random bullets ...

• definitely gonna have to give the bullet lists more regular appearances over here - not enough time to turn everything into a post these days (or any day?!), yet so much I want to say ... in glancing around my bloggy world lately, I think we're all in the same boat right now - being totally consumed by the collision course between the end of the school year and the start of summer ... I feel like I'm hanging on by a thread lately ...

• little ladybug got a fabulous last-minute opportunity to go to the ballet last week - with her friend who dances for the Boston Ballet, the one who kindly took her backstage at the Boston Opera House in December after one of her Nutcracker performances (see here if you missed it).  This time, little bug got to sit with her friend in the front row and was spellbound by the entire 2 hours of dance right in front of her ... it was a school night and when she fell into bed at an unheard of 10pm, the last words she whispered to me were "mommy, i felt so lucky tonight" ... so true - the luckiest ladybug of all ...

• the weather on the New England coast this May has been dismal to say the least.  I heard a statistic on the news this week that it was only something like 34%  days with sunlight?  The second most grey May on record, well behind the average for May sunlight.  Every morning for 3 solid weeks it's been foggy with a damp chill ... often as low as the 40's!  I even had to occasionally turn the heat on just to take the edge off ... dismal indeed.  Now it's warmer at least, highs near 80, but the muggy air persists ... with all this moisture, I think I'm going to have a yard full of mushrooms in no time ... and don't even start on me about the carpenter ant invasion in the house ... ew.

• Jen at Jen's Ink Pen hosted another linky party on Monday but I missed it this week ... I still want to answer, though, because I am loving her walks down memory lane each week ... 

what do you remember about prime time tv?

The Muppet Show on Sunday nights is my most fond memory ... it was to me what 'America's Funniest Home Videos' is to my girls every weekend: the one time each week where all of us gathered to watch and laugh over the same show ... my favorite characters were Beaker and the Swedish Chef!  I also loved those Disney movie nights ("The Wonderful World of Disney") - correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's where I saw Benji and Escape to Witch Mountain?  Loved those movies!

Did you or another family member have a hobby that took up a lot of time?
I don't have a great answer for this one from my childhood years but ... I do have a hobby fun fact: when we got older, my mother took up pistol shooting as a hobby and quickly learned she had a knack for it.  She became quite good, earning trophies and recognition on a national level.  She considered the Olympic trials at one point as well ... bottom line: don't mess with my mom, she's a skilled marksman!

Did you sleep with a special toy?  For how long?  Where is it now?
From the time I was 5 or so, I had a flat white stuffed animal (technically a cat, but shaped/sewn together like a person who happened to have fur and a cat's face) named "Cida" with a soft C ... I cut off her tail pretty soon after I got her so she could fit into doll clothes and be my best friend.  She went everywhere with me and we did everything together - a critical companion - just like a security blanket.  Like forever.  Like until college.  She needed frequent sprucing up along the way (thanks, mom!) to repair holes, lack of stuffing, general grime, etc.  Cida is still here in this house, in the attic, tucked into a 40-year-old metal footlocker filled with my most special childhood treasures.

Thanks for hosting this, Jen, sorry for the late link-up ... looking forward to more!

• After this weekend, only 2 weeks of school remain, the ladybugs will be set free on Tuesday the 14th and they're counting every last minute ... it pains me to think of all that's on my plate (not to mention theirs!) between now and then, but I have no other choice but to jump in and just keep swimming ... we have a summer that's already 98% committed between the steady flow of houseguests, the sailing schedule, the birthdays, the camps, etc ... so if I think it's busy now, I'm not even gonna know what hit me by this time in June ... yikes!  Just keep swimming ... just keep swimming ...

the evolution of a ladybug

So many times in the early weeks of 2011, I was mulling over a 2010 'reflections' post ... and my thoughts always came back to my big ladybug because the amount of change and growth she experienced in 2010 was truly mind boggling.  And that was only the beginning.  A total transformation is underway - the evolution from girl to teen. She hasn't gone through this much rapid change since she was a baby growing into a toddler ... physically, emotionally, socially, developmentally - just like when she was a baby, I swear she changes overnight.   And she's light years away from where she was only a year ago.  Ah, the magic of middle school.

