeth, and if he's having a problem with that then to break apart his PopTart. He asked me to do it for him because apparently (I'm so much better at it), he was breaking the pieces too large, and if he made them smaller he got filling all over his hands.

As I was breaking it apart, he started shouting, "MOM! LOOK!" He spit out his tooth in his hand, and triumphantly held it up for me to see. No blood. No mess. No pain. No crying. He was so proud!

Thing Two, on the other hand, was not so proud. She looked at his tooth, at his mouth, and back at his tooth and turned a shade of green/gray. I thought she was going to pass out! She exclaimed that she DID NOT like it, and she wanted it back in his mouth. I told her that a new BIG tooth was growing there, and that's why the little one fell out. I told her that she could see the new tooth coming up where the other one was. (It was actually just part of his gum that was whitish where the tooth was attached just moments before.) She was happy with that, and her normal color returned to her face. THANK GOODNESS!

So instead of getting worrying about a tooth pillow then, I did some work, played on FaceBook, played with the kids, talked on the phone, went outside and played in the snow, played on FaceBook some more, talked on the phone more, had dinner, read some blogs, played with the kids, and then I realized that it was time for bed. And Thing One was adamant about NOT going to bed without a tooth pillow.

So I searched my house for acceptable materials for a tooth pillow. Actually, several times during the day I looked for fabric that I had purchased to use as a nap mat cover last year, but never made the cover. It's some kind of blue Hulk material. Blue is Thing One's favorite color. Perfect! Use blue Hulk material, a piece of white felt, and some stuffing. Uh oh. No stuffing... Doesn't matter anyway, I can't find the blue material...

I DID find, however, black felt, white felt, and red felt. You know what colors they are, don't you? PIRATE!! So I made a pirate tooth pillow.

Step one - Draw a rough skull outline on a piece of paper.

Step 2 - pin rough skull skull shape to white felt. Cut out skull shape. (I have two here because I was going to make the pillow just the skull. I wasn't going to put it on an actual pillow.)




Step three - Cut out eye shape and eye patch shape from black felt. Using scraps, cut four (or so) strips for the space between the teeth, a strip for the eye patch strap, and a rounded upside down heart for the nose.

Step four - Cut a boat shape, and a tail shape from red felt.

(Assemble pieces on white skull cut out several times to see if they fit properly. Cut smaller to fix if they do not. :-P )

Step five - Using coordinating thread, stitch on face pieces. I used a straight stitch. One stitch up/down for the teeth (in the middle of the strip of felt), Out line of the patch, patch strap, eye, and nose. Stitch along the top edge of your skull to stitch on the red bandanna. Don't stitch on your "knot" yet. (I made this mistake.)

DON'T FORGET TO BACK STITCH!!

DON'T stitch the top of your eye patch closed. This will be where your tooth/reward goes.

Step six - Stitch your skull face onto your black felt. Which, in my directions, I have omitted as a step b/c I wasn't going to do this... So let's back up a minute....

Step SIX - Cut a two pieces of black felt just bigger than your skull.

Step SEVEN - Stitch your skull face onto your black felt. I used black thread on the white skull because I like the contrasting look. You can use white if you'd like.

Step eight - Stitch your knot/tail onto your bandanna and your front of your pillow. Make sure you stitch down the tails as well. I didn't do this, and I'm afraid Thing Two might pull it off.

Step nine - Lay your front and back pieces of felt together, wrong sides facing. (I wanted a rough edge. It's a pirate skull after all.) Stitch around right side, top, and left side. Leave the bottom open for stuffing.

Step ten - Using Polyfill (which I didn't have. Luckily I had some batting.) or other stuffing material you have on hand, stuff that baby good!

Step eleven - Stitch the bottom of your pillow closed. When your tension gets all messed up on your final stitches, yell and and bang stuff because you're so close to being done, and now your machine is messing up.

Step twelve - Decide that you don't care to unstitch the messy, loopy stitches that came from your bobbin. You're just going to cut them off and sew over them. It's black thread on black felt on your son's tooth pillow. No one's going to notice.

Step thirteen - (I had to make this one up because I don't want to end on Thirteen!) Squish your pillow to flatten out the inside filling. (Okay, I didn't really make this up. I really did this. It made the pillow look nicer to have the filling a little more even.)

Step fourteen - Give to the toothless one, place tooth inside, place under pillow and hope the Tooth Fairy remembers!

I made this in about an hour. The ONLY reason it took so long is because I didn't have a plan for it, and I kept changing things up. Now that I know what I'm doing, it should only take about 30 minutes. I might go to the store Tuesday and get more felt to make one for Thing Two... Not that she's anywhere near loosing her teeth, but I'd rather not be so pressed for time next time!

99 leggies...

*singing*
"99 pairs of leggies are done. 99 pairs all done. If one of those pairs should happen to sell, 98 pairs of leggies all done..."

