rainbow blocks and other misc. thoughts

The number one best thing, I think, for de-stressing is to look the stress straight in the eye, and say to it, yep, I see you, you exist. And you know what? So what?

This doesn't make it go away - which school to send your kid to? how to fix finances? how to make it to dinner time?

But, it takes the teeth out, so to speak.

I think this is what I did last week.

Fine yes, okay, that is stressful. Next?

What is more. Here is another thing that has happened.

Big news, really, so big, thinking about it this morning made me ridiculously happy.

No, its not to do with trotting off to Hawaii (back burner folks, back burner! The best things in life have a long gestational period, am I right???)

The big news is this, Dada and I have decided something monumental....

That is....EVERY WEDNESDAY IS TAKE OUT NIGHT!!!!!!!!

And with Friday being pizza night, and dada cooking most weekends that leaves me with a mere THREE NIGHTS to answer the age old question that plagues me all night, and tortures me every 4pm....WHAT THE HECK TO MAKE FOR DINNER???

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

And the reason being, simply, the little country steak house dada now works at on occasion has 1) ridiculous portion sizes, 2) ridiculous low prices, and 3) dada gets half off. So we can feed the family an incredible meal for less than a burger meal at McDonalds.

Worth celebrating, right??

I'd say. YES. Resoundingly so, YES.

I'm even thinking of forcing everyone to eat on paper plates tonight. So, NO DISHES!!

In other, less lazy news, we made these adorable blocks for the multiple two year olds in the family last week. Well, the blocks we have been making all winter (they take a lot of sanding!).

You could try this too, but we have access to amazing wood from a local cabinetry place, just the shavings of the longer boards, BUT, when cut to size and sanded make beautiful fancy looking blocks.

We colored them with oil pastels, I rubbed them in to even out the color, and then we finished them with beeswax polish.

I'm seriously amazed at how engaged the kids were with this. My latest crafty efforts with them have been, er, marginally, successful. Little man must've sat for an hour doing this though, thinking about each little cousin (oooh, lots of pink blocks for Baby Girl Cousin! etc.)

I do want to try doing them with good quality water color paints (the kind in tubes) but that seemed too intensive to do with the kids.

 Now, I hear you can buy pre-made wooden blocks at Michaels. So, you could try that.

In any case.

It was fun. The cousins loved them. And its sunny out today. And we worked a ton on the garden yesterday. And ITS TAKE OUT NIGHT. And I am pretty sure little miss has been sitting at the table making me a little love note, complete with a quarter taped to it as a present.

Life is beautiful.

we spent many happy moments sanding these in front of the fire this winter as a break from school...