Author: Big Mama

  • Fashion Friday: Edition I have a tree that needs to be decorated

    I know.

    I said I’d show y’all a picture of Caroline’s hair after the sock bun. But there wasn’t that much to see and you are highly overestimating my time management skills in the morning if you think I had time to get her to pose for a picture.

    The sock bun doesn’t appear to produce glorious, perfect curls like it does in the video. However, it does give her hair just a little bit more body and then we pull the whole thing back into a full, fluffy ponytail. So that’s better than nothing. Of course I’m sure she’ll quit letting me roll the whole thing up in a sock bun just as soon as the novelty wears off. Which should be sometime tomorrow.

    In other hair news, I went to get my hair cut yesterday and sweet Elizabeth who cuts my hair curled it for me with the You Curl. It took her at least thirty minutes to do the whole thing which means it will be a rare day that I replicate it by myself. And by rare day I mean probably never.

    And in other news, I’ve had a Christmas tree sitting in my living room for two days that is in desperate need of decorations. BUT OH I DREAD PUTTING ON THE LIGHTS.

    Anyway, here are some cute things I found this week.

    1. mossimo kathleen suede wedge boot

    I saw these in Target while I was there yesterday buying toilet paper and a birthday gift for my nephew. And they stopped me dead in my tracks because I kind of love them, yet I wasn’t there to shop for myself (except for I guess the toilet paper counts as shopping for myself) and so I didn’t feel like I could justify them. Plus I’m not really sure if they’d fit into my current wardrobe which consists largely of yoga pants and sweatshirts.

    But they are pretty. And would be very festive for Christmas.

    2. wool-blend toggle coat

    I really like this coat. I’m not sure if it’s the stripes or the charcoal gray, but the whole thing just works. It’s a great casual coat for a good price.

    3. pleated dress

    Now this is just lovely. I love the green. I love the style. I love the thought of it with gold accessories.

    I don’t love that I have nowhere to wear a pretty green dress accessorized with gold jewelry.

    4. sequin tank

    A sequin tank is a great piece for the holidays. You can dress it up or down with jeans and a blazer. And you can find them at all price points.

    5. eldora turtleneck

    I really like this sweater. As a matter of fact I bought it because I do enjoy a big sweater.

    I’ll probably get to wear it at least twice if the temps dip into the 50s.

    6. crepe ruffle trim sleeveless dress

    Rumor has it that some people have Christmas parties this time of year and need pretty dresses to wear to them. Here at Big Mama, Inc. we don’t have that kind of thing. We just celebrate by eating lots of iced sugar cookies while wearing our pajamas because we’re fancy that way.

    7. frye billy braided boots

    Remember those Frye boots I posted yesterday? They are my first love. But these are a very close second.

    8. oilcloth slouchy bag

    This kind of reminds me of an Orla Kiely bag. I like it.

    9. seattle skies coat

    I think this is cute. I’m obviously a fan of the charcoal gray right now.

    10. leopard fleece Toms

    Now these look super comfy. And they’re cute too.

    That’s it for today.

    Y’all have a great Friday.

  • A few of my favorite things

    So I was going to write about our trip to buy our Christmas tree yesterday but have decided the pain is all too fresh. As opposed to the tree whose freshness is debatable. But I’m planning to lift it up in daily prayer in the hopes it will make it to the 25th of December.

    However, there is still some Christmas joy afoot today. And not just because I was able to use the word “afoot” in a sentence. Yesterday as I was visiting various blogs I noticed that the Nester had a little favorite things going on. Kind of like Oprah but without the free cars or the Blackeyed Peas performing in a snowglobe on the stage.

    And I thought it might be fun to share a few of my favorite things right now. And the best part is most of them are budget friendly. You may also want to go check out all the Favorite Things over at the Nesters. TONS, I tell you, TONS of great ideas. It makes me want to host my very own Favorite Things party.

    1. ruffled infinity scarf

    I love this ruffled infinity scarf. I have a red one kind of like it that I bought last year and it’s the perfect thing to thrown on when there’s a chill in the air. Or even when there’s not a chill in the air. It just looks good.

    2. monogrammed return address rubber stamp

    I don’t currently own a monogrammed rubber stamp. Because I really don’t send letters anymore. And every year around Christmas I wish I had one and think that I should order one and then I procrastinate and I don’t think about it again until the next year and then it seems too late to bother with it.

    Welcome to my brain.

    But I really, really like them and Etsy has about 872 million different style options.

