Snow Peace

looking over at my neighbor's horse corral

     Each year, it is after approximately this many snowfalls that we Long Islanders usually get sick of winter.  I don't know exactly how many snowfalls this is, but I know that the number has arrived, since Facebook is blowing up with comments about how "winter sucks" and "bring on summer." Me, I take a little longer to hate winter, especially when I'm home for the day (school is closed!), the snow is perfect packing snow (great for building) and I don't have anywhere I really need to be.   

     Lately, I've been staying in on snow days, using the time to catch up on laundry or cooking, only going out to take a turn with the shovel on the driveway that would be like an Olympic ski slope if we didn't clean it perfectly. Today was warm for a snow day, though - or is it just that I've grown used to days with temperatures in the teens, so the thirties seems warm?  I decided to go out and wander around just for the fun of it.  

     My dog, Zoey (I like her name with a y), was terribly excited to go out - she loves snow - and she charged over to the neighbor's horse corral to see if her horse friend was outside.  No such luck.  Zoey is two years old - in spite of technically being an adult dog, she's really just a dog-child.  I think she may stay a dog-child for quite some time.  She used her unique antelope-style "I'm SO excited!!!" jumps to spring through the yard into the woods behind the house.  She charged down one of the trails...

     ...and I followed her for a while and then she played a short game of "catch the snowball in your mouth until your mouth gets cold and you have to take a break."  We returned to the yard where I took a picture of my favorite tree...

which looks just beautiful covered in snow.

I made a snow head.  Not a snowman, a snowhead...

     I worked on my snowhead for a few hours, alone with my thoughts and the still falling snow.  I remembered a snowman I made while I was in college, a tall, tall one that somehow came out looking like the statue on cover of the book I was reading for one of my classes.  I thought about a snowman I made with a preschool class I worked in long ago.  We had made the first snowball so big, when we got to the second one, I couldn't lift it up on top.  I asked a guy inside the building to help me assemble our snowman.  Then, years later, I married that guy.  Just a few years ago, I made a snowman with my daughter and our neighbor, who is like another daughter, and I made them both laugh by adding butt cheeks to that snowman.  

      My son opened the back door and shouted, "Mom, what are you making?  Is that an Easter Island Head?"  Hummmm, I guess it is. Sort of. 

Now he's out there making his own snowman. And the snow is still falling.

Soon, I too will be sick of snow and longing for spring.  Just not quite yet. 

Snowy-Night Project - Seagull Wings

This is a front seat view of my commute home this afternoon.  The traffic was moving at about 25 miles per hour, which is why I was able to snap this picture.  Once I was home, and dinner was over, some really pressing questions filled my mind...  How am I going to make it through a nice cozy evening at home without overdoing it on the snack eating?  Visions of ice cream filled my mind...  the Oreos my husband bought yesterday called me from the kitchen counter...  I thought about having some carrots instead, but alas!  Carrots do not taste at all like ice cream.

I finally admitted to myself it was time to stop procrastinating and make the damn seagull wings I had promised I would make for the school play.

You probably don't need step by step instructions on how to make these - they are relatively simple and you really don't even need to know how to sew if you're handy with a hot glue gun.  The pair I was copying this design from was hot glued, not sewn.  

Still, when you are cutting multiple layers of "feathers" out of felt and then sitting in a teeny, tiny chair in front of a large rubbermaid tote on which your sewing machine is perched, even a simple project can take a long time.  Especially when you're making 3 pairs of wings... and each wing has 9 layers. 

I realized, though, that sewing is a good thing to do when you're trying to avoid eating junk food.  Mainly because it requires two hands.  Unless you want to risk sewing over your finger with your machine.  Which hurts a lot.  Don't ask me how I know this. 

In this picture, the wings are just draped over the arms...

These are actually almost done - they still need elastic on the back side of each of them to hold them to the wearer's arms, and also to hold them together, but I don't have elastic.  I'm hoping I can get someone else to take care of that step.  Right now, I'm tired.  

Too tired even to eat snack.  

Thank goodness...  

T-Rex Teeth? No, Bird Beaks

T-Rex teeth?  No, bird beaks.  Seagull beaks, to be exact.

