Our summer of Harry Potter
It was funny to admit that, at 34, I had never even attempted to read one of the Harry Potter books.
It’s sort of like how I’ve only ever seen one of the Star Wars movies. (I call it “Star Wars” but people tell me it’s “A New Hope.”) I didn’t really care. I also have not seen The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, X-Men or any of the Rocky movies. (But I regularly get Doris Day songs stuck in my head and saw Spice World in the theatre seven times, so my taste is questionable.)
It seemed most of my friends and much of my family had read all of the Harry Potter books and loved them deeply. They hadn’t really appealed to me, I suppose. I’m not big on fantasy books or movies — um, except for that brief obsession with the Twilight series in my mid-20s.
I had only seen one of the Harry Potter movies and that was purely by mistake. I had been heavily pregnant and persuaded to tag along to the theatre, really only interested in the air conditioning and buttery popcorn.
What I knew about Harry Potter could fit on the head of a magic wand. I knew there was a wizard school called Hogwarts. I knew there was a flying sport called Quidditch. I knew people were divided into “houses” according to their personalities or something. And I knew when one of the books was released, people kept spoiling it by shouting “Snape kills Dumbledore!”
Our son recently turned eight and one of his best friends absolutely loves Harry Potter. She’s read all of the books and watched the movies, but he never seemed interested. Like mother, like son. But I could see he was experiencing the same niggling feeling of maybe missing out on something. I felt it, too …
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
DIY barn quilt (without the barn)
Have you ever spotted a barn quilt? They’re huge wooden squares painted in simple patterns to look like an actual quilt. I haven’t seen many in person — despite living in rural Nova Scotia — but I immediately flipped for the idea. I mean, hello! I love painting and quilting, so this is pretty much a dream project for me.
One problem . . . we don’t have a barn.
I approached my handy husband about putting a barn quilt on the shed, which is technically a baby barn. I got an emphatic no.
At first I thought maybe he just didn’t understand, and promised I wouldn’t use pink or make it really flowery. Still a big no. No barn quilt, of any kind, was going to be permitted on “his” shed. Since it’s really the one area of our property I don’t decorate or organize, I decided to let it go.
I didn’t have a barn or even a shed, but I did have a pergola — the new one we built above our picnic table, which I wrote about a few weeks back. Could a pergola have a barn quilt? Sure it could!
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Taking summer reading to a new level
Our son has been staying up late these days, but it’s for the best possible reason: he’s reading one chapter book a night.
I’ve always felt strongly about raising readers. I’ve loved to read since I learned how, but my husband struggled with reading as a child and now that no one’s forcing him to read, he won’t touch a book unless it’s to read to our son and daughter.
As we read to them as babies, I’d wondered if they’d take after him or me. Would they only read what they needed to read for school — and complain about it — or would they devour books in their free time and always want more?
Reading has always been part of our nightly routine and they certainly enjoy it. We would read to them before they could read and we started taking turns reading once each of them learned how. Then, after prayers and tuck-ins, they have always been allowed to quietly read for awhile until they go to sleep.
It has only been this past school year that our son has taken it to a new level. He’s outgrown the Easy Readers (which our daughter is now slowwwwwwly picking her way through) and traded Berenstain Bears* for chapter books. His favourite series is called Magic Tree House* and he’ll snuggle up in bed to read all 110 pages before he goes to sleep.
Because he’s reading a book a night, we’ve been making lots of trips to the library to stock up on more. I don’t care how busy or tired I am. If he’s out of books, we will find time to drive down so he has a new one to read that night. Must. Not. Discourage. Reading. Obsession.
During one of these visits, both kids signed up for something called the TD Summer Reading Club.
They hadn’t done a summer reading program before, but a few library employees visited their school and apparently had an excellent sales pitch because the kids insisted on going that very day …
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
Bedroom decorating on a budget
I recently helped a client redecorate her master bedroom and we made a pretty spectacular impact with very little cash. I love how it’s now a space that expresses her fun, loving personality.
