With titles like that its no won­der I am not get­ting any traf­fic thanks to SEO (search engine optimization).

Its the truth though, I will attempt just about any­thing. You wont find me hid­ing in a cor­ner, bit­ing my fin­gers about how I will be ter­ri­ble at some­thing. I may very well be ter­ri­ble at it, but I will at least give it a go and find out for myself. Call me a skep­tic, thats me.

So awhile ago when Mr.Blab jok­ingly asked me to cut his hair, cause he was too lazy to go to the hair­dresser, I said „Sure, dude, have a seat and hand me those meat scis­sors over there”.  I said it jok­ingly too, but he turned out to be even cra­zier than me, because he handed his mane to my com­pletely lost for words hands and the rest is history.

I have had my hair cut, I have watched other peo­ple do it, many times; I knew the proper tech­nique to hold the hair, and who doesnt know how to use scis­sors?! It cant be that hard. And the truth is that even after I was done with him, he was safe for pub­lic view­ing and didnt miss a day off work, to both of our surprise.

I still have no clear idea what I am doing when I grab the scis­sors, which now are proper hair-cutting ones and I even have thin­ning blades to com­plete my pro­fes­sional tool set.

Yours truly is now the offi­cial fam­ily hair­dresser, which not only makes  my man unap­peal­ing to other females, but also saves us not a neg­li­gi­ble amount of money. (The kids get good doos, because of the blood connection)

My prob­lem is that after every time I cut Mr.Blab’s hair, I for­get how hard it is and next time he asks me, which is usu­ally right before he looks like Big Foot, I agree to do it. And as soon as I stand there with my comb and scis­sors and try to moisten that moun­tain of hair, I feel half of my life run past me. The dread over­comes me, because ladies and gen­tle­men, he has way too much hair; I am cer­tain, in fact, that he is the rea­son so many other men are bаld around the world.

I snap with the scis­sors and noth­ing seems to change. I have no idea what I am doing is what comes out of my mouth every once in a while with a ner­vous laugh. Its ok, as long as I have some hair — calmly responds my client and we usu­ally laugh a lot. He pre­tends to be scared some­times and is not appre­cia­tive of my assistant/s, which might be spray­ing him with a bot­tle or pil­ing his cut hair on his pants, for exam­ple — what is this place?!

Oh, no worry, mis­tur, its all in bill…oups, that your ear?

By the end of it, my hands are falling off, and I am sure I patch up the last bits barely, barely. But he is always happy, bless his lazy heart.

Dodman, approved my work too.

And that is all that mat­ters sometimes.

And then he is put to work.

I won­der who can make a blan­ket from all of that cut hair.

Or two.

Here is another idea for you. Make a bag from a lovely woolen scarf. How? Follow these directions.

1. Go to the local op-shop and find a beau­ti­ful long woolen scarf.

2. Pay the $2

3. Leave the scarf in the laun­dry, so you dont for­get to wash it, before let­ting the kids wear it.

4. Get your­selves a Mr.Blab (dont skip this step!) and let the said per­son loose around your house.

5. (this step is auto­matic, so dont worry about it) Mr.Blab will need to do some whites and will grab the scarf and chuck it in with the rest of the stuff, thus felt­ing it.

6. It will take you a few min­utes to fig­ure out what in the world is the stiff woolen rec­tan­gle on the dry­ing line.

7. Laugh.

8. Now you can dis­pose of your copy of Mr.Blab.

9. Toss around the piece of what looks like unus­able use-to-be-scarf. Looks nice, but what can you do with it? Fold here, fold there — a hat, a col­lar, a weird short vest…a bag?!

10. Crochet han­dle out of wool and felt it.

11. Stitch the sides of the bag. Sew a but­ton and cut a hole for it.

12.  Put a bar of choco­late and a book in it, wrap it and give it as a gift.

___

As I always try to remind the kids, mis­takes can often turn into great things.
All it takes is for us to look for them.

