Knitting Zeal

The Places We'll Go: A photography project

Last year this time I was revved up to participate in the 365 photo-a-day project.  That enthusiasm died out fast.  Sometime in the middle of the year I got a new cell phone, an iPhone, that takes awesome photos.  So while I didn't formally categorize my photos, I took a lot of them and started sharing via instagram.  

This year I am going to try to keep my enthusiasm going for this new project described on Picaboo's blog, a 52 week project in photography.  Each week they are going to post a challenge of sorts to photograph.  I'm not sure how many photos I'll actually enter on their facebook page, but I will try to track my progress here.  Don't hold your breath, though!

The challenge this week was to capture glitter.  Ummm, ok.  It's pretty, right?  I read the post and misread it and took this photo of my son, at the Please Touch Museum, blowing confetti, at their Noon Years Eve party:

See, I remembered the word confetti, not glitter.  So I got the blowing effect, but not the glitter effect.  

So today, in my weak attempt to "capture" glitter, I took these photos:

The second two photos are photo ornaments I made using a tutorial I found on Making Lemonade's blog.  I love how they turned out and will make more next year! Next time I'll use finer glitter, as the glitter I used was a bit too "chunky" and didn't stick as well.  My son keeps asking why I printed the photos in black and white.  KEEPS ASKING.  It's artistic, kid, really!

Just now my son saw a beautiful photo of a girl blowing a handful of glitter on the Picaboo blog.  He asked if he could do that.  So maybe this weekend I'll finally get the glitter shot right!   

Life Well Lived Getting Happy

This week I'm answering the Life Well Lived Getting Happy question,  "What are your favorite resources for increasing and sustaining happiness? 

My favorite resources for happiness would have to be relying on a seasonal schedule and my network of friends.  Summer time always seems to be a happy season to me.  The flowers are blooming, my little veggie garden is growing, as a family we take trips to the beach and Sesame Place, as well as the pool at the Y to have fun.  It's just a more relaxed time of year. 

Every summer my mom friends and I make a list of ideas for summer activities to do together with our kids.  Our Summer of Fun list usually includes adventures at parks, playgrounds, museums and farms as well as plenty of days to just watch the kids play in the back yard while the moms chat and knit.  It's a great way to destress, and include our kids in the relaxed atmosphere.

I have a small, close network of friends from different parts of my life that I've "collected" over the years.  I treasure all of them as they each add something to my life. From high school, the work world, knitting, blogging, and now my mom friends, each friend contributes something to my life and to sustaining a feeling of happiness for me.  I hope that I do the same for them!  It is important to me to surround myself with positive relationships and I think I've been successful at doing so. 

Another resource that helps me feel happy is going to the spa.  I go maybe twice a year to a local spa for either a facial or a pedicure.  It is a little luxury that really sustains my relaxation, pampering and making me happy!  Summertime is when I like to get a pedicure, since having painted toes peeking out of sandals and flip flops is a great thing!

What do you do to increase and sustain your happiness?  Check out the discussion going on at BlogHer.

 

Screen Free Week, be creative

 

Turn off the TV this week!

This week, from April 30th until May 6th, is Screen Free Week.  It is a way to encourage people to reduce thier screen time and interact, exercise and play more using their brains and bodies, instead of watching TV, movies, video games or the computer.  

I noticed that after the amount of allergies and cold illnesses we've had the past few months that we have had the TV on way more than usual.  This week gives me a great excuse to reduce the exposure to TV and increase our play time in better ways.  I'm really hoping the weather agrees with me and stays nice this week, as it would really help!  My son is only 4 and at this age does not play video games or on the computer at home, so that isn't something that needs to change.  He is a big fan of PBS and Disney Jr, though, and while I like the programs he watches, it could be reduced drastically.  

Another really bad habit we have developed here is keeping the TV on during dinner.  I really hate it, but I am so tired by that time that I just give in to the arguing.  This is the week that it's going to stop.  I usually use the TV as entertainment later in the afternoon for quiet time, since my kiddo stopped napping.  It also helps me get dinner made, as he is occupied.  I haven't figured out a solution to that yet, except to have him help me cook dinner.  

I told my family about screen free week at dinner tonight, and said that my main goal for the week is to stop the TV on while we eat and to reduce the amount of TV that we watch.  So while we won't go completely TV free, I am curious to see how much we reduce our viewing. My son just sort of looked at me for a minute, and moved on.  (We kept the TV off all afternoon and evening today and worked in the garden outside instead!)

