Take a fancy picture of your tree

For those of you with fancy cameras, you should try taking a picture like this. Full instructions are here.

Miniature knitted ornaments

My mother-in-law asked me to gather some free patterns for her so she could knit up some quick ornaments. I thought I'd share what I found on Ravelry to inspire you.

 

 

More fun ideas for the holidays

How cute are these little gingerbread houses? You can download a pattern and see the tutorial from notmartha here.  They are based on the recipe for these amazing gingerbread snowflakes from Martha.

Don't want to do all the work to make the houses and put them together? Buy these cute cookie cutters and be done with it. The cookies sit on your mug!

Need a partridge in a pear tree to round out your holiday giving? How about this beautiful linzer cookie?

Looking for some last minute knitting projects? These are two of my favorites that I've seen in the last two weeks.

I love this destroyed cowl. Pattern is a free .pdf on Ravelry here.

You can wear it long like this or around your neck twice more like a scarf.

Who wouldn't love these bunny slippers? CRAFT magazine offered up the free pattern here.

How about a quick project for a little kiddo in your life? Here's a free pattern for a felt crayon holder.

Are you inspired?

Make your christmas lights fancy

Learn how to use a manilla envelope to make your lights pretty here.

Advent calendars

This year we were excited to get Playmobil advent calendars for the kids. They seem to love them. But the obsession on 'stuff' this year is a little out of control. Maybe it is just preschoolers, but I'm guessing that it only gets worse. For some reason I thought the toy calendars would be better than the cute chocolate ones, but they are still focusing on the stuff and not what we are counting down toward (ie Baby Jesus!). So next year I am going to either make a felt advent calendar like this one:

[Instructions for similar one here.]

Or I am going to make an activity one using baby socks like this one:

Instructions here. I love how simple this is. I was thinking I would fill it with activities for us to do as a family or to help prepare for Christmas. Any tips?

Make something cool: sweet deer

I can't wait to make this! Headed out to buy some felt for the deer body today and will likely make him look a little more like this or this. Download a free pattern here. Cute!

Creative gift tags

Here is a great little gift card that looks like a vinyl record. You can see the tutorial here and download .pdfs of the artwork so you can make your own.

Make something cool: coffee sleeve wreath

What a great way to reuse coffee sleeves! I love simple crafts that you can do with the kiddos, and there is no reason you couldn't use other textures of cardboard from the recycle bin. Check out the detailed turorial here.

Make something cool: gift card wallet

Are you giving gift cards for Christmas? Add a home made touch by making these cute little wallets.

Peanut Butter Balls

We discovered these delicious candies this year. The kids love helping me make them and they are great little gifts too! Instructions are here.

free: holiday funtime garland

what a cute craft to make with your family! click on the link to the image and look at the biggest one to download and print. think we will be making this in the next day or two.

the girls

How cute are these little girly clothespins? Super fun gift for the kids friends, I'm thinking...

More holiday things to make

I have a few more things to add to my list...

• Snow globes
• Rock animals

I'm sure there will be more that we come up with!

How can you resist these?

make something cool: ruffle skirt

Very fun project for little girls! Check out the awesome tutorial here.

make something cool: mitten ornament

I saw this pattern last year and didn't get around to making them. I love this little ornament and am hoping to squeeze it into my holiday crafting this year. You can find the free pattern here and see how the oliver + s folks are using them for an advent calendar. Cute!

Thanksgiving activities for kids

I was just printing out some fun things for us to do today with my preschool aged kids and thought I'd share.

• Activity placemats and another one here
  
• Pilgrim booklet (reading and coloring)
• The colors I eat on thanksgiving booklet
• Other booklets
  
• More printables

Have a great day with your families!

Thanksgiving

This is the first Thanksgiving I'm hosting in a very long time. And I'm getting excited. I've simplified the menu this year and am only making the things I care about most:

• Turkey & gravy
• Stuffing
• Sweet potato casserole
  
• Cranberry sauce

Everything else (rolls, drinks, pie, etc.) will be bought this year and brought by my parents or in-laws. Possible exception - I think my mom will bake a Marionberry pie if we are lucky. Yeah!

