Author: Big Mama

  • The bike rodeo

    One day last week there was a note in Caroline’s take home folder with detailed information about the upcoming Bike Rodeo. And I immediately put my head between my knees until I could catch my breath because February has been the month of school that wants me to die. It’s such a short month, yet so full of Valentine’s Day crafts and President’s Day book reports and 100 days of school projects. What about my time? How am I supposed to find time to study my eyebrows in the magnifying mirror when I’m constantly having to run to the store to buy more rubber cement?

    And I can’t even talk about last Thursday when I was supposed to send Caroline to school with a teddy bear since they were discussing Teddy Roosevelt and I totally forgot. It was a morning that had already started off wrong because I had the nerve to put her hair in a ponytail and she WANTED BRAIDS which caused her to collapse into tears. I honestly thought she must be getting sick because why else would she act so whiny and weepy. So I proceeded to question her about a possibility of a sore throat or ear pain, only to face the sad reality that her only real ailment was a bad case of DRAMA QUEEN.

    So I dropped her off at school, made myself a cup of hot choffee, and was contemplating if I wanted to ruin my morning with the 30 Day Shred when Caroline’s teacher called on my cell phone. “Melanie? We’re having a little bit of a meltdown situation here.”

    “Oh no. What’s wrong?” (See? She was sick. That’s why she was acting so whiny. She probably had developed a fever and everything.)

    “They were supposed to bring a teddy bear to school this morning and Caroline doesn’t have one.”

    Dang.

    I grabbed three teddy bears from the playroom (because nothing makes me overcompensate like some motherhood guilt) and drove up to the school where I made the walk of shame down the first grade hallway bearing (I’m so sorry) my three bears. Caroline was thrilled by my guest appearance at school and didn’t seem to be fazed by the fact that I was wearing my shameful purple velour sweatpants that make me look like Grimace. She chose one of the bears for herself and another one for a classmate whose mother had also forgotten the bear.

    And I realize the teddy bear incident is a small thing in the whole scheme of life and disappointments. In fact, I’m not even sure why I’m recounting it in such detail because the most disturbing point is that it was just further proof that my memory is swiftly fading. I don’t even know that Sudoku can help me now, especially because I don’t understand how to do Sudoku.

    We have some very dear friends who were expecting their second child last week. And we knew it. I’d even left a message on her Facebook wall that said, “Haven’t you had that baby yet? What’s the deal?” because people who haven’t been pregnant in almost seven years think that kind of thing is HILARIOUS. But yet, I received a text on Wednesday afternoon that read “4 centimeters dilated. Should be later today.” and I could not figure out who on earth would text me a message about labor. I nearly texted them back to say, “You have the wrong number, but good luck with the new baby!” before my brain slowly began to compute all the correct information.

    But none of that has anything to do with the Bike Rodeo and that’s where I was headed about six hundred words ago.

    Caroline got a new big girl bike for Christmas from Mimi and Bops. You may remember the following picture that would have been a precious memory if only my Dad’s head would have made the cut.

    However, since this has been a winter that would cause people in Seattle to feel depressed, we haven’t had the opportunity to really get her out on the bike. It also doesn’t help that we don’t really live in a bike-friendly neighborhood for the beginning cyclist. There are lots of hills and virtually no sidewalks which means that to ride the bike requires that we transport the bike to another location and see how it all starts to get too complicated when she is just as happy to ride her scooter which fits neatly in the trunk of my car?

    She made it abundantly clear that she must participate in the Bike Rodeo because everyone gets a ribbon and she has never been one to pass up an opportunity for an accolade of any sort. So I began to look at the Bike Rodeo checklist to see what we needed (a bell! a bike light! basic bike maintenance!) and realized that P needed to be in charge of the Bike Rodeo portion of the parenting journey.

    Yesterday after church, we drove up to an empty parking lot so she could practice riding her new big girl bike. And she fell. Twice. There were tears and drama and wringing of hands, not to mention that Caroline was pretty upset also.

    She decided she wanted to quit. She didn’t want to be in the Bike Rodeo after all. And I began to have newfound respect for all those mothers of Olympians because how did Shaun White’s mother handle it when he wiped out and vowed to be done with snowboarding? When do you let your kid quit and when do you make them keep on trying? Where’s the line between encouragement and being a Bike Rodeo stage mother?

    P whispered to me, “What do we do? Do we let her quit?” And I gathered up all my maternal stores of wisdom and replied, “I don’t know”.

