How did this happen?

I worked so hard at being prepared this year that I just can’t figure out how I ended up cobbling together teacher's gifts late the night before the school Valentine party. Maybe if I run through the events leading up to that last minute craft-a-thon I’ll figure out where it all went wrong.

Remember how I handmade all of those Valentines? Yes the classmates' cards were done, but I'd used up all of my fans. So I had to figure out something else to do for the teachers. And I had a plan. No really I did. Amaya hosted a playgroup last Thursday.  So I devised a craft involving glitter and hearts for all of her little friends and their siblings to do in between running around the basement laughing like jackals. My thought was to use the project my kids made as cards for their teachers that could go along with a store bought chocolate treat. Teachers--unlike preschoolers--are old enough to decide when they've had too much candy, so I have no qualms about giving them tempting treats. It was a good plan since it took care of multiple items on my to do list and conserved valuable resources—like my sanity.

The execution required the creation of a tray of wonders that would delight the little artists. I knew I'd been successful in my endeavor when I watched their little eyes light upon spying the glue, the glitter, the stickers, the stamps, and the markers that work on any kind of paper instead of those vision-limiting "wonder" markers that require special paper. It was like the lost treasure of the ancient Mayans had been deposited right in our suburban home. 

Before the words "Have at it" had completely formed on my tongue, a craftpalooza was unleashed in my basement. During the process, I was too busy trying to keep Amaya from eating the glue to take pictures, but I did remember to get a shot of the end result.

  Perfectamundo! Stick a box of chocolates on there and you have a perfectly acceptable Valentine for a preschool teacher. So I walked away from the project feeling like I had everything under control. I think that here is where my plan started to go awry.

What got me off track? Snopocalypse. That's what. The stupid snow came Thursday night and then AGAIN on Tuesday night. So I never made it to the store to get the boxes of chocolate.  Suddenly and without warning,  it was the night before the school's Valentine's celebration and there I was scrambling to put something together .But hey, at least I remembered this year, right?

I was saved by three things:

1. A well-stocked scrap room that has enough supplies to make cards for everyone on the planet with paper and ribbon to spare.
2. A great collection of bookmarked blogs that never fails to inspire me.
3. A husband who thinks that 9:00pm is the perfect time to go put air in his tires and is also willing to hop into the convenience store and pick up some Hershey Kisses for his perpetually scatterbrained wife.

When those three ingredients are mixed together at 11:00pm, you get this:

 I was so tired when I took the picture that everything looked blurry to me. I didn't realize that the picture itself was blurry until just now. Sorry about that.The adorable zebra valentines printed for free courtesy of Bunny Cakes--a truly great idea blog.Since the sheet printed 6 cards, I went ahead and made six treat bags to pass out. Everyone appreciates a few kisses, right?

So, I guess that's how it happened. Maybe I should go ahead and start on next year's batch now. You know, just in case?

Would You Be My Valentine?

I'm about to share with you one of my deepest, darkest secrets. Are you ready? First we must travel back to a specific moment in time when I was pregnant with Amaya and Chase was going to school a couple of days a week. Perhaps you remember how I was when I was pregnant? The term basket case would seem appropriate here. I can't really be blamed for my insanity as it was directly caused by the alien that was growing inside of me. I maintain the theory that the little gremlin was spiking my blood with some sort of elixir that turned me into a scatterbrained, energy-less droid. I think she did it via reverse osmosis or something.

Did you catch my attempts at building up an excuse there? Preemptive strike, that's my preferred MO. I hope it worked because what happened two years ago is this: I completely forgot to send Valentines to school with Chase. No wait, forgot would imply that I actually had thought to do it at one time, when in truth the red holiday was nowhere on my radar. What’s really sad in all that is that I was an elementary school teacher for heaven’s sake. It’s not like I was unaware of the protocol. So there you have it--my deep, dark secret. I am that mother.

So last year, I overcompensated by stuffing treat bags so full of chocolates that the seams were near bursting. Then I felt another wave of guilt as I looked at all of the junk that came home with Chase February 14 and nearly hyperventilated. No kid needs to eat that much candy especially on the heels of Halloween, Thanksgiving, & Christmas.

So this year, well I just nearly lost my mind is what I did. I scoured the Oriental Trading catalog looking for something not food related to give as Valentines. Sure, there were lots of really cute stuffed bears and whirly gigs, but since I had a list of 60 students between Chase & Amaya, that wasn’t really what you could call cost effective. What to do, what to do?