Do you ever sit at an all-school school concert or assembly and watch the older kids as they file in and think to yourself "wow, that's only one year ahead of where my kid is?  They look huge!"  Well, I do.  And starting in 5th grade last year (and continuing into this year), I've noticed that the distance between just one grade is getting wider than ever.  A 5th grade girl seems 2 years younger than a 6th grade girl and likewise a 7th grade girl seems 2 years years older.  I remember thinking at this time last year that I'd better buckle up for the ride.  I knew that big changes were upon us ...



Yet as much as I thought I would be, I truly was not prepared. First and most obvious, the physical changes - she's grown 3 inches in height and now stands just over 5 feet tall - what?! With such quick growth, her weight has yet to catch up - barely 80 pounds with all her clothes on - soaking wet.  But in spite of her slender build, there's no denying the physical signs of puberty are knocking at the door ... her hips have widened to the point where she can no longer pull on her pants without unzipping first - and of course, double-layer camis are as basic as underwear.  Indeed, changes are afoot ...

The fragile emotional evolution was another aspect I wasn't quite prepared for ... one minute she's feeling like she belongs and has friends she can count on - and the next minute she's feeling like a social pariah.  The social piece of puberty seems to feed this emotional hormonal roller coaster.  It's classic Queen Bees and Wannabes.  But big ladybug is neither the queen bee nor the wannabe - she just wants to fit in.  Somewhere right in the middle.  That's all she wants.  To be able to talk comfortably among her peers.  To feel like classmates will want to sit next to her.  That the other girls in her homeroom will be happy to see her each morning.  My big ladybug was born sensitive, she already felt things so deeply - so this new phase in her life is like pouring gasoline on the fire.  She hurts so much when she hears a group of classmates laughing without her ... and she shines so brightly when she's included.  Oh the roller coaster of it all ...

As if the emotional price of being in middle school isn't enough, the developmental leaps and changes have caught me off gaurd too ... it broke my heart to box up her beloved American Girl doll and gear last Fall - since the stuffed animals had gone up to attic several months earlier, "Mia" had been the last sign of childhood in her bedroom.  There was a time when Mia had gone on literally every outing with her, every vacation, every event.  In fact, for big ladybug's birthday in 2009, right before 5th grade started, her only request was to take Mia to lunch at the American Girl Store.  And by the time 6th grade was underway a little over a year later, Mia was gone.  Remember the scene from Toy Story 2 where the little girl outgrows her Jesse doll?  It happened exactly like that - Mia was big ladybug's Jesse.  These days, my big ladybug is listening to pop radio and choosing from an assortment of lip gloss and wrap bracelets each morning.  She struggles to choose her clothes and has been known to change her outfit several times before leaving her room.  Long gone is the little girl whose doll was her best companion ...

Such is the evolution that I am witnessing.  Before my very eyes, my big ladybug is growing up.  Magnificent, painful, joyous, heartbreaking, and amazing all at once.  For both of us.  If she ever reads this one day, I want her to know how proud I am - she's handling it all with so much grace and patience.  My heart literally aches from an abundance of love for her - now more than ever.  She amazes me every day.  And makes me prouder than she'll ever know.

warning: as addictive as heroin ...

Ok, so I hinted in my Mother's Day weekending post about a new internet addiction of mine ... forget blogging, this has become my guilty pleasure before bedtime each night since that fateful day my "invitation" to join arrived - and join I did.  Dear God, I'm exhausted from all the late nights surfing this site - but I just can't to stop myself!  Only Dana knows my pain for sure since she's the guilty one who fed me this addiction, but is there anyone else who's recently been consumed by this wonderful place, this online nirvana ...

