Cheap Thrills: Wolf Hollow in Ipswich

Checked out Wolf Hollow in Ipswich last weekend with Chloe. It's right down Rt 133 in Ipswich just before the turn-off onto the road to Russell Orchards. I'd been waiting until Chloe was old enough to have a hope of sitting thru the hour-long talk that's part of the presentation.

She actually managed to pay attention pretty well. The presentation is given at 1:30 in the afternoon and two wolves are present behind a double fence while the guide talks about wolf varieties and their history with humans. The two wolves are Weeble, the oldest wolf and Nina, a young female. Weeble sniffed around a couple of times, ate some cheese treats and retreated to the shade of a large tree while Nina trotted back and forth constantly making eye contact.

There's a full moon howl on this coming Saturday too: Wolves, reggae, beer and barbeque! Adults, $10.00, kids under 5 free. Event starts at 3pm.

Wolf Hollow Saturday Presentation: 1:30pm
Adults admission: $7.50
Kids admission: $5.00

Cheap Thrills: Wolf Hollow in Ipswich

New Playground taking shape on Salem Common

They say it will be open for business by next weekend. The new flooring has to set. It looks like it's going to be worth the wait!

New Playground taking shape on Salem Common

Second Life: Snack Size-Easy Seed Trays

Tomatoes and Lavender have begun to sprout!

I've been collecting those little snack size containers of Greek yogurt and applesauce all winter mainly because every time I hovered over the recycle container with one its size and shape seemed to cry out "Wait! Are you sure I couldn't be of some other use to you?

Well, actually, yes. I poked some holes in the bottom, filled with potting mix and put the containers in some old tofu and take-out sushi containers. Push some seeds into the mix, conscript your kid to water every day and you've got a great way to show your kids the value of growing your own food and recycling! Bonus.

Second Life: Snack Size-Easy Seed Trays

Clutter Busting: Kid Picasso

Art is messy. Kids are messy. Put them together and you have a big (happy!) mess in the time it takes to dip a paintbrush. It's alway been the biggest clutter-generating activity in the house and I'm slowly learning how to get a handle on it.

Here's what Chloe's art corner in our new place looked like:


Everything had a place, but there were a lot of empty and half-empty containers of random items and taking anything out to use it was a bit of a process. At first I was convinced that I needed some sort of storage system, but once I cleaned the corner out, I knew I could make better use of what I already had.

The first step was to sort everything out into piles:

1: Glitter, glitter glue, glue, foam stickies and pom-poms. (crafty stuff)

2: Finished works of art (to go into portfolios)

3: Paper that could be used for drawing and painting and construction paper

4: Paints and brushes

5: Activity books

6: Potential containers

7: Stamps and ink pads

The next step involved thinking about the best way to store small items. Luckily I had a set of stacking file boxes on wheels that I wasn't using any more. They were conscripted to hold paints (on the bottom) and all the stamp stuff, small craft items, glue and scissors. Like I said in my last post, the muffin trays I used to hold the paint jars were a great way to easily move the paint jars around en masse. Put the paints in the bottom, craft stuff in the top crate and voila! Instant roll-around art cart!

Next I needed a way to contain all the paper and activity books. I simply put them in a canvas fold-out crate and had an easy way to quickly find the right material for Chloe's next masterpiece. Once I consolidated everything I had some containers left over so I put the ones that were past their prime in the recycling bin.

Clutter Busting: Kid Picasso

Second Life: Muffin Tins

Paint Trays!


They stack too!

Second Life: Muffin Tins

Ultimate Holiday Cookie Guide!

Found this amazing collection of cookie recipes on the NYT website. Merry Christmas/Winter Soltice/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah! If anyone needs me, I'll be in the kitchen whipping up rugelach & shortbread

Ultimate Holiday Cookie Guide!

Cheap Thrill of the Week: Magic Birthday Candle!

(please note-This is only a video simulation of the reaction at our house last night)



Great way to entertain a toddler for 6 bucks!

Cheap Thrill of the Week: Magic Birthday Candle!

Second Life:Mesh Hamper

Giftwrap, ribbons, tissue paper, bows, gift bags, what I collectively refer to as "giftcrap" felt like a huge space-hog in our new place, which mysteriously lacked closets and a hanger-rod. In the process of whittling down items and containers in order to make everything fit, I started putting all the giftcrap into one pile on the floor and then it hit me-

Could it all fit into one container?

Turns out, it can!



Tips:

Sort the giftbags however you like, but save a few you're not going to use for gifts to store small stuff like ribbons and tools.

Honestly ask yourself, how many baby showers/bat mitzvahs/quinceaneras do I really go to a year? Then save the appropriate ratio of themed gift bag. Try it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Second Life:Mesh Hamper

WE'RE MOVING!!!

-Just up the road to Marblehead...