This is what I came up with. I just printed out the circle labels, made enough copies of each, cut them out, backed them with the scallop circle and then adhered them with glue dots to the fan frame. I was a bit bummed that the red background copied as that washed-out color, but hey the kids are 3 & 1—will they really care or even notice? Of course not, it’s only my perfectionist inner demon that is screaming its displeasure. So I put in earplugs and ignored that sucker.

I made the tags so that the fans can still open and close because I wasn’t sure if the boxes would be big enough to accommodate an opened fan. The fans were a fairly frugal find from Oriental Trading, but if you’re super industrious, you could always make those yourself too.

I’m beginning to feel a little less guilty about my slacking two years ago. It would be awesome if I’ve completely forgiven myself by the time the cherubs are in elementary school. If not, I’ll settle for being guilt-free enough to just smile and hand over boxes of conversation hearts.

And now that you know my awful secret, do you think you'd still consider being my Valentine? I have no qualms about bribing adults with chocolate if that makes your answer any different.

This post is linked up with Cop Mama’s Mama Guilt Mondays. Check it out to add your own post or read other guilty tales.

Love Hurts

love scars, love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough nor strong enough

Those Everly Brothers' lyrics are oh so fitting on this the day of Saint Valentine. But first, let me just say that I really don't care all that much that today is February 14--the day of love. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the Scrooge of the red holiday. I don't mutter strings of profanities about the evilness of commercialism when I see displays of cupid and conversation hearts in the stores. I just think of this holiday more as a kids' day or even a teenagers'--but not something that really applies to me in a way that would require that Andy prove his love in the form of flowers, candies and jewelry. I certainly don't begrudge anyone who does love this day and in doing so expects trinkets and treasures, but that's just not me. Maybe I feel this way because I am blessed enough to have a husband who spoils me rotten all year long. Or maybe it's because I don't think waiting 3 hours to be seated for dinner in a restaurant full of other hungry couples sounds like a good way to spend my evening. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that this day does not necessitate that I receive any gifts, have any special plans, or even acknowledge it at all beyond what we do for the kids.

Jeanne is a different story. She's the type who gets upset when her husband's attempts at securing reservations hit a brick wall. No present for her on this day would be sure to be met with much pouting. As long as her husband agrees to observing the day in such a manner, I have no problem with her drawing big red hearts around February 14 on the calendar and dropping daily hints for desired gifts. However, when her enthusiasm for the holiday starts to affect my own joy, happiness and personal comfort level, then I have a problem. A big, big problem.

You see, she of the red hair who has been training me for years begged and pleaded with me to come to her Body Pump class this morning. For those of you who aren't familiar with Body Pump--it's an hour class that is put together by a company called Les Mills. In those sixty minutes, you do various weightlifting exercises to the beat of catchy songs. It covers all of the major muscle groups and is high repetition, so after the hour you're pretty much done for the day. Anyway, Jeanne had been working really hard on putting together a special Valentine's Day play list of all love songs. Since it was a three day weekend, she was afraid that everyone would have headed out of town--meaning that no one would be in class bright and early Saturday morning to enjoy her handiwork. She wanted me to boost her numbers to help make her efforts more worthwhile. Being the kind and devoted trainee that I am, it only took a few minutes of whining and complaining before I half-heartedly agreed.

What she failed to mention was that all of these "love" songs were actually a compilation of the most brutal, agonizing exercise sequences that Les Mills has ever dreamed up. Every track was a killer--although I especially remember the squat track that had us doing a combination of single bottom haves, full squats and then four on the bottom--repeating at least a gazillion times. My quads were screaming in pain demanding that I put an end to the nonsense. Just as I thought relief was coming in the form of the abs track--she starts doing planks with knee to elbows. The whole class was groaning, and at one point everyone just stopped the exercise and looked at her like she was completely outside her mind. She continued right on through for another 50 knee ins completely unaware of the mutiny about to form . Today, Love Hurt. Actually there was no love, there was only pain. Pain and agony.

And her concerns about no one showing up? Please. The place was past capacity. I was a couple of minutes late, so by the time I got to the weight rack, all of the big plates were gone. I was bummed at the time, but by the end of the hour, I was quite happy with my medium and small plates thankyouverymuch.

Before you think I'm some crazy person that takes pictures of gym classes, John actually took these pictures. They wanted some photos for the gym's Facebook page, but couldn't find their camera. Ever prepared as I am, I quickly scooted over and gave them mine. I just thought I'd share some visuals for the story. Let's play a game of "Where's Mellon" except there's no striped shirt.




Of course there is a different kind of love that doesn't hurt at all. It's ooey and gooey and makes you just want to cover someone with kisses. Know anyone who'd let me do such a thing??



Yes, I believe she'll do. Happy Vday ya'll!