I'm totally counting them.

So I finally figured out that weekly updates might be a bit beyond me. This is mostly due to my crippling laziness, I think. I HAVE been working on things - the very things referenced in the title of this post! - but the whole getting out the camera and shooting pictures and logging onto the Internet while avoiding the allure of adorable cats or beautiful vintage frocks or (Deity save us all) PINTEREST is waylaid by logging onto the Internet and NOT avoiding said seductions. Now you get a wrap-up post! Aren't you lucky.

I have decided to add a few rules to this self-challenge, mostly so that I spend more time creating and less time flagellating myself over how far along I'm NOT. At first I wasn't going to count baking or cooking projects, but the Valentine's Day extravaganza of four dozen sugar cookies flooded and sprinkled for the 2nd grade sugarpalooza made me change my mind. So the sugar cookies count. So does the heart shaped pizza we had for dinner, and the chocolate fondue we had for dessert. I don't have pictures of those. I was too busy trying to keep the 2nd grader in question from covering everything in the house - primarily the felines and me, her own mother - in red royal icing and/or warm ganache. But those count for my 3,4,&5 out of 52.

I also wasn't going to count finishing projects that were started before the first of the year. But I needed the embroidery hoop that was sitting on the last of this pillowcase to start a different project, and these have been 75% done since I took my children to California (ahem. in fall of 2010). It took the work of one evening to complete them. And then I decided to cut myself some slack. UFOs need love, too! 6/52.

the dude zombie is mine pillowcase, the lady is Z's

Then I thought that the cards I made for Valentine's Day for the kiddoes shouldn't count because... I don't know why really. Because I'm dumb, and this is exactly the sort of thing I am trying to stop doing. Of course they count. I only have a picture of the Cap'n's, because HRH is using hers as a bookmark. Hers is, of course, the more amusing of the two.

the other card featured a dinosaur and the poem:"roses are red, violets are blue, i'm really glad you're not a Tyrannosaurus Rex because it'd be super hard to hug you with those tiny arms." yes, i know i'm an epic poet.

Valentine's also brought a request for special headgear for the princess (An aside: I use this term derisively, because I really, really, REALLY want to not raise an awful entitled mess of a girl. She's not actually very princessy, though, to my everlasting gratitude, and as long as they stay requests instead of demands, I don't think giving in to a hair doodad now and then is a big deal.) I made her a quick headband with glitter craft foam and hot glue. I'll let the cards be one project, and that makes 7 &8.

this ffffffabulous picture is courtesy of my aforementioned crippling laziness.

The one place I'm failing MISERABLY is my February postcard project. A fatal combination of working on a day off, a holiday, and then a debilitating cold just knocked me right off track. I am planning to do last week's and this week's both today and hopefully hit the reset button.

Lastly, I have been obsessed with these pieces from Wicked Minky on Etsy. I wanted to make an homage piece out of shrink plastic, but I have been having a tough time with it. The plastic is... really shrinky. They are less chest piece sized than hidden-behind-the-ear sized. I am still going to string them up into a necklace after they finish drying because I spent a long time on them. Then I will probably just break down and buy one of the fabulous chest piece necklaces from her.

Not bad, huh? I'm better than caught up! I'm AHEAD! I can just slack off for the next two weeks!

No? Sigh. See you soon, then.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

That song is one of the most irritating holiday songs ever penned. You're welcome. I know you wanted an earworm for Christmas.



Here's what I got:

-Ironman. You knew it. I knew it. There was not a way that this movie was not turning up. It was one movie that surprised me with its goodness this year; everything else was more or less exactly what I expected. I still feigned surprise, and Cap'n Jack saw right through me.

-New knives. They are lovely, but I only use three of the ones I have already with any regularity. I think these will not be used half as much as the giver intended. I apologize.

-A sparkly purple box. I asked what was intended to go inside it, and HRH replied, "Your THINGS." Oh. Sorry. How could I have asked such a ridiculous question?

-A sweet, meandering conversation with the man I hesitate to put a label on. It was not long enough by half, but it went a long way to luring the proverbial lemur into the light. It also made me long for his face and his hand to hold, but I will take whatever crumbs the universe tosses me at this point.

- A rousing game of Zombie Beauty Shop. This consists of sitting in a tiny purple playhouse, training a fake hairdryer on a ridiculous toy purse-dog, and alternatively shouting, "BRAAAAAINSSSS!" and attempting to lick the wriggling child opposite you. It is the best game ever invented, especially if it makes your eldest child shriek, "Quit staring at my forehead! You're freaking me out!"