But as I look around my messy house, I'm realizing we are hurting on the decor front. And I haven't thought about a gratitude project so I need to get crackin'. Some good ideas for decor (I mainly care about the table at this point - it is a little late for everything else!):

• Mayflower centerpiece
• Turkey placecards and more here
• Quick natural placecards (I actually have a handful of these I picked up outside the knit shop a few weeks ago)
  
• Finger puppets
• Awesome corn husk votives
  

I heart owls

Click on the image for more information. You can download free owl brushes for Photoshop here.

Photoshop lesson 2

Scrappin' fun

I'm taking another Photoshop class from Jessica Sprague and I really like it. This is the layout I made during the first lesson:
And while this may look simple, I think I had almost 40 layers in Elements before I finished. I even turned the photo to sepia manually and colored in Carter on his bike. I'm feeling very fancy right about now.

Photoshop layers and masks

make something cool: marshmallow shooter!

Things to make for christmas

I love being crafty, but things get so out of control before Christmas. Thought I'd make a big list of all the things I want to make before I figure out what I will realistically have time to make. Here goes (see how overwhelming this is?):

• christmas garland
• dinosaur play mat
• snow globes
  
• ornaments a la skunkboy or adorable felt toys
• fabric crowns or maybe felt?
  
• knitting projects: 5 hats and surprise?!?
  
• christmas card wreath display
• kids craft: gumdrop pops
• activity books for kids: coloring pages, connect the dots, etc.
• kids craft: Snowflakes and snowmen
• kids activity or gift: vintage paper dolls
  
• microwave caramel corn with chocolate chips added at the end (or nuts, white chocolate, coconut, orange zest, cinnamon, etc. depending on how i feel)
  
• peppermint cocoa or layered
• peppermint bark popcorn or peppermint candy brownies
• pin cushion gift with pinecone elves
• black apple dollies
  
• christmas countdown garland
• photo advent calendar
  
• christmas planner for gifts (another one made from index cards!), and printable forms for getting organized
• gift tags and photo gift toppers, as well as mitten clips

Other good ideas:

• sock or glove critters
• piggy mittens (pdf)
  
• drawstring bags using up my cute stash of fabric
• repurposed t-shirt pants
  
• christmas tree scrapbook
• gifts in a jar, including smores in a jar
  
• monkey bread
• christmas sayings, and kitchen gift sayings for cards
  

Things to do for christmas

In the spirit of celebrating family, here are some of the things I'd like to do this year:

• Put up the tree thanksgiving weekend and being decorating house
  
• Plan weekend in leavenworth
• Write letters to Santa
• Family game night weekly
• Christmas movie nights
• Bake christmas cookies and decorate
• Christmas stories with kiddos
• Picnic around the fire
• Fondue night
  
• Make a snowman
• Video chat with family
• Christmas eve at Grandma Peggy's with the aunties
• Christmas morning with Auntie Lindsey & Uncle Brett
• Christmas dinner with Grandma Maria & Grandpa Keith (and family)
• Hot cider and cocoa
• Christmas carols
• Family service project, operation christmas child
• Make peppermint cocoa to share with friends
• Eggnog french toast
• Craft projects
• Send out christmas picture
• Write a letter
  

December Daily Album

I've decided to create a December Daily scrapbook album before Dec 1 and got a great start on it yesterday. I am so inspired by Ali Edwards and love her sense of style and imperfect approach to capturing everyday life.

More links to projects and products for my, I mean your, inspiration:
Another December Daily album done in July in preparation.
Holidays in Hand class by Jessica Sprague - which I am also planning on doing this year.
Journal Your Christmas with email prompts

My goal is to slow down this year - be intentional about creating christmas magic, focus on experiences (not stuff) and savor every moment. I'm hoping these projects will help!

make something cool: pretty dresses

I would love to make this dress:
I love this dress. And I have lots of Jason's old dress shirts that I could use. But I've never sewed clothes before. I aspire to make this for Sabrina but fear by the time I get around to it, she'll outgrow the dress shirt!

Also, a sewing tutorial from Oliver + S that is great for those learning to sew.

My first digital scrapbook page

I made my first page today, do you like it?

Jessica Sprague taught me how. I took a free class online here.

Basic Photoshop stuff but I needed it. It's been over 10 years since I really used Photoshop! I'm very excited. Taking the next class now...