 Here is my list of things to do this week while we cut back significantly on TV time:

• Listen to music
• play with water beads  
• make mother's day gifts
• make fingerprint robins craft
• build our backyard racetrack
• garden
• dig for weeds (so fun, right)
• visit the library and READ
• fly a kite 
• make sidewalk chalk
• fingerpaint
• go for a walk
• visit a local garden center
• play outside in the yard
• visit a playground

How are you keeping your family occupied while cutting back on screen time this week?

Teaching preschoolers about money, our dollar box

The other day when I was trying to vacuum the family room, the place where 90% of the toys are stored, I kept discovering coins and dollars scattered about.  Turns out the kiddo's cash register had flipped over at some point scattering the contents.  Most of the "money" was toy money, but I also found a lot of real currency, including some gold dollars that had been fished out of a certain four year old's piggy bank!  I've now tried several times to explain that real money is not a toy and it is not ok to play with it because it has value. It is especially bad if I vacuum it up!  My son's response was, we'll just get more from the bank.  Huh?  I clearly was not communicating my message effectively.  Yes, four is young to grasps the concept of currency and value, but learning about it has to start somewhere.  

Aside from the kiddo's piggy banks, we have a box that we keep put away to collect 'A' dollar bills.  This is something I started doing well over a year ago when a friend told me about it.  They were collecting the dollar bills with their kid's initials on them and when they hit a certain amount, that was their spending money for a certain thing.  I decided to start collecting for my son, with the goal that what we collected would become our Disney money for spending in the parks when we eventually go.  My husband and I set aside our 'A' dollars, our son's first initial (and a dollar minted in Boston, making them not quite as common here in PA!) and store them in the dollar box, hidden in the house.  (Hidden from the child mainly!) Eventually we shared with our son what we were doing, saving dollars for a special trip.  I thought he understood it until he saw me with it today and asked if he could have some of his 'A' dollars to play with his cash register!  Ugh.  

our dollar box

 

I started doing a bit of research about how to teach a preschooler about money and discovered a great resource from the Credit Union National Association.  Thrive by 5 features a number of worksheets and ideas for helping parents teach little ones about money.  I am planning to start with a savings chart and an earnings chart for my son.  Let's hope that it makes a positive impression!

Our dollar box will continue to grow and while the money in it doesn't earn interest, it is an easy way to start saving towards a goal with change.  If it ever hit a substantial amount, I would probably put it in our money market account so it would at least earn a few extra cents!  

How do you teach your kids about money?

Life Well Lived, Getting Organized

This week over on BlogHer's Life Well Lived series they are discussing paperwork organization.  They asked, "How do you organize paperwork both online and off? Share your tip(s) to managing physical and digital clutter?"  

HA!  I am horrible at paperwork organization.  It absolutely overwhelms me.  I have great intentions, but I just can't keep it going to stay on top of things.  I should plan a weekly time to file away important papers.  I have done a few things recently that has helped:

• Pay bills online and register for email statements as opposed to paper.  This has really cut back on the amount of physical paperwork we receive and it is very "green."  It also makes it really easy to search for account info, since the websites organize it for me.
• Online banking: this has been a lifesaver for me.  Not only do I save money and time from writing checks and mailing payments, I can check instantly what has been paid and what hasn't.  
• Junk mail recycled immediately.  This is an ongoing battle for me.  We get much less junk mail these days as opposed to three years ago, but we still get lots of unsolicited mail.  Instead of letting it pile up, I try hard to deposit it in our paper recycling bin ASAP.

The biggest paper clutter I have to deal with besides filing bills and receipts is magazines and catalogs.  I try to read them as soon as I have time, but I'll find a recipe I like or not enough time to finish an article and the piles begin.  Every so often I go through the house and toss the magazines that haven't been read.  If it's a cooking magzine, sometimes I tear out recipes I like, but with the internet, there is a lot online.  One thing I really like is electronic periodicals on my ipad.  Eventually, I might have to switch all my subscriptions to just e-versions.  My husband did this with the daily paper and it has considerable cut down on the paper in our home. 