    Ultimately, we told her she needed to ride for a few more minutes because we didn’t want to end on a bad note and then asked if she wanted to go visit the Bike Store and see if they had a bell and a bike light. She did and so we picked up a purple bell, a purple bike light and a new purple bike helmet.

    And she was so thrilled with her new bike accessories that she begged to stop on the way home so she could ride her bike some more. I’ve always believed that sometimes a girl just needs some new accessories to give her spirits a lift and it worked like a charm. She rode her bike over and over again with new enthusiasm, ringing her little bell as she went.

    Who knows? One of these days she might even let us take off the training wheels.

    But I’ll need to take a nerve pill first.

  • Fashion Friday: Edition I’m not sure it’s going to happen

    I was totally prepared to discuss trends for Spring, but then I decided I don’t have the energy to get through it today. The new spring trends require a lot of thought and meditation. Frankly, I’m not up for the task right now.

    But maybe next week.

    Or maybe not.

    I’m just a little out of the words today. A statement that will seem ironic when this post comes in at 1000 words plus.

    (I was wrong. This is actually one of the shortest posts I’ve ever written. Maybe I really am out of the words. Or maybe it’s the Benadryl I took thirty minutes earlier.)

    On the bright side, this week was apparently the week of the spring catalogs and so even though I haven’t stepped foot in any sort of retail establishment, I’ve seen some very cute things.

    1. Emporia tunic

    I don’t really know that my world was as happy as it’s been since I discovered the beauty of a tunic top.

    2. Olivia blouse

    I’m pretty much in love with the entire Sundance catalog. When I first sat down with it, I began to turn down the corners of pages with things I liked and ultimately realized it doesn’t help much when every page is turned down.

    It’s not that I actually buy everything I like, but it gives me a place to go back and gaze fondly while I think about what could have been.

    3. Southern Wind trench coat

    Trench coat? Good. Ruffles? Good.

    Trench coat and ruffles together? GOOD.

    4. Ruffled tanks

    I know I featured a ruffled tank last week, but this one is a different ruffled tank. The more the merrier I always say. Unless you hate ruffles and tank tops.

    5. Big Buddha Hibiscus tote

    This should have been the first thing on my list because I am so in love with it. If there is a cuter handbag for spring and summer, then I don’t know it.

    I’m calling it a day. I need to rest up for the weekend because I have big plans to sleep and then watch some DVRed television. I have goals.

    If you want to go visit someone who’s ready to discuss spring trends, go visit Jo-Lynne at Musings of a Housewife.

    Y’all have a great Friday.

  • Bullet points sans the bullets

    I’m not sure why I’m so tired right now but I kind of think it might be the Olympics. All this sitting on the couch and watching the world-class athletes is EXHAUSTING. So today is just going to be a few pieces of information strung together with bullet points. Except I decided it’s too hard to format the bullet points so I’m going with numbers instead.

    1. Several of you asked about the shirt I had on in the video. It’s a JWLA shirt that I bought last year and I couldn’t find the exact shirt online, although this one is kind of similar.

    Except mine is bright orange.

    And has elastic around the cuffs.

    And has a drawstring thing at the top.

    So really they aren’t that much alike, except they are the same brand.

    Please note that I did not pay full price for mine, but found it deeply discounted at Nordstrom Rack where I swooped it into my arms and whispered terms of endearment to it all the way to the cash register.

    2. Speaking of the video, a few of you commented on how patient I am with Caroline. And, yes, I try to be patient with her, but that was a three minute slice of our life.

    The irony is that the rest of our evening didn’t go that smoothly and I actually felt guilty after I got her in bed because I’d been so impatient with all the bedtime stalling techniques. And I really can’t talk about yesterday morning when I was in a hurry to get us both dressed and out the door only for her to decide that her hair looked “weird” and could I please redo it. Then when I agreed to redo it, she proceeded to yell “OW, OW, OW! WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS YANKING MY HAIR?” as I gently combed it out while biting my tongue so hard that it started to bleed.

    God give me strength.

    3. One of the aforementioned bedtime stalling techniques was another loose tooth. It really was very loose so P offered to help her pull it out, but she told him she was saving it for Tilt to pull at school the next day because “she is a professional”.

    4. I thought I might be over American Idol. I mean, not really since what else would I watch on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after the Olympics are over? I just like to talk big. But I am a little excited about the talent this year.

    My pick right now? Casey James.

    5. I hope Jake doesn’t pick Vienna, but I’m afraid he’s going to since they shared that meaningful, challenging bungee jumping date together and anyone who’s married knows that life together won’t present any challenge more difficult than jumping off a bridge in tandem.