IMG00218.jpg

First fire of the season. Toasty! Kids enjoying picnic dinner on pirate plates. Bean bags are out for full lounging benefit. And paper bag lanterns that Carter invented. Good times.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Piano man

I came back from my trip to Nashville to discover that Carter learned to play piano while I was gone. See for yourself...


Here's the original Coldplay song he is playing:


And of course Sabrina couldn't miss out on the action...

Not bad for the first lesson - can you see how proud of herself she is?

Every time I leave my family, Jason does a great job with the kids. A little too good if you ask me. I'm not sure how he gets them to sit still for long enough to learn piano, for example. That just doesn't happen when I work with them. He is so incredibly patient and creative when teaching them that it is wonderful to watch. But it is starting to make me look bad...

make something cool: recycled plastic messanger bag

for another weekend when i'm feeling crafty, i want to make this!

Cricut Contest Entry

This is contest entry for those crazy folks at TodaysMama and Cricut. Be sure to check out Cricut's cool new cartridges and the chance at $30,000 in travel for you and your friends at the Great Gypsy Escape site!

Great Escape Meme
1. If you could escape to anywhere in the world where would it be? Hawaii
2. What song do you play when you are by yourself in the car? Viva la Vida

3. If you had a night to yourself, and money was no object, what would you do? Spa, hair, pampering generally
4. What is your guilty pleasure? anything baked, especially chocolate
5. What is the farthest place you have traveled away from your home? Munich
6. Last book that you couldn't put down? Edgar Sawtelle
7. When you want to escape into another time, what movie do you watch?
8. What is your favorite local escape? Point No Point beach with the kiddos
9. How do you escape on a budget? Parks, beaches, long walks, picking blackberries
10. Best food you've ever had while on vacation. Sushi in hawaii - so fresh and yummy!

I had to have these stamps

I'm in love with them. Can't wait for them to come!

It's like learning to ride a bike...

We had the best day on Sunday. It was the first day in over a month that Jason had the day off and we made the most of it. After church we visited with his parents and then headed to the ball field to try out the bike with no training wheels, something we'd been talking about all summer but haven't had time to do. Carter was convinced he wouldn't be able to ride a bike until he turned 5 (just a couple weeks away) and he was quite apprehensive about it. But Daddy knew best. He knew Carter was ready, but he just needed to want it. And he did. We took his bike to the baseball field and spent the afternoon riding and taking a break and hanging out in the shade and riding some more and just hanging out. It was really nice.

Here's a video for your enjoyment:

Carter learning to ride bike 4 from Michelle Anderson on Vimeo.

The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher

I just finished reading John Taylor Gatto's "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling." I was beside myself. It really helped me to think critically about the kind of education I want to give my kids. I'm not sure how much I buy into the Totalitarianism or conspiracy to dumb down our kids, but it did get me thinking which is a good thing. I'm consolidating my thoughts and need to talk it over with my husband before I publish anything here, but here is a copy of The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher speech that Gatto gave upon accepting an award for NY State Teacher of the Year in 1991. You should read it. And another chapter of the book, a speech he delivered in 1990 when he acepted an award from the NY State Senate for NYC Teacher of the year is entitled "The Psychopathic School."

Inspiring Layout: Hearts

I ran across this beautiful scrapbook page yesterday. Enjoy!

Gyoza!

The kids and I made Gyoza tonight and it was very fun. Missa taught us how to make Gyoza last year at our MOPS steering retreat and I still dream about them. I came across a blog post about Gyoza and it inspired me to make my own. It was a bit of work chopping and folding them up, but the kids got into it and I just made sure we had plenty of time this afternoon.

And here are the results!


If you want to make your own Gyoza you definitely should. I followed the recipe here, but added a little sesame oil and shitake mushrooms. I didn't mess with the cabbage, just cut up the leaves and mixed them all in with pretty good results. But I made a sweet and sour sauce that Missa gave me to dip it in. Can't find it right now but can give it to you if you want. It rocks!

Here are two different videos on how to fold Gyoza:

Silly Songs with Carter and Sabrina

As we were cleaning up and getting ready to go home from the Cabin, the kids started goofing off. Luckily I remembered to grab the camera!

GoFish's "Get Your Jammies On"



Sabrina Beat Boxing - Watch her turn into Action!



