Riding in cars (with swears)
One of the nicest things about living in small-town Nova Scotia is that it takes us less than five minutes to drive just about anywhere we need to go.
The only “traffic” is twice a day at a handful of especially-busy intersections where you might have to wait a couple of lights until you can go through. The trains might hold you up for 10 minutes, depending on how many boxcars they’re lugging.
Start driving. See train blocking way. Run home to retrieve forgotten bag. Drive back. Still blocked by train. #trurotweet
— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) November 1, 2017
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All of this means that I’m rarely in my truck with the kids for more than the length of a single song on the radio. I actually prefer to hit the “off” button as soon as I buckle up, since I don’t like background noise and we just chat during the (very, very) short drive to wherever we’re going.
But our listening habits changed recently when I found my old 80 GB iPod* — one of the REALLY old chunky ones where you have to swirl your finger around the dial because there isn’t a touchscreen. I hooked it up to the stereo with an AUX cable and started introducing the kids to the thousands of songs Mommy downloaded over the years.
Now, these kids are only used to hearing the handful of songs I have purchased on my iPhone — lots of Taylor Swift, and the soundtracks for Trolls and Moana — so it was hilarious to watch their reactions to my (questionable) music taste.
They were not impressed when I played my soothing labour and delivery playlist (“Boring!”) or lullabies and classical music I’d played in the car when they were babies (“Mom, no!”). They also didn’t care to reminisce about their toddlerhood with the playlists of nursery rhymes, Disney songs and Dora the Explorer tracks.
Nope, so far their favourite playlist has been a gem I called “Heather’s Dirty Thirty.” (Why, yes, I am super cool. Thanks for asking.)
Our seven-year-old son, who is a stickler for details, picked up on the fact that the lyrics of Florida Georgia Line’s Cruise included “this brand-new Chevy with a lift kit” and we, coincidentally, had recently purchased a (secondhand) Chevy with a lift kit.
“It’s our song! It’s about OUR TRUCK!” he’d said excitedly.
Now he loves singing along to that part, and I try to forget about the fact that the rest of the lyrics are about making out in trucks and include “when I first saw that bikini top on her / She’s poppin’ right out of the South Georgia water.”
Of course, my husband doesn’t use my iPod. (He does not share my taste in music.) When he drove the kids somewhere recently, he had no idea what they were talking about when they begged Daddy to “please put on ‘Brand-New Chevy with a Lift Kit.’”
While they do really love that tune, I also introduced them to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ Thrift Shop, since they accompany me to our town’s thrift shops sometimes.
They were bobbing their heads to the intro and singing along with me — “What, what, what, what!” — and it wasn’t until the end of the chorus that I realized I’d made a terrible mistake.
“Mom! He just said ‘This is F-word awesome!’” our seven-year-old cried delightedly.
Oh crap.
“What did he say?” our five-year-old daughter suddenly snapped to attention, realizing she was missing something.
“He said—”
“‘Freaking!’ He said, ‘This is freaking awesome,’” I interrupted quickly, trying to turn off the song without taking my eyes off the road.
Maybe I need to vet my playlists more carefully. At least I knew enough not to let them listen to Eminem!
xo
Makeup table gets a makeover
As much as I love decorating living rooms and kitchens and even bathrooms, my favourite room to decorate is a child’s room — specifically a really girly room.
Pink is my favourite colour, I love glitter, and it’s so much fun to choose fabrics — florals, rainbows and sequins speak to me on a deep level.
So when a new client asked me to help her redecorate rooms for her two daughters, I was thrilled. I have plenty of projects to share with you, but for today I’ll focus on how I turned an old vanity into a charming new desk/makeup table for her eldest daughter, Lila.
Originally we’d talked about building a floating desk or buying a skinny one from Ikea, since Lila had been asking for a place to draw.
We figured out the perfect spot — replacing an American Girl wardrobe — but then a few days later the plan changed in the very best way.
Lila’s grandmother had an old vanity with a mirror and the most amazing curvy details, and she didn’t want it anymore. Could we use it for the room? Of course we could! She even had an old (unmatching) chair we could use with it.
