A "working" afternoon in the life of a WAHM
12:30 p.m. Finish cleaning up from lunch. Shove three-year-old in her room and instruct her to read books quietly if she doesn’t want to sleep.
12:31 p.m. Put on load of laundry.
12:33 p.m. Grab water bottle. Sit down at desk to work.
12:40 p.m. Run up two flights of stairs to shush loudly singing three-year-old (shift-working husband is sleeping — well, maybe not anymore — in the next room)
12:41 p.m. Sit back down at desk. Work.
1:03 p.m. Flip laundry to dryer, start new load in washer. Resume working.
1:29 p.m. Run up two flights of stairs to check on crying three-year-old. She was stuck inside a sweatshirt. Again. Run back down and resume working.
1:58 p.m. Alarm dings on iPhone. It’s time to rouse the totally-not-sleeping three-year-old and get ready for the walk to the bus stop.
2:02 p.m. “No, you cannot wear your party shoes to the bus stop! LET’S GO WE’RE GOING TO BE LATEEEEEE!”
2:03 p.m. Walk down sidewalk to the bus stop. Retrieve five-year-old. Chase both kids back up the hill, yelling at them to stop so they aren’t hit by a car.
2:12 p.m. Open backpack and read note requiring a cheque that you definitely sent, months ago. Curse under your breath and run down to office to check bank account. Appears cheque was never cashed, so … who ate it?! Grudgingly trust school and write new cheque.
2:13 p.m. Learn that afternoon childcare is not showing up. Try to refrain from completely Hulking out in front of offspring.
2:14 p.m. Console self with chocolate-covered ice cream bar.
2:23 p.m. Shoo kids into backyard to play. Set up laptop at kitchen table with full view of backyard. Freeze in front of the screen door on chilly October afternoon, rather than get to work in cozy basement office.
2:26 p.m. Go outside to remind three-year-old to stay in the backyard. Sit back down and work.
2:32 p.m. Remember the laundry. Run downstairs to flip it. Sit back down to work.
2:40 p.m. Five-year-old screams. Run outside to comfort sore butt after impressively hard fall. Sit back down and work.
2:42 p.m. Go outside to insist the three-year-old stay in the backyard. Sit back down and work.
3:18 p.m. Three-year-old screams. Run outside to chastise brother for trampling her (one shoe is missing). Sit back down and work.
3:31 p.m. Go outside to INSIST that three-year-old stay in the backyard. Sit back down and work.
3:45 p.m. Wipe a small butt. Sit back down and work.
4:02 p.m. Break up a fight and lose your cool once and for all. Wake up your husband less than pleasantly and shout something about BEING A PROFESSIONAL and NOT COOL and DEADLINES and OMG YOUR CHILDREN as you storm down to your office and shut the door.
4:03 p.m. Spend five minutes calming down by browsing UsWeekly.
4:08 p.m. Work.
5:02 p.m. Pause to breathe after finishing three hours of work in less than one hour.
*Rinse and repeat daily until sanity completely vanishes*
Five tips for meal planning + free printable meal planner and shopping list
It was something I hated, and it turned out I wasn’t the only one.
I’m talking, of course, about the dreaded act of sitting down with a pad of paper and a pen and figuring out what the H-E-double hockey sticks you’re supposed to feed your family over the course of a week — otherwise known as menu planning.
We were awful at it. Truly. We were making three and four trips to the grocery each week to “pick up a couple of things,” and never actually doing full grocery hauls. We weren’t making lists, unless it was to remember that we REALLY did need TP and man, seriously, don’t forget TP. We were spending a huge chunk of our incomes at the grocery store and weren’t even eating all that well, really.
Earlier this month, I put on my Herald Homes hat (well, T-shirt actually) and spoke at the Fall Ideal Home Show about why I love DIY projects. I brought some of my finished pieces to talk about, and there was an overwhelming interest in the menu chalkboard that hangs in kitchen family command centre.
People were intrigued by this piece of wood that I’d slathered with a coat of chalkboard paint and hung up on the wall. With the days of the week painted along the left, I had a space to write down the dinner I’d planned for each day.