    3. red letter words canvas

    I love every single thing at Red Letter Words. Seriously, if given free reign I might be tempted to just line my walls with all the words. But for now I am just really tempted to order this one to put on my mantel during Christmas.

    4. love came down advent calendar

    This is a great Advent calendar. Perfect for remembering the whole reason we celebrate Christmas and helping you find your joy and peace after shopping for a tree.

    5. hummingbird farms lavender lotion

    This is my favorite lotion in the world. IN THE WORLD. In fact our entire family is addicted to it. We ran out last week and I am embarrassed to tell you that one of us heated up the last bottle in the toaster oven trying to get out the last little bit of lotion.

    True story.

    And it smells like real lavender because it’s made with real lavender. You think you’ve smelled lavender stuff before, but I bet you’re wrong. It’s so much better than all the lavender-scented things out there. They’re all just posers.

    Now I’ve gone on and on about it and you’re probably thinking SETTLE IT DOWN, NANCY, IT’S JUST LOTION.

    Oh but it’s so much better than that.

    6. mrs. meyers kitchen basics set

    Speaking of smells I love. It’s hard for me to pick just one Mrs. Meyers fragrance or product because I adore them all. In the summer I like the lemon. In the fall I like geranium. And around Christmas I like the pine but it’s hard to find.

    Just know you can’t go wrong. Mrs. Meyers won’t let you down.

    7. merry christmas y’all jumbo mug

    You know what I love more than a large coffee mug? A large coffee mug that is extra cute. That’s why I’m such a fan of the Glory Haus mugs. And picture frames. And everything else.

    But we’re talking about coffee mugs right now. I need a big mug to get the right proportions for my hot choffee in the morning and these totally work. And how cute are they?

    8. laptop case

    This would make any laptop so happy.

    9. baker’s edge brownie pan

    Have I ever mentioned that I just like the edges of brownies? I mean I’ll eat the whole pan but the edges are the best. I’ve even been known to cut strange configurations in a pan of brownies in my quest to just eat the edges.

    Don’t judge me. P doesn’t even like brownies which I think may be unconstitutional.

    Needless to say, my love of the edges is why I believe this pan is perfection.

    10. frye jackie button boots

    Yeah, so these are a little extravagant. And I’m pretty sure Santa isn’t going to think I was good enough to deserve them this year. But OH MY WORD I adore them and didn’t feel like I would be authentic to list my favorite things and not include them.

    That little bit of a heel? DIVINE. The beautiful cognac color? SWOON.

    And so that’s my list of favorite things. I’d love to hear about some of yours if you feel like sharing with the group.

  • The post where I use the term “sock bun” and more random things

    This is one of those times when I LITERALLY have not one thing to write about. Or maybe I do have something to write about but I’ve forgotten it. Either way, I’ve sat here next to P for the last hour and griped and moaned about how I have nothing to write about (as opposed to the riveting expose I wrote on the You Curl curling iron yesterday) and he’s looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and gone back to watching the Outdoor Channel as if that’s the most important thing.

    The problem is I spent all day at home doing laundry and trying to create an air of organization before I haul out all the Christmas decorations and my living room becomes a study in chaos. Although I did try out the sock bun curl technique that was mentioned in the comments on my hair yesterday, so there’s that. I wasn’t thrilled with the results but the YouTube tutorials specifically say to leave it overnight and I only kept it up for about four hours.

    However, I put Caroline’s hair up in a sock bun for the night so I’ll report on that tomorrow.

    (I know you won’t be able to sleep until you know how it turns out.)

    (The suspense is killing me.)

    It would be such a score if it actually looks good because she is in the midst of a hair crisis and doesn’t even realize it. She’s so thrilled with her long hair, but it’s very fine and I prefer it in a ponytail or braids. She prefers to go to sleep with it wet and then wake up and wear it down to school. Which makes me cringe because it is full of crimps and random indentions and OH THE STATIC CLING. The other day it was cold outside and I asked her if I could blow her hair dry and she said, “Oh, I’ll just wear a hat until it dries.”

    Because everyone knows that’s the secret to good hair.

    But I really didn’t mean to talk about hair. Again.

    Here are a few other interesting things that you might care about:

    1. Burger King announced yesterday that they are making their french fries thicker. I don’t really know what that means and I really don’t care because I can’t remember the last time I ate at a Burger King, but I found it fascinating that someone actually did the research and determined their fries need to be thicker.