It's basically an online profile made up of virtual bulletin boards that I customize, manage, and share with others.  Folks on pinterest share images.  Just images.  Things that inspire them.  Anything from quotes to gorgeous photos of children, clothing, architecture, landscape, you name it, it's there.  It's a veritable smorgasborg of deliciousness - and I bit in hook line and sinker.  In setting up a profile, you create customizable "boards" and "pin" them with your very favorite images.  When I started 2 weeks ago, I created 7 boards that I'm perpetually adding "pins" to - I've customized them into categories: weddings, travel, style, design, photography, food/recipes, and quotes.  As images get "repinned" within the community, they appear in a news feed of recently pinned items.  Naturally, with hundreds of thousands (?) of members in the pinterest community, that news feed is constantly changing ...

By the time you reach the bottom of the page (like a mile down the page) and hit the refresh key, the entire feed has updated ... hence the addiction ... oh, i'll just take one more peek ... and suddenly it's midnight.  As part of my addiction recovery, I am starting to streamline what I see.  You can see in the upper left of the above image that you can filter the news feed to reveal only certain categories, such as design, art, food, etc.  You can also "follow" other pinterest members and limit your news feed to only what those members are pinning.  This is what I've had to start doing because scrolling through the main newsfeed is so darned ... well ... addictive.  I now try my best to follow only Dana and a couple of others, as well as a handful design bloggers who are well-established on pinterest.  When I see an image that I especially like, any one of them can be "repinned" onto one of my own boards.  My total number of "pins" is about to hit 200 ... did I mention how addictive this place is?!  My homepage, where you can see only my boards, looks like this ...

Can you see all of those beautiful thumbnails of gorgeous places and spaces I've been pinning?!  I swoon with each and every one - inspired to redecorate my whole house, travel to exotic locations, be an amazing photographer, dress myself with oodles of style, churn out delicious recipes one after the other ... well, you get the idea.  Fortunately, I also have a board dedicated only to "inspiration", a place to pin quotes that really speak to me - things intended to make me smile or to keep me grounded.  Or both ...

Ha!  Sad, funny, and true all at once!  Note to self: reading that every now and again is also going to be an important step in my addiction recovery ...

memory lane @ jen's ink pen ...

It's been a while since I've joined in a linky party, I had to miss a few when I was feeling totally swamped over the winter, but I'm going to give Jen's new Memory Lane project a try ... I'm psyched to join the fun, Jen, thanks for organizing and hosting this!

So the first question is ... what do you remember about your very first best friend?  This one intrigues me because I moved around quite a bit after my parents divorced when I was six years old.  Being fairly transient, plus the upheaval of a remarriage and new baby in the house, making friends was not easy.  I remember having one close friend, a neighbor by the name of Mia Wigmore, when I was about nine - but we lived there for only a year so although she was a great friend, I wouldn't qualify her as a bestie.  I didn't really have an actual best friend until I was about ten years old.  She had that classic native Florida look with the blonde hair, fair eyes, and very tanned skin that never burned.  Her name was Robin Perkins and she lived directly across the golf course in both our back yards.  The youngest of 3, she was a spitfire with a confident personality, so the shy and displaced part of me loved every bit of her.  We had a wonderful friendship, perfectly suited for 2 girls at the ripe old ages of 10 and 11 - we wandered all over the golf course after hours, writing our initials in the sandtraps, collecting lost balls, playing in the sprinklers, we once even swam in the little golf course lake with all our clothes on (ew, that water!) ... and of course, sleepovers, tree climbing, and neighborhood bike rides were frequent.  It was truly the very definition of a childhood friendship - happy, innocent, active, giggly, and carefree all at once.  Sadly, we moved to the other coast after just 2 years, right after I finished the 6th grade ... I saw her once right after we moved, our moms met halfway so we could all grab lunch together and do some back to school shopping, but after the school year started I never saw her again.  I can't remember if we wrote letters for a while, but we were completely out of contact by the time the new school year was over.  I have only had 2 other "best" friends since then, one in high school who earns the title of my oldest friend (almost 29 years of friendship - gasp!) and my destiny friend who is truly like a sister to me, a close dear friend from the instant we met at age 21 ... how I wish there was less distance between here and North Carolina!  Anyway, back to the question - the "first" best friend - with internet tools like google and facebook these days, I have tried a few times to search for both of my childhood friends ... but I don't have any high school info and the name Robin Perkins (and even Mia Wigmore) is fairly common and if they married and changed her names, the trail went cold long ago I'm sure.  It's too bad - I would love to find out how their lives turned out ...