God You Reign



Mighty to Save

Magically clean inbox

I just found a cool trick for cleaning out your gmail inbox. When I started my gmail account the transition from folders to lables was akward and I had so much space it didn't seem like I'd ever use it. But now that I'm a GTD convert (sort-of) it really bothered me that I had 10k emails in my inbox. So I deleted some obvious spam and then archived the rest (see: http://www.ainotenshi.org/cleaning-up-your-gmail-inbox). Now my historical email is still there, and I can process the rest as it comes in by labeling and archiving if I want to save it. But I delete a lot more email than I used to and the satisfaction of having the Inbox at 0 messages is huge!

Time flies

wish I was having fun though. ParentMap uses word to keep track of employee time, and even excel is a bit annoying for this task b/c it doesn't handle calculations of time well. It can subtract time if i enter start and end times, but summing time becomes problematic when you get to 99 hours.

I looked for a free tool, because this is a simple task I want it to do. Start, end, date, project. Keep track for me and then add it all up at the end of the month, but break it down by day or project or both if I want.

I downloaded and started using HourGuard, and it is great except that I can't break down the report by day. Suck.

Other free tools:
simple - http://online-stopwatch.chronme.com/ allows you to keep track and export to csv
http://www.toggl.com/ - looks clean and simple
http://www.trackmypeople.com/ - seems fancy and am afraid they'll charge me to export csv or something
http://klok.mcgraphix.com/klok/index.htm - seems clunky to me. maybe just ugly.

I'm trying Toggl next. But I downloaded their widget for mac and setup an account and my login/pass failed so that is annoying. But it is nice that they have an online interface. We'll see how it goes. Any suggestions?

The new more efficient me

Ahh...the illusion of productivity. In an attempt to get organized, dump tasks out of my head and associate them with projects I went online looking for a good tool to keep track of my tasks. And I quickly discovered the world of Getting Things Done (GTD) and the cult of productivity that seems to flow from that. I hadn't heard of GTD before but some of the ideas resonated - that I function better when I get stuff out of my head and on a list. That there are some things I need my computer or the internet for that I can't do at the cabin on the weekend, but other things that I need to be able to sit and think which doesn't happen with the kiddos underfoot.

Anyways, I wanted to use the task feature in outlook/entourage. I like that I can assign categories to them, and due dates and priorities, etc. But I didn't want to pay for office. So I downloaded iGTD and I kind of like it. My only beef is when it comes time to process tasks - I'd like a view where I can see everything on my list grouped by project so I can sort it and still see everything in one place. Maybe it does this and I just haven't figured it out yet.

more GTD resources:
good place to start - http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-getting-things-done
5 sentences - http://www.43folders.com/2007/07/12/five-sentence-email
Quicksilver - http://www.43folders.com/2007/06/19/buffington-igtd-01
http://blog.circlesixdesign.com/2007/06/21/my-personal-igtd/


Note: I resisted buying office for my mac b/c i didn't want to spend anymore money just so I could work. I already own 2 licenses for the PC and switching to a mac was pretty expensive already. But the home edition isn't really that much and I broke down. Open Office just didn't cut it for the excel data minipulation I needed to do (lots of data in many tabs, pivot tables, vlookup, if/then statements, etc.) - it choked or it just didn't work. I'll concede that it is possible that I didn't spend enough time learning the interface on a few of those, but the choking with big data sets (only 10k rows) was a big waste of time.

Salmonberries

DSC08285
Originally uploaded by egerdahl

Uploaded our pictures from this summer to my new computer and they are so cool! I was playing around with my camera and took these pictures of the salmonberries we picked...yummy

Book: Outrageous Learning: An Education Manifesto

I devoured Scott Oki's book this weekend. I found it easy to read and well organized. It was written in straight-forward prose that everyone can follow and is packed with ideas for incremental change on 11 main planks, as he calls them. It made so much sense to me that I was surprised that some of the recommendations were even there (which highlights my ignorance on how public schools work). For example, do we really not give principals the ability to hire whatever teachers they think are most qualified? Or, do we really not pay our teachers based on how well they perform?

