Children break things

In 2008, my husband and I bought a vase.

We had just moved into our first legitimate home together. Everything was brand new to us. The place seemed huge. It was just the two of us. We were waiting for our kids to arrive.

Actually, I bought a vase.

I'm not great at home decor, and by that I mean I suck at it. I do not have refined tastes, and I don't know the difference between an original indy artist's painting and a print bought at a thrift store. But I was trying.

So, I bought this huge shiny brownish vase. From Marshall's. For $20.

And I loved it.

Soon after its arrival on our fireplace, my husband looked at it and said, 'why is there an empty vase here?'

And I was like, um, 'IT'S DECORATION, DUH."

"No, no. You can't have a vase without something in it."

"Um, yes you can. I'm pretty sure Pottery Barn does this shit all the time." (I'm paraphrasing, here. Eight years ago, I wouldn't have said this. I would have meekly smiled and nodded. But I'd say it TODAY, and so let's just pretend that's what I said. Because I definitely thought it.)

But an empty vase would not suffice. A few days later, my husband came home with some forest-green fake leaves. I don't even know where they were from, but they smelled like the inside of JoAnn's or Michaels or The Christmas Tree Shop.

Whatever, we are high class, okay?

We stuck the leaves in the vase, and voila. Before we'd even hung our (by which I mean my husband's) paintings on the wall, we had an accent piece to die for.

It went supremely well with my pregnant belly and my impeccably clean, before-kids carpeting.

That vase stuck with us throughout the years. It saw the layoff, the move to Florida, a condo and then our rented house (because lol if we're going to buy again after the housing collapse that we felt the brunt of).

It saw my kids as infants, toddlers, little kids, and finally, the big kids they are today. It's been a steady friend and companion. One of the first things my husband and I ever bought together (the couches you see in the picture being the first. ... Do you see that white couch? WHAT FOOLS WE WERE.)

Three moves, three jobs, and a family later, that vase stood tall, guarding the fireplaces of our abodes.

Until the other day.

I don't know how many times I've said/shouted/screamed 'no running in the house', but I'm pretty sure the dog doesn't want to eat glass. Anyway, I may as well have said it 0 times because apparently running in the house is still and will forever be a thing here.

And when you catch them in the act, they do that awkward quick conversion to super-fast walking. loooool, okay, kids, you fooled me.

The girls, to their credit, were distraught about breaking this vase. I didn't even yell at them. It turns out, they feel way worse about doing something by accident than when they are purposefully being turds. They feel the way I want them to feel when I've chastised them for being rude or mean. Only they just accidentally broke something. Life isn't fair, y'all.

I shooed them outside and set to work cleaning this mammoth mess. (I got the dog new food and washed his bowl. Don't worry. He won't be killed TODAY.)

I brought the shards out to the garbage, and when I came back in, my girls had given me the gift of a new vase for my husband's hilariously colored leaves.

Perfect.

This happened two days ago, and their "vase" is still there in front of the door with the leaves in it.

Not because I'm sentimental and touched (although I am), but more because I'm the kind of mom who looks at things on the floor and wonders...how long can this stay here before something bad happens?

I'll let you know.

For now, enjoy our decor as you sip some coffee from a stained mug and marvel at our bean-bag filled, princess placemat having, high-living, jet-setting lifestyle.

Epic Shoe Adventure

Sometimes, when you move, things get lost. They get tossed out, or you're sure you packed them, or suddenly you're just down a couple dozen books you were sure were in your bookshelf (me.) Sometimes, you have helpful spouse tying up loose ends, and they simply tie them up too tightly. And that's where our scene begins.

The weekend before last, my husband rented a big, old UHaul truck, and we stacked our larger furniture, paintings, beds and bookshelves inside. We hadn't packed beforehand, so after we brought the truck back, there was still plenty to do, boxes to tape, things to give away, you know.

Over the weekend, my husband had said something along the lines of, "I got rid of half my wardrobe! We don't need to bring all that stuff."