image from here

Ok, so Jen's next question is ... what did your childhood bedroom look like, smell like, feel like, or sound like?  Well, this one's even more tough with the amount of moves we had - I didn't really have one special bedroom as a child.  Unbelievably, I do remember snippets from the bedroom I had when my parents were married, my room from birth to age 6.  One treasured item that I can still clearly remember was my apple table and chairs.  Imagine a round wooden playtable, painted red with a scalloped edge and a quote (that I can't remember) painted around that edge.  In the center of the table was a green "stem" that you could grab to lift a circular cutout from the table's surface ... below was a bright green vinyl bag hidden underneath - storage for all my crayons!  Between the smell of the vinyl from the storage compartment and the wax from the thousands of broken crayolas inside, I can still smell my beloved apple table ;-)

Third and final question is ... do you remember being allowed to do something as a child or teenager that you would not think of allowing your child to do today?  Hmmm ... this is the toughest of all because I was never really inclined to push limits (dream child through the adolescent years!), so my entire childhood was fairly safe and tame.  (First year away at college, however ... ugly might be the best word there.  'Nuff said.)  Since I have no specific example from my 'at home' years, I guess I'd have to say obvious things that are probably true of everyone in my generation - I grew up never wearing a bike helmet or a seat belt, smoking cigarettes was still reasonably accepted (even for teens), and I don't recall a whole lot of background checks on who I was with or who was in charge.  On that note, I'm now having a flashback that works well for this question ... I remember going to a drive-in theater with my aunt and cousins in 1979 to see The Amityville Horror.  Oh. my. Lord.  Scared out of my mind doesn't even begin to cover it ... so to answer Jen's question, horror movies are definitely not something I'd encourage for my ladybugs ... unless they want to carry a lifetime of therapy with them ...

Thanks again to Jen at Jen's Ink Pen for organizing "Memory Lane Mondays" - hope to see a lot of my peeps over there too!!

SOS ...

Can anyone tell me what happened to blogger these last 24+ hours?!  I couldn't get on last night or this morning, it kept saying "temporarily unavailable" when I tried to access my dashboard, new post, edit post, etc ...

... and now that it's back up and running for me, I see 3 new posts from friends (Pam's "Today around my house", Gabe's "What am I", and Jenny Denton's "What did I do last week?") that I can't seem to access ... when I try to link up it says "sorry the page you requested does not exist" ... the similarity is that all 3 of these posts were published yesterday, while my blogger was down.  I was able to access Nicolle's post "Truths", which she just published about an hour or two ago ... but anything published in that black hole of time in which I was down is not being recognized ...

Further, I had about 7-8 comments on my Tuesday post that are missing ... it only shows the first 3 - the rest have vanished?!  And from what I can tell, the same thing has happened with the blogs that I commented on yesterday prior to blogger's blackout ... Jen's "D is for daredevil" has 0 comments, as does Cindy's "This and that" ... but I left comments at both ... and the doubly odd part is that I had trouble leaving a comment on Cindy's, but it seemed successful after a 2nd attempt.

So can anyone tell me if they're experiencing the same phenomenon?  If so, what happened to blogger on Thursday May 12th?!  It seems as though it entered a black hole and came out fairly time warped on the other side of the blackout?!  SOS ...

totally random ...

As happens each and every May, time somehow becomes compressed - as a result, my calendar gets squeezed and without any warning, I find myself backlogged and overwhelmed as the school year winds down.  So here's another collection of random thoughts from the last week ...

