Archives for 2011

Last week I finished the book Interrupted.  In short, the book is about a pastor and his wife in Austin, Texas that had their lives interrupted so much they left the church and started what some may call a missions based church.  They are very involved with the homeless community that I actually was witness to while visiting last Spring.  The impact of the book reminded me a lot of what Same Kind of Different as Me did to me.   The plight of the homeless has been fresh on my mind to say the least.

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Saturday night when Kaitlin and I went downtown Charlotte to eat we approached a street corner and slowed to wait for the walking sign to change.  Behind my back I heard a woman say to the gathering crowd, “Anyone have any money for food?”  She barely stopped, obviously not expecting an answer.  I admit, in the past my instinct may have been to let it pass, not really sure where the money would go.   With my “eyes open” I became excited when I actually had a few dollars to hand her.  I had to almost yell, “I’ve got some!” before she was fully turned away.  It wasn’t much but it was something.

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My high school classmate and her husband have started Speak Up.  It’s a street newspaper designed to create jobs for the homeless.  They print a magazine written by unpaid authors.  The homeless or low-income individuals are hired to sell the magazine.  Street papers have been running successfully worldwide; 114 of them in 40 countries.   They just announced last week they are ready for their first run of 10K copies.

When I was standing at the corner I thought of this woman and thought, you know, she could be one of the people Speak Up could help.  No longer would she literally have to beg on the streets for money.  This magazine would give her dignity and experience and much-needed income.  And it’s not just the idea of the magazine.  It’s specifically this effort that could help.

Speak Up needs 8,000 dollars to print it, 3,000 of which they have received.  Would you consider donating to get this thing off the ground?  Charlotte folks, I especially hope you consider donating.  This magazine could change the landscape of our own city.  If you can not donate now, I’d ask that you consider buying one of these magazines if you see them on a corner downtown selling them.

None of us can do everything but we all can do something.

Visit Speak Up to read more and donate.  I was not compensated or asked to write this post.  Just love what they are doing!

Whew, what a weekend! My friend Kaitlin came for her 3rd visit from Boston this weekend. I picked her up on the way home from work Friday and dropped her off this morning on the way to work.
We shopped, ate, swam and watched movies all weekend. Apologies to all my Twitter and Facebook friends for stuffing your streams full of it all. Note to you movie watchers: never watch Country Strong, watch Soul Surfer with your kids and Justin Bieber’s movie never gets old no matter your age.
With all the driving and walking and parenting and dog-parenting and hosting I was worn slap out by Sunday night. None of that was very hard on its own but we were just on GO most of the weekend. It’s always fun to have a great weekend but it’s just one of those weekends I need a weekend from my weekend, you know?
While Kaitlin was here we made a video with an announcement about our Friday Night Lights site. After two years and the series finale, we’re closing up shop. We’ve had some fantastic moments interviewing almost everyone from the cast and crew for our podcast, meeting folks at Beyond the Lights and visiting the set. I really couldn’t have asked for more from a fan site run. If you were ever interested in listening to the podcast with our interviews or reviews, make sure to grab those files from iTunes before we close everything down at the end of this month.
Hope you guys had a wonderful weekend and have started your week well!

Everyone was excited.  No tears, no fears.  Or maybe just a little from Lexi that it was going to “be boring”.  In any case they were excited to wear their new duds.  Emma loves her new boots and both got the high tops but only Lexi wore them today.

Emma’s hair is super curly today.  We washed and put it up with some gel last night.  She loves when it’s extra curly.

I cut both of their hair last night.  Thankfully you can’t much tell with Emma’s but poor Lexi’s is a disaster at the edge.  I’m pretty sure it’s uneven.  But obviously she can’t stay still enough for anyone to even notice.  We’ll definitely be making a trip to a salon in the near future.

Also, my first grader still took her blankies in the car with us.  She might be getting bigger but she’s still my baby.

Now excuse me while I enjoy my celebratory comforting white mocha.

So today was the big day.  The Back to School Luau Pool Party.  Except this morning we weren’t very sure there was going to be a Back to School Luau Pool Party.  I was woken up by a storm at 3:30am last night and when I woke up this morning there was nothing but storms predicted starting at 10am.  Even our local weatherman suggested we postpone the party.  Seriously?  Do you guys have a weatherman as awesome as ours?

 

But then I got to thinking about the fact that the predictions for Sunday were just as stormy and I was out of sunny free weekends so we were just going to have the party indoors if we had rain.  I had to have a sit down with Scott about it.  You should have seen his face when I informed him for the first time that 14 girls had accepted our invite.  “I thought they only were having 2 or 3 friends each?!”  I think we went to take a few extra pills and we all started praying the rain away.  And God was good.  It didn’t rain a drop on us even though dark clouds loomed for hours.

If you didn’t catch this post on our plans, check it out because this party was brought to you by Pinterest.

Above is the wreath.  Let me tell you a secret.  That’s my pine cone wreath I made. I just stuck the umbrellas around it to hide them. Hopefully no one took notice.

Of course we had to hand out leis first thing.

And because we were going to have a total of SIXTEEN 6 and 8 year olds I decided we were going to need stations.  What if a few of them hated swimming?  Or they were fighting over floats?  Or the sun was too hot?  Or the water too cold?  These kids needed something to do!  So first up was “Make-a-lei Bay” where the kids made the lei hanging there on the sign.  Now, to tell you about these signs a bit.  Scott had some leftover MDF board.  I simply

1. Sprayed the signs white
2. Printed the lettering with the “Gilligan’s Island” font
3. Bought a large flower punch (actually bought for the leis) and hole punched some scrapbooking paper
4. Cut a strip of green scrapbooking paper and then cut slits to make grass and glued it on the edge so it hung over.

