May | 2013 | Boogers on the Wall

Broken Fence, Broken Forgiveness

30 May 2013 2 Comments

by Natalie in Parenting Battles, What's a mom to do?

I tried to teach my son a life lesson but ended up freaked out instead. Here’s what I’d like to say to the scary man who treated us like dirt.

Dear Angry Man who rejected my broken-fence apology,

Thank you for keeping me from teaching my 6-year-old a valuable lesson.

I brought him to your house, despite his serious anxiety, to fess up and apologize for accidently knocking over a section of your decrepit cement-slab fence. He was scared to death as we waited on your porch for you to answer your door.

We told you he bumped into the fence a couple of weeks ago and part of it fell to the ground.

But you didn’t believe us. Instead of allowing us to apologize and help you fix the fence, you got angry and shouted at us to break the whole thing down. You snapped at me telling me you didn’t think he was the one who did it.

Do you seriously think I was the one who broke it? Then I blamed my child?

Anyone who has ever walked by your fence will agree that it looks so unstable that if someone whistled while walking by it would topple over.

Other sections of the same fence are missing. Surely he is not the only one to bump one loose.

I hesitated to make him knock on your door and admit to breaking the fence. But I wanted to teach him that he needs to admit to his mistakes and make them right whenever possible. We stopped by your house two times before to talk to you and you were not home.

Now I kind of wish we never talked to you.

Then again now that I think about it, maybe you did help me teach my son a lesson or two, or even three.

1. How not to be a complete jerk if someone accidently damages some of your property.

2. How to graciously accept an apology and an offer to help.

3. How to forgive.

None of those were the lessons I intended, but now they seem even more important than the one I set out to teach.

I can’t help what happened, but I was willing to pay to fix the fence. Now maybe you’ll have to do what you suggested to us and, “break the whole thing down.”

Sincerely,

A tired, busy mother who is trying her best to teach her children manners

Gameday Hustle

23 May 2013 Leave a comment

by Natalie in What's a mom to do? Tags: cheering mom, kids sports, soccer mom, watching kids play sports

For someone who hates running, I sure run around a lot – especially on Saturdays.

I’ve been on a wild goose chase all month running from batting practice at 9 a.m. to soccer at 10 a.m. then soccer again at 11 a.m. – all at different parks across town from one another.

And with my husband coaching two of the teams, I’m left scrambling – a lot. I leave most games 10 minutes early to try to get to the next game on time.

I normally pack my 20-pound baby and my 20-pound diaper bag onto my stroller, strap two or three camping chairs across my back then juggle a soccer ball, camera and my kids’ end-of-game-treats. Half the time I lose my car keys in the shuffle.

Then I push all of us across uneven, grassy fields, bumping along to the next cheering section.

I feel as if I am going crazy. I love watching my kids play, but hate all of the run around.

We’ve spent three and four days a week lately playing organized sports. And my little athletes are only 4 and 6 years old.

I know what you’re thinking. As the mother of several young boys, this is only the beginning.

I was feeling a little overwhelmed lately by all of our extracurricular activities when I stumbled across this article in our local newspaper.

The article talks about Gwen Judkins, mother of eight, who carted her kids around sporting events for years. She signed them up for everything because she saw the joy it brought into their lives. She sat on the bleachers keeping stats and cheering them – and all their teammates – on.

My favorite part of the article comes from Gwen’s youngest son:

Jon said what he appreciated most about his mom was her constant support and encouragement.

“She would come to everything,” he said with a laugh. “And she had eight kids. She’d go to every game, sometimes they were overlapping, but she’d be running from this place to that place … I have four kids, and I don’t know how she did it. She’d go everywhere to support us and that always meant a lot to me.”

Reading about how a mother of eight could support each one of her children gave me the perspective I needed to pick my pom poms back up and keep cheering – no matter how tired I am from packing my junk around town.

Gwen’s story inspired me to be a better “soccer mom,” to stop complaining about the rat race and to encourage my children to do what makes them happy.

