SmartFairy.com

I have been to some great websites trying to figure out how to make stuff. The best one I've found was Not Martha.org. Her site inspired me to start SmartFairy.com for a number of reasons. Whenever I try out something new, I have a tendency to not get all the materials together at once and therefore have a harder time creating whatever "it" is.

For instance, I decided I wanted to make a pomander and put a fairy spin on it. I had the oranges, but didn't have the cloves. It was a week before Christmas (I know, shouldn't I have been doing something more worthwhile than making a pomander) and all of the inexpensive cloves were sold out - at Walmart no less. I guess there were a lot of people in Loveland making pomanders that Christmas when they should've been doing something else! The only cloves they had left were $7.39 a bottle!

Anyway, I got down to business and began my pomander, the instructions I had were illustrations. Not always a bad way to go as far as instructions go, but these were not the best - I like photos - good ones like they do in the DK books.

To make a long story short (thank goodness) the pomander looked decent, but I wasn't sure if my rows were the right spacing apart and I really didn't know what the end result was supposed to be. I apprehensively put the pomander into a brown bag and placed it on a shelf in the furnace room. And then, of course, forgot about it. Not completely, I would remember every other week, but forget to follow through on that memory and retrieve it from downstairs. Really, how often does one wander past or enter into the furnace room?

I did manage to bring it upstairs last week. All I can say is that looks aren't everything to a homemade pomander. It smelled gorgeous though! Now that brings me to the reason for the SmartFairy.com website. I really would liked to have know ahead of time that the fairy pomander was not going to be particularly attractive, but worth making one, they are fun and they do smell great.

You can visit my "Pomander" page here at:

http://smartfairy.com/Craft/Fairycraftshome/fairypomander.html

Help! My son is suffering from the terrible elevenses!

My son, we'll call him Jack, is suffering from the terrible elevenses and, therefore, causing those responsible for him to suffer as well.

What do I mean by the terrible elevenses?

If you must ask this, obviously your children are 10 and under, female or you are happily childless. Terrible elevenses become obvious to we parents around the entrance of 6th grade or as it is here MIDDLE SCHOOL. For me it was Junior High, terrible elevenses were actually 12 and they were known as just plain puberty. But, because of MIDDLE SCHOOL, we have a new syndrome.

Now, the terrible elevenses (TE) it doesn't take full terribleness (making up words today) until about 6 weeks in. That is the innocent time where they are scared to be in a new huge school and are not feeling like 6th graders, but kindergartners.

Unfortunately, as children have a tendency to do, they adjust to this new enormous school and think they are not eleven year old 6th graders, but "MIDDLE SCHOOLERS".

With being a "MIDDLE SCHOOLER" or MS, that means I have become stupid and everything (even hard boiled eggs) must be argued against.

Second Bit - Off on an Emotional Tangent

My son is learning about sex, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, global warming and the holocaust....but, isn't he just 11? Isn't he just a 6th grader?

As I am writing this, I am feeling that awful feeling of panic that comes when your children start to grow into a new phase. That feeling that you are actually letting them go down the slide by themselves, or walk to school alone.

This is my second child to experience this, I don't like it one bit! I want him to grow up and be a man, independent and safe. But today I really just want him to sit on my knee so I can read him a story.