I made the board because it looked cute, to be totally honest, but I wasn’t sure it was going to work for us. Like some household projects that start out with good intentions, there was a good chance this menu board was going to end up shoved in a closet until I repainted it for some other purpose.
But not this time. The menu board used the combined superpowers of chalkboard paint and swirly letters to convert me into a dedicated meal plan maker. I don’t know if it’s the accountability of having it right up there on the wall for visitors to see (and read thoroughly), or if it’s just because it’s more visible than a scrawled list stuck to the side of the fridge, but it’s definitely working.
Want to know my patent-pending method for planning meals and making a weekly grocery list? OK, get ready to have your mind blown.
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene
DIY Disaster Diary: The two-toned deck
Halloween is coming up, so this weekend I shared my version of a DIY horror story: the two-toned deck. Like all horror stories, it starts off cheerfully, but then there’s a lot of screaming and crying and it ends on kind of a dark note.
***
I can sum up two-toned decks by ripping off a classic nursery rhyme: When they look good, they look very very good — but when they look bad, they look horrid.
Actually, wait, I have another one: If you want to test your patience and your marriage, try a two-tone deck!
When we moved into our home in the fall of 2011, the deck, porch and basement stairs were just plain wood weathered to a grey-ish colour. We didn’t touch them for the first summer because my project-weary husband, Michael, insisted they were “a special kind of wood that can’t be stained.” Yes, I’m really that gullible.
Once I learned he was pulling my leg — and punished him appropriately — I started browsing photos of decks and decided I loved the two-tone look.
The rationale behind a two-tone deck is that you can have the beauty of a high-maintenance shade — like white paint, or very dark stain — on the parts that won’t be exposed to foot traffic and patio furniture scraping back and forth. Since the horizontal surfaces undergo a lot of wear and tear, you stain them a more serviceable shade so they last longer.
I chose a rich dark stain for the deck boards and stair treads (Sico’s “Autumn Brown” in exterior semi-transparent) and crisp white (Sico’s semi-gloss exterior paint/primer in “Natural White”) for the railings and risers. It was going to look so classic! I couldn’t wait to get started.
Now, this first round of painting and staining was in the summer of 2013, but I still have vivid memories of how very awful it was.
Endless power washing (which is only fun for the first five minutes). Scorching July heat. Michael and I taking turns juggling a three-year-old and a one-year-old and begging my mom to come watch them for a few hours. Dehydration. Paint dripping onto stain. Accidentally brushing stain onto the white paint. Touching up your touch-ups. Acres and acres of naked deck boards stretching before us. So much squabbling.
You don’t realize how large your deck and porch really are until you are crying sweaty, angry tears and cursing the day you ever saw a two-toned deck on Pinterest.
It was done, finally, and our marriage survived. We could hardly appreciate the finished product because the memories of those hot, miserable days were too sharp.
But when the snow melted the following spring, a cloud of despair settled over our porch. Months of shovelling snow off the front steps had scrapped the stain and chipped the paint. Nooooooooo!
Michael was ready to tear out the steps and swore up and down he’d never be on board with one of my Pinterest ideas again ( … I think we all know how long that lasted). So I bought more paint and stain, and spend more hours in the heat scraping, staining, and re-painting the beat-up areas.
This summer? Yep, I was back at it again. Except this time, I decided it was finally time to do the two-tone treatment on the neglected basement steps and railings — which had spent the last three years without a lick of paint or stain.
As I toiled away yet again, on one of the hottest days in August, I kept thinking “A nice light brown stain on everything would have looked so good. WHAT WAS I THINKING?” While I worked, I watched our next-door neighbour do a fresh coat of light stain on his deck and porch, and he breezed through the job — it hadn’t even needed to be redone for years. Oh yes, I had major DIYer’s remorse that day.
When it’s been freshly done, I still do love the look of our two-toned deck and porch. The trouble is that it doesn’t look perfect for very long, and I’m pretty sure the hassle of maintaining it has taken years off my life.
Looking back, a better two-tone option certainly would have been to choose a light stain for the horizontal components and a dark stain for the verticals. Then I still would have had the high-contrast look I love, but without all of the maintenance.
