The Third Day Naturals winner! (and can you handle more randomness?)
I really enjoyed reading all of your comments about your moms in the Third Day Naturals giveaway. So inspiring to me!
The winner of the Third Day Naturals giveaway is Jill. Congrats, Jill! You've been emailed.
(Jill's favorite thing about her mom is that she doesn't wait to be asked for help-she offers things like babysitting and such without being asked. I'm gonna try to be like Jill's mom when my kids are grown up!)
Don't forget that Third Day Naturals has a 10% off sale going now through Mother's Day, so if you're wanting to buy some of their products as a gift (or for yourself!), now's a great time.
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Remember how I became a dance mom this past fall? Well, we're in the midst of rehearsals for Sonia and Zoe's first ballet recital.
This is a whole new world to me, as my childhood thing was music (and piano recitals don't involve costumes and hair and makeup!)
They're having fun (Zoe especially, I think!), and they look pretty cute up on the stage.
(If I do say so myself.)
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I got a subscription to the magazine version of Cook's Illustrated for my birthday!
I'm super excited about this.
I already subscribe to the web version (which includes the magazine recipes) but somehow, flipping through the magazine is a little less overwhelming, and I think this will help inspire me to try some new recipes.
(I do still find the web subscription to be super helpful! I love it for looking up equipment reviews or looking for a specific recipe. I just have a hard time poking through the archived recipes for new meal ideas. I do that better with a paper magazine or book in hand.)
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I have SO MANY THINGS on my calendar in May. My introverted homebody self is feeling a little overwhelmed.
(I'm not the type to be energized by a full calendar!)
I'm trying to remind myself that June promises to be calmer.
Also helpful: school is winding down a bit. As of today, 2/4 of my kids are done with their math curriculum for the year, so, yay!
And subjects like grammar and vocabulary are pretty much finished too.
Is May crazy for you too? Normally we don't end up being unusually busy, but lots of things just showed up on our May calendar this year.
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P.S. I'll be back at noon EST today to share a post which contains, among other things, a picture of my kitchen in its original right-when-we-bought-this-house glory.
(It may include roosters. And jade green linoleum.)
Spring has been bonkers for lots of people I know, including me. I've been trying to remember that every time I see people, especially customer service-type people, who are acting agitated and frustrated - it's not me, and this is not their best self, so just be nice and see if a smile doesn't help.
It's most frustrating, though, not being able to get all the things done because I NEED a lot of time to wind down from social and family obligations. Let's just say spring cleaning hasn't happened yet because I've been escaping in books and tv shows. I hope you have some extroverted people you can delegate tasks to in order to rejuvenate in the middle of all of the things.
I think you'll like the printed version of Cook's Illustrated! My favorite part is the scientific drawings on the back cover. I also found a new favorite soup recipe in one of the printed copies: carrot-ginger soup. Oh, wow, is it tasty! And not something I would have ever looked for online.
Yes, exactly...I think this will help me see some recipes I might not happen across otherwise, with only the web subscription.
Okay, here is a weird thing. And I hope it doesn't come off as snobby/annoying that I'm commenting about a silly thing like this... I seem to have made it my one-woman mission to educate the world on this topic. But noon EST stands for Eastern STANDARD Time, and most of the country is practicing Daylight Savings Time right now. Noon EST is the same time as 11:00 AM EDT. My assumption is that you are actually going to be back at noon EDT. You can avoid it entirely by just saying ET - people will generally assume the standard time or daylight time portion based on what the majority of the country is doing at the time (this gets even more confusing if you're in Arizona, for instance, which never uses daylight time - they are always on MST. That means they are matched up with Pacific Daylight Time in the spring/summer/fall and they're matched up with Mountain Standard Time in the winter. Anyway.... there's more than you ever wanted to know about time zones... sorry about that. 🙂
Oh, interesting. This is a post I'm writing in coordination with BlogHer and they said to publish it at 12 EST (by which I think they meant 12 on my clock right now, during Daylight Savings Time.)
I think most people probably just assume EST and ET are the same thing...I know that's what I usually do!
May is crazy for us as well. And I echo your thoughts on the whole 'introvert needs some hometime' thing. We are trying out dance classes starting in August with our 7 and 5 year old daughters. We'll see how that goes! And I love before/after pictures - looking forward to seeing that kitchen 🙂
Yes! Mayday! Mayday! That phrase accurately describes our month! Mother's day, 2 weddings on back to back days (to which we will be bring our 3 little boys, ages 4, 2 and brand new!) Followed by dog sitting, 2 brothers with birthdays (one of whom shares his birthday with our brother-in-law and future brother-in-law) one brother graduating from the Coast Guard Academy and inviting his girl friend to visit the family! And my husband is working every day, but one, this month!
Whoa. I think your month kinda tops mine!
AND though I'm super excited, and love social things, I am freaking out slightly because it's just the tip of the iceberg since this summer will be wedding preparations, bridal showers showers for a sister and sister-in-law, family visiting, etc! we will likely be attending 5 weddings this year, with 3 being for siblings! Exciting and insane!
Wow. That is a LOT of wedding-y stuff! On the upside, this couldn't be repeated all that often, right? It's not like this many people will get married every summer. Heh.
Exactly! There were six weddings 6 years ago, including my husband and I, and two of his siblings. However, we still will have 8 unmarried siblings between the two of us. ...so there is the potential to have another cluster of weddings! 😉
I'm not in love with e-books or e-magazines. They're convenient to have something to read if I'm stuck somewhere like on a plane or at the doctor's office, but I will always choose the printed version over the e-version, especially for recipes. I pick up food & cooking magazines from the library's donation pile and clip recipes while I'm on my recumbent bike and then sift through them to put my menus for the next few weeks together. I love it! What I don't love is then having to file the recipes that I do want to keep (I keep several binders, organized by main ingredient), so right now they're all in one big pile. I'll get to filing them one of these days.
May is super busy for us since 2 of our kids are in public school. Traditionally it's been when all the after-school clubs and sports have had their banquets/galas/balls, the 3rd grading period award ceremonies (ugh, do they HAVE to recognize students every quarter? Couldn't we just do this once a year?!), etc. This year my daughter has several AP exams, the PERT test, and a couple of competitions: right now we're actually in Tallahassee because she is competing in the National History Day state competition for group website. We'll find out tomorrow morning if she won her category. Next week she's competing at the state level for the Optimist Club (she has to present a speech). She also has several EOC exams and so does our son. The only months that were busier were the fall months when my daughter was on the volleyball team and our son was on the cross-country team because we had meets and games almost every day.
But in a month and 6 days we will be on a plane to France to spend a glorious month with my parents and siblings and we can't wait. So being busy in the meantime is a good way to make the time fly by 🙂
Your daughters look adorable. Is there anything better than to see your child participate in an activity that they love? I don't think so 🙂
May is ALWAYS crazy busy for us (and we don't even have kids!) I still love it, it's my favorite month, but I am feeling a little stressed out... I need to remind myself that it's okay to say no or miss out on some stuff, too 🙂
Too funny. My husband has the magazine subscription to Cook's Illustrated, but much prefers the website. We're planning to go website only, next time around. 🙂