    2. Beyonce announced her baby is due in December. I’m not sure why this interested me but it did and I might as well own it.

    3. A sweet reader named Whitney emailed me to let me know that she’s selling Stella and Dot Jewelry and is donating all of her commissions (25% of sales) to Compassion International, specifically to their Clean Water, Unsponsored Children and Disaster Relief funds. It might be a great place to do some Christmas shopping and help Compassion at the same time. You can check out their jewelry here.

    4. On that note my friend AJ’s organization, Arise Africa, has a Christmas catalog this year where you can give friends and family the gift of knowing they bought school supplies or meals or classroom textbooks for kids in Zambia. You can check it out here.

    I don’t know that there’s a better gift than that.

    5. Lastly, I am sad (and embarrassed to admit) that I’m almost finished with Army Wives on Netflix. Yet I feel that there are still plenty of good T.V. times to be had, especially considering that we are early on in the hunting season and I will have a lot of time to watch whatever I want on T.V.

    Any suggestions for a great T.V. series? I already watch or have watched Friday Night Lights (obviously), Mad Men, Gilmore Girls, Grey’s Anatomy (though I quit watching about two seasons ago), 30 Rock, The Office and Veronica Mars.

    I’m sure there are others but those are the high points. Or the low points depending on your perspective.

    Y’all have a lovely Wednesday.

  • It’s the you in the you curl that’s giving me problems

    So about a month ago (or maybe longer but I can’t really remember because the last two months have been a crazy blur and wasn’t it just summer and why do people have Christmas lights in their yard when it’s surely only August?) my sister called me with the news she’d found a hair product that had changed her life. Because in my family we don’t believe in simply stating that something is really good, we like to go straight to IT CHANGED MY LIFE.

    Naturally I couldn’t wait to hear about the new hair product because, in the words of Truvy, there is no such thing as natural beauty. Amy told me all about a new clampless curling iron called the Conair You Curl and said it creates the best curls of your life. She informed me it doesn’t make regular hot roller curls or normal curling iron curls, but curls that look like Kelly Ripa or Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian.

    Yes. I’d like to go to there.

    Because Kim Kardashian may not know much about marriage but she has some good hair and Taylor Swift is just darling and Kelly Ripa kind of has a lollipop head but I do like her hair most of the time even though Regis and Kelly don’t come on in San Antonio anymore because I guess our local affiliate is too cheap to pay for it. And I feel like I’ve watched celebrities on T.V. for the last year or so and thought their hair was doing something that I didn’t know how to replicate, but couldn’t figure out all the follicular logistics. I just chalked it up to a good stylist and maybe some tricky way of using velcro rollers.

    But now Amy was telling me that she had created those curls for herself. And, not only that, the curl had lasted for two days. TWO DAYS. She warned me it was a little hard to use at first but that YouTube was full of video tutorials demonstrating how to use it and create fabulous hair in the comfort of your own home.

    (I promise this isn’t a paid advertisement or some kind of infomercial. I feel like I sound like an infomercial.)

    (Buy one now for a limited time for only $29.99! We’ll bill you in two easy installments and guarantee your money back if you’re not completely satisfied after thirty days!)

    So I drove to Target THAT VERY DAY and bought a You Curl for myself. But I didn’t have time to try it out until the next day after I dropped Caroline off at school. I came home and watched a few of the tutorial videos on Youtube and decided it didn’t look that difficult. It was just a matter of pinning up sections of my hair while I curled the back and sides.

    This is where I need to interrupt myself to explain that I am a die hard hot roller girl. I have never been one to have the patience to curl my entire head with a curling iron. Why go to all that trouble when you can put in eight rollers at one time, do your makeup, take out the rollers and call it a day? I’ve always just used a curling iron as an auxiliary curling device to add some volume around my face.

    However, there was a time in the late 80s when I may have used a miniature curling iron to enhance my spiral perm. And also to create bangs that were then curled and teased into oblivion. The 80s were a cruel hair time.

    See what I’m saying?

    Anyway, I opened up the You Curl box and was so pleased to discover it came with a heat-proof glove for me to wear while I curled my hair. Hair styling while rocking a glove on one hand like Michael Jackson? Yes, please.

    And then I spent the next thirty minutes trying to emulate the curling technique I’d observed on all the tutorial videos. Only to discover that I am highly uncoordinated and couldn’t keep the stupid Michael Jackson glove on my hand and that a ceramic curling iron heated to 360 degrees really hurts when you touch it with your fingertips.

