2014 New Year’s Resolutions

My kids love this game.

It’s mid-December and time to begin thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t typically get too involved in those. Usually, my resolution is to simply try to be a better person overall. I like to think I am slowly evolving into a human who is at least somewhat better than she was just a few years ago. This year, I’ve decided to be a little more specific about my goals for 2014. I have two:

1. Be more fun.
2. Stop complaining so much.

Lately I feel like I am already being a lot more fun than I used to be. I used to hate playing board games and such. I think it had more to do with the company I was keeping than it had to do with any specific bias against games. The past couple of months, my kids and I have been playing Skip-bo literally three to five nights a week. And I am enjoying it. I want more of that in 2014. So much so, that I asked Santa to bring my kids several items that we can enjoy together as a family.

As for my second goal, well— 

Something to think about this holiday season

Is it that time already? Yesterday, I noticed workers were hanging lights downtown in my town. Are you ready for this? | Christmas lights on Aleksanterinkatu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are the type of person who believes you *must* buy your children every single over-priced item they wrote on their Christmas lists, think again.

Wanting builds character.

If you do not provide opportunities for your children to want for something, then you are depriving them of the opportunity to build character.

Just think how much money you could save this year with an attitude like that.

Framing Great Grandma’s quilt blocks

This is one of my great grandma‘s quilt blocks, framed by my aunt.

When I was a kid, my great grandma, Wilma, always had a quilt in the making, stretched out in her big quilt rack. She probably made hundreds of quilts in her lifetime, but I unfortunately never got my hands on one for myself.

Last summer, at my family’s annual Christmas in July celebration (there’s too many of us to try to get everyone together around the holidays… July just seems to work better for us!) one of my aunts came armed with a box load of Grandma Wilma’s quilt blocks, all framed, as gifts for the family.

My aunt had come across a box of unfinished quilt blocks and had thought long and hard about what to do with them. She wanted to share them with as many of us as possible, so putting them together into quilts was out of the question. Like I said, there are a lot of us (my dad has 11 brothers and sisters living… I think… I always lose count!)

Crafting for Christmas

Hot Pads: $12.50 + S&H per set of 2

I’m a crafty writer. In fact, I probably spend a bit too much time making stuff when I should be writing. But, crafting gives me a good excuse to sit in front of the TV once in a while. Anyway, I’ve been working on a lot of crafts for Christmas lately. I like to have a good stock of little things put aside each year, and I pretty much used up my stash this past holiday season. 

Poetry Friday: Saturday Scratch-off

Image via Wikipedia

For this week’s Poetry Friday, hosted by Hey, Jim Hill!, I am sharing an original poem about a little girl and her grandmother:

Saturday Scratch-off

Come on, Grandma! Catch up!

I scamper ahead on
ice-slicked concrete. I am
impatient. She’s slower
than wiggly gummy worms
that will slither down my
throat on the way home from
the Stop-n-Go.

I crochet too

This is the Green and Gold blanket I just finished crocheting for my Green Bay Packer-loving boyfriend. I seriously hope my boys don't want the same colors because I am sooooo tired of looking at green and gold!

My hands are getting pretty sore lately from the strain of actually being productive at writing and crocheting in the evenings while sitting on the couch watching TV with my kids or my boyfriend. Yes, I crochet too. For some reason, my hands must always be busy doing something, thus the carpal tunnel syndrome.

Anyway, I recently made several scarves for Christmas gifts and a couple of stockings for my BF’s kids’ cousins. A few days ago, I finished a huge green and gold blanket for my packer-loving BF. I’m using the leftover pink and purple yarn from the girls’ stockings to make myself a new set of hot pads, and then I promised my 5-year old I’d make “his blanket” next. And of course that means I’ll make one for my 12-year-old after that.

Just say no to holiday madness

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It’s that time of year. Once again, Tom Turkey is eclipsed by that one word that seems to be on the lips of everyone I know: Christmas. If you read any current online or print media at all, I’m sure you’ve already noticed the usual holiday how-to headlines this year: “How to keep from gaining weight over the holidays,” “How to avoid stressing out this holiday season.” But if you ask me, the answer to these questions boils down to one, simple, little, teeny-tiny, two-letter word: NO.

First of all, if you really want to avoid the holiday madness, your first assignment is to just say no to the Black Friday-starting-at-midnight craze. This is one of the worst ideas that have ever ripped through retail. I always thought Black Friday (the other two words on everyone’s lips) was stupid anyway, but the past few years, this trend has gotten completely out of hand.

How would you feel if you had to sleep through most of your Thanksgiving Day because you have to be at work by midnight that night to work a 12-hour shift? Would this stress you out? I don’t know about you, but I would be thoroughly pissed.

In case you haven’t already figured this out, Black Friday is manned by an army of thoroughly stressed and pissed off, not to mention underpaid, workers who probably couldn’t afford to take advantage of the so-good-I’d-totally-step-on-your-head-if-you-fell-down-in-front-of-me deals their employers are offering even if they did have the day off.