And that's what was running through my head as I looked quizzically at the expensive brown shoes in the middle of our almost-empty master bedroom.

Surely he didn't leave them behind on purpose? But all the other shoes were gone, and these lone survivors were out in plain sight...right near the donation pile. I looked again. But I would never donate these, I thought. Of course, I took all my clothes (save my excessive number of 1990s pantsuits).

You know, it's hard to give away suits that got you your first few jobs after college, right? No? Anyway, they're gone now. Along with those shoes. I threw them right in the bottom of a 30-gallon trash with all his other clothes on top, and hauled it off to the Goodwill.

Three days later...

"Oh my God, where are my brown shoes? I can find every single pair of shoes, except the ones I want! I'm sure I packed them!" At t-5 minutes until he had to leave for work, I thought it might be a bad time to tell him that perhaps he didn't, after all, pack them. I stayed quiet, earning a confused and slightly distraught look from him as he most likely wondered why I, shoe-queen, did not feel his pain. As he walked out the door in his definitely-not-brown shoes, I posted on my phone to Facebook:

"That awkward moment when your husband is very clearly looking for shoes he's sure he packed, but you know he left behind...and you brought them to Goodwill two days ago. Operation shoe recovery to commence at 12:30."

And it did. As soon as I dropped those kids off at school, I picked up more stuff to donate, and drove right back down there.

Hairied and in emergency-mode, I pretty much scared the pants off the poor guy taking donations. He'd dealt with me the other day, and so kind of already knew my New-England-talking-way-too-fast-and-intensely-for-you ways.

"I brought in a bunch of stuff the other day! Do you still have it?"

"Out...on...the...floor," he answered in Florida-slow-drawl-style.

"There were some nice shoes in there, did you see them?"

He shook his head.

"If they were nice, miss, they're prolllllllly gone." So. Slow. When. You. All. Talk. Seriously.

I finish unloading and rush into the store. I find the women's shoes, and a woman working on them. I ask her my questions and she looks at me like I've lost my mind, and points me to the men's shoes. I run over there. The shelves are nearly empty.  But there, on the third row down, a pair of nice brown shoes!

Huzzah!

I shout out loud, and a man who's looking at the shoes startles. I pick them up. Man, it must have been a few days since I saw them because they look just slightly different. But it was meant to be. Armed with my husband's shoes, I walk proudly up to the counter and tell them my sordid tale of woe.

And would you believe it, they even gave me half-price. Best $5 I ever spent.

With the blessed shoes in hand, I texted my husband in jubilation. The conversation is too funny to leave out.

"Just bought your shoes back from Goodwill. Hahaha!"

"OMG, really? Wait, bought or brought?"

"Yes. I had a feeling you had left them behind because when packing up, I remember thinking damn, he went crazy getting rid of stuff. I loved these! So when I dumped today, I asked about them. They'd already made it to the floor. So nice, even Goodwill marked them for 10 bucks."

"Haha. You had to buy them back."

Over the course of the day, he told his brother, who, of course, blew my cover.

"She knew this morning!" he said.

When my husband asked me that, and I said yes, he was shocked. Hah. It was just a bad time to say anything, know what I mean?

Where were the shoes, he wanted to know. And I proudly pointed him over to his chair, where they sat in a plastic bag that said "Thank You" on it.

Grinning from ear-to-ear he opened it up. And the smile faded. And the shoes clattered to the ground.

"These are not my shoes." He was totally disgusted. Other people's shoes don't really do it for him, I guess.

And I was like, yes, of course they are not. They are far too pointy, and too dark in color, and there was no scuff on the top of the toe on his shoes.

I knew all those things. I knew them. But I ignored them, so excited was I about being able to be jubilant.

And so our shoes are gone. Long now on the feet of someone who doesn't mind other people's shoes.

My Facebook status, of course, after that, read: "Oh my God. Just kidding. Those were not his shoes."

To everyone's delight.

