My Life At Playtime. . .

wordless wednesday- game night

blackspotter — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:13:31 +0000

love links

blackspotter — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:51:36 +0000

Here’s some things around the web I have found inspiring:

-Cakies-Aaron just made this oven baked fried chicken and it was delicious. And of course so much healthier than actually frying chicken in any oils. Highly recommend, and super easy ingredients, we didn’t even have to make a trip to the store for a single ingredient.

-A Beautiful Mess-Elsie shared such a simple tutorial for a simple cotton top that is inspiring to give my sewing machine a go again. I really really REALLY need to take a class, but until I find the time for that I still would love to experiment with easy and beginner things. This looks just up my alley.

-All for the Boys-such a great and easy idea for mini tents/forts for Lego guys. Which we have a ton of this house, lego guys every.where.

Other inspiration I’m finding at the moment?

-The need for green. Aaron and I have been having green smoothies for dinner a few nights each week, and we both are feeling great. Tonight he paired it with quinoa with almonds, pomegranate seeds, green bell pepper, and green onions. delish

-Sore muscles. Yes, the soreness is inspiring for me. I’m back to regular exercising and I love that stiff feeling in the morning til I stretch and get going.

-Caffeine. Back on caffeine a little. A few lattes a week is all I’m allowing myself, but it’s oh so good.

new year new ?

blackspotter — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:43:26 +0000

everything. I promised to write with good news if I had any. And I do. You see two weeks ago Aaron was laid off from his job. First time we have ever been in this situation. We kind of thought this would happen last September, but once it didn’t in the fall, we were pretty certain he was safe. Most certain a few weeks ago when he was offered a job at another company. Being the kind of guy Aaron is, he went to his supervisor and told him about the job offer. Once he was assured and reassured about his job at this company, he felt confident enough to turn down the offer. And then 48 hours later, he was laid off. Talk about shady. Talk about sucky. No good.

You know how you read in books and magazines about how you should have a 6 month cushion in your savings account? There’s good reason for that. And we didn’t have that nice cushion to fall back on. In the line of work both Aaron and I are in, if we don’t work for a day, we don’t get paid. Simple as that. There’s no such thing as a paid vacation, severance, sick days. Nope. You work you get paid. You don’t you don’t. So this came as a huge shock to us, and then once the surprise wears off you start to stress about it. I wasn’t stressed that he would be unemployed for months, or even an entire month, but when there is no paycheck coming in, and you still have all the same bills going out, that’s kind of stressful all by itself. And it’s not like I can just add 10 new clients a week to pick up any slack. To top it off, his work vehicle and cell phone all came from his job. So he had no vehicle, and no cell. So I’ve been carless for almost 2 weeks now, still will be for another day or two.

The good news during all this was December happened to be an extremely expensive month for us, it seemed every bill came in at once. Property taxes, car insurance, water and power, all our really heavy ones came in and were paid for. So this month was a lighter month, otherwise I think I would’ve ended up at a few spas passing out my resume to pick up some shifts.

The even better news was that he interviewed last week at a new company, and this morning got the call to come in and start filling out the paperwork. He was in safety training most of today and hopefully will have a work truck delivered by Wednesday. Which means that this mama can finally sleep at night, and soon will stop walking the kids to school. Seriously, walking 3 tired and hungry kids home, with 3 backpacks after school is no bueno.

What else is new around here? My Yukon is gone. During the midst of all the job changes, or I should say WEEK RIGHT BEFORE(!), we decided to sell our car. I really thought I was going to have that car for another decade. But we sunk a lot of money into it last winter, and this winter we had to do a few more repairs, so we had to make the choice. Either we commit to this car and decide we will spend whatever it takes to keep it running, or sell it now when it’s still worth something. So we did the later, and for the first time in our lives, we leased a car. Leased! As in, it’s not really mine so I have to be careful with it! A bit nerve wracking, but whoa has technology gone a lot of places since 2004!

