So excited for Christmas!

 

Click Photo for Animation!

Paint!!

I had stumbled onto a photo/recipe from Easie Peasie on how to make finger paints for kids.
Let me tell you... SO EASY, and fun, and quick, and I'm so excited to give these paints to my daughter, nieces and nephew for christmas this year. I'm giving them all a set of brushes, so the paints don't have to be used as finger paints!
So excited! Hah.
Thanks to you Tiffany!

I thought I'd take some photos of my process and share it with you.

This is the recipe:
3 tsp. Sugar
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/2 cup Corn Starch
2 cups of warm water

You combine the ingredients in a saucepan (I combined the dry ingredients and mixed first), warm until mixture thickens, pull off of heat, and let cool (doesn't take long!) and then add food colouring.
I found that my gel food colouring worked so much better than the liquid. I had to use a lot more of the liquid, and it wasn't nearly as vibrant as the gel.

Here are the pictures of my fun!

Water (ooo! exciting):

Dry Mixture:

Mixing together over heat:

 

Cooled, right before I add the colour:

Pink: 

Blue (The first wasn't dark enough for my liking, so then I added some purple to darken it):

Red:

Green:

Yellow:

For some reason I didn't get pictures of the red, green, and purple mixed up in my pyrex dish - sorry!

This is my finished product!

The colours aren't as true to life in the pyrex dish as they are in the canning jars.

Too Grown Up for My Liking.

I promise- I'm not that kind of weirdo!

You know what??

I wish my beautiful daughter would let me take her photo. Every now and again, she's generous and lets me snap three or four, and then she gets tired of my lens in her way, and puts her hand up to obscure her face, or she pulls the most ridiculous faces (which can make for excellent photos, don't get me wrong).

She's who I take my photos of, and I'm not getting to take as many as I would like. Bummer. Every now and again, and never often enough, we have family gatherings with the grandparents and my beautiful sister in law's family, and I'm lucky enough to take their photos as well.

My point is - I don't get to use my camera enough. I'm still learning, and I'm no where near a pro, but I'd LOVE to branch out. I just have no idea how.

I think I have a better eye when taking pictures of the kids, because they just have fun. Adults are very conscious of how they want to look in that photo and pose. So the moments captured aren't nearly as genuine.

I was trying to figure out how I would go about being able to photograph others who are not my family.

But what am I supposed to do? Post an ad? "HEY!! I am NOT a professional photographer, but I'd LOVE to take photos of your kids!"

What's that? "Oh, Hi Chris Hansen..."

Anyway- If you have any tips, please share.

Annoyd.

Reminicence.

I was uploading pictures to get printed so I can decorate my home with some of my photos, and I came across a video of Adriana when she was about three, and a-freakin-dorable. So I thought I'd share.

The most beautiful person I know.

 

 

Fire!!

On July 18th, I looked out of my window and saw one of the most beautiful/interesting sunsets I've seen in a while.
I thought the sky looked like it was on fire, so I grabbed my brand new camera and ran outside to get some shots in.

Funny Things Kids Say

So my daughter is fricken hilarious. I wish I wrote down all of the funny things she says all of the time, but I rarely do. BUT she was just pretty funny, so I thought I'd share.

We had a family hug and Jeff exclaimed being silly "family sandwich!"
So afterwards Adriana looked at me and said "Mom! You and Jeff are the bread, and I'm the mayo and meat!!"

It is far too early for me to be up on a sunday morning.

Boo. Hiss.

I will start out by saying that I'm not religious, at all. But, I want my daughter to find her own path in life, even if religion is part of that for her. If she wants to go to church and her grandparents are able to take her, then by all means.
I want her to learn through experience, and make knowledgeable decisions, and I hope by going to church, or not going to church and talking with people of differing opinions that she will find what's right for her as she gets older.
I of course try to guide her in making the best choices so far in her life (be polite, courteous, be good, etc.) but for the sake of just being a good and decent person. There is no talk of "you need to do such-and-such, or you'll go to hell". I disagree with that sort of parenting and teaching. I think it's wrong to teach a child to live in fear.
I have to say, I have an amazing little kid. She's all of the things I've hoped she'd be. She's bright, caring, sensitive, funny, a little weird, but purely awesome.

So, that turned into something I wasn't expecting at all, hah. I just wanted to whine a little about having to be up to early.

'Til next time!!

Learning to Read.

This year, my daughter is in grade one, and is learning how to read. As a book enthusiast, I am so so so so sooooooooooooooo excited!
Just last summer, I would try and get her to sound out words, because I know that she has known her letter sounds for a long time. She would get anxious, and forget a lot of what she had previously learned and would give me the "but Mom!! I don't know how to read yet!" and would get frustrated, and give up.

The past seven months or so, she has completely turned it around. I mean, this kid is a genius in my eyes. She still has smaller struggles, but she's reading everything! I can`t spell things out in front of her anymore, because even if she doesn't get the whole word, she can piece it together on her own. She is starting to write her own stories, and though there are lots of misspelled words, most are spelled semi-phonetically.