As for the craft, we made these.  I did A LOT of prep work before hand.  I can’t tell you how many flowers I stamped and hole punched.  A LOT.  Individually.  I also pre-cut the yarn and straws.  I will say it wasn’t a huge hit but there were a few girls that passed the time at Make-a-lei Bay.  I will say that the set up of the two children’s picnic tables was perfection.

We also had Palm Tree Piñata.  They had a blast with that.

The pool was of course Typhoon Lagoon.

Since we already had the fire pit, we bought the stuff to make S’mores and called it “Roasting Volcano”.

“Hawaiian Hula” was set up for hula hooping and hula dancing, to go along with the Luau music CD I picked up at Party City.

And finally there was the Jellyfish Jumper.  Simply our trampoline.  It ended up being well-visited.

We also did some general decoration around the pool with grass skirting.

 

Other fun things:

Tiki torches along our sidewalk.

Umbrella with grass skirt on it.

The watermelon shark which had blue jello and Swedish fish around it but those girls ate it faster than they could say “Justin Bieber”.  All props go to Scott for carving that bad boy.

We had snow cones.  I think most of the girls indulged in about 3 rounds of those.  You are welcome, parents 🙂

Hawaiian Punch.  Of course.

Fun plates, straws and umbrellas, of course!

I cropped this group picture pretty close because I wanted to show you one, I wore a flower in my hair.  You won’t catch me with one any other time.  I admit I felt a little like a Brit with a hat.  And even though that’s the exact opposite look and feel we were going for, I’m never going to complain about feeling British.  And two, we totally lucked out as one of the girls’ grandmothers owns one of the best bakeries in town (she made our wedding cake!) and she freely gave us these awesome iced flower cookies.  Amazing!

 

Overall, fantastic time was had by all.  Big thanks to our parents and my sister for helping pull it off.  We truly said goodbye to summer with a bang!

Source: theletteredcottage.net via Amy on Pinterest
My favorite Pin this week

 

How about a list today?

• We finally closed on our mortgage from the addition yesterday.  I found it pretty cool that the attorney the bank chose for us has 3 biological boys and 1 girl which they adopted.  He was very supportive of our decision and gave us some great advice.
• Speaking of, we had our initial fire inspection this morning.  Everything looked fine.  The fire marshal has to come out and inspect everything himself.  He does it once a month in our county and will be out the last week of August.  She mentioned that they’ve lost 2 workers and are running behind on home studies.  Normally they do the home study just as soon as the fire inspection is over but it could be longer.  She’s still hoping by October/November we’ll be approved.
• School starts 1 week from today.  We are READY.  Emma is on countdown.  And honestly, I am ready.  I’ve enjoyed having the kids around but it’s been a stressful summer with my new schedule.
• Speaking of going back to school, our luau is ON.  We’re doing some shopping tonight and will be preparing decorations and food the next two nights.  It’s actually been a lot of fun being creative with the girls.  Also, testing out a snow cone machine is not a bad job to have.
• I finished the first draft of this.  20,000 words came out faster than I imagined they would. Would you pray I know what to do with them and more than that, have the courage?
• This is very silly news but I finally earned my gold card at Starbucks.  I have a gold Starbucks card (duh) with my name on it.  I can’t help it, it feels cool.
• Scott bought me a Kindle for our anniversary and I’ve been spending time figuring it all out.  If anyone has good resources for children’s books, I’d appreciate it. Also, does anyone have experience with lending books?  Basically I need all your favorite tips and tricks.  Please and thank you.

 

Hope your week is going well!

I normally am quite underwhelmed when a book gets made into a movie. It’s not that the adaptation is bad, it’s just you simply can not capture the full spectrum of a character or storyline in such a short time. Well I just have to say that I was more than happy with The Help. Honestly, there were some characters that came alive more on screen and scenes that were funnier. I have never been so bipolar watching a movie. One second I was crying and the next I was laughing while wiping my tears.
The casting was spot-on. Aibileen was just exactly like I imagined. Minny had us rolling in nearly every scene she was in. Mae Mobley was just the sweetest little thing. I think we got to see more of her in the movie and she was just a delight and broke your heart all at the same time. Hilly was just perfectly proper and nasty all at the same time. Her facial features were simply perfection. Stewart was a handsome jerk. Skeeter’s mom was much more likable in the movie but still weak and ridiculous at moments. Other characters I didn’t think much about in the book included the newspaper editor in chief. He got just as many laughs from Minny. Constantine surprisingly made two appearances and delivered two of the most moving scenes. Hilly’s mother was insanely funny and delivered the sharpest line of the entire movie. I never gush about so many characters on screen but truly, the love you felt for them in the book was not lost on screen.
They were fantastic at delivering every important plot point and scene. The Terrible Awful was simply outstanding and I laughed harder about it than I did in the book. Even Scott was rolling. In fact, I found Scott laughing at quite a few scenes. The only scene that was not covered, and frankly, I was grateful was the man that visited Celia and Minny one day at the house that they had to attack. I’d rather not see that on film, thankyouverymuch.
I think for me one of the most moving scenes of the whole movie was seeing Skeeter walk into Aibileen’s house with it full of women willing to help her write the book. So much courage and fortitude in those women.
I asked in my giveaway who your favorite character was but never told mine. I love Aibileen. I love her quiet strength. Her courage. Her willingness to bare herself as she writes. Espcially at this season of my life, I can so relate to her fear of writing but courage to do so. Ever since reading the book I’ve started writing out my prayers. It’s been such a freeing, peaceful practice. I can honestly say in a little way she changed my life.

You just HAVE to see this movie. If you haven’t read the book, I’d highly recommend you read it first. You’ll really fall in love with the story and then be able to enjoy a fabulous rendition of it on screen.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway, it’s open until tomorrow!