Furniture of course!

I have told you before of Mr.Blab’s eager curb­side col­lect­ing lately (here there is tra­di­tion to put any junk you want to get rid of on the curb in front of your house for oth­ers to pick up for free). I have a whole reclin­ing chair wait­ing for me to fix with my non exist­ing reuphol­ster­ing skills. Its still wait­ing for a spark of cre­ativ­ity to hit me, or just a lit­tle free time to force me to tackle it. Whichever comes first.

Another piece that was wait­ing in the garage was a book­case he brought home months ago. I must say it got a luke­warm recep­tion from yours truly. It was wonky, old, dented, put­tied in places and had water dam­age on the back piece. I kind of shrug my shoul­ders at it and it was des­tined to the wait­ing line. Truth me told, I didnt think any­thing will come out of it and I had men­tally thrown it in the next skip bin.

And then some­thing hap­pened. Mr.Blab brought it out one sunny day and requested we do some­thing with it.

„What do we do with it?” — he said.

There went my garbage chuck­ing plans.  Something had to be done with it. And if I didnt add in my input, he will do ‘some­thing’ with it and that some­thing might end up in the house. I bet­ter get on with the program…

As the wood was not nice, we decided to sand it and paint it.

Enthusiastic child labor was not hard to find:

Then my input was needed. My cre­ative juices were nec­es­sary to moisten the deal, you see.

„You are the cre­ative one” — Mr.Blab would say. If that doesnt seem to work on me, he would shrug his shoul­ders and add — „I can do it, but do you really want me to?”

What to do with the bloody ugly book­case that just wont go away?  Ideas started com­ing, options, colors…and then I made an exec­u­tive deci­sion (why do peo­ple love this say­ing any­way?) — we will paint it white and have some graphic paper cover the back. Maybe even wall­pa­per. Yeah. Wallpaper.

Then I was off to the hard­ware store to get the paint so we can con­tinue our pro­duc­tive streak. And then it hit my ama­teur­ish self how expen­sive paints are! For a tiny lit­tle can I had to pay almost $30. Now, that will be fine, if we were not going to slather it on top of curb­side garbage. Then I real­ized that it will just about kill me to pay another $20 or so to buy the fancy paper. I was bit­ing my lip and walk­ing to the paint swatch pan­els to choose the white I was going to go with and then it hit me. The beauty of the swatches. I have used them before for party dec­o­ra­tions, if you remem­ber Dodman’s first birth­day. But now I had an even grander idea. Better yet, cheaper. In fact free!

So I started pick­ing them lit­tle col­or­ful swatch cards. It takes time to pick a lot. I am sure peo­ple were watch­ing me — method­i­cally pick­ing row after row. But I could care less. When I had a big olé pile of them I put them care­fully in my bag and went to buy the warm white can of paint. Now much hap­pier to do so.

Painting com­menced.

Later on I realised that my novice self should have looked fur­ther and picked a bet­ter paint, as the one I got needed close to 2 weeks of open air off­gassing (my word) before it can be allowed to enter the house.

Dont do the same mis­take as me. Buy low VOC paint. K?

I also pur­chased new back­ing, as the old one was indeed water dam­aged and now we had high hopes for the project. Do you know how hard it is to cut MDF with a bread knife? It had to be cut to size before I start glu­ing the cards to it. We didnt have the tools, so I sug­gested the bread knife. It worked, but I will lie if I said we didnt laugh at our­selves while saw­ing through the sheets in the back­yard. It was hard work, so one would use the knife, while the other had to pro­vide sup­port for the vio­lently flap­ping about material.

Then it was my turn. I had enough cards to play with. My orig­i­nal idea was to just use the ready made pat­tern — from blues to pinks, sat­u­rated to desat­u­rated col­ors. It had a nice appeal­ing look to it. But once I set them up, I thought they are not bright enough. I was think­ing of some­thing more graphic, stronger, funner.