• Last Thursday, I did something crazy ... I took a "day off" from chores and errands and put on something other than jeans and a sweatshirt - and there might even have been a touch of makeup involved.  Just sayin.  And after packaging myself up as an intelligent and productive member of society, I went with a couple of friends to attend a lecture and lunch at a really wonderful local museum.  The speaker was none other than Livingston Taylor ... unfortunately for him, he's more often known as James Taylor's younger brother, but he is an a.m.a.z.i.n.g. singer and songwriter in his own right.  And he was terrific - a great storyteller and singer, he talked, he sang, he got the crowd energized and laughing ... I would highly recommend you to see him if he ever comes your way - it was so much fun!   Way to live outside the box on a school day, momma ladybug!

• Last Friday was May Day at school.  Last year, my sweet little ladybug joined her 3rd grade classmates as the headliners of the entire production - they were the special kids who got to wrap the maypole after an hour or so of school-wide songs and celebration in the gym.  It was an amazing day filled with joy - you can see photos from last year here.  Sadly, those are the only photos you'll ever see of May Day because I now see that life on the other side isn't nearly as fun - once you're past 3rd grade, it's all over ... you've peaked.  This year, the girls hemmed and hawed, they didn't want to dress up, they didn't want to go, they didn't want to sing ... complain, complain, complain ... geez, take away the spotlight and they want nothing to do with it ... sigh.

• Over the weekend, the carnival came to our tiny seaside town.  It's a small-time operation that comes each year on the first weekend in May - it's a fundraiser for the high school and it gets set up in the parking lot of our beach.  Probably about a dozen different rides that can each pack up into an 18-wheeler truck - everything from your standard carousel and "dizzy dragons" for the little kids all the way up to the "octopus" and "salt-n-pepper-shakers" for the teenagers.  There's also a host of familiar carnival games like whack-a-mole and of course, plenty of friend dough and cotton candy.  For the kids of the town, this may as well be the coming of Justin Beiber ... they go nuts.  For me, not so much.  It's a lot of giant things, from the rides to the people, all crammed into a filthy dirt/sand parking lot, not good for my space issues ... and naturally the cost is outrageous ... as in, rob an ATM first.  I shouldn't complain, because the photos are going to make it appear as though it's the best thing since sliced bread ... and for them it really was ...

waiting in line to purchase ride tickets

the octopus

swings = dizzyyyyyyy ....

super cool shot as the dizzy dragon whirled past - do you recognize little ladybug on the left?

• Saturday was busy - sports in the morning, house/yard chores in the afternoon, and a fun party in the late afternoon/evening that our friends host annually for the Kentucky Derby.  I put all my money down on Pants On Fire - a gorgeous horse with the only female jockey - but just as with the carnival the night before, I lost all my money and still managed to have a good time ...

• Sunday - Mother's Day - ah, the bliss!!  This year, it was my perfect day in every way ... the ladybugs were happy and cooperative, I got a beautiful breakfast in bed, I got to spend an extra hour+ in bed afterwards to surf my laptop (I have a new obsession** that I can't wait to tell you about - thank you, Dana, it's as addictive as heroin) ... then later I snuck out of the house with another mom friend of mine and caught a 2:45 movie we had been dying to see ...

Truth be told, friends, I am a complete Brit-lit nerd ... love love love all things Brontë and Austen ... just a romantic fool am I ... if you are, too, you should put this movie on your to-do list - a world apart from the ridiculous 1996 film with William Hurt (but if you have the time, nothing beats the 4-part Masterpiece Theater version!) ... oops, have I said too much?  Yes, I'm a Brit-lit and Masterpiece Theater nerd all at once ... don't judge ... anyhoo ... the day got even better when I returned home to find that everyone wanted to go out to Chinese for dinner ... so fun, so delicious, and no cleanup - yay!!  Yup, the perfect Mother's Day ... what a lucky lucky momma ladybug ...