    6. I love Shaun White. As a matter of fact, I love snowboarders in general. I would totally move to Colorado and become a professional snowboarder if I weren’t a thirty-eight year old wife and mother who doesn’t really like the cold and has no sense of balance.

    7. I’ll be back tomorrow with Fashion Friday.

  • I can’t apologize enough for this video

    Late yesterday afternoon I decided I should probably take some pictures to serve as a visual aid for my pouf tutorial. I can say with all certainty that it was the poorest assortment of photos that have ever been taken and would have shown nothing other than what a horrible photographer I am.

    For example:

    I don’t even know what step I was attempting to photograph.

    Honestly, I don’t even know that I have a clue what I’m doing or if my poufs will stand the test of time. They’ve only been up less than a week and could fall down at any moment. One good tug and I might have myself a drapery house of cards.

    And I have to give one more shout out to The Nester who is the founder and inventor of window mistreatments. She has so many great, creative ways to mistreat windows that go way beyond what my limited decorative sensibilities can comprehend. Also, I was inspired by the pouf achieved by Katie at Harrington House. She made me aspire to heights of great poufiness after I saw her beautiful mistreatments. Lastly, I have to thank Holly for writing a great post full of links for great drapery tips.

    Seriously, did I win an Academy Award or just make some cheap curtains? Maybe I should get over myself and my homemade draperies.

    Anyway, after my poor attempt at documenting the process in photographs, I decided I was going to have to do a video tutorial even though I semi-swore to myself that I’d never do another one after the scarf-tying video. It’s just too painful to hear the way the camera makes me lisp combined with video evidence of how flat my hair looks by the end of the day. But because I love y’all, I recruited an amateur videographer to help me out.

    Disclaimer: If you’ve never suffered from vertigo, you will after watching this video.

    The Pouf from Big Mama on Vimeo.

    A few things:

    1. The camerawoman could not be cuter is spite of her tendency to interrupt and put in her two cents. She also doesn’t really get the concept of holding the camera steady or not getting your own feet in the video.

    2. I don’t have a lisp in real life. It’s the camera. I promise.

    3. However, my hair is that flat.

    4. If the poor quality of the video isn’t enough to guarantee I’ll never be featured on HGTV, then the chip clip sealed my fate. Also, my Doritos are now stale.

    5. I had to cut the video short due to uploading difficulties (most likely due to user error), so I’ll explain the final steps as best as I can. Continue to clip the fabric across the top, making sure you have all the folds in the ring clip (or chip clip) until you get to the other side. Then fold in the outer edge like you did at the beginning and clip it. Carefully, CAREFULLY, hang the rings on your curtain rod and then just gently pull out the folds of fabric to make the poufs. There is really no scientific method, just pouf and pull until it looks like you want it to look. It definitely works better if you have some fabric with a little bit of substance to it because the linen stuff I used in the video would have given me virtually no pouf at all since the fabric is so flimsy.

    6. There is a very good chance that I have no idea what I’m doing. In fact, I’d say it’s 70-30 that there’s a better way to make a pouf, but my lack of knowledge has never really stopped me from sharing information.

    7. If you really want to do this on a budget, then check out how cute The Nester made these draperies look without even using a curtain rod. Oh, and she also hot glues trim to her edges on occasion which looks beautiful but is beyond my skill level unless I decide to give myself second degree burns one afternoon.

    8. I have nothing else to add. Carry on.

  • Dizzying heights of fun

    Several of you asked how I achieved the poof on the top of my new drapes. I promise I will do a photo tutorial tomorrow, but at the moment I am suffering from a touch of the vertigo after spending the afternoon at the Rodeo Carnival.

    Since the kids were out of school for President’s Day, Gulley and I decided it was the perfect day to take them to the rodeo. It was a little chilly, but the sun was shining so we headed out to the fairgrounds full of hope and optimism.

    The kids all agreed that our first stop needed to be the ferris wheel.

    That look on Will’s face is what he refers to as his “sweetest smile”.

    Gulley and I decided we’d join the kids on the ferris wheel.

    Holy Rachel Zoe. Were the stores out of the large sunglasses?

    After the ferris wheel we wandered around and let the kids ride a few more rides, including a worm in desperate need of some orthodontia, the bumper cars and the Pirate Ship.

    Finally, Gulley and I couldn’t stand it any longer and insisted that it was time to go where all the real carnival magic happens.

