Best Children, Best Costumes, Best Halloween, Best

Another Halloween come and gone. From the bloggers here, we want to wish you a happy one.

Alex Nguyen and her sons "the Stein brothers." (Frankenstein and Einstein).

Teaching Ain't for Heroes' Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.

Today I Nursed -- the Captain, and his friend, as Superman and Batman.

Pollychromatic's adorable Wonderwoman and Captain America.

Jill Redding's Doc McStuffin's.

Fine and Fair's Ladybug and Banana (she's the monkey).

Elizabeth Hawksworth, tin-foil-hatting it. 

Putting the twin in Parentwin, tbh.

Aias.ca got a great stash!

It was A Day Well Spent, over here.

A Place That Does not Exist produced a raver this Halloween!

The Answer Is Garlic, or is it Yoda?

 Inside the Mommy Van gets outside!

And Accidentally Mommy takes out a witch and Spiderman!

The Never Ending Laundry chimes in from New Zealand!

And Melanie Greeke's girls go as Princess Bubblegum and Jake from Adventure Time! Cutest.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE.

 

That's a Wrap

Welcome to the July edition of the Simply Living Blog Carnival - Celebrations cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. This month, we write about keeping things simple with our kids. Please check out the links to posts by our other participants at the end of this post.

******

It was nearly midnight. I should have been wrapping long ago, but instead I chose to fritter away my time on the Internet, roaming the endless wastelands of Facebook and parenting forums. In my bedroom, a pile of wrapping paper, tissue paper, boxes, bags, tape and scissors awaited me.

God, I hate wrapping.

And every time, it goes like this: I give myself a little pep talk. "You're going to do it so well, this time," I say. "You're going to take your time, cut straight lines, fold with care and precision, and tape gently, like the delicate wrapping guru you are."

And I go in, and I start. And within my first three closures of those scissors, my wrapping paper begins to look like a five year olds rendition of a lightning bolt.

And I give up. I just can't. I mean, who can with this?

Okay, I don't really give up, and I don't make it easy on myself either. I mean, those hula-hoops weren't going to wrap themselves.

Have you ever tried to wrap a hula-hoop, by the way?

Don't.

Stick a bow on it and call it a day, seriously. (Although, I will say, seeing huge, oddly shaped presents was the highlight of my kids' morning.)

Okay, so after a rousing round with the hoops, I choose something square. Easy, I think. Piece of cake. But I don't want to use too much wrapping paper. Turns out the "value pack" at K-Mart actually means three rolls of wrapping paper with a foot of paper each. Definitely not hula-worthy.

But, alas, what always happens when you try to scrimp on paper? You're sure you measured it perfectly.

No. No, you did not.

So, you flip it. Try it the other way. You try the old 'diagonal trashy' look. Still not enough. Just put that crack on the bottom, and move on. Your kids aren't even going to see it, I promise.

Well, you know better for the next time, don't you. You definitely won't use too little wrapping paper.

Of course not. You'll use too much. Hello, cursed wrapping bump. Oh how I've missed you since Christmas.

Here's another pro-tip about wrapping: Don't do it on a bed. And if you do  do it on a bed, for goodness sake, do not try to pull the present to a better position by the wrapping paper. Especially if it's Play-Doh and it weighs 40 pounds.

Yeah, I ripped it. Yeah, I still used the paper (taped it together like the class act I am. I'm using "value pack" paper, remember? And I am almost out! I cannot waste!)

Seriously, I was gentle as hell with this wrapping (after ripping it, of course), and I still got the bump. How much tape must one use, wrapping gods? How much? This is Simply Living.  Get with the program, yo.

Dear presents,
Fuck you.
No love,
Darlena

 At least I got to steal pinata candy, right?

Do you know what this is? I called it "morning birthday crowns" and my daughters loved the idea. You know what it really is? This is "there's no effing way I'm wrapping a crown that cost me a dollar. No. Effing. Way." Happy breakfast, princesses.