So-I'll still be around Salem a lot since, in my opinion, it's got it going on in a way that Marblehead doesn't. We found a great place for a fairly decent price and I'm going to have my own office instead of a 2X3 foot space in a corner of the living room/den/playroom now! Part of the reason I've been so lax about keeping this blog up-to-date has been the fact that: A)The Chloe has discovered online games and it's hard to say no when I see how quickly she's learning to use the computer from them, and B) by the time she's safely out of the house, I've got so much work piled up that I can't justify the time it takes to crank out these finely handcrafted bon mots :^|

Anyway, here's some moving tips tailored for moving with a toddler:

1) Make Moving Day sound like a really awesome adventure.

Maybe tell them it's like going camping in the new house and pack their sleeping bag and a canteen and flashlight for the first night. Maybe tell them they are going to "discover and explore" a brand new neighborhood in their "explorer ship" (aka moving truck)

2) Get all their friends' contact info for future playdates.

Chloe is old enough to verbalize her fears fairly well and knowing that she will be able to stay in touch with her old buddies makes it easier for her and her friends to deal with separation anxiety.

3) Let them get involved with packing and purging.

Giving a kid a damp rag and letting them clean unbreakable stuff before it goes in the box makes them feel more in control about what's happening. Giving them a box to pack favorite toys in helps too.

4) Take everyone up on those offers to "help get them out of your hair".

Because there's times when you just need to focus on what you're doing and constant pleas to play "train" with 20 cardboard boxes is a bit too much at the moment.

5) Big liquor stores are the best source for grabbing carloads of free packing boxes.

6) Got old clothes, towels, bed linens? Use them for packing padding before you recycle them! Bubblewrap and peanuts don't bio-degrade too well. Also, before you toss some old stuff, think about making something else with it, like a stuffed animal, pillow case, or quilt.

7) (Local tip) Savers, in the Danvers Market Basket plaza, is the easiest way to get rid of kid's stuff. They take toys, books, games and clothes.

8) (Set Dresser's tip) Blue painters' tape is great for labelling everything since it stands out against boxes and bags really well and won't damage wooden surfaces. Make a "packing kit" by using a box or tub and keep your markers, blue tape and packing tape in there so you can easily go from room to room.

WE'RE MOVING!!!

Library Find: Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde

Found in the young readers section, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde with illustrations by Michael Hague


Featuring Oscar Wilde classics such as "The Happy Prince" and "The Selfish Giant", this is a gorgeous book that seems to be out of print and therefore, even more of a great find. Good for lulling a restless toddler to sleep, or engaging an older child.

Note, the above illustration is from a completely awesome blog called simply The Dodo Blog

Library Find: Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde

Yin Yu Tang with a Toddler?

It's possible! I have been blessed with the type of kid that retail clerks and gymnastics teachers euphemistically refer to as "exuberant". That said, I was hesitant to attempt the Peabody Essex Museum's Yin Yu Tang exhibit until a friend of mine with two toddler boys said that they were allowed to tour the house. So I decided to try my luck last week.

I knew better than to attempt the audio guided tour, but there was no avoiding the orientation speech before we were allowed in. After carefully explaining multiple times that the floors were uneven and to watch our step, (or, "if you trip, you can't sue us.")the velvet rope was lifted and the sprog and I were allowed in along with a small batch of tourists.

Chloe had a great time discovering that people who lived during the Qing dynasty used the potty too and I marveled at the wide variety of child-restraints crafted from bamboo. A big hit was the pair of cisterns in the courtyard with their population of koi and a couple of enormous carp. I don't think visitors are allowed to jump on the beds or try on the clothing laid out on the furniture, but Chloe managed to restrain herself somewhat and I thought the guards were pretty lenient about small children running around.

Yin Yu Tang with a Toddler?

Awesome Gift Idea!

Courtesy of Boing Boing.net, a mother created a stuffed toy out of her child's drawing and the result is achingly adorable. Now I am definitely going to go for that kids-quilt-from-old-baby-onesies idea I've been putting off for the past 5 months!

Awesome Gift Idea!

Getting Down at the Wenham Museum

Took Chloe to the Baby Boogie Oogie at the Wenham Museum yesterday. Of course, like any rational human being, she was terrified at the site of 18 month old's and their birkenstocked parents shuffling around to the strains of "Burn Baby Burn", so we ended up spending most of the time looking at the new Soul of the Shoe exhibit which is pretty amazing. We learned that Chinese foot-binding practices created a market for cruelly exquisite silk slippers the size of hummingbirds, the 1960's was the Golden Age of stiletto design, and former President Bill Clinton had some mighty big feet. Also, the fact that mothers in the last century needed to button about 10 buttons on each toddler's shoe completely explains the popularity of all those soothing syrups.