I hope you got the things you wanted the most off your list, and I hope that you had your own Zombie Beauty Shop moment. Someday, your loved ones will be able to look back and say, "We're not sure why we love you so much. You are a sick individual." And that is the best present you can get.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I remember my eleventh birthday with distinction. We had returned to the States after living overseas for more than two years, and we had moved to Kentucky. I was in utter culture shock. The kids at my middle school - an unknown entity to a child schooled by DODDS (Department of Defense Dependent Schools) - considered me so alien as to eschew talking to me at all. I was reading vampire novels and listening to punk rock and New Wave music (thanks, big sisters) while they were hoarding their meager cash for Now or Laters and the new Madonna tape. (It was True Blue, if anyone is wondering. It contains the masterwork Papa Don't Preach.) There were no kids my age at my party, because I didn't really have any friends yet, having only been living in the U.S. again for three short months. Instead, my mom's boyfriend's sister, who we called Tia Carmen, brought her two much younger kids along, Bhuj and Carmencita. Please don't ask me how Bhuj got his nickname. His real name was Diego, after Carmen's maiden name. His dad called him Boner. I am so glad I was as innocent a child as I was.

Anyhow, Tia Carmen baked me a birthday cake with a sparkly pastel unicorn on it. To a child enamored of Anne Rice novels and my eldest sister's Dire Straits albums, this was unspeakably lame. I can't remember any of my gifts, except that my mom bought me a grown-up ring, my very first piece of real jewelry. It was 10 karat gold and had the world's tiniest diamond chip striving valiantly to shimmer. It remains to this day one of the best pieces of jewelry I have ever received, much better than the opal ring I had to put on layaway in a store so my ex would know exactly which to buy, much better than the thermos he purchased the Christmas I thought I might get a gorgeous handmade silver necklace. I don't have it anymore, the ring. So much of my childhood was lost in the constant shifting that occurred in my life. I can still see it, though. The memory remains. It was a concrete token telling me very plainly that the time for letting other people rule my thoughts and emotions was done. I was a whole and separate person. It didn't sink in for a while.

Cap'n Jack won't soon forget this birthday. Flying hundreds of miles away and not being asked to eat vegetables for a whole weekend go a long way towards creating an epic in the long tunnels of reminiscence. I didn't pass on such a substantial baton for him; I am not quite ready to take the step my mother made. Perhaps next year, when he is twelve. Until then, I cling to the tiny warm ball curled in my exhausted arms eleven years and five days ago. The first night we spent holding each other was one of the sweetest I've ever known.

Oh yeah, and we saw Billy Joe and the Dusty 45's. Billy Joe told my budding pyro the secret of the flaming trumpet. Then Jerry showed him the weird sounds your hands can make after you play guitar for (mumblemumble) decades. Rock and roll has claimed my son's soul. Thank God.

Pretty in pink

That outfit is positively volcanic!

You may have noticed a tiny redesign here at BMA. There was no real reason behind it, except I couldn't for the life of me remember why I chose willow green as the color scheme. I do love yellowy greens - it's one color I absolutely CANNOT pull off, even if I adore it - but still. It seemed un-MarieAntoinette-y and un-Stella-y and... not quite right. So, pink it is. For the moment.

We are watching Sesame Street Old School DVD right now. Santa brought it to HRH this year, even though there are disclaimers all over about how it no longer suits the needs of modern pre-schoolers or some such nonsense. Miss Thing, of COURSE, is captivated. So, for that matter, is Cap'n Jack, despite his double digit age. Why? Because this Sesame Street feels real. It's paced like life is - long stretches of quiet mundanity punctuated with moments of interest. Most everybody - even the monsters! - are non-excitable, tranquil, even (dare I say it) slightly surly. Adults are quite firmly figures of authority, not friends, although they are friendly. There is a little slapstick - kids running into laundry on a clothesline - and many, many lessons: where milk comes from, how to form a knit stitch, counting to 12, over, under, around, and through... It's orderly and frankly, to eyes jaundiced by the frenetically paced, neon-colored, song/dance/laugh fest that is children's television today, a little boring. In a really good way. There is a real sense of respect for children that I don't feel from the program anymore.

Anyway, this isn't on the DVD, but it is my favorite Grover moment, and has the bonus of being several teachable moments in one: