Warning: Objects on Pinterest are Cuter Than They'll Appear

I'm frantically signing school planners and packing lunches in the morning.

Soccer games are scattered across my calendar.

The entrance to Hobby Lobby is adorned with fake pumpkins and scarecrows.

All signaling my favorite season is fast approaching.

F-A-L-L!

Another sign Fall is near is that the Pinterest boards I follow are blowing up with pumpkin recipes (Mary B!) which have caused me to gain a few pounds as I drool over the pictures.  Oh, and don't forget the super cute Fall crafts.

Part of me wants to pin my own fun recipes and drop everything to make wreaths out of burlap and, well, anything orange.

But, alas, nothing I attempt...I repeat, nothing, winds up looking even remotely similar to the way it looks on those dazzling boards.  Ok, one Christmas canvas I made turned out.  And I try to incorporate it into my decorations as long as possible.  Long about mid- February David will look at it, sigh, and say, "O Holy Night? Really? Still?"

I hesitate to jump on the Fall crafting bandwagon because I can't help remembering back to this past Spring.  Unlike my friends who are already posting stuff months ahead in preparation for upcoming holidays {if you're already posting Christmas or Valentine's Day crafts, I may be unfollowing you posthaste} I was frantically perusing Pinterest boards a few days before Easter to step up my game a bit this year.

Pinterest should really come with disclaimers or something.

Like, seriously.

Even though I know my replicas probably will come up lacking, it would still be nice to have some kind of warning about all the things that could possibly go wrong. 

Take these adorable last minute centerpieces:

I like to be as thrifty as possible when it comes to craft-making. So I was probably more excited than the average dollar store customer when I found these vases and festive speckled jellybeans for...yep...$1 each! I picked up my favorite Spring scented candles at Wal-mart for a few bucks and was feeling pretty good about life. 

This is where a Pinterest warning would have come in handy. Something along the lines of: Beware of using real candy in any type of craft. Children and husbands will find a way to get to it and eat it.

Ahem.

The unmistakable *clink* *clink* of the candles against the glass signaled me multiple times someone was sneaking a jelly bean...or six.

Heck, soon they quit even trying to be sneaky about it.  David and I were having a conversation in the dining room one day and, before I knew what was happening, he pulled out the candle altogether, reached in, and helped himself to a few pieces of my crafty creation. 

"What do you think you're doing?" I asked in disbelief.

"What?" he said, with a mouthful of sugary goodness, "Getting some jellybeans."

My other super cute Easter idea from this false advertising website was a glow in the dark egg hunt.

How. Incredibly. Fun.

It called for mini glow sticks, but my super successful dollar store outing yielded glow bracelets. I was sure I could make them work. Oh, and I grabbed some more eggs while I was at it. 

The warning that would have been helpful here might have said: Be sure and don personal protective equipment before attempting this project.  

A few nights before Easter, I put my plan into action. I told David to keep the kids occupied while I prepared the eggs and secretly hid them in the backyard. I'm pretty sure by "keep them occupied" he heard "turn on the TV so they'll be oblivious to their surroundings."

I snuck out to the driveway where all the loot was stashed in the trunk of my van. I sat cris-cross on the cement and began the assembly process. Turns out, the eggs I bought were a tad too small. And the bracelets were a tad too big. 

Story. Of. My. Life.

But I was bound and determined to make it work. The bracelets were bendable. Surely if I bent them just so, and quickly closed the eggs, they would....nope. Wasn't working.

I should insert here that I may be one of the least patient people on the face of the Earth when it comes to stuff like this. I just wanted to be done already. I could almost hear the joyful laughter as the kids skipped around the backyard gleefully finding glowing eggs.  

Yet there I was stuffing in glow bracelets, quickly snapping eggs shut, only to have them pop right back open and the bracelets come flying out. 

That's when I got the idea to cut the bracelets in half. They would fit in the egg and the glow juice would be distributed throughout the inside casting an even brighter glow.

I cut the first bracelet and placed it in an egg. The glow juice spilled all over my clothes and the driveway. But the half bracelet nestled snugly inside the egg. This worked perfectly a few more times.

Until the one time it didn't. Half a bracelet sprang out of the egg I was holding and the glow juice squirted in my eye. It burned like a thousand suns leaking into my cornea.

How dedicated am I that I tried to blink it out through my tears and continue on?! (You're no doubt inserting a different word in place of "dedicated" at this point). When I couldn't take it any longer, and feared I would go blind and not even get to see the kids enjoying the egg hunt, I bolted inside and flushed my crimson colored eye out in the kitchen sink.