I tried lit­tle area with another idea and after play­ing with it for two nights I set­tled on a pattern.

Then it was time for the glu­ing part. I made a lit­tle trial on the off­cuts of the mdf and had a plan. The newly glued pieces needed uni­form pres­sure on top to make sure they stay flat and nice to the surface.

So I whipped out the weights and the process went like that after I had mea­sured and lined up the board:

Brush glue on the sur­face. Position swatch card. Cover with board and weigh down with weights.
Brush glue on the next spot. Position swatch card. Move board with weights to the left to cover the new swatch as well.

And so on and so on, from left to right. From top to bottom.

It took 3 hours to fin­ish the whole backing.

After it was done, I used a var­nish to cover the cards to pre­vent them from being scratched by the books. In the end I used the whole jar in three goes.

After all was dried, off­gassed and nailed together we had a most won­der­ful lit­tle bookcase.

Invoice:

Bookcase — free
Paint — $28 (we used less than half)
Swatches — free
Glue — $5 (I had the glue already)
Varnish — $10.50
New back­ing — $9
_______________
Total: $52.50

I say, not bad. Especially for com­plete novices in the field of home/furniture renovations.

And it goes per­fectly with the pil­low cov­ers I had sewn for the comfy read­ing area in the kids room.

I like the color names on the swatches. I have heard Miss Fab read­ing them out loud the other day

The kids have given it the big stamp of approval and now we have space for the extra books that could not be fit any­where and would end up pil­ing on the floor.

And I stand cor­rected. I guess noth­ing is quite as hor­rid and hope­less as we may think.

Now if I can only apply this think­ing to the chair that is wait­ing out there in the cold.

If only.

I am alive and the cel­e­bra­tions are over and now I am offi­cially a mother of a pre­teen. Tween? Is that the new word?

In the midst of prepa­ra­tions for every birth­day party I won­der why I am putting myself through this, but see­ing the lit­tle ones excited and so happy does make it worth­while, even though I can really appre­ci­ate it after­words. After a nice long sleep to rest the tired eyes and body. And its not like I do any­thing huge or extra special.

Back to the impor­tant bits for those of you who have been waiting.

The day started early on with Miss Fab get­ting the presents from us. The new dig­i­tal cam­era went quickly on the charge to be ready for the party and then it was time to open the pile of cards and gifts from the rest of the fam­ily. Some of them have been sit­ting and wait­ing for months.

Handmade card by my aunt. Drawn on silk.

Little gifts from grandma and aun­tie  and more cards.

Then it was time for last minute prepa­ra­tions and get­ting ready. Both girls have gone with street fash­ions for their dress ups. Miss Fab and I made a bunch of trips to the op shops and had a few out­fits ready for her to choose from. While Little B got to wear the won­der­ful  baby doll dress her grandma had sent years ago for her big sis­ter. Pony tails, red cheeks and Cons com­pleted the look.

I repaired a short kimono I had bought years ago for myself and Mr.Blab stole the show with a kimono type flow­ery robe on top of which I tied one of my slings on his waist then a made a lovely pony tail on top of his head and he fin­ished the look with a won­der­ful facial hair shav­ing job — Fu Manchu style. I think I laughed every time he passed me.

The guests didn’t dis­ap­point either. The girls had mostly gone with Tokyo street fash­ions too, although we had one tra­di­tional look for a good mix.

The boys didnt get left behind either — footwear, head­wear, hair­styles were all in order and I have to say they were all one smash­ing look­ing group of kids. And accord­ing to the par­ents they all had great fun dress­ing up and most of them did it all by them­selves after care­ful research­ing on the net. Gotta love home schooled kid­dos

I had great plans for dec­o­ra­tions and piles of paper to work with , but alas never got to it. Instead I quickly did a few things last moment, like the lanterns hang­ing from the lamps.