This is another one of my favorites. I call this one "Yeah, that present is way to freaking big for that bag. I'm not wrapping any more. Bite me." Also, I actually did run out of paper, and yes, I only had one sheet of tissue paper.

They call me Miss Prepared.

Looks great, don't it?

Well, actually, now that you mention it, at 2 a.m. that morning, it kind of did. That's not so bad for a few hours of stress, strife and fail!

Take heart, fellow fail wrappers. Your kids don't really care what it looks like, so long as they can tear the wrapping off at some point.

*****

Thank you for visiting the Simply Living Blog Carnival cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. Read about how others are incorporating simple living and parenthood. We hope you will join us next month when we discuss Money Matters!  

• Parties - sustainablemum explains how and why she keeps her birthday celebrations for her eldest a simple affair at his behest.
• Simple Birthday Celebrations - Birthdays are kept simple at Living Peacefully with Children. Mandy shares how her family celebrates birthdays without the stress and expense.
• Countdown to a Simple Christmas - Start now to prepare your house and home for the holidays. Steps to take each month to enjoy a much simpler approach to Christmas.
• Simply Celebrate - Jorje has tried celebrating kid birthdays BIG and small... which one do you think was more simple? less stressful?
• That's a Wrap - At Parentwin, Darlena describes her experiences with wrapping gifts and how she has changed her ideals when it comes to gift giving.
• Simple Celebrations - Laura at Authentic parenting shares how her family keeps celebrations simple.

 

I Think I'm Pretty

You know that Dove Campaign that everyone loved for a hot second before everyone hated it?

This one, where the artist sketches a portrait of a woman based on her own description of herself, and then sketches another portrait based on how someone else describes her? And the self-portraits are inevitably harsher than the others? The point being that, hey! You're more beautiful than you think!


It's a great little promo...with a lot of problems.

Mainly, as Anne Theriault at The Belle Jar points out, Dove Does Not Give a Shit About Whether or Not You Feel Beautiful. In this corporate age, you always have to look one rung up. And that rung, above Dove? Is Unilever.

Pollychromatic points out this bit, at the end of the video: “'It impacts the choices in the friends that we make, the jobs we apply for, how we treat our children. It impacts everything. It couldn’t be more critical to your happiness.'”

Your beauty. Remember, that’s what this Dove ad campaign is talking about here. Your beauty."

Writer Elizabeth Hawksworth says she doesn't want to be beautiful. She wants women to be brave instead.

Then Cassandra over at Smibbo said everything I wanted to say. That we're missing the point. And she's right, imo.

And before you read about my flailings and failings, if you want real positivity in imagery and real acceptance in life, head over here. ...

Your self-image of your beauty, according to Dove, impacts your whole life. Therefore, we should all learn to love ourselves, and we can start by knowing that other people find us pretty, even if we don't think we're pretty ourselves.

When the video went around my feed, I shared it because I saw how much better it was making women feel about themselves, and that's a good thing.

But as my friend, Leona, said: "'There is no room in Doveland for women who know they’re hot.' (Source Feministing) Welp. I'm out then."

Me, too.

Because what Dove has done by attempting to tell all women they are prettier than they think they are is reinforcing the idea that our self-image is wrong. No matter what we do, we're wrong about ourselves. Again, people telling us what to think, for good or for bad. Let me go ahead and hit this on the head instead of beating around the bush.

I think I'm pretty.

Here's the thing, though, and I don't know what to make of it myself. If this is coming across as disjointed and weird, it's because of how unbearably uncomfortable I am even writing it. It goes against...things. It makes my chest tighten up. You aren't supposed to say it.

My friend just said it best: "You're dancing around a bit because you have negative feelings about your admissions because society has trained us all to avoid the topic of our own beauty. Believe me I know how 

you feel. It's awkward at best, feels dangerous at worst."

And that's exactly it. So, bear with me.

I never wear make up, I hardly ever match, I make weird faces. I just think I'm pretty anyway. In all of these pictures, for instance, I think I'm pretty.