The book makes me want to buy copies of the book for some of my smartest friends and gather them together to start a conversation about Bainbridge public schools. So if you get an invitation, you'll know that I think you are very smart. But if I'm really honest, it also makes me want to seek out the best alternatives to public schools for my kids. I really just want to run the other direction. In the preface of his book, Scott states that he “believes the lack of sufficient emotional energy to make a positive difference in public education is due to the fact that we, as individuals, feel powerless to fix a problem that is a multi-headed hydra of gargantuan size.” That is how I feel.

Scott's premise is that there is not a unified view of what the problem with our schools actually is. He thinks the real problem “is rooted in just a few essential things. First, there is an almost total lack of freedom for school leaders – principals and superintendents – to innovate, make policy corrections and change any number of things when warranted. Second, there are an insufficient number of capable, insanely great teachers in the classroom, and there are many weak teachers who should receive heavier and more frequent doses of professional development, or who should seek another line of work. And third, in many places, there is a lack of involvement of parents and neighborhood communities in improving local schools.”

Makes me think about a story I heard on This American Life last year about underperforming NYC school teachers that were sent to a holding room for weeks in lieu of firing them. Facinating. And scarry! But alas, I digress...

The 11 suggestions for improving public schools in Washington offered in the book are:

1. Let local leaders lead. Need to start with “inspired leaders who are empowered to make key decisions and who accept responsibility for delivering results.” “Teachers should be able to make the decisions that impact the learning for each and every one of their students without the burdensome constraints of bureaucracy.” “As the school's CEO, the principal should be ultimately responsible for the quality of the teachers, the effectiveness of the instruction and the health of the school's learning community.” He suggests each principal has a Board of Directors helping him to succeed.
2. Insanely great teachers. “We should create a meritocracy in which good teachers are recognized and paid for superior teaching performance...We should allow schools to hire qualified teachers from the broadest talent pool possible...In addition to attracting top talent, constant and continual improvement should be a part of the teaching culture.”
3. The freedom to choose. “Yet when it comes to one of the most important decisions affecting the future of our children, their education, parental choice is often nonexistent in public schools. Parents are largely told where to send their child and what teacher the child will have...In contrast, no one would dream of accepting a system in which a government official assigned each citizen to use only the public gas station within two miles of his house especially if the gas were underperforming and overpriced.” “Without consumer choice, managers, whether public officials or company executives, have no incentive to innovate, improve quality, provide inspired leadership or create a culture of excellence.”
4. More time spent educating. Some reasons kids don't keep up in school include: “student-to-teacher ratio, quality of instruction, quantity of instruction, pace of instruction, and duration of instruction.” Consider “lengthening the school day, increasing the number of teaching days in the school year, and/or adopting a year-round school calendar...”
5. Early learning rigor, optional high school. Only half of the children entering kindergarten are ready to learn. “...a person's foundation for how they feel about themselves, self-esteem, is established in childhood and that lifelong intellectual curiosity is shaped in the earliest years.” The Hart-Risley study found that “the level of income, ethnicity, and level of parents' education had no explanatory power in determining the level of cognitive capacity that the children achieved. It is all explained by the amount of language dancing, or extra talk, over and above business talk, that the parents engage in. It accounted literally for all the variance in outcomes [of success].” “...if parents and caregivers would simply engage children in adult conversation with more frequency, children would be more intelligent than if not spoken to in this matter.” “We have to stop warehousing teenagers where the educational self life is quite limited, based on where we would like them to go (college), and get them into learning environments that are appropriate for their long-term goals. I believe many students will flourish if we engage them in classes they find meaningful, excite their interests and are relevant to their futures.”
6. Muster an army of volunteers. Parents, mentors, tutors, Teach Corps. “Parents are teachers of their children, and can meaningfully contribute to the learning by checking homework, reading to young children, asking questions, engaging kids in conversation, and the thousand other ways parents create a stimulating learning environment at home.”
7. No standardized curriculum. “While managed instruction strategies are ideal for the earliest grades, more freedom and flexibility in pedagogical approaches is necessary for the higher grades.” “We should return to a more focused approach [to curriculum], with more class time devoted to a smaller number of essential subjects. Even though the breath of subjects would be more limited, we should embrace many different ways to teach the same material.” First Move program taught chess to second and third grade students in order “to stimulate higher-level analytical thinking skills and to improve the learning outcomes in the areas of math and reading”. What does it mean to be educated? At minimum, “upon leaving school our children need to be literate, with strong working knowledge of spoken and written English, to have mastery of mathematics (including geometry and algebra, though trigonometry and calculus are probably overkill), to understand the natural world, to grasp the core concepts of science, to understand how democracy works, and to know the history of their country, region, and state.” But most important is the ability to think critically.
8. Early intervention and specialized instruction. Leaders should focus on immediate, micro-remedial action to help kids showing the first signs of difficulty. Stop social promotion, all kids need to be prepared before advancing. Stop teaching to the least common denominator, lowers the rigor of the lesson and wastes resources babysitting and disciplining. Segregate special needs if appropriate, to target to students individual needs.
9. Spend money as though it were your own. “We are the only country in the world where non-teaching administrative positions exceeds the number of teaching positions.” Outsource whatever tasks you can, including transportation and food service and consider nurses, therapists, security, janitorial, clerical, and administrative positions. Eliminate the costs associated with WASL and other standardized tests. Let capitalism work and it'll be obvious which schools are suceeding.
10. Plant the seeds of success in life: values, character, leadership. Boy and Girl Scouts as model to “focus on values, character and leadership, and the equally important goal of establishing a pattern of accomplishment for kids”.
11. Establish a culture of excellence. Excellence DNA “takes many forms: open and honest communication; teamwork; the elimination of bureaucracy; a shared vision and passion for the work to be done; a unified view of wanting to be the best; a commitment to constant improvement; the elimination of the attitude, “That's not my job.”” Develop level 5 leaders as described in Good to Great. Example of Toyota culture based on continual improvement and mutual respect.