And then I got in the kitchen and thats pretty much where I could be found for the next 4–5 hours.

First on the menu were Japanese style noodles.

Then while the kids were hav­ing fun, doing their own thing…

I made the sushi.

Do you have any clue how hard it was to find fly­ing fish roe (tobiko)?
Or more pre­cisely a small amount of it?

Not very.

Gifts were opened and I can safely say all were won­der­fully thought­ful and use­ful.
She will be doing lots of origami for sure

And then it was time for the cake.

I usu­ally sur­prise the kids with it just before the can­dles go on it. This time the cake was out for all to see and admire as is done at wed­dings. So much sweat went into it that I wanted to make it worth­while. For me, peo­ple, for me. I am a human too.

When I got it out, Miss Fab was lost for words and started jump­ing about and I got a breath stop­ping hug.

Thats all that I needed and I knew my job was well done.

The idea for the cake came to me out of the blue. The way most ideas come to me. Hey, look at that tree..lovely leaves…hey, why dont I make a tem­ple cake for the birthday!…

And since my cake dec­o­rat­ing skills are very very basic, my knowl­edge too, its not sur­pris­ing that the exe­cu­tion of my „won­der­ful idea” was a bit painful. There was a lot of prop­ping, pray­ing to the good spir­its or whomever may be lis­ten­ing, deep breath­ing, cross­ing fin­gers and most of all wing­ing it. I had no plan, I had no clue and took it one step at a time.

I think from now on I will stick to nor­mal cakes with frost­ing dec­o­ra­tions and leave nov­elty cakes to oth­ers. Yup, sounds like a good idea and please remind me of it if you ever hear me say­ing „I have a won­der­ful idea for the cake!”.

The impor­tant bit is that the final result, no mat­ter how wonky, was a success.

One of the boys said to his mom that she should ask me for some point­ers and another kid exclaimed that this was the best cake EVER!

Hahahaha!

„Double Decker” pieces went to all the kids and all the plates came back empty.

PHEW!

And before every­one knew it, the five hour party was over.

Miss Fab gave out the party bags.

I hate the party favors we get — pile of cheap lol­lies and crap.

I cant bring myself to do that, so this year I made up bags — hand drew in Japanese sym­bols „Thank You” and I sin­cerely hope its just a bad hand­writ­ing and I didnt man­age to screw it up too much so it says some­thing obscene. In the bag went a box of dark choco­late Lindt squares, two hand made bean bags filled with azuki beans (ojama) as done tra­di­tion­ally in Japan for their otedama games; and a selec­tion of pat­terns for mak­ing paper toys, another Japanese born and loved art.

And then we send off our guests..

Mr.Blab deserves a spe­cial men­tion, because he was my incred­i­ble helper. I had given him the clean­ing job before and after the party and he did a won­der­ful, no, per­fect job. I didnt have to worry even a bit about his part of the prep and after the party I needed a quick nap and he cleaned up and there was not a sign of a dirty dish or mess left over when I woke up.

Thank you, my won­der­ful man!

Miss Fab was happy.

And older.

And there was not much cake left over, so we took care of that.

And we had a good long sleep.

The best kind — when one is tired and with a smile on their face.

In lieu of tak­ing Miss Fab to Japan, as per her orig­i­nal wish, we are hav­ing a Japan inspired birth­day party in our house. Believe me, I had put myself on the line, I vol­un­teered for the hard job of accom­pa­ny­ing her to the small island, but alas, that good old deal breaker Mr.Everyone Hates Money came to the fore­front and squished our dreams with­out even blink­ing an eye. He is cold hearted  like that.

The invi­ta­tions have a lot of sim­i­lar­ity with the last ones I did for her brother’s  almost a year ago. His were born out of what­ever I had on hand and it just hap­pened to be red and white papers. These ones were planned, dis­cussed and approved by and with the Miss Fab coun­cil to the very last detail.