I’ve missed two of my sons’ games to go to other family functions and I was heartbroken. I want to be there for everything.

Who wouldn’t want to see their tiny first grader strap on catcher’s gear and waddle behind home plate for the first time? Or see them finally score a goal in their last soccer game of the season, then run around the field bearing a permanent smile? Those moments are priceless.

I want a front row seat to all of the action – even if I have to run to get there.

Bachelorette Bash Boogers Style

16 May 2013 4 Comments

by Natalie in Parties/Showers Tags: bachelorette party, bride veil, bridesmaid sashes, cafe rio chicken, cafe rio dressing, cafe rio salad, homemade sashes, homemade veil, newlywed game, paper cup decoration, paper cup garland, planning a bachelorette party, tulle veil

I have never been to a bachelorette party, so I don’t know why I thought I could plan one. But my baby sister’s getting married this Saturday, and as her maid of honor, I was determined to throw her one heck of a party.

Panicked that I wouldn’t know what to do or how to decorate, I cracked open my laptop and started web surfing. Thank heavens for Pinterest.

We held the dinner/mini spa bachelorette party last weekend and I don’t know about the other girls, but I had a great time.

Here’s how I threw it all together:

Invitations

First off, the invites. After looking at a couple of really cute invitation ideas online, I decided to throw together my own invitations using Photoshop and InDesign. I started with a tiffany blue background that I pulled off of one of my favorite royalty-free clip art sites: clker.com

Then I placed a red rectangular box on the bottom and played around with different fonts to come up with the text. When I thought it looked decent I took a .pdf version to the local copy store and had it printed on light-cream cardstock.

Piece of cake.

Games

If you notice, on the bottom of the invite it asks each guest to bring six $1 bills and a pair of underwear that best matches their personality or relationship with my sister. Those pieces were essential to our games.

We played the underwear game found here. We couldn’t stop laughing at the different pairs of panties – especially a colorful lacy, top that we couldn’t figure out at first.

We used the six $1 bills to play a newlywed game that I like to call “What do they know?” I videotaped the groom answering several questions about himself as well as about my sister. Then we watched his responses while my sister told us her correct answers. If her answers matched up with his, she got $1. We put her winning money in her Honeymoon Fund Jar that I made her for one of her bridal showers. I got the newlywed game questions here.

Party Favors

I decided it would be fun/relaxing to do pedicures at the party. My mom found a great deal on pedicure sets so each guest got an emery board, scrubbing stone, file, toe spacers and two pairs of clippers. My mom also got a great deal on nail polish so I threw in one each for the girls along with a Hershey’s Cookies n’ Cream bar and a Kit Kat (two of my sister’s favorites.)

I made each guest a bright red sash. I bought stiff 2” ribbon from the craft store.

Then I cut out white vinyl BRIDESMAID letters on my Silhouette SD cutting machine.

I used double-sided tape to put the vinyl on the ribbon and smoothed it down with my handy pot scrubber.

Then I peeled off the tape and put a dab of hot glue at the base of the sash. They were tacky, but fun.

I put everything in big red tubs that I found at the local Dollar Store. The tubs doubled as basins that we used to soak our tired feet.

Decorations

I saw a really cute banner here that said From Miss to Mrs. So I whipped out my cutting machine again and cut out block letters and chunky hearts.

I draped brown hemp-style ribbon through the letters and spaced it evenly over my sister’s kitchen table.

I also saw a hanging garland made of paper cups here. I bought a pack of kids cups and a pack of thick, red cardstock. I cut open one of the cups and laid it flat.

I made a pattern with the cup so that I could trace it and wrap paper over it.

I traced what felt like a million of those patterns. Then I started cutting them out and gluing them onto the paper cups.

What was my 10-month-old doing at this point?

Making a mess.

After I had all of the cups covered in red paper – I did a few in blue that I had left over from the Miss to Mrs. banner – I grabbed a kitchen knife and started cutting small x shapes in the top of the cups.

They all ended up looking like this.

Then I stuck them on a strand of 100 mini Christmas lights.