It all started with a dresser makeover. Since we redid her existing dresser for one of her guest bedrooms, she bought a new one second-hand and painted it a rich navy (Fusion Mineral Paint’s Midnight Blue). It came with two matching nightstands (all for $125), which she also painted. The dark blue paint is perfect against her pale grey walls, and it goes well with her dark bedframe.
Heather’s home hint: I’m a fan of contrast, so I like dark furniture against light walls and light furniture against dark walls. Not everyone agrees, of course, but my heart skips a beat at the idea of white furniture popping against dark emerald green walls. I also believe in painting furniture to match, even if it’s not technically a matching set.
One of the biggest crimes to commit against a big, beautiful dresser is to hang something tiny above it . . . and nothing else. This new dresser was the width of her queen-size bed, so it needed more than just a single frame floating above it …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, Heather’s Handmade Home …
Sources for this room:
And so it begins
We’re not even a week into summer vacation, and already school feels like it ended months ago. Was it really LAST FRIDAY — not even one week ago — they got off the bus for the last time? REALLY?
Our weeks of summer camp have yet to begin, so we’re in those early-summer days of getting used to the new normal. Read More
Summer needs some structure
If my kids were left to their own devices this summer, they would not leave those devices — electronic devices, that is. They would alternate between the iPhone, iPad and PS4 until their eyeballs fell out of their heads and rolled across my Wayfair rug.
My kids (most kids, I think) thrive on structure, and sometimes summer can get a little too loosey-goosey. Without the steadiness of that Monday-to-Friday school schedule (I miss it already) kids can get cranky because they (A) don’t know what’s coming up next and (B) get into a rut of doing the same things without any variety.
Yes, they will spend a lot of time playing outside, and we will make many trips to the local park, library, pool, playground, etc. They will draw and make crafts and play with their toys and build blanket forts and invent new games.
Sometimes, I just structure activities that will keep them quietly content while I’m working. So here are some of the ways I’m going to structure our time this summer to keep them from becoming “vidiots.”
1. Tinker time.
I started doing this a few months ago actually. They run up to our son’s room and each build a unique Lego creation, and then I come upstairs and tell them what I like about each one — um, what I like about the Lego creations, not the kids themselves.
2. Wayback playback.
(Yes, everything has some sort of alliteration. It’s the “fluency heuristic,” which means ideas are more valuable if they’re easier to say or think). This is when I’ll pull out toys they haven’t played with in a long time, and they are legally obligated to play with them for a certain amount of time. I’m looking at you, giant expensive Playmobil collection they never touch anymore.
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
DIY hanging bars
Three summers ago we built a simple wooden teeter-totter for $60 and the kids still love it today. It opened our eyes to the genius of building your own playground equipment from solid wood, rather than spending hundreds or thousands on dinky metal and plastic sets.
Last summer, we built a set of monkey bars for $175 and they’re still the most popular thing in our backyard — well, maybe second to the swings.
This summer, I decided we could expand on the monkey bars and add two hanging bars. The kids love flipping around on the ones in their school playground, and it felt like a natural next step in our backyard.
It started off pretty similar to the monkey bar build — the same pressure-treated 4×4 posts and the same giant ground spikes to keep them snugly nestled in the yard. Because we were building the bars off the existing monkey bars, we just needed two new posts. (My handy husband even remembered the trick he “invented” last summer, where he used a small scrap of 4×4 to help him pound the spike into position before adding the real post.)
We’d purchased the monkey bars as a set, but the hanging bars needed to be hunted down since they’re not a standard piece of playground equipment. It involved visits to several different stores as we shopped for something decidedly unusual …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Confessions of a dance pusher
It wasn’t a shady deal in a parking lot where two cars pull up next to each other and try to act casual. It didn’t take place in an alley or in the dark corner of the park. The deals were all made via text, but I still felt like quite a … pusher. Not a drug pusher, though. A dance pusher.
The messages started flying early in the morning on the day registration opened for existing students of the dance school. Over the course of a few hours, I was popping in and out of group texts and individual texts — weaving an intricate web of plans involving weekday afternoon dance classes for six-year-olds.