Tackling all of these issues seems daunting, but Oki recommends focusing first on choice. All else will flow from that, but have to focus on four areas of choice:

1. Student. Using the Disabilities Education Act as a model, Oki recommends some rights for students, including: assessment of each student's present levels of performance, allowing students to choose the school suited to their learning style, if student experiences learning difficulties a team will convene to develop a detailed plan for addressing, explanation to parents of the need for intervention, alternative or modified assignments, specially designed instruction, in-class teachers aides, and access to other related services that lead to effective learning progress.
2. Classroom. Improve on the quality of the students entering colleges, implement new curricula for teacher that optimizes teaching in a customized way, increase the starting salaries for new teachers, offer bonuses to entice more teachers to pursue math and science or teach in tough schools, create new compensation that is merit based, create better system for assessing teacher performance (Lakeside school and Ohio Teacher Initiative Fund evaluation criteria).
3. School. “Granting greater freedom to principals would lead to increased responsibility and accountability.”
4. Community. Girl and Boy Scouts, YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, mentoring, tutoring, etc. Specified outcome might include “reducing behavioral problems at the school, decreasing truancy,improving study habits, improving subject matter competency, or building a more involved parent community.”

Ends with Japanese concept of Kaizen – management concept for incremental, gradual and continuous improvement. Success “relies on the long-term view of encouraging everyone to participate in making small improvement suggestions, frequently and regularly.” Can lead to substantial change.

Add to mission statement of schools: “Provide a joyful education that allows every child to pursue his dream.”

I want to reread or go find the following sources sited in the book:'

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Annual Report, 2008
• Washington Learns, World Class, Learner-Focused, Seamless Education 2006 Report chaired by Gov Chris Gregiore. Current generation is less educated than parents for the first time.
• Lakeside schools and the OTIF teacher evaluation performance standards and peer review guidelines
• Good to Great, Freakonomics
• Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation by Robert Lynch
• Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children, by Betty Hart and Todd Risley
• Disrupting Class by Dr. Clayton Christensen
• First Move, American's Foundation for Chess

Workin' 9 to 5

I had just decided that I was content being home with my kids. It had been a year since I took a project consulting and I was grateful to not HAVE to work. But we ran through our savings and things were getting uncomfortably tight. A girl can only go so long before she needs a new pair of shoes.

Contentment is something I’ve been struggling with since I had kids. I think it is part of our nature but I think the culture we live in plays a big part. To long for what you don’t have. To think that satisfaction lies in the next ‘thing’ acquired. That if we just had XX our life would be so much easier. That if only we finished this one project on the house it’ll fit us perfectly. It seems like there are so many things that I was coveting and longing for. When you and your husband are working full-time it is easy to buy most of what you want or need – new clothes, cars, furniture, crafts, etc.