I thought they turned out really cute and the lights were really fun.

What’s a bachelorette party without a tacky veil? I had left over 2” ribbon so I tied a giant red bow.

Then I bought 1 yard of tulle and set it out flat on my floor. I bunched the top of the tulle in one hand.

Then I threaded a needle and wove it through the top by hand, gathering the tulle about ½ inch from the top. I pulled it tight and grabbed the red bow.

Veil 4

I sewed the red bow in the center of the gathered bunch. Then I stitched on a bobby pin so we could attach it to my sister’s head.

Food

For the food I cooked what I like to call Café Rio chicken salads. (I got a killer recipe from my friend Jaclyn). I cooked spicy chicken, sweet rice, easy black beans and creamy lime-cilantro dressing and salsa (from my friend Racheal’s recipe). We used lettuce, cheese, sour cream and tortilla chips to top it all off.

Here are the recipes I used:

Spicy Chicken

1 small bottle Zesty Italian salad dressing
1 TBSP chili powder
1 TBSP cumin
3 cloves minced garlic
5 pounds chicken breast

Cook in a crock pot 4-6 hours, then shred chicken.

Sweet Rice

6 cups water
4 tsp chicken bouillon
4 tsp minced garlic
1/2 bunch cilantro
1 small can green chilies
3/4 tsp salt
1 TBSP butter
1/2 white onion chopped
3 cups rice

Blend cilantro, chilies, onion and 1 cup of the water in a blender. Add all other ingredients (except rice) and blend. Put rice in pan or rice cooker and then add blended ingredients. Cook 20-30 minutes in pan or normal time for rice cooker.

Salsa

1 large can tomatoes…any kind. I got the petite cut
4 yellow peppers (winco is the only store I could find them in the winter)
1 jalepeno pepper
1 anaheim pepper
cilantro
salt to taste
lemon juice 1-2
lime juice 2-4
4 cloves garlic

Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend.

Here’s a link to the Easy Black Beans recipe.

Here’s a link to the Creamy Lime-Cilantro Dressing recipe.

For dessert I mixed up two boxes of my favorite fudge brownie mixes. I tried to whip up some cream but that didn’t work so my sister’s friend Mindy came to my rescue with some Cool Whip. We layered our treats with brownies, Cool Whip, then strawberries, then brownies, Cool Whip and strawberries.

Delicious! It was a great way to end the party. We ate our treats while soaking our feet and watching one of my sister’s favorite movies: Casper.

My first bachelorette party was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. It’s nice to have a reason to make some crafts and try out some of my Pinterest pins.

Hopefully my sister had as much fun as I did.

As far as screaming goes, I haven’t done very well lately. I am starting anew. I went 28 days without yelling at my kids, then I lost it last week. No I am back at the beginning at 1 day. You can read about my yell-free challenge here.

Bake Potato Blow Out

09 May 2013 4 Comments

by Natalie in Cooking/Attempting to Cook, Failed Housewife

Pieces of potato that I picked out of the bottom of my oven.

Just when I think I finally have a handle on how to cook for my family, I blow up a baked potato and find myself on my hands and knees scraping off veggie shrapnel from the far right corner of my oven.

Seriously? How hard is it to bake a potato? You wash it, poke it a bunch of times with a fork and viola! It’s ready to toss into the oven. I’ve done this a million times.

Well apparently this time I missed poking one last week – or I only poked it half as many times as I should have. Because while I was waiting for dinner I heard a loud boom and peeked into the oven to find that one of the potatoes was hollowed out with it’s insides shattered in a million pieces on my oven floor.

Dang.

The best part? The oven was too hot for me to clean up the mess and I forgot about it for several days. It wasn’t until I started smelling some serious charred food while preheating the oven a week later that I remembered the potato pieces.

Unfortunately the oven was too hot to wipe out so I found myself carefully wrapping my hands in hot pads and scraping out as much of that poor potato as I could. Then I started preheating it again. All the while hoping that I didn’t set off the smoke detector – something that happens frequently around here.