Instead of just answering their simple question of, “What class/day/time is Charlotte doing in the fall?” I couldn’t help but try to lead them over to my side.
I might as well have been smoking a cigarette and casually leaning against a brick wall. Probably wearing a cool leather jacket and ripped jeans, too.
“You want the good stuff?” I’d say in a gravelly voice. “It’s all about lyrical. Have you heard about lyrical? Oh man, you’ve gotta try lyrical.”
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
DIY crib bedding
My friend is expecting her third baby, and we’re all so excited for her. She wanted a rustic, woodsy feel for the nursery to go with the rest of her farmhouse, and didn’t want to reuse the old brown and green bedding from her previous two nurseries.
We ended up spending just $75 on everything we needed to recover her old crib bumpers* as well as make a brand-new crib sheet and a four-sided crib skirt.
I also made her a sweet, woodland-themed quilt for her baby shower.
If you’re an expectant parent, feel free to hand these tutorials over to a friend/family member who sews and beg them to help you make custom nursery bedding. You’ll be able to get exactly what you want for a fraction of the price of baby bedding sold in stores, and think of the possibilities …
(*RE: BumperGate. I’ve gotten a lot of emails about crib bumpers, since this article ran in the newspaper this past weekend. I don’t “endorse” crib bumpers and didn’t use them with my own babies, BUT my friend has used them with her two previous babies and wants to use them again. That’s her choice, and any parent’s choice. I just made them look pretty for her.)
Cake pops are surprisingly easy
I always admired parents who made cake pops. They seemed so fancy and I’d imagined they’d spent hours in the kitchen, perfecting each little ball of cakey goodness before dipping it and decorating it.
While I’m definitely better at baking than cooking (which isn’t saying much), I don’t like making cupcakes because I find it a pain to frost them individually. I prefer to just slap some frosting on a cake — much faster — and maybe toss on some sprinkles. I assumed cake pops were way out of my league.
But when we threw a “mobile” birthday party for our daughter back in April, I realized cake pops would be really convenient. We wouldn’t need to pack napkins or muck around with globs of frosting and we’d also avoid the crumbs that come from half-eaten cupcakes.
I was shocked to discover that cake pops were MUCH easier than I’d imagined. They were actually kind of fun to make! They were tidy to eat, really delicious and a huge hit with our party guests (and their parents).
So, if you’ve been tempted to try making cake pops but figured they were too difficult, here’s exactly how to master them on your first try …
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
DIY pergola picnic table
When you’re a certified indoor person and avoid the sun like a vampire, it’s a challenge to have children who love (and need) to play outside.
Even with my collection of oversized hats, sunglasses and tubes of fancy sunscreen, I’m all about sitting in the shade. I don’t like to feel hot, I’m prone to heatstroke, and working as a drugstore cosmetician in high school and university left me extremely paranoid about sunburns.
I wanted a spot where I could sit outside our house semi-comfortably to supervise the kids in their little pool. A large umbrella seemed like the obvious solution. But we live on top of a very windy hill, and umbrellas are a joke. (Well, and a weapon, since they’re likely to catapult through the air whenever the wind picks up.)
My next thought was a retractable awning attached to the house to cover our (very small) back deck. But those started at $500 and the majority were several thousand dollars (yikes), plus there was a good chance the wind would destroy it anyway.
“I just need some kind of little roof,” I whined to my handy husband on a particularly sunny day. “Just something to cover me. We could almost just . . .” I paused, looking at the picnic table sitting in the backyard. “We could just put a roof on the table! …”
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Work-at-home meal hack
When I’m working, I’m completely zoned out and don’t register that I’m hungry until suddenly I’m STARVING and ready to eat anything in sight. I feel like I’m too busy to stop and make something — even if it’s just opening a can of tuna and making a sandwich — so I used to run upstairs to the kitchen and grab a handful of crackers, a bowl of cereal, a granola bar, or another non-meal that takes mere seconds to prepare.
Then I started doing this …
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