I finished up and looked at my little bowl of glowing eggs.  There were twelve.  I had only gotten twelve eggs.  If you're quick at math, you'll realize that was only four eggs per child!  What was I even thinking?  I hid them quickly, which was no easy task considering it was nightfall and I could only see clearly out of one eye.

I grabbed my camera and tried to video their reactions when I told them they were about to embark on one of the coolest adventures of their lifetime.  Somehow I didn't press record, so there is no footage.  Which is probably for the best, because they all just looked at me quizzically, wondering why I was blocking their view of the TV.  "Right now?  We're going outside right now?", they asked, not in an excited tone, but rather in a we're pretty comfy right where we are, do we really have to move? tone.

Tate was the most excited, bless his little heart.  As they scattered into the far corners of the backyard, I yelled, "Only get four eggs!"

"Four?!" they repeated, sure they hadn't heard me correctly.

Of course, they found their allotted amount in about 3 minutes flat.  In between complaints of the grass freezing their bare feet and me hollering out, "Do NOT open the eggs!  They will leak poison onto your skin!"

I'm pretty sure I forced Tate to smile for this picture.  My one tangible visual memory of our first, and last, annual glow in the dark hunt.  I probably said, "Hold up your eggs and smile, doggone it."

I rallied back from my Easter flops to try my hand at crafting teacher gifts that were supposed to be beautiful bouquets of dry erase markers. Don't even get me started.  They all fell apart on the walk to school.  I can't make this stuff up.  The petals kept flying off down the street and the pens were falling out of the little pots and rolling down the sidewalk.  

I'm sure I will work up the nerve to, once again, create seasonal items of happiness for my little family.  It will probably take place the night before Halloween when I decide to line my driveway with ghosts made out of gallon milk jugs.  I'll be the crazy lady at Aldi buying a cart-ful of milk, then transferring it to buckets around the house all for the sake of creativity. 

Out of the Blue

I wasn't going to write a sappy back to school post.

I really wasn't.

Ok, I was.  I had one all started in my head, and then decided against it. 

Because it basically covered the same stuff I say every year.  And what every parent already knows: This stage in life is going by way more quickly than I ever dreamed.

When I woke Tate up the first day of school, I said something along the lines of, "Third grade, here we come!".  He rubbed his sleepy eyes, shook his head and said, "I still can't figure out how 2nd grade went so fast."

When friends or family who haven't seen the kids in awhile exclaim, "Oh my goodness!  They're getting so big!", I smile and agree, "I know! Crazy, isn't it?"

Even though I'm really thinking, "They don't look much different to me."

I see my kids everyday.  I only know they're growing because I have a garage FULL of clothes I'm trying to get ready to sell.

And when they hug me and I bend down to kiss the top of their heads, I really don't have far to go.  Their little heads are getting closer and closer to mine all the time.

This post wasn't sparked by the new school year per se.  Or by any other milestone signifying to the world that time marches on and my babies are growing up.  It was sparked by those little everyday moments that hit me out of the blue.

Like when Tate laughed at something the other day. I just stared at his front teeth that had finally grown in and filled the gap made last Spring.  Those little teeth that kept us up many a night breaking through are long gone. And have been replaced with the teeth that will make up the smile he'll flash to win over his future wife someday.

Or when the shoe salesman measured Drue's foot last week and declared she was now a size 7.  I wanted to crumple to the floor clutching her little baby footprint from the hospital. But I didn't happen to have it with me at the moment.  Plus, he would have thought I was strange. 

Last night was also one of those out of the blue moments.  We weren't doing anything spectacular.  It wasn't a special occasion.  I was taking Drue to soccer practice and at the last minute Reese said she was coming with us.

When we got to the field Reese hopped out of the van as I fumbled with the chairs in the trunk.  When I looked up my breath caught for a split second. Who is this preteen emerging from the front seat of my car? 

She looked familiar. Like a little girl I used to know.  A barefoot girl in tiny pigtails and a cozy purple sweatsuit, holding tight to her "ju-ju" (juice).  They have the same sparkle in their blue eyes. 

Only instead of having to chase this little girl around the soccer field making sure she didn't run too close to the parking lot or eat fistfuls of grass, we were able to just sit next to each other chatting about middle school, new friends she was making, and how she might be able to help her sister with soccer.  

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go dig through the boxes in the garage for that little purple sweatsuit.  No way am I selling that little memory maker.