** full-length post forthcoming ... once I can manage to unplug myself from it ;-)

time lapse tuesday: bathroom evolution!

It's been quite a while since I did a Tuesday time lapse post and all winter long I've been meaning to share a very modest bathroom makeover we did last Fall, so I thought I'd finally share ... time lapse style!

The background: we've been in this house for exactly 9 1/2 years ... it's a charming 1951 colonial gambrel with barely any yard space but tons of curb appeal thanks to the pretty roses along the front fence, so it fits right into that 'coastal cottage' New England look that you'd envision.  The only downside to "charming", however, is that it's not modern.  Like not at all.  Original windows (brrr), original kitchen cabinets (blech), original bathrooms (yes, there's a huge 5-gallon porcelain American Standard toilet that's date stamped 1951 inside the lid - and it's green!) ... sigh*  We had such vision when we moved in ... so many grand changes were on my radar - we'd gut the kitchen and put in beautiful beadboard cabinetry and marble countertops in keeping with the 1950's look and feel ... we were planning to rip out the 1950's bathrooms as well, especially the ladybug's shared art deco green and black tiled bathroom - ick!  BUT ... and you knew there had to be a but ... life took over, the expenses of having a growing family took over our sensibilities and the dream kitchen was put on hold - it exists only in the clippings and photos I've saved over the years.  Ditto for the girl's art deco monstrosity in green and black ...

It took about a year for me to accept that the girl's bathroom was staying as-is, and at that point there was no other choice but to embrace it, even in green and black ... the girls were so young - a toddler and a pre-schooler - so I had a lot of fun with "little girl" decorating.  I was able to find great home decor items at Target to spruce it up and went with a fun preppy striped shower curtain and had a sink skirt sewn together from a second shower curtain (would that I could sew myself!) to hang from the original 1951 green porcelain sink.  And despite the crazy color scheme, it actually came out GREAT ...

the green stripe tied perfectly into the green in the tilework ... and how cute are those HK curtain hooks?

sweet shabby chic pink sheer curtains from target, the curtain rod came from linens-n-things ... I also added a pink ribbon wallpaper border up top

more hello kitty ...

enough ribbon barrettes to share with an entire neighborhood of girls ... I ache to see them here, I miss those days!

sweetness ...

behind these sweet pottery barn bug towels you can see the green sink and the sink skirt made from the shower curtain ... you can also see the black tile that covers the entire lower half of the walls, ugh.

more sweetness ...

I have to admit that I loved every minute of that sweet bathroom for them - for about one one-thousandth of the cost of a renovation, we got ourselves a pretty great deal!  BUT ... yes, there's a second but ... my sweet little preschoolers grew up and this pink and preppy sweetness was no longer flying with my tween girls who are now 9 and 12.  So what did we do?  A pricey renovation sure wasn't in the cards, so why not try what worked before ... and one Saturday last Fall, off to Target we went ... and look at the amazing transformation, all for less than $300 ...

new towels, curtains, and prints for the wall - all from target!

the girls did these bird wall decals themselves - from marshalls for $14.99 ... shower curtain from bed bath and beyond

matching fuzzy bathmat from target - sink skirt was sewn out of the curtain material (also target) - trash can from container store

new curtains (target), rod (martha stewart for home depot), and wallpaper border (also home depot - a vinyl decal by "wall pops")

from target - takes the place of the old HK dish

looking pretty!

yes, my heart did in fact skip a beat when I found this in the sale bin at Home Goods - $5!

as seen in the mirror's reflection above - I received a pair of ladybug frames as a gift last year, but had no place to hang them!  I particularly love this one b/c of the sailing ... the other frame says 'ladies night out' - love!

So my beloved Target came through again ... for very short money, the bathroom was completely transformed for a second time and the ladybugs have been beyond thrilled with their hip and modern look!  Isn't it fabulous?!  There was just one small carryover from their "little girl" bathroom that I had to insist upon ... 

♥ so true ...