Yup. Finally getting around to the bulk of it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna succeed at this. *I* have to do it. No one else is going to do it for me. No one else is going to make me succeed, and no one is going to hold me back. I hold my future success (or lack thereof) in my hands.

Not so much a blog, but some positive reinforcement to myself...

I have a "vendor fair" next month. I was up in the air about it for a little while, and then spoke about it with a friend. She jumped right on it, and I was amazed. Although, her fire for it was contagious, and soon I was VERY excited about attending. It was a nice feeling to be excited about this business again. I've been down in the dumps about it for about 2 weeks now. You see, I've found that another person has finally come up the the same idea as I have come up with in regard to the leggies. They've also decided to market their leggies. I've been very sad, mad, whatever because I didn't follow through with the patent process, and now he was this new person with *my* idea, and they were (selling them for a lot more) getting all kinds of exposure -everywhere.

They're not going to hold me down though. There are all kinds of different manufacturers of the same products. Most of them all do well. Look at Baby Legs leg warmers, and look at all of the work-at-home-mammas who make them, and make a nice living off of them.

I can do this. I BELIEVE in this. I BELIEVE in MYSELF (most times). I'm out of my slump. I'm going to get all of my inventory back on track, and I'm going to kick patootie at the vendor fair.

Thanks *M* for helping to get me back on track! <3

Today's proclamation....

Be it hereby resolved that I will have a productive day today. I will get much accomplished in little time. I will get my laundry not only washed and dried, but folded and put away too. I will run my dishwasher, and then I will put the dishes away within less than an hour of them being finished. I will get my bathroom cleaned. I will get the Christmas presents put away. I will start dinner early, so that we may eat no later than 5:30. I will get my packages ready to go before the kids are to be picked up from school. I will be on time to get the kids from school.

As Queen of the land, this is what I say, and this is incontestable by all.

Sounds good, right? This was my plan from this morning. My computer froze up, and I never got around to posting it. Good thing too... I separated the laundry, did a load of laundry, loaded and ran the dishwasher, and took a nap..... A nice nap. A long nap. I deserved it. I went to bed at 12:30, and thing 2 was up at 4 AM to start the day. At 5:15 I brought her down to lay with Daddy on the couch so that the TV could babysit for a little while. Common! You would have done it too!

So now "Today's Proclamation" will be tomorrow's proclamation. It's a good plan, don't you think? Well begun is half done. I WILL get my stuff together! I will! .....Tomorrow.... :-)

Resolutions....

So here it is, January 12th... The 12th day of January. The 12th day of the new year. On day 10 or 11, I had broken my resolution already. My resolution was to NOT make any resolutions this year. I never keep them anyway. Why build myself up for disappointment this year?

Well, I decided the other day that I was going to ditch that resolution, and make a new one. It was a good one too. It was one that didn't really seem to be too hard to keep -right? My resolution was to get my crap together... I didn't actually use the word crap. I actually resolved to get my $**t together.

Well, as I've already stated, today is day 12. I'm no closer to getting my STUFF together than I was 30 days ago. I have no more inspiration to get my STUFF together than I did 30 days ago. I look at it/think about it, and flop back down on the couch again. I'm just SO LAZY anymore.

I have no desire to do ANYTHING. Some days it's a challenge for me to brush my teeth during the course of the day. Don't get me wrong, I DO get it done, but my 3 year old has more excitement in brushing her teeth than do I....

And then I start thing about all the crap that I have to do like meetings, orders, inventory, new stock, letters, advertising, meetings. Don't even get me started on basic household chores like laundry, cleaning or dishes. Yup. You'll find me back on the couch. (Actually, you'll find me on the computer.)

Apparently, I've just been out of the workplace for too long. I don't know how to just tackle an obstacle anymore. I don't know how to just muddle through it -as much as I don't want to muddle through it, until it's done. I have no pressure to get it done, so it just doesn't get done.

Actually, I do have pressure to get it done. Better wording would have been, I don't have a boss with a pink slip in hand breathing down my back waiting for me to get it done. Now the pressure to get it done is the seemingly ever growing piles of dishes, laundry or toys. It's the meetings that grow closer and closer, for which I still have to do my leg work. It's the customers looking for new items. It's the orders that are waiting to be mailed out.

I just don't have the desire, the motivation, the.... whatever to do it. You wouldn't think that it would be that hard to finally put away the Christmas presents, would you? At least it's still less than a week past the Epiphany. I give myself until tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. Maybe tomorrow, lucky 13, will be the day that I finally get all "my crap" together.

But how many New Year's Resolutions are really kept anyway? I should have just stuck with the resolution to not make any resolutions.... There would have been no dissapointments in that....

Christmas time...

It's the Christmas/Hanukkah season. Please consider donating a new, unwrapped toy to Toys for Tots. There are many places to drop off your donation including, but not limited to: many schools, Municipal buildings, many stores have collection bins by the exit doors, many fire departments or EMS buildings.