Or, you know, I could have just stained it all a nice light colour and not had to bother with it for a few years. *weeps into T-shirt covered with stain drips*
Thanksgiving prep is upon us …
“Do we have enough cutlery?”
*digs out dusty “fancy” cutlery set in the basement*
“I didn’t like this gift at the time, but now I’m super grateful for it.”
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how important are cloth napkins?”
“Do we have enough large plates?”
*counts plates*
“Nope.”
*makes note to buy more Corelle at Walmart*
“Are paper napkins acceptable if they’re Thanksgiving-y and kind of fancy?”
“WHERE DOES A PERSON BUY TABLECLOTHS THAT AREN’T $40 each?!”
“Can you make them?”
“Out of WHAT? PINK CHEVRON FABRIC?”
“We’re going to need plates for dessert, too, aren’t we?”
*counts small plates*
“Damn.”
“I already feel the walls closing in around me.”
“Shit … we don’t own a gravy boat, do we?”
Six Lessons I Learned at My First Blog Conference
I have been blogging for almost seven full years, but I only attended my first blog conference last weekend. WHAT? I don’t know what’s wrong with me, either.
Anyway.
I was pumped to attend the first-ever BlogJam Atlantic conference in Halifax, and — as I’ve told everyone who will listen — it completely exceeded my expectations.
I took very few notes because I was focused on taking it all in, but here are six (super important) lessons I learned. Fellow bloggers, take heed …
1. Give no f–ks …
Hilarious Newfoundland parenting blogger Vicki Murphy from Mother Fumbler gave the morning keynote, and it was epic. I’ve never heard a vagina described as a “wizard sleeve” or a “wookiee bush,” and when she called hers a “dropped pie” and shared a photo of an actual smashed pie, everyone was in hysterics.
Be yourself, use your own voice, and people will respect you for being real.
Another favourite part of the day was the Red Balloon gals, Colette and Laura, who talked about the importance of putting your heart into what you do. They told an awesome story about the power of following your inspiration and doing what feels right.
“As writers, the most interesting stories you will tell are the ones where you take the plunge.” Inspiring! @redballoongals #BlogJam2015
— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) October 4, 2015
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js I left the session feeling energized about pursuing projects I believe in, and maybe being a little more ambitious about setting goals.
Debbie Adams from PeopleCan Training & Development had a great session on creating videos. I’ve been too nervous to do my first Periscope although I do have an account, and I’m guilty of trying to make myself look as good as possible in my videos for various work projects. But Debbie said it’s just a matter of being real, practicing, and showing people your authentic self, so video is a skill I’m determined to work on.
Try something new! Go for it! It’s the only way to get better.
Mike Tanner from Chewy and Vader gave Vicki Murphy tough competition for the funniest talk of the day. I loved hearing about his life as a work-at-home parent (*raises fist in solidarity*) but more importantly I enjoyed his message about how it’s OK to fail.
“I don’t trust people who haven’t failed at something.” @oneredcatmedia #BlogJam2015
— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) October 4, 2015
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js He says he regularly starts businesses and sometimes they don’t work out, but “owning your failures allows you to show your ability to overcome obstacles and make the best of bad situations.” So much of what I do professionally is “This is what I did/made and it was awesome, and you should do it too,” but Mike reminded me that nobody wants to read about people who do everything perfectly.
Sometimes bloggers put their head down and don’t realize the scope of their reach because it feels abstract — like, is anyone REALLY reading this right now, despite what Google Analytics is telling me? That’s why it was SO inspiring to hear Virgina Fynes from Fynes Designs talk about pitching companies and securing sponsored posts and brand ambassador positions. Her blog is incredible, from the photography to the projects themselves, and I couldn’t take notes fast enough because everything she said was so helpful.
Inspired by her tips on pitching, I actually reached out to two brands yesterday and heard back from one within 15 minutes saying they were interested! So now I’m going to make it a priority to reach out more often and see where it leads.
Most of my “blog friends” are in the U.S., so it was wonderful to connect with IRL blog friends and talk about content and strategies.
***
So that’s a wrap for me, but you can bet I’ll be attending the next BlogJam conference. If you’re a blogger, I highly recommend finding a conference close to home (or far away, if your kids are being really annoying and you’d like a bit of a break).
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