Happiness is…

This is my first blog post linking with Seven Cherubs Happy Days in May Project, and it couldn’t be better timed.  The Drama Queen has had a sad day.  She’s not sure why, but everything has been a bit of a challenge, and as she is prone to a bit of over dramatisation, we have seen some spectacular tantrums.  We sat down and had a girly chat tonight about happiness and how she was the only one who could decide if she was going to be happy.  When I told her that if it was up to me I would make every day a happy one for her, she informed me, with her infinite four year old wisdom, that not every day could be a happy one.  She went on to tell me that you had to have days that were sad, angry, happy, really really mad, and that some days would just be love.  She is a wise old soul in a very young body.

The idea of the Happy Days in May Project is that you choose a time each day and write a sentence about what has made you happy that day.  You can check out the project here, and it’s never too late to give it a go.  Here’s my first few days

1 May – Finally managed to get the tax documents to the accountant – Massive tick off the to do list and weight off the shoulders, Yay me!

2 May – Listened to a sparkling rendition of Happy Birthday sung by the Drama Queen to Nanna Mon – She was so happy to hear from us and have a good chat, I’m so lucky to still have such a wonderful grandmother

3 May – Chocolate cake – are there any two words that could make you happier??

4 May – The Daredevil is a super fish – he loves swimming, and Mr Perfect loves taking him – I love watching!

5 May – Love when family gets together, lunch, drinks, old family and new friend?  Happy that everyone is happy. (cryptic much?)

6 May – Sunshine, lollypops and rainbows everywhere, everything is wonderful when we’re together – had a really nice family afternoon in the sun and the park.

I doesn’t take much to keep me happy!  What made you happy this week?

Sam

My Paris Fashion Girl

Kids these days are very tech savvy.  I think the Drama Queen and the Daredevil are more at home on my iPhone and iPad than I am – well they are on the apps that they know and love.  The drama Queen is particularly enamoured with the households i devices.  She has recently discovered a new app, admittedly I introduced her to it, but she has embraced it wholeheartedly.  She refers to it before she decides on what she is going to wear each day, and tries to plan her clothes for the day to match.

Colorforecast by Pimkie scans the crowds in the fashion capitals of Paris, Milan and Antwerp and aggregates the colours people are wearing to provide you with the trending colours for each city.  It then, of course suggests clothing that you could buy from Pimkie to match the trending colours.  This is not only a great way of creating a bit of inspiration for your wardrobe, but it has also given me a bit of design inspiration when designing.

The Drama Queen has adopted a very fond affection for anything French.  At four years old, this never ceases to amaze me.  She has a large picture of the Eiffel Tower on her wall, is teaching herself French through a kids french language CD and has decided that when she grows older she will become a Paris fashion girl.  She will not only design and make the clothes, but model them too in her grand scheme of things to come.  So of course her daily check of colorforecast hinges solely around the colour trending for Paris.

The Drama Queen has always been very creative in her clothing choices, and there have been some almighty battles had over what clothes can and can’t be worn together, but adding this extra dynamic into the decision making process has been, hmmmm, well, shall I say interesting.  Here are some of her creations based on the trending colour in Paris.

I love that she is embracing colour and creativity at such a young age, I just wish that I didn’t have to constantly explain that she likes to dress herself! She is so in love with styling herself that she has come up with “a wonderful idea” she told me this morning that everyone would love to see the clothes she chooses for herself, and that maybe she should be just like me and have a blog and she would call it “What The Drama Queen’s Wearing Today”.  Hmmmmmm maybe she might like to learn to write first!

Sam

Glad that one’s over!

I’m not a big believer in wishing your life away or being grateful that something’s done and never wanting to go back, but we’ve just had a week.  What a week.  If we were a garden we would have been hit with a flooding rain, ravaging drought, a powerful frost and then a searing dry heat, and then when it was all over a minor landslide would have wiped out just a small section, something akin to an tomato patch or a flower bed (for me it was my ankle and the Drama Queen’s bottom!).

What do you do to recover and how do you pull yourself back up onto your feet after a week that knocks you not only for six, but for a whole baker’s dozen??

I like to think of myself as an optimist.  Nothing can be really that bad, and there’s generally a bit of a silver lining somewhere if you can just manage to scratch that tarnished surface enough.  We have achieved.  Santa photos for this year have been taken.  Unfortunately the Daredevil hasn’t worked out the deal with the fat man in the red suit, so was a bit apprehensive (read frantically unwilling)

So we now have the whole family posing with Santa…

We have set up and decorated the christmas tree, one of the Drama Queen’s favourite things (apparently it’s perfect!), and now the Daredevil’s play thing.  I think he feels there are too many ornaments on the tree, how else could you explain the constant ornament removal process he is currently perfecting?

And for dinner tonight we have roast pork with triple chocolate brownies for desert (yum!).

Sorry for another quiet week, but in between doctors x 4,  antibiotics x3, pain killers x 2, mixed up medications x 1 and a rather spectacular plummet from a kerb, I’ve finally mustered up the energy to blog, ahhh.. another silver lining.

So tell me, where do you find your silver linings when the karmic gods throw you some pretty crappy storm clouds?

Sam

A trail of terror…

The Daredevil goes by a couple of other names, there’s the Super B, our little terrorist and my personal favourite, Mr Destructacon.  There’s also the nice gentle ones like cuddle bug and gentle Ben, but today was definitely a Mr Destructacon kind of day.  I think I’ve spun from one minor clean up to major hassle all afternoon!

Let me explain a little further.  Normally on a Tuesday I only have the Daredevil at home with me.  The Drama Queen would generally spend the day in child care.  But today we had a little outing to get some immunisation shots, 18months for the Daredevil and 4years for the Drama Queen. So, like a responsible mother I’ve tried to keep things calm.  Have an inside relaxed kind of afternoon. It’s rainy outside, so outdoors really wasn’t an option anyway.  My munchkins have had other ideas, particularly the Daredevil.  My plan was for a quiet and crafty afternoon, but like best laid plans things have gone a little pear shaped!

While the Drama Queen has been relatively calm, despite the occasional snap at her over excited brother, the Daredevil has sniffed out and found almost every kind of destruction his little frame can handle!  The problem today has been that he has been really quite stealth like with his destruction and it is only by chance that I’ve found the more creative and difficult to rectify misadventures.  As I type, he is trying to unload the dishwasher – really helpful if he were 10 years older, though I have a feeling when he is 10 years older he will have no interest in any form of household appliance!

We managed to cut out the tulle for the pink and purple (yes, the Drama Queen’s colour choices) Christmas pom poms, but the lure of ABC for Kids became too strong so they haven’t progressed much further. We I have made the green jelly that will hopefully set before desert time.  But beyond these small achievements, our day has been a joyful chaos, fortunately free of any major damage to property or person.  I’ll let the few photos I have managed to take speak for themselves…

Do I look like trouble???

I managed to stop this one before all the DVDs followed the games out of the cupboard

The unpacked dishwasher Daredevil style...

These were my new embroidery threads, I guess they still are, but with the Daredevil touch!

But then I found gems like this, he has set the table for dinner with his and the Drama Queen's cutlery

and this is as far as our pink and purple pom poms got!

Ahhhh…. nearly time for dinner, and Mr Perfect’s on the way home.  A Daredevil shared is a disaster halved!

Sam

Drawn Outdoors with Sesame Street

 

 

 

 

 

 

The things you find when you have little people that need entertaining on a wet day!  This might just have to be Drawn Outdoors theme song!

Hope you enjoy it as much as we have this morning.  Are you smiling now??

Sam