Did you know when your cell rings, you can answer it through your stereo?! Or when I am listening to music or a podcast on my phone, the car senses that somehow and broadcasts it through my speakers!? Or when I reverse my car there’s a whole video of it with lines that tell me exactly how many inches and feet I have before I run something over?! Truly amazing. Where have I been all these years. We decided to get a Honda Pilot. We knew we had to get a car that seats 8. With 3 kids, it’s not unusual for me to have 6 kids in the car, 1 friend for each kid. The third row is really just for smaller sized people, but the seats fold completely flat. No more lugging my humongous and heavy Yukon seats out of my 3rd row every time we pack up the car for a road trip. I love it and cannot recommend it enough. It’s just the right size, without being too big which sometimes I felt my Yukon was. I sometimes felt my SUV was in your face and anti eco-friendly.

So there’s been lots of changes around here for this change-hating mama. Seriously, I fight change. I hate it. It stresses me out when Aaron tries to get me to try a new ice cream when all I want is my old faithful mint and chip. Why change something that is good? Why do you have to strive to get something better when good is great. I am learning to embrace the new chapters we have. I am learning to be excited for my husband to get to work on new equipment and work with new people. He has a reputation in the industry that precedes him and I’m so proud of him for that. But I admit that I am not one for so much change at the same time.

There you have the new things going on. In fact, there’s even MORE new changes coming. But I cannot share it just yet since it’s not ready. But it’s something I’m so proud of and so excited to finish. It’s been something I have wanted to do for a few years now, but haven’t really had the guts or the know how to do it. Well, I figured it out finally and hopefully in the next few weeks I can share it with all of you.

Change is good, right? Right?!

Instagram Recap

blackspotter — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:40:32 +0000

1.family movie date, Hugo, A-mazing 2.kinder flashcards 3.prepping to make kale chips 4.better than potato chips, no joke 5.2 minutes later 6.lunch date 7.dancewear 8.wish i had her hair 9.family worship night snack 10.happy 11.drums 12.ramen 13.kindergarten art lesson 14. happy boy 15.love him 16.homework woes 17.oven baked fried chicken 18.crazy hair day 19.tried to sneak away for some quiet time, guess who followed 20.movie night fireside 21.love this necklace 22.started Downton Abbey season 1 23.working 24.library trip 25.nighttime snack of freshly baked bread and sun butter 26.more Downton Abbey 27.someone’s thrilled with the new Legos line 28.workout buddy 29.more homework 30.fire

weekend

blackspotter — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:24:12 +0000

Hopefully I will come back to this space with good news Monday, waiting is hard isn’t it? I’m not the most patient person, so it kills me. I’m not a big optimist, no, I leave that to Aaron to take care of. I’m the realist and the pessimist.

For those of you who recently found this little blog of mine, welcome! Not sure how you stumbled upon it, but it’s awesome that you have all subscribed to it.

I’m jealous at the moment when I read my own blog feed of everyone at Alt Design Summit in Utah. Been wanting to go to that conference for years, and maybe just maybe I can make that happen next year. We will see, but how fun would a weekend spent in Park City, surrounded by panelists speaking and teaching on my most favorite subjects, photography, business, crafting, sewing, and blogging. Pure joy. One can dream. That’s optimistic right? Right?!

I will be spending my afternoon teaching a Louise Nevelson art history lesson to a bunch of 7 year olds followed by a discussion on Collaboration and Ancestry for our upcoming art show at the kids’ school. We have big plans for this 2nd grade class. But I can’t help but panic at the thought of still coming up with equally amazing plans for my other 2 kids’ classes. I’ve been enjoying a few days of unexpected time with Aaron, it’s a bit strange having a sidekick again during my days when the kids are gone. But it’s pretty nice to have someone to share the chores with, have lunch dates, and schedule work for myself whatever time I want. Fingers crossed though that this is short lived.

Hope you all have an amazing weekend enjoying the snow if you received some, and the rain if it comes, or the cold that has returned to Southern California. I will be working tomorrow and hopefully get to start this phenomenon you all are raving about called Downton Abbey, mixed in with some downtime with the family. Be back with an Instagram post in a few days.