Times are tough for everyone, but some know that they have to choose between putting food on the table or buying presents for their kids. We know that the holidays aren't about presents, but tell that to a young child that has nothing to open on Christmas morning, or during Hanukkah.

Target, Walmart, Big Lots for starters have great toys for five or ten dollars. Five dollars is around the cost of a cup of coffee from Starbucks, coffee for a week from WaWa or 7-11, less than a pack of cigarettes (in this state), less than a value meal from a fast food joint.

Please consider donating a new toy today. Know that you'll not only be delighting a child who may otherwise be going without presents this year, but think of the relief that you'll be helping to bring to the parents or guardians. Not everyone is in a hard money situation because they make poor spending decisions. Some families have taken on the joyful burden of caring for other children. Some families are faced with unemployment of one or both of the parents. Some families are finding that rising energy costs are just too much for their paychecks that haven't seen a cost of living increase to match today's actual cost of living. And yes, perhaps some have made poor spending decisions. We've all made a purchase that we've later realized that perhaps we should not have made. Don't penalize the children for that though.

And yes, I proudly donate to Toys for Tots, and I have been doing so for years, so this isn't just something about which I'm preaching, it's something in which I actually participate, and no, I don't mean just one or two toys. Toys for Tots is MY "baby" if you will. I have been donating to the cause for about 8 years now.

I was very moved when a friend/co-worker told me that one year she swallowed her pride and accepted toys from Toys for Tots because if she didn't, he daughter would not have have any presents to open up. This was a proud, hardworking, single mother. At the time, her ex didn't have much to do with their daughter, save to build up her excitement for a visit with Daddy, only to let her down. I was amazed (and I don't know why) to find that she was as hard up as she was. She worked a full time job plus two part time jobs.

For this woman to accept help was amazing, and it moved me. It made me realize that one day any of us could be in unfavorable circumstances. One day it could be ME who could be not able to give my children gifts under the tree on Christmas morning. And while I know, and while I tell my children that Christmas is not about presents that doesn't matter when they know that all of their friends will have presents under the tree on Christmas morning. It doesn't matter when they go back to school and they hear all of their friends talking about their cool new gifts, and then they ask them what they got for Christmas.

Can you put yourself in their shoes and have to mutter back that you didn't get anything for Christmas? Can you imagine that feeling inside? Because if you can, then you know how heartbreaking it can be. If you can, then I know that you'll be moved to find an extra five dollars for a new toy for a child in need this holiday season.

Cleaning and Lists

It's amazing what happens when I clean. I find stuff... Stuff that I didn't know was missing, and (if I'm lucky) stuff that's been sorely missed.
My little notebook in which I've been writing my blogs belongs in that second category. I've been lost without if for months now. Not only does it have my mindless ramblings, and late night warblings in it, but it's also home to all of my lists.
Yes, I'm a list maker. They help to calm me. I make all kinds of lists: Things I need from the grocery store, upcoming events in my life (like a calendar, but in list form), things that I have to do over the course of the day, things I'd do/buy if I ever hit the $1,000,000 lotto. Heck! Some days I'd even settle for the $1000 lotto! Anything. Everything. You name it, I'll make a list about it. Like here and here, and I guess that even this is a list too, isn't it? So you already know I like lists.
They help to calm me. they make me feel as if I've got some control over at least some of the things in this hectic, fly by the seat of my pants life that I live.
Perhaps a SCHEDULE more so than a LIST would help to calm me... But then again, isn't a schedule just a list of activities with times attached to them???
Enh, You say TA-mato;
I say TOE-mato.

My list says it's time for me to clean house now... Either that, or no one will have anywhere to have their turkey dinner tomorrow... :-P
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. Don't forget to give thanks for EVERYTHING in life -big and small. And don't forget to GIVE, and give from your heart.
Much love <3
Happy Thanksgiving

Backed up blogs...

So, I really do have new blogs to post. -Really, I do! You'd be quite proud of me. I've been keeping a little spiral bound notebook (bought in a back of 6 at Target during their back-to-school clearance sales last year) next to my bed. This way, when the Muse descends right before I fall asleep (as normally happens) I have my trusty notebook (think diary, but I'm too old for a diary -hahaha!) right there.

Unfortunately, even with all of this new found free time I have, I never seem to have time to transfer my ramblings over to the computer for your reading pleasure. And I KNOW how much you love to read my senseless ramblings. :-)

Sooooo.... I DO promise to get them on here.... Sometime.... Shortly.... Maybe....

I know. You miss me. You can't deal without the craziness that is me. I know. You'll have your dose of me soon enough. In the mean time, this will have to hold you over. Don't be too sad. It's okay. I'm still here, and I'm still just as nutty as ever. (More so lately!)

MUAH!