I'm not "allowed" to think I'm pretty. I mean, sure, okay. I'm allowed to think that. And you, or whoever else, are then allowed to think I'm a pompous, self-important, full-of-herself asshat. In real life, should I ever receive compliments on my looks, I immediately say, "Lucky genes." I don't want to own it. I don't want people to think I think I'm better than them or that I think I have any control over what I look like. I make as small a deal of it as possible. Because wahhh, being pretty is so hard and people hate pretty people. Right? You know people are going to read those last few lines and think that's what I'm saying.

Honestly, I didn't even want to type this out because I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.

Point being, no matter how you think you look, it's ingrained in you to believe what other people think is more important. And it's burdensome either way.

This is the problem. This surety that other people's points of view are more important than our own.

I was having a discussion about this with a friend of mine about this. "I'd write about it," she said, "but I'm too unique-looking." At the same time, I was typing, "I'd write about it, but I'm too cookie-cutter."

In both cases, we assumed our feelings were invalid. Because of who we are.

And that's kind of what Dove is saying. What you think is invalid. Look at how wrong your image is when placed against other people's thoughts about you. Maybe you should think like them.

Meaning the solution they are providing is a bandaid. It's a way to work within the set parameters women have been given as boundaries for how they're allowed to feel about how they look.

What we really need to do is forward that message, push it further. Break down the conventions of beauty. Understand that because someone's genes gave them a look that's more conducive to praise in our modern society, it still means nothing. Understand that the only way to put everyone on equal footing is to thoroughly reject that image of beauty. Understand that how we feel about ourselves is valid and is a result of several societal factors working for and against us. Understand how we are a piece of this puzzle, not to better fit in (as some ads would have you do, like Ideal Image Laser Hair Removal, for instance), and not to see how other people do think we fit and therefore begin to believe we should think that too (like this Dove commercial), but to make a new puzzle. To make it out of Playdoh. So that it can move and shift and grow as we do, as individuals.

In the end, it comes down to caring about what people think. And on that note, I'm bracing myself for the barrage of comments telling me that 1) I'm not pretty. 2) I'm an asshole for even trying to talk about it. Because that's what I've been raised to believe happens. I've been raised to believe I do not have the right to talk about this. Because I think I'm pretty.

But I tried anyway. Because I'm confident.

And that's where we need to be. Confident. Have belief in yourself, regardless of all else.

 

Happy Earth Day

Earth Day was always a big deal to me growing up. I would grab my brother and sister and trot down our seldom-used road and pick up any bits of trash we saw on the way. It was fun and frivolous at the time, but it was enough so that I started to become conscious about the world around me, and to this day, when I do something green or something that would favor Earth over my convenience, I'm reminded of those Earth Days of years' past.

But picking up garbage is just one of the tiny and multiple ways you can get the message across to your kids.

Joella over at Fine and Fair has easy ways to live a greener life without it being a battle! Check them out, and while you are over there, make note that her post is actually a blog carnival in itself and there are tons more green goodie posts at the bottom!

(And if you want to start submitting, check out her monthly carnival.)


Meanwhile, Alex at Alex Nguyen's Portraits has a stunning craft making bracelets out of bicycle tires. I know, when I say it, it doesn't sound cool. But check this out:

Way cooler now, right?


And a lot of us feel pressured to go hard or go home when it comes to going green. Jackie over at Accidentally Mommy realizes that's just not possible for all of us. Even the small steps we take are appreciated and should be recognized.


 

This Feminist's Box

Look, feminism is a squidgy topic these days. Now that we can vote and own property and work and stuff, what's the problem, amirite? Do we really need to keep "making people aware" of the stereotypes perpetuated and marginalization of women in modern society? Doesn't everyone already know? And if they do know, doesn't that make it individual choice? And if women are choosing to live in certain ways and enjoy certain things, isn't that what the main push of first and second wave feminism was about anyway? Haven't we won?

Yes and no.