And in regards to electronic clutter, I'm embarrassed to say that in trying to find an email from someone who I couldn't remember their email addy, I read through all my emails on my main email account.  I deleted as I scrolled through until I found the email I was looking for originally.  When I finished deleting all the junk and old emails, I realized that I had deleted over 7000 emails!  That is insane.  I don't even want to look at my google email accounts.  I am awful at deleting!  

What helps you with paperwork organization? Feel free to share your tips here and over at BlogHer.  While you are at it, check out the latest Life Well Lived sweepstakes and enter!

 

Welcome 2012!

Happy New Year! Early Morning, January 1st, 2012

 

I really can't believe how fast the holiday season flew by.  December was so busy, I barely blinked and it was over.  We had a great time over the holidays and enjoyed the season.  Having a four year old in the house made Christmas more magical and certainly more entertaining.  

We don't really do much for New Year's Eve, so it was fairly quiet.  (Except for the neighbor's noisy midnight celebration in the street!) I watched CNN's coverage of NYC.  Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin crack me up.

Today we had friends come over for brunch.  I made the Pioneer Woman's Baked Cinnamon French Toast again...it was great!  The boys played all afternoon and had fun.  For dinner I made the traditional pork roast with sauerkraut.  Using the crockpot, I put a bag of rinsed kraut in the bottom, added a bag of baby carrots, then added the pork roast.  I used Penzey's 33rd and Galena seasoning on it and added slices of apple around.  After 8 hours on low, I added bisquick dumpling batter to the pot and let it puff up for about a half hour.  It turned out great and we have enough left over for dinner tomorrow. 

This year one of my personal goals is to become more proficient at using my DSLR camera.  For Christmas my husband gave me a speedlight for my camera.  To get more practice in using my camera with different settings I decided to do a 365 project this year where I take a photo everyday.  I found several groups doing this, but decided to go with the one hosted by Picaboo.  One of their expert photographers and bloggers is Steph of A Grande Life, a local mom blogger who I met last summer.

This week's themes are Goodbye Holiday and Just Keep Shooting. I already completed the first day's photo, even though the project officially kicks off on Monday.  I like there there will be different themes and techniques suggested to try.  For today's photo, I used manual focus with the manual setting on my camera, along with my 50mm lens and an f-stop of 1.8.  The goal was to capture the last of the holiday decorations/lights in a different way, out of focus with the lights highlighted. I photographed both my tree's lights and the lights on our banister.  

I won't post all of the photos here, but once I find a spot for them, probably on flickr, I'll post a link.

Happy 2012!

NaBloPoMo!

So, November is National Blog Posting Month, and it's being hosted on BlogHer this year.  I've heard about this before but never participated.  sUsAn often does a post a day in February and I attempt to copy her out of admirations, but after that gusto in posts, I tend to trail off.  I'm consistent with my menu planning because it really helps me, and I work hard to post a photo every Wednesday.  So now, I'm going to try to post every day in November.  This may be tough, as it's such a busy time of year, but I'm hoping it will add a bit more discipline to my writing, as I tend to compose posts in my head all the time but never actually write them down.

This month I have a handful of product reviews that I'll share, some of which are products I won at raffles that turned out great!  I also will try to post my menu planning for the holidays.  I'm hosting Thanksgiving and possibly Christmas for at least part of our family.  I like to be prepared, so I will be working now on my menus and entertaining ideas.  I've been perusing Pinterest for inspiration too.

If you are a blogger and want to participate in NaBloPoMo, check out how to get on the blogroll and join in on the fun.  If you are participating, please leave me a comment with your blog link so I can check out your posts!

Life Well Lived, Looking Your Best!

A while ago I was asked to answer the following question for the BlogHer campaign Life Well Lived Looking Your Best:

Q: Makeup is a form of art. What do you think is the hardest makeup trick to master?

Here was my answer:

I had a hard time finding a good foundation base that looked natural, was easy to apply, and lasted through most of the day. Once I switched to mineral powder foundation, applied with different brushes, I was hooked. Using different types and sizes of brushes really is the trick for getting good coverage and I find the finished look to be natural looking and feel good on my skin. Bonus: no chin/jaw line of makeup! The mineral powder really works great for me! (I use bare escentuals and love it!)

 

 What would your answer be?  Share your thoughts on the Life Well Lived blog post. Be sure to check out the sweepstakes they are featuring right now where you can share your Life Well Lived moment for the chance to win $250!