Vacation Movie

blackspotter — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:51:17 +0000

I finally sifted through all our footage of Mammoth, and got some shots from our friends to supplement my phone pics, so if it looks like it was taken without an iPhone, and you haven’t seen it posted on the blog before, I didn’t take the photo. Thank goodness someone documented it, or else the entire video would be instagrams. I tried to compile the video where there’s a photo of the kid before they ski or snowboard. Greta is easy to pick out because she’s in the polka dot jacket and on skis, but the boys are both snowboarding. You can tell it’s Sawyer because he is snowboarding in class, and the video of Gunnar snowboarding is with us. If it’s someone who is snowboarding very fast and looks like he could possibly incur injury, then that’s Aaron. I love the music for this video. In case you are wondering it’s Avalanche City, ‘Love Love Love’, and Mat Kearney, ‘Hey Mama’.

wednesday- happiness is….

blackspotter — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:42:58 +0000

Winter Concert

blackspotter — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:54:46 +0000

Wow, these are from over a month ago. Slacking. Seriously Deborah. Greta took the dress code of red for the kindergartners quite seriously. In fact, when she woke up the morning of, she walked into my bedroom and told me “mama, I don’t want to look cute today, I want to look beautiful”. Oy vey. Here we go. The kids were all great, Sawyer and Greta were my only kids performing in this concert, and Gunnar’s grade will perform in the spring concert.

Romeo was quite taken with her.

mammoth

blackspotter — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:10:06 +0000

I warned you I didn’t take many photos. And I meant it. Here’s the ones I took. That’s it. Hopefully as soon as I see the photos from our friends’ camera I can have a little more variety to share with you all. But for now, enjoy the brief post.

All set and ready to rock this road trip. On the way up Aaron introduced the kids to Napoleon Dynamite and then we listened to a few RadioLab podcasts. The kids loved them and I’m afraid we just created a new NPR junkie named Gunnar.

Red Rock Canyon. No matter how many times we drive through it, it always takes our breath away.

This next one was taken just a few minutes before I got pulled over for speeding. I really hate those little towns, Lone Pine, Big Pine, you go from a 65 speed limit, down to 45, 35, and sometimes 25, in a few seconds, then you may go back up to 35, and sometimes back down to 25, before boom it’s 65 again. Anyways, the cop was super nice and I asked him what the matter was, he said I was going 40 in a 25, I honestly thought it was 35, and I told him. I told him I have tried to keep it straight but the switch between all the signs is confusing. He agreed with me and told me to hand over my license. I looked at Aaron and wanted to cry. I mean if I’m going to get a speeding ticket, give me one on the highway where I’m going 85, not in this dinky town. After a few minutes he walked back to the car, handed me my license and told me to drive safe and enjoy our trip. He let me go!!! Love these dinky town cops.

After ski/snowboard school snacks.

I brought puzzles and crafts for the kids to do in the early evening, late afternoons, when I knew we’d be either conked out on the couch or trying to get dinner ready.

Heading home.

Our Week In Instagrams

blackspotter — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:22:49 +0000

1.after 3 fun weeks of winter break, the backpacks came out again 2.my mode of transportation for a few days, my feet 3.library volunteer 4.new fun blog/business cards 5.she finally outgrew some 4T clothes 6.found this eucalyptus she snipped from my dining room arrangement sitting in my good crystal on her window sill 7.my very appropriate reading material for the long wait at the post office 8.lady in black 9.aaron’s sprained ankle from snowboarding 10.school clothes 11.car detailing in prep for selling 12.making videos 13.business taxes complete, now on to personal taxes 14.yummy dinner of rainbow pasta, chicken sausage and fresh broccoli 15.vintage floral 16.picking out school clothes the night before 17.and wearing them 18.he’s pretty proud to be compost captain this week at school 19.torture 20.lunch with my grandparents 21.preparing my favorite black bean salsa 22.homemade pizza night 23.with toppings 24.somebody is a fan 25.the game of life 26.my pirate/fishing boots 27.a very empty keychain after selling our yukon 28.more yummy black bean salsa 29.fondue present(thanks peter and heather!) 30.new keys to replace old ones 31.more torture 32.snacks for golden globe watching