I mean, we really do have a bigger box, and it is a lot cozier in here now that we've been allowed to decorate (see what I did there?), and it would be kind of nice to just stretch out in here and bask in how far we've come. We deserve a break from all this struggling and fighting, and gosh darn it, we just aren't even likable anymore. Why isn't anyone ever grateful?

Because how far we've come isn't far enough. Because not only are things still incredibly weighted toward men (white men in particular), but the general population believes that they are not. Which, really, makes the problem worse than it was before because you cannot fight a problem people who should be on your side (I mean, all people really, but it's worse when you're like, but, guys, come on! This is you we're talking about / fighting for here!) refuse to acknowledge exists.

And just to clear some things up, it's not about wanting things made easier for us. It's about wanting the structural set in our society made equal. We don't want special programs and rights and passages and treatment. We don't want an equal ending point, meaning, we don't expect that being a woman should make it easier for us to succeed as we go through like. We want an equal starting point. Meaning we'd simply like not to have to claw and fight and spend years just getting to the point where men are born. That is what privilege is. It's not a bad thing, you needn't feel personally bad about it if you were born into it. But is is what it is, and we're not trying to drag anyone down so much as we're trying to climb up the patriarchy. Don't be scared, seriously. Us gaining equality does not diminish your life, I promise.

Anyway,  I could write pages on this and bore you to tears, so instead, I'm just going to point out a few specific ways in which women do not start (or end, but remember, the important piece here is start) on the same footing as men. As a group. Not talking individuals. But as a sector of society. In these ways, women are not equal to men, do not have the same opportunities as men, must work harder than men to achieve recognition or rights. Here we go, then.

Here is my feminist's box (get it?). I'm just going to go through each wall of it point by point. In this world and society where "feminism has basically already won guys, come on" we still deal with:

- Unequal pay: Women get paid 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. The equal pay legislation was shot down by our government this year. Awesome. Thanks, guys.

- Corporate absence: Women only account for 12 CEO positions in the Fortune 500 companies. Women make up 2.6 percent of corporal officers in these companies.

- Violence: one in three women will experience some form of violence, including rape and assault, and women are 10 times more likely to be victimized by intimate partners than men.

- Grooming requirements: Hair, makeup and style are considered mandatory to rise in the workforce or in society. When women don't 'groom' properly, their lack of care is blamed for their lack of success.

- Political absence: Only 20 percent of the U.S. senate is made up of women and only 12 percent of governors in the United States.

- Absence in the arts: Only 3 percent of artists highlighted in the MET's modern art section are women.

- Failure language: Failure is consistently feminized. People whining are bitches, or c*nts...if you are afraid you are a pussy...people are douches or twats...all of these represent weakness and something to be ridiculed, failure. And all of them refer to women.

- Property ownership: Worldwide, women own only 10 percent of all property (I cannot find a U.S. statistic. Sorry about that. Understand that this guy is apples and oranges with the rest of the examples.)

- Literature: Novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard says "instead of allowing women to succeed on their own merits the world of male critics and editors scratch each other's backs." Do you know who Elizabeth Jane Howard is? Point.

- Reproductive control: the people in charge of this country (which shown above are men) have control over whether or not women have rights to choice and birth control.

- Childcare inequality: Women are still held to be the main ones responsible for children. They are not, in this country, given automatic paid maternity leave.

- Healthcare access: Women's privacy is in danger when it comes to who can access their healthcare records and why, particularly pertaining to the aforementioned reproductive choices.

...

And yet, all of these things are not where the main problem lies. The main problem is that you (and if not you, then someone you know) read through this list not nodding along, but shaking your head. If they only worked harder, or asked for more money, or loved their children, or shaved their legs, this wouldn't happen to them, you think.

That's the problem. That's why we can never be content in a box.


For more amazing stories on what feminism means to these incredible individuals, check these out:

Feminism: Nobody told me how, by Smibbo:  "I saw boys who were teased for being “like a girl”

I saw girls who were shunned for being “too bossy”. I saw the way the rest of the world, outside of my happy-hippy sheltered life really thought. So even though I was brought up to BE a feminist and feminism runs through me effortlessly and without thought, I came to understand why there was a need for such thought, such effort, such …push."

