Upon Leaving: Bonus Photos

Upon Leaving was published this week in the WIR!

I talking about a recent incident that happened while I was waiting for my flight back to Minnesota. I had an amazing week in Arkansas and hope I stocked up on enough sunshine to last me through the winter. :-)

Below are a few of the photos I took during my trip.

Enjoy.

Rainy Day Masks

What do you do if it's raining outside and you have a big box of plaster strips?

You make face masks of course!

The boys have been begging to make them ever since they saw Mission Impossible, of course we did have to explain that they would not be as accurate as the ones in the movie. lol

You will need some plaster strips, we got a huge box of it off Amazon for around $30 and only used 1/4 of it so there is tons left over for other projects. You can also find them at crafts stores. Ours were in really large strips so we cut them down a bit.

You will also need a jar of Vaseline. I didn't notice until I just saw the photo that my jar says "baby" on it. I have no idea what the difference is except that it smelled funny, like wet baby powder.

You will also need a bowl of water, which I didn't take a photo of because...it's a bowl of water. If you don't know what that looks like you have bigger issues than I can help you with.

So, first off smear the Vaseline all over your child's face. Don't skimp. Get it all over the hairline and eyebrows too. And if your child has really, really long lashes like mine do you'll have to put it on their eyelashes...or when you take the mask off it will pull them out. And you don't want that. I also used a headband to push their hair back. They looked cute.

Then have your child lay on the table, face up of course. Explain to them that it will be wet and icky, and they should keep still and their eyes closed. You will take one strip at a time, dip it in the bowl of water, shake off the excess water, and then lay it over their face, and smooth it out. Repeating as many times as necessary until you have a thick mask.

Oh, you should also lay some newspaper down on the table first. We forgot. So afterward there was a huge mess to clean up off the table. It would have been a much easier cleanup if we had remembered. 

Once you feel that the mask is thick enough have your child get up, slowly and keeping their face upturned, and sit them in front of a fan so the mask will dry quickly, around 15 minutes.

When the masks are dry, very slowly pry them off your child's face. If you missed small spots of Vaseline it will stick in those places so be careful.
The boys wanted eye and nose holes as they plan on using the masks during pretend play. 

Our daughter though, wanted a decorative mask to hang on her wall so she decided to cover up her eyes and mouth. After we put her in front of the fan she asked for her DSi...we tried to tell her that she couldn't see but she was persistent so I handed it to her and....she was able to play it by the sound alone.  I was impressed. She even loaded up her notepad program and wrote notes to us. lol

Once the masks are off your child will be a mess so throw him in the shower. (Well ok, don't really throw him...) It will take a bit of scrubbing to get all that Vaseline off. (Oh yeah, make sure they wear old clothes for this project!)

They turned out so cute! They need to dry for a few days and then they will paint them!

After we were all done with clean up we made gluten-free, double chocolate, peanut butter brownies!

It needs to rain more often. ;-P

New Website

Take a moment to check out my new website:


Quietly Contrary

:-)

Dentist Woes

This week's piece is up, you can view it HERE.

In the article I talk about a recent trip to the dentist and flash back to a memory of my own childhood dentist trip. What I've always found interesting is that no matter how well these trips go, going to the dentist is still something most fear. There is just no way to make a person with sharp objects designed to be inserted into your mouth fun. In fact the next day after Alex, age five, was at the dentist I had to go back to get a form filled out that I had forgotten to bring. It was nice out so Alex and I walked there but as soon as he saw the door of the dentist he dug his feet into the ground and refused to go in. Now his trip had been fine, a simple cleaning, but there is something about having to open your mouth to strangers that feels like a violation of sorts. I didn't want to leave him out on the street while I went in so I was finally able to talk him into standing in the entry way where he kept an eye out for staff, worried they were going to call his name. As we were leaving he said "Whew, that was close." lol

Beauty in her hands

Accepting Me was published last week however, since my laptop decided to crash on me during my trip out of state I was unable to post it until now.

In the column I talk about a beautiful elderly woman I befriended at one point in my life, a photo of her hands is below.

Enjoy.

Say "no" to no: Photos

Today's piece for Quietly Contrary can be viewed by clicking HERE.

 In the article I talk about spending one on one time with each of your children so I thought I would include some photos of my children in photos with me. Of course these were hard to find because I'm usually the one behind the camera! I had to go back to photos taken when we lived in AR. So now I have a new goal, take some updated photos of myself and my children.

This is my youngest when he was a baby- awwwww!

This is my middle child and I, we were reading books on the couch.

And this is my oldest and I at the Olive Garden, saying "yes!" to dessert.

A Place to Hide: Photos

A PLACE TO HIDE was published in the Western Itasca Review today! In the article I talk about the three different places we have lived: Arkansas, N. Ireland, and Minnesota. So I thought it would be fun to post a few photos here of those places.

This photo is my all time favorite of the children, in fact I had a canvas made of it that is proudly hanging in our living room. It was taken at Withrow Springs State Park in Arkansas. Note the shorts and bare feet, ah - I miss not having to wear three layers of clothing.This is a park that I went to as a child so it was always fun to bring the kids, we started having picnics with Rebecca there when she was just a baby.

This was taken in Helen's Bay, N. Ireland, a beautiful town that was just a short train ride away. Of course once we got off the train we could see not a single sign pointing to the beach so we stood on the side of the road in the deserted town looking confused until a tiny car pulled over and a tiny man got out and asked if he could help. Once he found out where we were trying to go he piled all five of us plus our stroller and all our bags into his car and drove us there! Note the jackets and hats, a bit chiller and windier on the coast than in Arkansas!

And this was taken soon after we moved to Northern Minnesota. The first "real" snow the kids had ever played in, they were so excited about being able to make a snowman that was over 2 feet tall. And of course they are wearing a lot more clothes! Brrrr!

I hope you enjoy the article.