    All I managed to create were a few sad looking waves that were completely straight on the bottom because I never could figure out how to wrap all my hair around the clampless curling iron without it all sliding off before I curled the bottom. Granted, my hair is really too long right now. I’m in desperate need of a haircut and one chorus of “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” away from Crystal Gayle. So maybe that was part of my problem.

    But I tried it on Caroline’s hair the next day and managed to create some flawless, beautiful waves. This is where it would be so great if I’d taken a picture of it but I failed to document her perfect hair day and she hasn’t sat still long enough to let me try it again.

    And so the You Curl has sat on the shelf in my bathroom, taunting me with its promise of good hair and third degree burns, for the last few weeks.

    Until Saturday night.

    P and Caroline were at the ranch for the night and I decided I could take a break from my Army Wives marathon to make another hair-curling attempt. After all, it’s humiliating to know there are videos of ten-year-old girls demonstrating how to use the clampless curling iron all over the internet when I couldn’t even manage to get one lousy curl that wasn’t reminiscent of the days when I’d crimp my hair with a waffle iron and throw it up in a banana clip.

    So I washed my hair and blew it dry. Then I heated up the You Curl and didn’t even attempt to use that stupid glove this time. And I’m proud to report I managed to create fabulous waves on ONE side of my head. For reasons that I don’t totally understand but lean toward a diagnosis of hairstyling dyslexia, I couldn’t quite manage to get the curls on the left side of my head to go the right way.

    (I think a large part of the problem is explained by my need to tell you that I mean the left side of my head when I’m looking in the mirror. As opposed to what? The other left side of my head?)

    But the results on the right side of my head gave me hope for the future. A belief that, with some work and perseverance, I can create a better hair tomorrow for myself.

    And I think we all know that’s what Kelly Ripa would want.

  • We came, we ate, we turduckened

    It is so cold in my living room right now that I’m finding it hard to concentrate because my nose is so chilled. I have on flannel pajama pants, a sweatshirt and am wrapped in a blanket, but, alas, there is nothing I can do for my nose.

    And, sure, I could turn on the heat except I hate the way the heat makes me feel. Once the heat comes on I immediately feel claustrophobic, like I’m trapped under a pile of blankets that smell like burned tires.

    By the way, I’m not complaining about being cold because I vowed this summer when it was 193 degrees outside that I would never, EVER, complain about the cold. It’s just an observation. My nose is cold. And yet I’m thankful for the cold, seasonal weather, especially considering that I spent much of Thanksgiving week sweating profusely as I insisted on wearing sweaters even though it was 85 degrees outside.

    Anyway, how was your Thanksgiving?

    Ours was lovely. As it turns out we are all big fans of the turducken. Who knew that all that layered poultry could be so delicious? Of course I never knew if I was eating turkey or chicken or duck or some combination therein, but it was delicious nonetheless. There’s nothing wrong with a little mystery.

    I also made cornbread dressing, broccoli rice casserole, sweet potatoes, corn casserole, cranberries, roasted Brussels sprouts, pecan pie, and chocolate ice box pudding. And I would do all those things all over again with the exception of the corn casserole. I wasn’t a big fan. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the corn casserole, it just seemed like one carb too many at the Thanksgiving table. A superfluous carb if you will. But I’m glad I tried it because I don’t ever want to get caught in a Thanksgiving rut.

    (I don’t know what that means. Like cooking a turkey and making dressing once a year constitutes a rut?)

    As it turned out I made way too much food for our Thanksgiving crowd of five people, but the good news is I may not need to cook again until sometime around mid-December. Sure, we may get tired of constant meals of cornbread dressing and various duck/turkey/chicken parts but think of all the trips to the grocery store I can avoid. I might even have time to learn a new hobby or constantly stalk the Anthropologie site in search of new sale items.

    So the Thanksgiving meal was delicious. And then we went to watch the A&M game with some friends.

    The day went downhill at that point.

    I would say more but the language wouldn’t be appropriate and I try to keep it family friendly around here. Poor Caroline burst into tears after the game was over and I tried to console her by letting her know that disappointment is part of being an Aggie. It’s our heritage. It makes us stronger, more resilient in the hard times or bad coaching life can bring. I also may have tried to teach her a valuable lesson about how you can’t base your happiness on a bunch of twenty-year-old boys. It doesn’t work when you’re twenty and it doesn’t work when you’re forty.

    But I think by the time I got to that point in my lecture on life lessons she was already over it and had moved on to her repeated request for a puppy for Christmas. She never misses an opportunity to ask for a puppy. In fact, we even met some friends for lunch before we left Houston on Tuesday and as soon as we got in the car after lunch, she asked, “Was I good enough to get a puppy?”

    It’s turned out to be such an effective motivational tool that it’s going to be hard not to hold out on the puppy thing until she’s about nineteen. Is her room dirty? Well, that doesn’t really demonstrate that she’s ready for the responsibility of a puppy. Did she forget to brush her teeth? You can’t forget to feed a puppy. Did she stay out too late and talk back to her mother? NO PUPPY. The leverage is exhilarating.

    And someday she’ll read this and the jig will be up.

    In reality I love the idea of getting her a puppy for Christmas and the whole LOOK AT THE PUPPY SANTA LEFT UNDER THE TREE thing, but Scout and Bruiser are old and set in their ways (Join the club. It’s an epidemic at our house.) and I’m not sure if they would welcome an energetic youngster to the mix. Poor Scout is already on the verge of some type of nervous breakdown half the time. A puppy might push him right over the edge.

    (I don’t know how this veered off into my internal debate about the puppy thing. I apologize for dragging you into it.)

    So on Friday we all woke up with a touch of disappointing football game loss hangover. P and Caroline packed up and headed to the ranch for the weekend. I sat on the couch and debated getting out and joining in the Black Friday craziness, but resisted the urge until about 5:00 that evening when I ventured to Pottery Barn and the lure of 20% off Christmas ornaments.

    But then I got overwhelmed at all the choices and the pillows and the coffee tables from the days of yore and the 30% off all throws and ended up leaving empty-handed. I drove straight to the pedicure place and treated myself to a holiday pedicure. My toes are now a sparkly red color called “Meep Meep” that’s part of the OPI Muppets collection.

    (The details. Oh my word. ALL THE DETAILS.)

    (Then I filled up my car with gas at Chevron. And debated going into Gap. And even made a u-turn and then changed my mind again. But then I regretted it later because they were having a big sale.)

    (Then I came home and put on my plaid flannel pajama pants and gray sweatshirt. And watched six episodes of Army Wives.)

    (I AM SO SORRY. I CAN’T STOP.)

    The rest of the weekend was spent in a totally constructive manner. I alternated between watching episodes of Army Wives, Real Housewives of Atlanta, and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Which may explain why I dreamed last night that Claudia Joy Holden died and I was embarrassed because I showed up at her funeral in a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader uniform and a man in a top hat drove me away in a horse drawn carriage.

    That dream will absolutely make sense if you’ve watched all those shows. Otherwise you’ve never been more confused.

    It probably didn’t help that I gave into the temptation to eat leftover broccoli rice casserole at 10:45 p.m.

    And now Thanksgiving break is over and it’s back to the real world. A world where I haven’t even thought about my Christmas cards and am slightly panicking about it. A world where I’ll eventually have to get out Christmas decorations and put them up. A world where I’ll need to get those rotten pumpkins off my front porch.

    The good news is I don’t have to factor cooking dinner into the real world equation, thanks to all the leftovers. The turducken is the gift that keeps on giving.

    At least until the salmonella sets in.

  • Happy holiday of the turducken

    I have big plans to spend the next two days in the kitchen cooking all manner of carbohydrates in various forms to serve to my family on Thanksgiving. Thankfully Mimi and Bops are providing a turkducken for the main course so I will not be forced to deal with poultry of any kind. Sticking my hand inside a dead bird doesn’t even show up on my list of life goals.

    Largely because birds of all kinds and I are on very shaky territory these days.

    But I’ve never had a turducken so I may feel compelled to try a bite if I’m feeling adventurous and can erase the thought of that pot of chicken parts I had to serve while in Ecuador.

    And the bought turducken goes completely against the turkey recipe Caroline provided to her third grade class. Most of the other children wrote recipes that read, “Go to HEB. Buy a turkey. Put salt and pepper on it.”

    Caroline’s recipe read, “First, you go to the ranch and shoot the turkey. Then you get the meat off the turkey and cut the head off.”

    I’m raising Bear Grylls.

    In all seriousness, I hope you all have the best Thanksgiving and eat delicious food and have time to reflect on all your blessings.

    So, from my turducken to yours, HAPPY THANKSGIVING Y’ALL.