I have been beaming about her journey and her progress for months, and I just cannot get over how fast she absorbs these things that just a short time ago seemed impossible to her.

Being a parent truly is the best job in the world. I know that sounds sappy and cliche, but it's true. It's hard as hell sometimes, but it's just so rewarding. I'd never give it up.

'Til next time!!

Touchy Subjects...ish.

 I've been meaning to make this post for a couple days now, but I've had a very long week, so I've been putting it off but today is my friday, and I decided it was about damn time I update this thing!

Just to begin, I just bought new nail polish last night, and I looooove it. It's Coconut Crush by Revlon, and it's this very pretty pearl colour and it's SCENTED!! I'm still a little girl at heart, and I love that it has a faint coco-nutty scent. To be fair, I purchased it because I love the colour, but I do think the scented nail polishes are a neat gimmick:)

Anyway!

For some reason, this topic has come up in my life a few times in the last couple days, so I figured I'd write about it.

*Deep breath* Circumcision.
I have absolutely zero qualms with any parents who choose to have their son circumcised. If you believe that is the right choice for your family, then who the hell am I to say a word about your choice?
I just wanted to get that out of the way first.

If I were to ever have another child, and it happened, to be a boy, I would not have him circumcised.
These are my reasons:
- It's an unnecessary surgery, that is mostly cosmetic, save for religious reasons, which I absolutely do not have.
- With the very little I've researched, I've seen a doctor demonstrate how a circumcision is done, with the tools they use, and a doll. They strap the baby down on a little table thing, where I assume they do so in case the baby moved and made the doctor injure him, and use this strange clamp that looked like a mini stainless steel sewing machine to pinch the baby's foreskin so tight that the doctor could cut it off without having to anesthetize, instead they use a numbing agent and also to prevent a lot of bleeding.
I just can't imagine wanting to put someone I love through that.
Here's the "torture table" (what I call the restraint table when I'm discussing this with my boyfriend and I'm being dramatic and teasing him)

And this is the clamp I mentioned:

-It hurts the baby! I've heard the argument a number of times that he won't remember the pain, but it still hurts them in that moment, and in the healing afterwards.
- The foreskin is there for a reason! It is a protective piece of flesh.
- It was free however many years ago in Canada, but it now costs somewhere between $150 and $200.
- I've learned that an uncircumcised baby is not hard to clean, and that the foreskin should not be retracted until it is easily able to do so, otherwise you can injure him. So the "it's cleaner to have a cut penis" is complete bullshit. If parents are properly educated, there should be no issue with cleanliness.
- Speaking of education, if we educate out children to understand that we are all different and unique, then the argument about wanting your son's dick to look like his father's/brother's falls completely.

Anyway, this is completely just my opinion, and I'd love to hear yours as well!
Please be respectful, as I tried to be.

'Til next time!

I knew it was coming...

This post may be on the sad side. If you are here to read something uplifting and happy, it certainly isn't the day for that. Fair warning.

My brother and sister both passed away almost 14 years ago. They were 7 and 9. I was 13, and it was the summer before I started high school. I miss them both very much, and there are three dates will be forever burned into my memory.

Each of their birth dates and the day they died.

Until early this afternoon, I had forgotten all together that today would have been my sister's 23rd birthday. Which is absurd to me. She was basically still a baby when she died, so it just pains me to think that if the accident didn't happen, then she'd be a grown up, possibly with a family, and would know my family.

It's hard on days like today not to think about what might have been. I have been given great advice from a lot of different people, and the one thing that tends to come up most often is to not worry about what the future might have held for them. That it would just make me crazy.

If anyone who is reading this right now has ever given me that particular piece of advice - you were right.

Anyway, I just wanted to write this post to recognize my sister's life. She was a wonderful child, who looked up to me (who would've thought??). We fought, as sisters do, but then sometimes she'd ask me to lay with her, and sing Silent Night, even though I can't hold a tune worth a damn. She was happy, goofy, and loving and kind.

I miss my little sister, and I wish she were here more than anything right now.


'Til next time, I promise I will be happier then.

Introductions!!

Alright... If you're reading this, you likely know who I am, but I'll give you a quick refresher course, just in case!

My name is Terra, I'm a twenty-something mom to an amazing little girl, and in a wonderful relationship with an even more wonderful man. I am from the east coast of Canada, a small town in Nova Scotia to be specific. I've lived in a small handful of places across the country, but mostly when I was itty bitty. As an adult, I've lived in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and now I'm in British Columbia.

With this blog, I want to write about some of my experiences with being a mom, or at least those that I remember. "Mommy Brain" is a real thing, you know! Hopefully I'll have some tips (and get some in return!), give reviews, show you some of my recipes, and share some of my life with you!

I'm very excited for this journey, and I hope we can share a lot together.

'Til next time!