Getting Down at the Wenham Museum

Second Life: An old floppy hat

My downstairs neighbor's incessant smoking finally drove us to switch our bedroom with our daughter's. (A 3 year-old with a smoker's cough tends to get strange looks at the library storytime) I kept procrastinating because part of the switch involved dismantling a large handmade futon frame that was a refugee from a loft we had built in Fort Point. Even though it was an awkward monstrosity of polyurethaned pine and metal reinforcing "bandaids", it was a reminder of days without kids and spontaneous night-life.

Finally, after transferring about 2 metric tons of stuffed animals acrosss the hall and dismantling and re-mantling the crib, I decided to just tackle the damn thing with a Mikita and, two afternoon sessions later, I was triumphant and the former slumber-barge lay in pieces next to our garbage bins.

One of the side effects of being somewhat of a compulsive clutter-buster is that there always seem to be a few random items that constantly turn up in storage bins and closet bags because I just can't bear to toss them for some reason. Take, for instance, a purple and gray nylon floppy hat. If I were to actually use it as a hat, it would only make me look like the nerd I really am. But, it's a hat that was purchased for me by a friend while in Vietnam in order to help me avoid paying the "roundeye-tax" and everytime I see it, I am reminded of: 1) My friend Phong, who was the coolest guide a girl could have, 2) Travelling throughout the Mekong Delta by motorbike with my husband and 3) Touring the Cu Chi tunnels whilst in the early stages of food poisoning.(not fun, but memorable)

Long story short, I can't toss the hat, but I really wanted to get rid of the old crap lumber and recycle the brass l-brackets, so I grabbed the hat by the brim, filled it with about 5 pounds of used woodscrews and l-brackets, added a manual screwdriver and ta-da! Instant toolbag!

Second Life: An old floppy hat

Kid's Room Needs a Lift?

Found via crossing paths on Boston Mamas' blog, Cheeky Monkey Murals will do custom murals for kids' bedrooms, playrooms or wherever you wish to put one of their unique works of art. (they also do murals for businesses)

I love the style these murals are done in and the artist, Holly Johnson also does portraits of "loveys" that are a wonderful way to capture your little ones' loved ones.

Kid's Room Needs a Lift?

My New Form: 5 Mantis Pickup

1. Child pulls out the legos (butterfly horse stance)
2. Mom helps build a castle (kneeling horse stance)
3. Mom lunges to grab cell phone (side to side with mantis hook)
4. Mom cleans up the toys (duck walk back and forth 3 times)
5. Mom sweeps the floor (deep lady horse stance across the floor)

My New Form: 5 Mantis Pickup

Second Life: Old file crates

As any parent will tell you, having kids + a bathtub = A plethora of little cute plastic bath toys. After searching high and low for a good way to store everything, I had an epiphany when I was cleaning out some old files. I grabbed a terrycloth bathmat, folded it so it fit in the bottom of the crate-



Yay! Instant tub-toy caddy!


The reason I was so picky is that so many of the "official" types of tub-toy caddies rely on suction cups, which any half-way intrepid toddler is just going to pull off, and/or contained little nooks and crannies which are a haven for mold.

Second Life: Old file crates

Second Life: An old in-box

My daughter goes through a ton of different types of paint in the average week and she's also taken to painting wherever the "mood" strikes her. I finally got tired of constantly following her around like a human paint caddy, schlepping tiny bottles and brushes all over the place and then I realized that a recently retired plastic inbox could hold everything, water, paints and brushes. So, the inbox-paint caddy was born.

Second Life: An old in-box

Man Eating Bugs at PEM

It's a cookbook! A COOKBOOK!

Trapped by snow and ice (plus my husband had to borrow my car), I couldn't watch any more "Blue's Clues" so I ventured out with Chloe in her stroller to the Art And Nature Room at the PEM. Chloe loved to empty the activity boxes, not necessarily playing with everything, just likes to do inventory, and while I waited for her to get bored, my eye happened across "Man Eating Bugs" on the bookshelf. Finally, a cookbook that will scare away any potential schnorrer who sees it on your recipe shelf.

Man Eating Bugs at PEM

Google.org Launches Site To Track Flu

As reported on the BBC's website, Google.org has compared billions of searches that occurred over the years during various flu outbreaks and developed a way to triangulate what is breaking out where based on search data. (Sounds like fun, no?)

Anyway, Flu season is here, kids are snuffling everywhere like bloodhounds, every other parent I know has some kind of cold going on and a couple have had sinus infections, so at least this could help you determine if you have to wear the bunnysuit to to the grocery store.

Google Blog Article

Google Blog Article On An Arenavirus That Could Turn Your Hair Gray

Who Is Sick.org (another sniffle-tracker)

(Thanx to Modern Mechanix for the photo!)

Google.org Launches Site To Track Flu