Ok people, friendly Halloween-candy-handing-out people, I want to ask you a favour. Could you please stop giving my kids so much candy? Like seriously, one piece is enough. This whole, "Oh my goodness. Look at you! You're so cute. Here let me drop two big handfuls of junk food into your pillowcase.", stuff has to stop. Please just give my kids one piece of candy, one … [Read more...]
Secret Confession: I Have Beach Guilt
I've brought my kids on a family vacation to Florida twice now. Twice we've visited Orlando as a family. And I'm finding that I feel oddly guilty about it. See, when I was a kid we would visit Florida and stay with relatives. We'd fly down, or drive (24 hours straight, my dad was hardcore) to Bradenton, or Sarasota, stay for a week or two and head home. We chilled. A lot. We … [Read more...]
Mom Guilt and the Magic of Childhood — Little is Enough
With Summer Break just starting I've been thinking back on how much I hated March Break this year. For about six years now, ever since my eldest first started school, I've watched on social media as other parents complained about summer break (or March break, or Christmas break, or whatever), saying how it drove them bats to have their kids home for x many days... but I just … [Read more...]
What do you do with pie scraps? You make a Sugar Dog!
When I was a kid my mom used to make these homemade tourtieres each year around Christmas. My favourite part of the whole process was waiting around to see how much leftover pie dough there would be. I'd be hoping my mom would make us kids a "sugar dog" or two. I always worried she would forget. Or that she would somehow use up every last bit of dough in making her meat … [Read more...]
TV, Then and Now — or Why The Death of the Saturday Morning Cartoon Might Actually Be a Good Thing…
So, this is the new big thing at our house -- pillow forts and Netflix on the Dell 2in1. Or more accurately pillow nests, where the kids strew as many pillows and cushions as they can find in a circle around themselves and snuggle down in their PJs, all lanky limbs and cuddles, in the big kids bed, or in a pile on the bedroom floor. They beg for this, as if it were the biggest … [Read more...]
Hot Wheels, Second Generation Crush
I remember loving Hot Wheels as a kid. In particular I remember this one car which I took with me everywhere, a shiny green Volkswagen Beetle. I loved that little car. It slept on my bed next to my pillow, and it travelled with me in the pocket of my jeans. It went missing one day. I got home from a long day of adventuring and realized my beloved Bug wasn't with me. I remember … [Read more...]
You Never Forget Your First Love
My kid sister with our T1-99/4A. While our Texas Instruments computer was technically not a toy, I spent so many hours of my childhood playing around on this thing that I think it qualifies for my Retro Toybox theme. It took cartridges, like Nintendo style cartridges, that held games such as Alpiner (climb the mountain while dodging snakes, cougars, giant egg laying … [Read more...]
Vintage Christmas
My little brother and I, playing with our Christmas toys (circa 1979). … [Read more...]
How the Hell Do you Cope with Bullying in Our Cyber Age?
I'll start this by saying, I have no answers. As a mom, when I think about the incidents of bullying that have been in the media lately I have that worried sick in the pit of my stomach feeling. How could this have been prevented? How can I protect my own daughters from having the same thing happen to them? I think about about Rehtaeh Parsons and I cry. I bawl. But the truth … [Read more...]
The Floor Is Lava!
Not a quote, as I usually go with for Monday Mutterings, but true none the less. I so remember doing this as a kid, and I now find my own girls playing the lava game. Having never shown it to them I have to wonder, where do kids come up with this stuff? How the heck did my brother and I come up with the game, way back when? Is pretending the floor is made of lava genetically … [Read more...]
Sandbox Play, 1970s vs Modern
THEN My mother in-law noticed my latest giveaway, the one for the fantastic $270 sandbox, and she emailed me this awesome photo of my husband at 16 months old playing in his sandbox 1970s style. As she put it, "The canopy on his didn't lower but it did provide shade and the play value was the same...years of imaginative fun." NOW … [Read more...]
Halloween is Timeless…
My mother-in-law just emailed me a bunch of pictures from Halloween's of the past. Photos of my husband dressed up to head out trick-or-treating, back in the 1980s. I wanted to share them because I thought they were cute, but what really struck me while looking at these photos is, they could really have been taken from anytime from 1960 through … [Read more...]
Thirty Some Years of Little Red Riding Hood
When I was 4 years old we went to visit relatives in Florida and my Great Aunt Eve gifted me with an antique child's manikin named Heidi. Heidi came dressed in a little red fur trimmed cape with matching skirt. I have no clue exactly how old she is, but I was told she was "an antique" when I was given her over thirty years ago. That year for Halloween I … [Read more...]
My Childhood Memories From When I was Eight…
My first experiences with loss... When I was in grade three we gave away Tina, the cat which I had won in a potato sack race when I was three. I had developed allergies, and was allergic to cat dander. Tina hadn't adjusted well to life in the city. She never seemed happy after we moved and had taken to shredding her claws on windowsills and furniture. My parents spent some … [Read more...]
A Blast from Halloween Past…
As part of my journey to capture my childhood, I recently wrote a bit about some of the Halloween costumes my mom made me over the years. With Halloween being tomorrow I thought I'd share this awesome photo my mom dug up of me and my siblings. That's me as (the ill-fated) Fairy Princess, my brother as Wee Willy Winkie and my sister as Little Red Riding Hood, Halloween Eve … [Read more...]