    We started with corndogs with a side of Texas Twisters, which are homemade potato chips that were gone before I was able to get photographic evidence that they ever existed.

    Then I was torn between the turkey leg or the gordita. Ultimately, the gordita won out because there is no gordita like a rodeo gordita.

    However, I am sad to report that the gordita was filled with beef fajita meat that had never met any kind of tenderizing treatment. I finally just threw the rest of it out because I felt conspicuous standing in the middle of the fairway re-enacting one of those scenes from Wild Kingdom where a lion is trying to choke down an elephant.

    I found some consolation in the arms of a funnel cake.

    Anyone who says that food is not love has obviously never enjoyed a funnel cake at the rodeo.

    The kids were impatient to get back to the rides, so we headed back in that direction and saw something that stopped us in our tracks.

    Chicken fried bacon.

    Oh my word.

    It’s served fresh from the fryer with a side of coronary bypass.

    Oh, and Caroline saw what she referred to as the “Pickle Bird” and wanted to get her picture made with him.

    We finally made it back to the rides and Caroline and Jackson announced that they wanted to ride that ride where you ride up to the top and then it drops you and you do a free fall for about ten seconds but it feels like a thousand lifetimes. I can’t remember what it was called but I will henceforth refer to it as the Tower of Doom.

    For some reason I decided that it would be fun to join them on the Tower of Doom. After all, I spent most of my childhood summers as a frequent patron of Astroworld where I regularly rode the Dexter Frebish (later renamed the Excalibur, but it will always be the Dexter Frebish to me) and the Cyclone and the Sky Screamer. I laughed in the face of danger. Give me some turkey legs and a Gravitron and get out of my way.

    (Seriously, just thinking about the days of yore at Astroworld makes me want to weep because it no longer exists and what kind of childhood will Caroline have if she can’t experience the Alpine Sleigh Ride?)

    So we waited in line, let the scary carnival worker belt us into our seats and lower the shoulder harnesses, and then panicked as we began to ascend hundreds of feet into the air only to plummet back to earth. I can still hear the screaming. Mainly because I was the one screaming.

    As we got off the ride, Jackson announced he wanted to go again and Caroline looked a little shell-shocked. Me? I was just trying to keep down my corndog.

    Because you know what doesn’t really mix as well as it did thirty years ago? Vast amounts of junk food and rides that defy the laws of physics and gravity.

    I never really recovered after that. I think it might have given me a case of vertigo.

    So Gulley had to take one for the team and ride this swirly, spinny thing with the kids. TWICE.

    After a big day of fun, we announced it was time to head home and everyone commenced with the wailing and the whining. Gulley and I were forced to join in the chorus of mothers who were saying “What you ought to be saying is THANK YOU for the great day, Mom, instead of whining about it being time to leave, FIVE HOURS LATER.”

    In fact, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I think I pulled out the phrase, “Maybe you should examine your heart”.

    But by the time we made it back to the car, they all agreed that a good time was had by all.

    Even though it ended too soon.

    And I got the vertigo.

  • The longest before and after post ever

    P and I began dating in March of 1995. That means that we’d almost been dating for one year when our first Valentine’s Day as a couple rolled around. I was hoping for a ring. Instead, I received a large tin full of cinnamon-flavored popcorn. It’s not that the popcorn wasn’t delightfully delicious as much as the fact that there wasn’t a diamond solitaire anywhere in that tin. And, trust me, I looked long and hard and very subtly as I ate an entire tin of popcorn in three and a half minutes under the guise of being hungry.

    The problem was, even after a year of dating, I didn’t know P well enough to know that he wasn’t a fan of any holiday that he deems to be a passel of lies being sold to the American public. I should’ve realized it when he chose to spend our first New Year’s Eve hunting at the ranch with his friends instead of taking me out to a romantic New Year’s Eve dinner which led us to spend the first day of 1996 breaking up as we argued over what constitutes a holiday (according to him a holiday isn’t a day that falls during the height of deer season) but love is blind and optimistic.

    Now, fourteen years, a wedding ceremony, one mortgage, a child and two dogs later, I totally agree with him on the whole made-up holiday thing. Oh sure, you may say that he’s trained me to disregard Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, but it’s really no different than how I trained him to do his own laundry after one week of marriage. Frankly, I think I got the better end of that deal.

    And just to be clear, we haven’t robbed Caroline of the Valentine’s Day experience. In fact, she got a Hello Kitty DVD and a new pair of binoculars this year because that’s what she wanted and how is a girl supposed to get by without her own pair of optics when she’s afield?

