Curious Finds

 

This is my china cabinet. 

It looks like most cabinets except for one detail.  
Look closely....can you see it? 

    

 Light on china, heavy on books, my china cabinet is a glorified curio of words.

This is fine by me. My life was shaped by these books, these many stories.

 
Some books took me away from my everyday world...

...while other books brought me back to myself.

And still others are just precious memories that I never want to forget.
 

I have always loved books. STILL DO.

 

To peek into another life - real or imaginary - mistakes and all. 
Yes, you can bring on the mistakes!!

I can handle all the broken hearts of Austen.

I can rally and fight with the Three Musketeers, despite the odds.

I can laugh at the comedy of human error in Shakespeare.

I can sit with Linus in the pumpkin patch. 

 

I can hold on till the very end of every great story, every great mistake.

 

Dear Kiddos,
In honor of great tales, big and small, don't let go of your mistakes,

this week. Be curious of them, turn the page and keep going because

you, my dears, are the heroes of another great story!

xo
Mom

What's a little mud between friends

For all my talk last week about mud, I wanted to share with you another side...SWEET EATS!

My plan was to share a Mississippi Mud Pie recipe but all Reese had on the brain this week was milkshakes. Lo and behold, I found a Mud Pie Milkshake recipe! It just wasn't the type you find on a kid menu. 

No worries! Reese took a desserts cooking class at school last year and assured me she knew how to KID-I-FY this treat. 

All she needed was a little bit of DIRT.

REESE'S DIRT MILKSHAKE

1 pint of chocolate/vanilla ice cream - all chocolate, even better! Slightly softened.
1/3 cup of very cold whole milk
12 plus Oreo cookies (depending on how much DIRT you want in your drink)
Mallomars cookies for your topping

Directions:

Place 6 Oreo cookies in a ziploc bag. Get your fists ready and break them up, Wreck It Ralph style, till you have what looks like DIRT.

Place ice cream, milk and 6 more Oreo cookies, broken in pieces, into blender. Mix until you have a smooth consistency. 

When ready, pour into glasses (or Olaf's head) alternating layers of DIRT and milkshake. Don't forget, like we did, to save some DIRT for the very top layer of your drink. 

 

Top off your creation with a tasty Mallomar cookie or two!

 

 

It's not the ultimate foodie pic but quiet children and empty glasses

are the final word at our house on good eats.

 

After they slurped these milkshakes down, more sweet combinations and toppings came to mind for our next DIRT Milkshake. We'll definitely be making these again. Stay tuned!

 

 

For those interested, here is the original Milkshake recipe by Bobbly Flay that originally caught my eye.

Mississippi Mud Pie Spiked Milkshake Shots by Bobby Flay

Still a keeper amongst adult friends! Happy Friday!!

Know Your Mistakes

I like this quote. There's a challenge, an implicit dare in its words, but to see it, you need to get past the Big Bad Mistake in your head. 

I found this quote in my research of mistakes. (Who researches mistakes, you ask? Only me.)

You see, I wanted to be able to break down the word. MISTAKE. I wanted to take some of the charge out of it, make it more palatable as we dive into our own mistakes this month.

Thanks to Berkun's essay, I found some interesting information.

Did you know that the most common mistakes made by people can be broken down into 4 categories?

Or that the most complex mistakes, the worst of them (or best of them, depending on how you see things) are really a series of smaller mistakes? Who knew? For more insights, you can read Berkun's essay, HERE.

Knowledge like this can be a great starting point but action, the kind found in challenges (and double dares) keep us moving forward and striving for more, even in our mistakes.

So, can you make a mistake today and still be alright? Yeah, that feels do-able.

Friday night

On Friday night, we stayed in and read, I mean, WRECKED a book.

 

Ethan relaxed and chilled with one page...

(Figure out a way to FREEZE this page.)

 

 

...while David got cozy by the fire with another.

(Infuse this page with the scent of your choosing.)

 

 

Oh, no he didn't! Oh, yes he did.

Reese doodled on her page and got a green thumb.

(Trace your hand.)

 

...and me, I just drank my page away!

(Make a funnel. Drink some water...water is just a suggestion:-)

 CHEERS! Hope your weekend was GRAND!!

 

Friday Night Read: WRECK THIS JOURNAL by KERI SMITH

 

 

Wreck this journal? there must be some mistake...

In honor of mistakes, we'd like to introduce you to our November project!

Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith

Our journal comes with a WARNING!

Check out our unique list of materials.

The mission is simple - do whatever the book says...

whatever the books says...

...no matter what.

Our goal, to stretch and wreck our comfort zone on what we call a "mistake". 

Permission to wreck along, granted! 

To follow <our house rules> and receive email updates, add your email on the right side of this page. Thanx, you rule!   

Refrigerator Art - november

Here is our artwork for November.

Reese likes the bright colors. Ethan and Dave like the words floating over the paint. And me, I just like that it's done. Why? Because the artwork you see didn't have a pretty start. 

What I wanted was an abstract look, something that might be perceived as a mistake. I started off fine but then got carried away with my paint. When one too many colors swirled and mixed, all I was left with was a mess of brown or better yet, MUD.

It was a mistake, a real one, and it wasn't beautiful.

I wanted to chuck it. It would have been easy to start over again but for all my talk about mistakes, I didn't. I got out my paints and tried to work with it, again, and again.

I made big strokes and little strokes. I dabbed paint here, I dotted paint there. I outright squirted colors all over my paper obliterating the brown muddle I started out with. But it was still there, down deep.

As I mentioned, the kids really liked this piece but they only knew the final result. They didn't know, like I did, about the mud pie that was holding all those colors together.

What a metaphor for life.

There are so many layers to our every day. So many moments, so many attempts, and yes, so many mistakes. It takes a lot of living to reach those fleeting instances where suddenly, everything looks alright. How easy then to sit in a shining moment and forget the not so pretty mistake where it all began. 

But everyone has mud moments, beautiful mistakes. Lucky you. Lucky me.

Hello November!

Mistakes? What's the fun in that? If you are asking this question, then chances are, you go out of your way to avoid making mistakes. That's ok, you're not the only one.  

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually afraid you will make one."

                                                                          - Elbert Hubbard

I'm a recovering perfectionist. It took me a long time to unravel my fears about mistakes and to understand how they help us to learn. The trick is not to make the same mistake over and over again. But knowing is one thing and doing is another.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

                                                                          - Albert Einstein

To make mistakes, you have to be willing to push yourself out of our comfort zone. You have to be OK with mistakes even when they hurt. That can be tough.

 

This month, to help us test our comfort zones, we have a fun challenge planned. I'll write more about it at the end of the week but for now, know that it's going to get very messy around here.

So to be clear, this month isn't about just collecting mistakes. It's about changing how we think about them. Between little boo-boos and big blunders, there is a world of human errors available to us. They don't even have to be ours.

 

If we can let go of our fears and ugly feelings and instead be curious and interested in mistakes, we can learn to admire them for their beauty, cracks and all.

Fear less - experience more.