The corner of my oven where a potato exploded last week.

I was trying to make enchiladas – one of my favorite recipes. (Thanks to my friend Joanel.)

When your husband walks in from work, takes one whiff of the kitchen and asks if we need to go out to eat, you know you have failed as a housewife.

Luckily, the enchiladas turned out just fine. We may have eaten dinner a little later than normal, but we did eat a home cooked meal. I think I have shared this recipe before, but just in case, here it is. If I can cook them, anyone can. I’m all about easy recipes. But then again I thought baking potatoes was easy. Guess again!

Enjoy!

Green Chili Enchiladas

Ingredients:

– A Cup or So of Sour Cream

– 1 can of Cream of Chicken Soup

– Milk

– Onion

– A Small Can of Green Chilies

– Cheese

– Tortillas

– Cooked Chicken

Take some sour cream and the can of cream of chicken soup and combine them in a bowl. Add milk until it’s creamy. Then add the can of green chilies and onion. Take a tortilla, smooth a spoonful of the creamy sauce in the middle. Then sprinkle a handful of chicken and cheese on top. Roll into a burrito shape and put in a greased cake pan. Repeat until almost all of the creamy sauce is gone. Save about ½ cup.

Smear the saved ½ cup over the top of the burritos. Sprinkle with a little more cheese. Then bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes.

MIA

02 May 2013 Leave a comment

by Natalie in Failed Housewife, Trying to be a Better Mom, What's a mom to do? Tags: busy mom, no time to clean, no time to play with kids, super busy

Here’s my half-weeded garden. Anyone who knows me will know that this is driving me nuts. I love to garden and I hate when I don’t finish projects. But, I haven’t had time. Oh well, right?

My children have been motherless for the past month. At least it feels that way to me. I have been running around like a chicken with her head cut off.

Between sewing projects, bathroom remodels, taking a small part in my sister’s wedding festivities, sporting events, church meetings, book clubs, etc., I have been running around ragged.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to do all of these things. I choose to do all of these things – I love socializing and helping others – but it feels like it’s been a jam-packed spring.
Easter snuck up on me and now Mother’s Day is almost a week away! Where has all the time gone?

My poor kids have had to fen for themselves as I have spent a vast majority of my spare time working on a million different projects. For the past month I have been a missing-in-action mother.

I am sure that my children don’t mind that they have watched extra television and played long hours with the neighbor kids. They probably don’t even care that we haven’t read 20 minutes every night or flossed their teeth every day.

But it’s starting to get to me.

My garden is half weeded, my house is half clean and my basement bathroom is halfway remodeled. My kitchen floor is nasty, there are baby treats smashed all over my van and we aren’t even going to mention my laundry room turned dumping pile. It’s so jammed full of crap I don’t even know where to begin.

My basement storage room flooded about a month ago. I had to take all of my boxes and papers and move them into the laundry room. They are still sitting in this pile today. I know I need to get rid of a lot of it, but haven’t had time. Hopefully I will have time to sort through them soon!

Ironically there are times in my stay-at-home life that I am so bored I want to cry. But not lately.

I’ve got to step back and take a breather. Before I go insane – or worse – yell at my kids. (Thanks to the allowance of the “Oopsie Snap” I’m still yell-free. You can read about all that here. )

What do you do when you are so busy you can’t think straight?

I miss relaxing with my boys while watching PBS in the afternoons. I miss building Lego sets and spying on enemies in the back yard.

So I say who cares about the kitchen floor and the laundry room? During these busy times we are just going to have to stick to the linoleum and shut the basement door. If I don’t have time to do all of my projects, clean my house and play with my kids, I choose to give up on the cleaning.

It can wait until one of those days I am bored to tears. That’s when I’ll sort through the debris and mop my floor.

I don’t want to be missing in action any longer. I want to cuddle to my boys while we read stories on the couch and huddle with them under their army fort while we make plans for war.

21 Days yell free!!!

Boogers on the Wall

Broken Fence, Broken Forgiveness

Gameday Hustle