Who wants a happy ending anyway?

Moment of the Week - 143: We Moved!

Well, it's been a while. We moved and I had an entire week without internet. Like, a whole one. And during that time, I learned that...well, there are people who live like that all the time. Amazing.

Anyway, the whole week was made up of moments and stories. For now, here's the pictorial overview!

Our new home!

The back and inside...before we put our stuff in it.

The girls especially love the jacuzzi tub!

And their playroom. (It's filled with toys now.)

And the neighborhood with its sidewalks where they can ride their bikes.

And even the wildlife!

This has been a really great move. I can't wait to talk about every aspect of it and bore you to tears!

 

Smells Like Home

I hate buying stuff online. This goes for anything. It's hardly ever what I imagine it to be when I order, and not only am I out money for the crap item and shipping, I'm totally disappointed in my purchase.

Even more, I hate buying things from companies that seem to spring up out of nowhere and require my friends to advertise for them and hound unsuspecting social-network goers to buy stuff from these companies, so that my friends can see a penny or two. I'd rather just give you the five bucks instead of buying that shitty sticker set, know what I mean?

I don't want to go to your facebook party. I don't want to buy their crap from you so that you may eventually have the privilege of trying to get me to sell for them, too. I've seen this before. Before the days of the common internet, in fact. I have a Pampered Chef strainer that's collecting dust in a corner because it broke within moments of my using it. I just don't feel like buying crap from a company using my friends as pawns to stuff money in its own pockets.

All that being said, every once in a while, if I happen to have extra cash that day, and a friend of mine really and truly believes in whatever product they're peddling, I'll shell out for them. Last month, I agreed to buy some Scentsy from a friend of mine. I scrapped together 25 bucks, thinking that should be enough to buy a respectable product. Haha. No.

$25 is apparently nothing to this company. This company is high society. Get it together, Darlena, if you're going to try to shop Scentsy, okay?

So, I'm put off even further than usual, but I'd told my friend I'd buy something, so I searched the site looking for what I could afford. I passed by page after page of cute warmers, packages, combinations and scent bars. Nothing.

Finally, I found some little smell packets that you hang from a car mirror or a hook in the closet. I could afford two! But which scents did I want? As I looked at my options, I began to laugh out loud. Scentsy offers aromas like "Home Sweet Home" and "Kailua Bay." (These were the two I bought.) Way to not tell me at all what these actually smell like. Seriously, no descriptions or anything. It's like, take a gamble on a smell up in there.

But, here's the thing. You need to do this. Take a gamble on a smell. You won't regret it.

I expected some tacky car air-freshener type deals, but I got little fabric pillows of scent that actually look classy. I was impressed. I opened my mystery scents, expecting to laugh my head off because how dare a company presume to know what home sweet home smells like to me? How could a company bottle the smell of Kailua Bay, Hawaii? Impossible.

Only, Scentsy did it. I opened Kailua Bay and was transported to my father's house on the Big Island of Hawaii. I hung it in my closet.

I opened Home Sweet Home and I fell in love. It smelled like the house I grew up in. It made me want to do chores and go to church and rake leaves and do science homework, and not in a bad way. It's this potpourri-like smell tempered with something to make it less annoying and powdery and more authentic.

It's perfect. It's like some genius in their marketing department researched trendy scents in the 80s and decided "we need to bottle this up. People in their mid to late 20s are going to want this in their homes for nostalgic purposes."

And I do. This is what I want my house to smell like. Scentsy has won. They said it was home sweet home, and by God, it is home sweet home. This is the scent I want my children growing up with. This is what I want them to remember as they go out into the world, too.

This is what I want my house to smell like, and I didn't even know it.  You can bet the first opportunity I get to scrape together $40, I'm buying a warmer and brick of Home Sweet Home.

So, long story short is, I recommend Scentsy. And this is a recommendation coming from someone who hates this kind of stuff.

If you're interested in gambling on one of their ridiculously named scents, go here.


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