It was the ideal solution, since Lila’s younger sister was about to receive a pretty pink vanity for her birthday — and, well, you know how sibling jealousy can work.
I lugged the vanity home, being really careful not to break the mirror. I have a history of breaking mirrors and this one didn’t even belong to me …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
When your child says ‘I hate math’
It came out of nowhere.
The sadistic monster that haunted me from Grade 4 through Grade 12 was back, only this time it had a new victim: our seven-year-old son.
We were sitting around the table eating dinner on a Sunday evening, and casually talking about the return to school after March Break. I was enthusiastic, naturally, since it had been a long nine days and I was ready to work in a quiet house again.
“It’s going to be so nice to see all of your friends again,” I chattered between bites of hamburger and broccoli.
Our five-year-old daughter, ever the social butterfly, readily agreed. She flits through the Primary pod like she owns the place, and couldn’t wait to see her friends and hug her teachers.
But our son hesitated. He shrugged a moody sort of shrug and mumbled that he didn’t want to go back.
I felt my mom instincts fire up. Nooooo! He’s always liked school! Why is this happening?! Ugh, is it all of a sudden going to be a struggle to get him to school?! Whyyyyyyy?!
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
“… How are you supposed to reassure your child that math isn’t the enemy when, for you, it really was? …”
No, you’re not a monster for painting old wood
There are plenty of people who think it’s sacrilegious when I paint old wood furniture. I know this because they email me about it. 😉
It’s a personal preference and I get it. I really do. Their argument is that natural wood is beautiful, and covering it with paint is a “fad” and I’m going to regret it down the road — or, like in this case, I’m passing along the regret to someone else.
I was squarely back in the to-paint-or-not-to-paint debate recently when I was helping a client decorate a guest room with a double bed. We were going to bring in a dresser from her bedroom, since we had plans to redo a different dresser for that space.
Now, this dresser was extremely dark wood and very old. It had beautiful turned legs and they were on casters — swoon! The drawers glided nicely and it was solidly built. It was going to be great for the guest room, but . . . did we want to paint it or leave it?
My client was happy for me to paint it and we decided on a colour right away, so I didn’t think twice about it. I guess it wasn’t much of a debate after all. 😉
I trucked it home, wheeled it gently across my driveway — all furniture should have wheels, seriously — and carried it into the house myself …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Super easy quilt top for beginners
Whenever I share pictures of a quilt I’ve sewn, I hear a lot of “OMG I could never do that!” or questions about HOW I EVER LEARNED how to make quilts. They are a project that seems to baffle most people who have never tried to make one.
They might *look* complicated — and some quilts certainly are, but, um, not the ones I make — but quilts are actually REALLY easy to make. I swear. They’re just taking little bits (or big bits) of fabric and stitching them together, for the most part.
If you’ve ever thought about learning to quilt but were intimidated by the idea of making complex little blocks and assembling them, here’s a super easy way to buy fabric, take it home, wash and dry it, cut out blocks, assemble them, and put together AN ENTIRE QUILT TOP in … a single evening. Yup! It’s true.
(Oh, and did I mention there’s hardly ANY waste? You’ll use every smidgen of fabric, except maybe a raw edge or two.)
Step 1: Get thee to your nearest fabric store!
Find pretty fabrics that speak to your soul (ahhhh) and choose EIGHT (8) different ones. This is incredibly fun. I could pick quilt fabrics all day long and never get bored.
For this quilt, I went with my stepmother because I had been harassing her to start quilting for ages. She liked the idea of making a nautical-themed quilt for her guest room, so we found a collection with beautiful blues and greens — anchors, chevron, etc. To get a total of eight, we also added some plain/solid coordinating colours.
Once we had our top eight picks, we asked the sales associate to please cut 0.5 meters of each fabric — giving us eight tidy little bundles, for a total of 4m. This is going to make a nice-sized square quilt for snuggling up on the couch or spreading over a double bed.
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Heather's Handmade Life 