Equal, by Pollychromatic:  "Feminism is a statement that women are equal to men, and to correct inequality where it exists. Both my daughter and my son deserve such a future."

I Was Born a Feminist, by Elizabeth Hawksworth: "Feminism is about equality. I was born a feminist.

Children are born not knowing the difference between women and men, black and white, straight and gay. Children are born knowing that their neighbour is their neighbour, that everyone can be a friend, and that everyone deserves a cookie when the plate is passed around. Children are taught the differences in society. Children are given cues to follow. But when they are born – all children know is that the people around them are people."

A Bit About Feminism, by Corndog Mama: "In this moment, I have a partner who recognizes that I'm bearing a heavy load, and he's looked for a way to make it lighter. In this moment, I am conscious that I don't have to be everything for everyone: I only need to be me, calm and reflective for my sake and that of my unborn child's."

Feminism in my Life, by Accidentally Mommy: "As a rebellious teenager, I defined feminism as being able to run around and do what I wished, date however many men I wanted, and have my world on a plate with no social repercussions. I bought myself birth control, and I worked a job where my co-workers were predominantly male. The misogynists I knew called me an undisciplined slut. I disagreed. I still disagree."

Feminism Defined: The Lowest Common Denominator, by Fine and Fair:  "Alright then. So what's the lowest common denominator? Do all feminists hate men? No. Are all feminists lesbians? No. Are all feminists hairy legged, makeup abstaining loudmouths? No. (But some really cool ones are!) Do all feminists believe that every woman should work and that stay-at-home moms are setting the movement back? Certainly not. Do all feminists believe that women share equal status as human beings and should have the same rights and opportunities as men?"

Each of these pieces is as amazing as the woman who wrote it.




Sources for this (my) piece:

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08308/

http://www.urbanministry.org/sexism-and-gender-discrimination-statistics

http://math.berkeley.edu/~kirby/sexism.html

http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2010

http://library.thinkquest.org/C006274/fem/stats.html

 

Easter Crafts, Foods and Fun - Blog Share

Doing Easter last minute? We've got some ideas for you!


First of all, invite over friends! Yes, this is Jackie and her family from Accidentally Mommy!

Now, we're just dyeing eggs because that's all some of us can handle, for real. But there are other crafts you can tackle, perhaps, one could say, of a higher calibre...

Samantha Williams shows us plebs how to make string eggs over on Heart Shaped Leaves.

A complete, step-by-step how-to, made easy for people even just slightly craftier than I am!









Of course, we're busy concentrating on just getting some color on the real eggs.














But that's not the only fun to be had! After the eggs get colored, you get to go on Easter Egg hunts. And sometimes, if you're really freaking cool, you get to do it in the dark...with flashlights, like Tracey from Inside the Mommyvan. Check it out.

Some of us, though...we're still just chugging away. Work, work work.














And the whole time, we're striving not to break those darn eggs. But what would happen if you let your kids stand on the eggs? Literally walking on eggshells. Alex Nguyen over at Alex Nguyen Portraits found out. And you won't believe your eyes!

Not even a joke, guys, not even a joke.

Of course...we aren't so lucky.

Good thing I'm hungry! (And super duper attractive!)

Now, you might not be into hard-boiled-egg-that-just-fell-on-on-the-floor (though I'd question your taste, because obviously delicious).






If you're looking for something a little more impressive, JJ on Low So Paleo has got a brunch idea that's not only appetizing, but also Paleo friendly!

Okay, now that we've eaten...back to work!

Looking good (if blurry. Way to go, photographer.)





So, we're just about ready for Easter Day!

But when the Easter Bunny comes, maybe he feels like filling those plastic jobbies with something other than candy or money this year...if so Joella at Fine and Fair has some great alternatives to put in the Easter basket.









So, there you have it. Easter in an eggshell.