My decision to quit work was not hard for me. Carter was 10 months and I knew I wanted to have kids that were close in age. And the project I was working on at Amazon wasn’t challenging me and didn’t feel like it would make a difference. After you’ve influenced the growth of a billion dollar business, launching an incremental feature on an ad server just wasn’t cutting it. It was easy. I could do it in my sleep. And I was getting paid relatively well to work a couple of days a week in the office. But boys at 10 months are very fun – Carter was starting to walk, was very responsive, content, happy, exploring and just a delight. I figured I might as well start trying to have another baby it could take a while. And it would be nice to get diaper/preschool years over with and get back to building my career as quickly as possible.

And I really feel like kids need their moms close. That so much happens developmentally in formation of self before the age of 5. That I was best equipped to care and love on my kiddos. And that mothering full-time is the most important job I could take on – even if it was mind numbing at times and incredibly tedious. And generally I’ve been happy with that decision.

Except when I’m not. When what I do doesn’t feel significant. When I feel like my brain is fried and my memory shot. When I never get a pat on the back or praised for how smart I am. But it is really hard to network and drum up work as a mom, especially in the recent economic climate. Finding childcare to have lunch with former colleagues much less finding cash to pay for lunch wasn’t happening. And I didn’t have the energy or quiet time on the phone to make calls to people I haven’t seen in a couple of years to ask if they had projects they wanted to farm out off-site on a part time basis.

So when Sarah Bryar called me a month ago and asked if I’d consider working part-time from home I was surprised and at the same time not surprised at how excited I was at the prospect. The fact that Parent Map is a virtual company of a couple dozen women that work from home on a mostly part-time basis sounded unreal. And the fact that they needed help developing products on the web to generate revenue and meet clients needs fit right in the sweet spot of what I am good at – analytics, strategy, and online marketing. And the fact that they haven’t had anyone thinking about this piece of their business means that I can walk in and add value quickly makes this a no brainer. And it doesn't hurt that I AM the target customer, that I am in the thick of parenting and intimately know the customer. And I get to work ‘just enough’ - No more or less than fits in my life. Cha-ching! You can see why I’m excited. I’m a month into the job and loving it.

It isn't perfect. I need to get some help with the kids - I have no idea how I’ve worked 20 hrs a week this past month but I have. Things feel a little out balance right now. But once summer settles down a little and swimming lessons are over and I get a little bit of help, I’m looking forward to having blocks of time to think and be creative and feel productive. I can’t wait to see what we can build over the next few months and years.

The JW came knockin'....

I'm not sure why I invited them in. The two older gentlemen seemed so friendly and I just thought about how much nerve it takes to knock on someone's door and how much rejection they must face as they try to share their 'good news'. And I was a little curious. My grandmother is Jehovah's Witness and I've never really tried to understand what they believe or why she converted after her husband died so many years ago.

Admittedly, my experience with the Jehovah's Witness is limited. I've grabbed flyers they were handing out at public events and have shoo-ed them away from my door when they knocked in Seattle. I had heard that the JW believe that the sky is falling and that only 100k people will be chosen to live with Jesus in heaven forever. And that just seems crazy and hopeless to me. Isn't the point of religion to give you some sort of hope for the future and comfort in our current condition?

So this is your official warning. If you are not a Christian or don't like to talk religon skip to a different post...I've had quite a few people ask me about this so I decided to post the progress.

It was almost two months ago that I first invited the JW in to 'talk'. I let them believe that I was open to what they wanted to teach me, but was in control of the conversation. Within one additonal meeting, they suggested I meet with some women - that it might not be appropriate for the men to meet me alone in my home with my kids. I had already decided that they were not serial killers and was comfortable chatting with them, but didn't object to the handoff. Turns out they weren't equipped to have the type of conversation/debate that I was engaging in so they brought in the big guns - Phyllis and Mary. Turns out Mary is a leading teacher in the area and her side kick is a new recruit. So I had to bring them up to speed. They came weekly for 4 weeks and then I told them that I needed to take a break, that I wasn't satisfied with their answers to my questions and didn't feel like they were prepared to talk about what I asked. So I made a copy of the the four questions we had been addressing and made them take it with them and study it. And they are coming back next week to talk about it after a month haitus.

