Homegrown Thoughts

I was motivated to clean up my craft area because my mother-in-law wanted me to help her with some scrapbooking. I haven’t had my area in a workable state for some time. My husband got these leftover cubicle parts from work so we now have 2 cubbies in our basement office. While he was setting up his side, mine became the dumping ground. So for the first hour and a half or so, I was just getting the stuff out that didn’t belong there. Then I remembered I was going to take a “Before” picture. So these first couple are taken really at about the halfway point in the process.

Counter side

Desk side

Quite a mess, huh? I have way too much stuff, most of which I don’t use on a regular basis. But you just never know when you’re going to need some jingle bells or potpourri or velcro or ribbon or… so I keep it all. Which I think is ok, as long as I actually have somewhere to keep these precious commodities.

So…I made it look like this:

Counter side

Desk side

Much better! But do you see the problem with this set-up? I don’t really have very much work space. Considering the large desk and counter tops, I really thought I’d wind up with more. So a quick remodel was needed. I put the wire shelves back on the floor. Not my optimal set-up because my paper is in there vertically instead of horizontally, but it’ll do for now. I’ll have to tear down and rebuild these shelves to get the paper going the right direction again.

Moving the pictures over to the newly enlarged desk top created much more counter space to work at, also. If I can find another spot for the fax machine, I’ll really be in business.

My next step is to begin moving things from cardboard boxes to clear storage bins. I bought some today, so I can hopefully do that soon. I’ll update the shots when that is taken care of. :-)

I have been told that I should add this bit of the story. I thought I had humiliated myself enough in my previous post and could safely leave it out, but full disclosure has been requested, so here it goes. Yet another reason for your kids to be glad I’m not their mother.

Okay, so on the birthday cake were the 7 little candles, which you see in the photos in my previous post. What I didn’t tell you before was that I was a very mean mom and bought those candles that won’t go out. If you blow them out, they rekindle and burst to flame again. I’ve never used them before, but I’d seen others use them and it was kinda cute, so when I saw them at the store, I got some. I did this totally forgetting that my son has a hard enough time blowing out regular candles. For some reason he has control issues with his lips which make it a challenge, LOL. So anyway, those are the candles we had, so I had to use them and hope for the best. Well, first of all, they make a really big flame (which you can see in the one photo). Second of all, they spark. That was not expected. They also burn down really fast and drip a lot of wax. It was probably fortunate that I had them in the cake almost horizontal or we would have had wax all over the cake.

So my son is huffing and puffing away (after his first reaction of standing about 4 feet away with fear in his eyes), having no effect on the candles other than causing a small flicker. My younger son gets in on the act and he can’t get any to go out either. I’m laughing and snapping pictures in my heartless way. As I see the flames are getting dangerously close to the cake because the candles are burning down so fast, I run and get a cup of water. My husband has to blow the candles out and then I have to quickly grab what little bit of waxy part is left and toss the candles into the cup of water one by one. Of course I wasn’t going fast enough and they were re-lighting before I could get them all pulled out, so he had to blow a couple out more than once. But eventually, all flames were doused and nobody was injured in the process.

So you see, I am a cruel (and not altogether intelligent) mom. I would like to state in my defense that I really did forget that he has trouble with blowing. And I had no way of knowing these would be super-charged fast burning, sparking candles. For the record, there were also 3 grandparents in close proximity who offered no assistance whatsoever - 2 of whom were snapping pictures of their own! My son doesn’t seem to have been traumatized by it…but I suppose the imaginary budget for his ‘future therapy’ fund should be increased, just in case.

And that’s all I’m going to tell you. I have admitted MORE than enough of my failings already. My humiliation is complete. I hope you all appreciate my transparency, especially since I try so hard to act like I have it all together and know what I’m doing. But you all know different by now, don’t you?

Somehow, I don’t now how, my older son turned 7 yesterday. I’m sure it was only 2 or 3 months ago that I held my first baby in my arms and decided I’d like to keep him there forever. And surely it was only last week that he was learning to walk and talk. It appears that he is choosing to ignore my pleas to stop growing up so fast!

So, since he wouldn’t let me pretend it wasn’t happening, we celebrated his birthday. I made him a special cake (photo and more about that below). The grandparents came over for a little party and he got way too many presents. You give the grandparents one gift idea and they show up with that plus 5 other ‘little things’ they decided to add. And I had to listen to my husband’s “When I was a kid…” speech about his deprived 1 present for birthdays and 1 present for Christmas childhood. Whatever. I was an only child. I got 2.

My son is very pleased with his haul. He got the software he’s been asking for (Zoo Tycoon 2 - see my Tycoon post here) along with several books, a Lego set and a Megablok set (F1 racer and a monster truck), a RC car, a geography game - and a share of real stock! He’s firmly planted in front of the computer now. I am informed that he is getting Emporer Penguins for his zoo and he seems pretty excited about it.

About the cake. He’s been deciding what he wanted on his cake for some time now. I started a bad tradition of ‘fancy’ designs for birthday cakes. They’re not really that fancy because I’m not that good at cake decorating (I want to take a class!!), but I usually do some theme they like. Now something *special* is expected each birthday. So he started out telling me he wanted an airplane. I wasn’t sure how I’d manage that other than pulling the ‘toy airplane on the cake’ trick. Well, then he added that he wanted a runway. So I thought, ok, I’ll put a runway in frosting and put the toy airplane on it. Then he wanted the airplane to have a flag on it. Then he informs me that he wants a specific airplane from his Flight Simulator program. It was at this point that I began searching for a different design I thought I might have a chance at pulling off and which might be cool enough that he’d choose it over the said runway/airplane/flag motif. Well, I finally found it. A space ship! It was going to take some cake carving and a lot of frosting, but I thought it would still be easier than the other option and they made it look pretty simple in the instructions.

Well, I’m not sure it was easier at all, LOL. I think I had some humidity/temperature/too moist cake issues. Something wasn’t right with the frosting. But in the end, I did get it finished. It didn’t turn out as well as I wanted it to and I was getting really frustrated working on it. I had frosting ALL over the kitchen and my hands because my bags kept having ‘issues’. I exploded at my husband, “I can’t get it to look right!”, and my son heard me. He came over, hugged on me, and said, “I don’t think it looks bad. I just want you to try your best, Mommy. I like how it looks! It looks really good!” Hmmm. My ‘baby’ is now more mature than I am at times. How very lowering. And he is obviously learning some coping skills in dealing with his perfectionist mother.

So, since my son was happy with his cake and that’s really all that matters, I’ll be brave enough to share photos. And I’ll try not to point out all the ‘wrong’ things on it. Wow, I totally get that from my grandma! She always did that…you’d sit down to eat and she’d rattle off all that went wrong with the preparation of the meal and how she hoped things would taste ‘right’ and you’d suddenly lose your appetite, LOL. So I won’t do that. And the cake did taste really good!

Here is the cake:

And here it is at ‘lift off’:

So, happy 7th birthday to my son. I’m glad it’ll be another whole year before he has another one. At the rate he’s going, he’ll probably be making his own cake next year.