    The thing about P is that he does really nice things for me all year long. He gets up first in the morning and turns off the ceiling fan so I don’t freeze, he brings me flowers for no reason, he doesn’t ever care when I announce that I’m too tired to cook and I’m calling in some Mexican food to go, and he never questions the fact that every purchase I bring into the house was bought for the bargain price of $15.00. And last week he completely outdid himself and installed a new kitchen faucet (even though he killed my farmhouse sink dream) and hung my new curtain rods.

    Remember when I wrote about Holly and how she was helping me make some changes to my living room? And then remember how I showed the bird cage and the old suitcase that I found at the antique store? And then remember how I haven’t said anything else about it in a month?

    One of the things Holly suggested was that I add some drapes in the living room. What Holly didn’t know was that I am deathly afraid of window treatments. They intimidate me. I blame it on some ill-conceived JC Penney drapes that P and I had in our first apartment. They were so unfortunate with their green swag of fabric draped across the top.

    But Holly insisted that drapes were the way to go and I was too embarrassed to tell her about my long-standing drape phobia. We began to look for fabric and ultimately found this beautiful Robert Allen fabric that was on sale at Fabrics.com for $6.95 a yard. It was exactly what I wanted, something soft and subtle that would add some texture to the room and coordinate with the fabric we’d chosen for some new pillows.

    However, I let my fear keep me from committing to the fabric purchase until Holly told me that I needed to go ahead and buy it because it was great fabric at an unbelievable price. She even calculated that I’d need about fourteen yards and I’m forever grateful to her for doing that bit of math for me because I don’t know what my guess would’ve been other than JUST WRONG. So I went online to order the fabric and it had been reduced to $1.95 a yard. ONE DOLLAR AND NINETY-FIVE CENTS A YARD. You can’t buy burlap for $1.95 a yard.

    Or maybe you can. I really have no idea.

    Procrastination has never served me so well. I ordered all the fabric I needed for less than $30.00. But then Holly began to mention words to me like “drapery lining” and “sewing machine” and I felt frightened all over again. I actually own a sewing machine but only because my mother-in-law was getting rid of it and asked me if I wanted it and why would I turn that down? That would be akin to admitting that I’ll never learn to sew and I’m totally going to learn how to sew. SOMEDAY.

    Holly realized that all the sewing might never happen and the drapery lining was wishful thinking at best, so she suggested that I might want to just “mistreat” the windows with the fabric a la The Nester. (If you don’t read The Nester, you are missing out on a veritable wealth of home decorating information) I knew that Sophie had mistreated her windows with much success and since I know she and I function at about the same level of non-crafty, I felt that there was hope for me and the mistreating of the windows.

    So I bought new curtain rods and clip rings at Lowe’s. Then God smiled on me and it rained all day Thursday causing P to say out loud in my presence, “I’m bored”. Which led to this pleasant development.

    I don’t know that he’ll ever utter the words “I’m bored” again.

    I rolled all fourteen yards of fabric out as best I could given the fact that I don’t have a room that’s fourteen yards long and then I nearly caused my brain to explode as I tried to compute the measurements of how much fabric I needed to cut for each window. A timely call from Sophie saved me from what would have been a terrible tragedy because I was about to cut the fabric right down the middle because I was in way over my head.

    Words can’t describe the level of stress I felt as I debated cutting into the fabric because Holly had stressed that it was very important that I line the pattern up and each panel needed to match. My head hurts right now just thinking about. But finally I looked at P who was sitting on the couch trying to figure out how on earth I’d decided I could make my own drapes and said, “Well, here goes nothing. At least the fabric only cost $28.00 if I totally screw this up.”

    He replied, “Yeah, but if you screw it up you’ll never find that fabric at that price again.”

    It wasn’t really the word of encouragement I was looking for. Also, please note that I told him the actual price of the fabric because it was such a good deal and I needed him to know how much money I’d saved him. It totally makes up for all the other $15.00 items we have around the house.

    I took a deep breath, hyperventilated for several minutes and began to cut. And now I have drapes in my living room.

    Here’s the before.

    Let us never speak of that fake plant again. It was the devil’s foliage.

    And here’s the after.

    Please don’t mention that vast array of animal prints. I was a woman on the edge who just made my own curtains and I threw that pillow and the footstool over there. I’m not attempting any sort of safari theme.

    New pillows and other accessories will be coming soon. And, no, I’m not making them myself.

    But the good news is they’re only going to cost $15.00.