It has been an interesting game of cat and mouse. I posted my research/notes that I used to prepare for our talks and I think the approach worked well. At this point, I have them on the defensive. The strategy was to focus on one issue and force them to address the issue before we moved on. I made them look at me when we spoke - somehow that took them out of debate mode and I think it helped them to hear what I was getting at. They are very well prepared and will throw lots of scripture at you to demonstrate how much they know as they talk you in circles. But if you really listen to what they are saying - it sounds like crazy talk! Nothing is directly answered. It is very frustrating and takes lots of patience. I've published my rough notes with scriptures here. I spent up to 4 hours a week preparing for a 1-2 hour conversation.

I didn't engage in this debate to 'convert' them. I really did feel sorry for them because I perceived that there is so little freedom and joy for the JW and I wanted to understand. I think I wanted to connect to my grandma. I wanted to get a feel for how someone could be drawn into to a religion like this. And I wanted to demonstrate another way of thinking - critically understanding truth and struggling to come to my own conclusions. I've gotten what I wanted out of our meetings and think I'll cut it off after I hear the response to my questions. They are now inviting me to local JW events and I don't want them to waste their time on me or mislead them as to my intentions. They are working hard for their salvation, and every door they knock on and every convert they are able to 'save' gets them one step closer to heaven.

The next thing for me

I've found my next big project. When I decided to have children, I knew that it would come up. But it is just so big and overwhelming, and I feel so small and inadequate. Who am I? But I saw this video on the Julia Roy blog and it really got me thinking....



It got me thinking that even if the public schools were delivering on the basics, they still aren't going to be sufficient.

I moved from Seattle to Bainbridge in large part because I wasn't happy with the public school situation in Seattle. I didn't want to have to work in order to send my kids to private schools, and I wasn't happy with the crazy life I saw families leading. I wanted the option to stay home with my kids and work when I want to on projects that are interesting and fulfilling. And I wanted to slow down our lives and focus on the little things that matter. Bainbridge and Belleview had the highest scoring public school systems in the area. Little did I know that these schools also teach to the WASL so that they can maintain the high scores, or that the class sizes were growing significantly each year, or that even in a district of highly-affluent well-educated citizens the schools wouldn't be able to gather the funding they need to fix leaky pipes or replace a school that has outlived its usefulness and may be a safety hazard. Of course most of this information is second-hand from other moms with older children or from what I read in the local paper. But I really do not want to have to home school my children - I would be a terrible teacher. I am not patient enough and it just seems like so much work. And I don't feel like that is what I'm being called to do.

So, I was listening to a conversation with Scott Oki, a former Microsoft exec turned philanthropist, on NPR about a month ago that sparked my interest. He was offering some ideas on how to improve public schools that sounded simple and achievable. He wrote a book entitled "Outrageous Learning: An Education Manifesto" that I ordered and received in the mail last week. I cracked it open this morning and am looking forward to this read. I would love to introduce it to our book club and start a larger conversation.

The problem still feels huge and I have no idea where to start, but I do know that I really need to get on top of this issue and figure out how to plug in. I don't think it is OK for us to opt out of the public school system because we can afford to do so. All of our kids deserve a chance at the best educational opportunities we can create. Really. Not just talking about it, but really making it happen.

Simple foodie pleasures

it is the little things that matter. today i had the opportunity to have a long lunch by myself and it was lovely. most people are uncomfortable dining alone but not me. i get the chance to slow down and think and savor. potato gnocchi with pesto cream sauce. ice cold sweet tea. almond cake with bing cherries and whip cream. delish. i was working through lunch but even that was nice because i had time and space to be creative.

Feels good to be outside w/o a parka or scarf

Look what you can find on a walk if you look for it.

Wired Kids

A couple of weeks ago I attended a session on “Unplugging our Kids and Plugging in the Family” by Gloria Degaetano. Gloria was an engaging speaker with a fascinating background and I left feeling very passionate about something I knew very little about before. She validated concerns I had about exposure to electronics in kids, but more importantly helped me to understand the science behind why these tools can be harmful to kids as they develop. Here is a transcript of my notes from the 90 minute presentation she gave.

Look what we did today!

I got a new scrapbooking tool called a Cricut that cuts any shapes I want. It is very fun and a little addicting....