I love mak­ing them. I think I have a col­lec­tion of all of the invi­ta­tions I have made through­out the years for the kids and maybe I can dig in and see if I can show you my favorites. I can think of one which was ‘secret agent’/hero that I looooved how it turned out.

This year its Japan. The girl loves the place and she has not even stepped foot on it. I can only imag­ine how this love will turn into an obses­sion once she vis­its. Cause I cer­tainly fell in love with it and so did her father when he got acquainted.

How old is my big girl becoming?

Guess…

Next year, we will be there.
One has to dream or else whats the point?

A dear friend of mine is hav­ing a baby in the com­ing weeks. It always melts me a lit­tle bit when it hap­pens, although I am rarely around to truly expe­ri­ence with them the preg­nancy and those first weeks and months that can be so hard for a new mom. And I so wish I could. They prob­a­bly dont needs me, there is fam­ily around. It doesnt stop me from dream­ing about being a sup­port per­son, as I feel I have some­thing to con­tribute. Most of it not what one would prob­a­bly think of. I feel I can pro­vide true under­stand­ing for the sit­u­a­tion with­out all the glossy, made up, dreamy stu­pid frilly details. Blah! Sorry about that.

Maybe I am a bit nuts, or maybe I have a skewed view of the real­ity, I guess its quite pos­si­ble. I am far from think­ing what I see and expe­ri­ence is The Truth. But, a new mom needs work­ing hands around her, not bal­loons and flow­ers that she has to won­der where to put and then after a few days they start to wilt and make a mess every­where, even stink up the place. Then its a huge chore to clean them up, cause the leaves fall and break when you even approach them… and wash the slimy vases…Working hands. Someone to tidy up, wash the clothes, make food, wash the dishes after­words and all of it with­out her hav­ing to ask OR wait. A per­son to make a warm drink, while she is cud­dling the new per­son in her life on the sofa and then to have a quiet chat with. A per­son who doesnt expect her to be cheery and glow­ing or in the least bit enter­tain­ing. Because those first moments of moth­er­hood are not easy, espe­cially in our soci­ety where women are iso­lated from other women and all the real  sup­port that they could actu­ally get. Most are alone, hid­den behind the white sheet that is show­ing the pro­jected image of the cheery, lov­ing new mom — per­fectly groomed, ener­getic, smooth skinned with „her body back”. Vomit. Sorry about that.

So I dream to be to one of my friends, what I have always wanted for myself. And yet I won­der even if we didnt move and I was there with them, will I have been able to do it? Will my offer have been taken as an inva­sion of some sort? Will I have even offered? Cause we are all so inde­pen­dent now, love is only allowed from those we share blood and rings with. Or so it seems.

For now I set­tle down to send­ing mod­est gifts for show­ers far away and hope that the love I have put in them will come through even a lit­tle bit. Cause I could not bring myself to giv­ing bot­tles, paci­fiers, frilly pants or spa acces­sories for mom. Sorry about that.

This has to be my favorite doll I have made so far. I was even tempted to keep it. Filled with wool and chick­peas, which gave it a lovely heav­i­ness around the lower part of the body.

The birds…the birds…

The plan was dif­fer­ent, very dif­fer­ent. The idea is from this tuto­r­ial. The first issue was that I could not make the whole mobile as I had to send it by post, so I thought of mak­ing a one branch mobile. Weeeeel, not so quick, missy. Its not easy at all to make those birds stay upright with the branch, as they just want to flop down and look dead. After numer­ous attempts at mak­ing it work and deep into the night, I gave up and made a sim­ple hang­ing dec­o­ra­tion. Boo-Hoo.

I also sent her a child/baby jour­nal if she wants to write down the devel­op­ments and her thoughts of the year that is com­ing up.

And that is all. Packed in a box, flown over and deliv­ered by another dear dear  friend at a shower far away. And I want to give so much more.

Maybe one day.