My assignment was to make three additional seagull costumes for the play (The Little Mermaid Jr.).  No problem, I said, but I had forgotten about their heads.  Or shall I say, beaks...

The seagulls wear a pretty simple set of wings held on the actor's arms with elastic.  The feathers are layered felt in black, grey and white.  The beaks, however, I had made of paper mache and then attached to a yellow baseball hat.  Actually, someone else attached them for me, since I was pretty much in stress melt-down stage by then.  To form the beak shape I used approximately 10 crumpled up sheets of newspaper, setting them down on the table in three rows of three, and then topped off with one (or two) at the end to form the point of each bird's beak.  Then I attached them all together using masking tape (just enough to keep each crumpled paper in place), and covered them in paper mache (flour, water and bounty paper towels).  They'll dry near the wood stove tonight (maybe not as near as in this picture) and then tomorrow I'll give them another layer of paper mache, and then they'll be ready to cut and glue to the hats.

Procrastination!! Kim Kardashian Impressions, Dante's Inferno, and Fake Fruit Platters

When you're a kid and you have 14 days off from school in a row, of COURSE you wait until the very last day or two (only because your mother nagged you on Saturday do you start then) to do your homework. After all, who wants to write a paper on the fairness of the punishments in Dante's Inferno? It doesn't even help that your mom is a former English teacher, because she makes you write the paper yourself, and she only gives you pointers like, "write down each level and the sin and punishment that goes with it to help you prep."  Of course, you scoff at her, because what does SHE know?  She's just your mom after all...

If you're a few years younger than that, and you have to prepare for a presentation you are doing with a partner (whose phone number/contact info you don't have) you can worry for 10 out of the 14 days about how you're going to complete this assignment without your partner.  Your presentation is on "something that you're good at," and you've decided that you're good at comedic impressions (which you are...) but your perfectionist nature won't let you settle on which famous people you're going to impersonate.  Dozens of ideas are discussed and rejected leaving you and your sibling at virtually the same state of doneness on the last day before vacation is over.  

Of course, don't let your mom convince you that SHE would not be in this situation if SHE was the one with homework.  SHE was secretly planning to complete the 8 fake fruit platters and 3 extra sets of bird wings and beak hats for your upcoming school play, but SHE, TOO, waited until the LAST MINUTE, stating (if only in her own mind) that she had to do the 8 or so loads of laundry first.  

But even Dad, who packs his ebay sales before they even sell and is also known as "Mr. Early-to-Every-Event" is lamenting the end of vacation.  So... is it better to live through your homework for a few leisurely days or one nose-to-the-grindstone day?

Only the procrastinator knows...

Even DOGS Love Sleigh Riding

After the snow stopped falling it was a day of shoveling and sleigh riding.  Not necessarily in that order.  Our dog Zoey was like a small child standing at the window, longing to go outside.  I told the kids she was not allowed to stay out for too long of a stretch because she was "naked" (except for her doggie fur, of course) and it was pretty chilly.  Still, she loved jumping through the snow like a deer (she left a series of hop marks in her wake) and she absolutely loved chasing the kids down the driveway on their sleds.  She even rode with them once or twice, but I think she still preferred running after them.

She is currently quite tired...

... and so are the kids.

Scaring the CRAP Out of Each Other...

Home with the kids with too much time on your hands?  You can always spend time attempting to scare the crap out of each other...

The other day when my daughter was taking a shower, her dad hung this purple blow-up alien from the bathroom doorframe.  He then went back to watching television - looking very "Mr. Innocent."  I wasn't there when she opened the door, but I heard her immediately yell her brother's name, SURE that he was the perpetrator.  He gets blamed for things he doesn't even do, although, now that I think about it, he earned that suspicion one prank at a time...

It's a good thing all the hearts in this house are in good working order.

FINALLY Ready for Christmas

The presents have been purchased.  (Although, if I keep going to the store, I will keep finding things to buy, so I'm glad Christmas will be here soon!)

The tree is up and decorated (finally!) and I have just a few more things to wrap.  So much for the cards and the cookies. 

I feel just like Zoey in these pictures...

But NO ONE can sleep like a dog...

Except maybe a toddler.  

Merry Christmas, everyone!