Lighting it up (in vivid colour)
Most people know pink is my favourite colour, but I wasn’t expecting the lights in my home office to suddenly start flashing hot pink, soft pink and magenta while I was on a call.
I heard giggles from upstairs as my office exploded with colour like a nightclub at 1 a.m. The kids had gotten hold of my husband’s iPhone. Can you imagine how funny it would have looked if I’d been on a video call?
How did the kids control the lights in my office from another floor? They’d like to say it’s because they’re Hogwarts students, but really it’s because my office now has “smart” lighting that’s controlled by an app.
The folks at Lowe’s and RONA recentl sent me the Sengled Element Colour Plus Hub Smart Home Lighting Kit, which retails for about $119. It includes a hub that you plug into your router anywhere in your home (so the bulbs can connect to the internet) and two of the most magical LED bulbs you could imagine.
They look like ordinary white light bulbs and they’re rated to last 25,000 hours (which seems to be the average for LEDs), but they can turn 16 million different colours. Sixteen million!
It took me less than five minutes to (A) locate our router, and (B) plug in the hub. Once I downloaded their app (Sengled Element, available in the App store and Google Play Store) and “named” my bulbs, I could set them to lighting schemes like Romantic or Relaxed — or just go wild swirling my finger from neon green to blazing hot pink and royal blue.
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Christmas pom-pom garlands
Let’s get this out of the way up front: I dislike Christmas decor.
I mean, it’s fine in other people’s houses. I know plenty of people who love decorating for the holidays and their homes look wonderful.
But in my house? Ugh. It always feels cluttered and over-full during the month of December, once we’ve pulled out the lights and stockings and Santas and tinsel garlands … and the giant wooden gingerbread man that seemed like a fun idea at the time. Then there’s the (special but admittedly gaudy) tree itself.
Basically, I’m taking deep breaths and looking forward to the lovely season of decluttering and organization — a.k.a. January. That’s my Christmas.
Of course, my children adore Christmas and all of the decorations that come with it. So I thought I’d make an effort to replace a few pieces with ones I liked better — specifically, something simpler.
I decorated bedrooms for two tweens a few months ago and fell in love with the sweet pom-pom garlands I’d made for their rooms. So I picked up packages of red and white pom-poms and made a few to swag over the windows in our living room.
These are SO easy to make!
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Notice me Senpai?! My 8-year-old’s secret admirer
Well, that was unexpected! My eight-year-old son just came home with what may be the most … unusual … secret admirer note?
In case you’re not used to kiddie-writing, it says …
Dear Dexter,
Hi. I really like you. Like not as a friend. Like a boyfriend.
I always call you Senpai. You’re my Senpai.
I always look at you at recess.
Love from, your secret admirer
***
Adorable, right???
It was typical cute-kid stuff, really, except for the word “Senpai.” I thought it might be Mi’kmaq since it’s the third language of our school, and both D and C take Mi’kmaq lessons every week. Or possibly another Japanese word for Sensei, but that seemed far-fetched.
A quick Google search and I figured out that “Senpai” basically means someone who is older than you and/or more experienced than you, and the phrase “Notice me, Senpai” is a cool way of talking about your crush when you don’t think they know you exist. (D was very flattered by this point.)
But wait! It gets even more … interesting?
D and I found a cute-looking anime video on YouTube called “Notice me Senpai” and figured this is likely where an elementary-aged kid in Nova Scotia learned about the phrase.
Naturally, we watched it …
At first, it was very sweet! The girl likes the boy! The boy actually looks a little like D! Aww.
Senpai, I saw you at school today
Took your picture then I snuck away
I want you to notice me …
but I’m just someone you don’t notice!
Then things took a dark turn …
Please notice me, Senpai
Please notice me, Senpai
or others will have to die
EVERYONE ELSE MUST DIE
ONLY YOU AND I WILL BE LEFT STANDING
WHOAH THERE’S BLOOD ON MY KNIFE
AND I DON’T KNOW WHY
Luckily, my darling boy didn’t seem freaked out. He’s happy with his note, and suspects it’s either a fellow Grade 3 or a girl in the 2/3 split class.
I suggested he give the note to his teacher and ask her to pass it around the staff room for handwriting identification. He loved this idea, so YOU’RE WELCOME, TEACHERS! 😉
In the meantime, um, I suppose we’ll be on the lookout for little girls at our school who love anime and perhaps show murderous tendencies to other little girls who may stand in her way of winning my boy?
GRADE 3, WHAT THE HELL?!?!
The pressure of ‘believing’
Welcome to Veggie Village, the very boring column where we talk about forcing our kids to eat vegetables because we’re mean. Today I’m going to share my favourite methods for steaming broccoli and how to … OK, that should guarantee any kids have stopped reading …
I could say this is the year it happened, but it actually may have started last year when our son was in Grade 2. It wasn’t dramatic.
He came home from school and matter-of-factly announced, “Some kids on the bus said there’s no Santa Claus.”
My reply is always the same. “Wow, that’s not nice. Santa’s not going to like that!” He really isn’t.
Our daughter, who’s only in Grade 1, piped up another day that she’d heard the same thing. (Their bus ride is about five minutes long and yet it’s plenty of time to learn bad words, tell scary stories that will upset them later at bedtime and potentially ruin Christmas magic.)
“A girl on the bus said Santa’s not real, but I don’t believe her because I want presents!” she chirped. Our son quickly agreed.
I really don’t know what they believe about the big guy in red. We have always been a little loose about the details …
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
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The Fortnite fight
Our eight-and-a-half-year-old son is obsessed with being allowed to play Fortnite and I am obsessed with saying “no.” (At least, that’s how he perceives this thing called “trying to be a good parent and never being quite sure.”)
Here’s why he insists it’s a good idea I let him play Fortnite …
1. All of his friends play it.
First of all, this isn’t even true. But he claims everyone else (well, almost everyone) is allowed to play Fortnite and I’m the only stick-in-the-mud parent. I asked him if his friends jumped off a bridge, would he? He looked at me blankly and said, “There … aren’t bridges in the game.”
2. The dances.
He’s got a point here. The only nice thing about Fortnite, in my opinion, is that its popularity has encouraged my serious little robot child to dance. The game is responsible for dance crazes like The Floss, The L, Best Mates and Groove Jam. They’re adorable, like this generation’s Macarena. Apparently, there are also lots of silly costumes, like spacesuits and dinosaur outfits, that appeal to younger kids like him.
3. It’s free.
He thinks this is a great selling point. It is not.
He regularly pleads for this game and I give him my usual string of reasons why I’m not letting him play Fortnite yet …
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
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