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Showing posts from July, 2010

Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo!

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Remember how I said I'd never wear this outfit ever again? Gah! Well, I wasn't lying: Even Remewin likes it! Just kidding, she's trying to hit me. Talk about a super easy re-purposing. ::polishes fingernails:: I'm so cool.

Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead

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This morning I asked my husband what he would write about if this was his topic. He said, "I'd talk about the war in Afghanistan." ::crickets chirping:: "What, my darling, does that have to do with dead babysitters?" "Well, it's something that no-one talks about, a big secret." Now as I sit here talking I can't remember if he was of the mind we would win or lose in Afghanistan. All I remember is that his interpretation of this theme was 'cover-up.' So I thought I'd run with that. When I was a kid, we rarely had babysitters. In fact I don't particularly remember anyone coming over to tend us. Mainly this was because my mom and dad never went out together, but also I think my parents just figured we could take care of ourselves (it was way back when the world was safe). Well, since kids are kids, it was inevitable that we would get ourselves into trouble. Boy were we good at that, we lit things on fire and dr

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

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It's time for another post from Evelyn @ Hanging By a Silver Lining . When you pop on over there to see what I've written you might notice a few things different about her space... namely it's different, she got a full makeover! How much fun is that!? But really, I know you all want to read about dead babysitters so I'll let her get talking. :) Babysitters. I rather resent them. Not because I had such terribly bad ones when I was kid. On the contrary, my parents hired fantastic babysitters. I remember one girl in particular who let us watch as much Star Wars as we wanted AND even did Darth Vader impressions. Awesome. Another babysitter was this older kid who set up wrestling rings in our basement. My brother particularly appreciated his child-tending "skills". All in all, the babysitters we had picked up where my parents left off...feeding us dinner, helping us get ready for bed, and making sure we were happy and safe. Only they were better than

Keep Bleeding, Keep, Keep Bleeding.

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This is what my baby girl looked like after her one year doctors appointment. She looks pretty beat up, huh? She's not. Well, okay... she did have four shots, one of which was the dreaded--and painful--MMR (have you had one recently? They HURT!) But that's not the point! The point of this post is her hand. You'd think my girl had lost a finger or something? Nope. It's actually the result of a very dramatic blood sample. The result of one tiny pinprick and one very mad little girl. This is what happened after she tried to to eat four band-aids in ten minutes. This is the consequence for Remewin getting blood all over me and the nurse and herself... and the chairs and the tables. It was the craziest, bloodiest ten minutes since her birth! Every single band-aid that the nurse put on Remewin pulled off as soon as her back was turned. Then when we'd try to wrangle her hand out of her mouth she'd scream and grab at me, thereby sharing her trauma

Hop and a Jump and a Skip and a Follow!

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Welcome Blog Hopping Followers to The Great and Random Ramblings of Cannwin. Since I have your attention, let me direct you to some fun around these here parts. You have to first be introduced to the Characters , and then I'd suggest seeing the funny things they say . Then I'd recommend reading one of the three blog posts I have up on my profile 1) These Nine Years 2) Two Steps Forward and One Step Back or 3) Fire, Water and the Written Word . Then if I've intrigued you be sure to click on the follow button! Oh, and if you're looking for a good book blog--- You should head on over to the Literary Soundtrack. Have a great day!

Come Join the Fun!

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I know you were all super excited with the prospect of another blog swapperoo with Evelyn, but what with the whole Mo(u)rning Sickness she's having we decided to postpone it for a bit. :) More to come soon. Until then I thought we could do another blog follower award. Surely with the amount of new followers I have, and the three months that have lapsed since the last vote, we can come up with some new and exciting blogs we like. So... to refresh everyone's memories about what my award is all about I'll be lazy and just quote myself: Created on a whim to help me find some more blogs to read. Once in a while (a schedule to be determined by participation) I have a link and vote for a blog that my readers love. Then I give that blog this little cutie: The criteria for blogs I look for are: Small following (less than 250-ish) Humorous Easy to read Consistent postings Relatively family friendly Someone willing to have fun with my little award Wordpress an

True Me Tuesday

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Yesterday, after we'd spent over an hour at the grocery store buying school supplies and arguing over what cereals we can and cannot eat, I nearly bit Vicbowin's head off. Well... okay, I did bite her head off. I was unloading the groceries into the back of the truck. I was tired, my feet hurt, Remewin was fussy from the four shots she'd received that morning at the doctor. . . and I'm now making excuses. . . I'll just tell you the facts and let you decide, on this True Me Tuesday. The kids were all sitting in the air conditioned car (windows down to blow out the heat) and after I was done returning the cart I hopped into the drivers seat next to Vicbowin. I was slammed with a wall of hot air. I looked down and saw that the heat had been turned on and was going full blast. I looked over at Vicbowin and she giggled and I lost it! I yelled at her saying how 'not funny' that was. I gestured at her siblings in the back seat and explained how hot t

Crafting Advice

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Since going crazy with the crafting stuff I've started accumulating a lot of odds and ends in the hopes of doing something with them. The problem is that it's all fun and games until you can't find the living room. So I've decided to put out advice feelers. What would you do with these things: 1. Window frame. My idea was to make it a coat rack thing (what do you call those?), but what would you do? 2. Single shutter. 3. This shutter folds down the center and is fairly small (note the height of the plug outlet). 4. The back of an old chair that fell apart. I loved this pattern so I didn't get rid of it... should I? 5. Small frame... 8x10 ish? I got it at Hobby Lobby for $3 6. Large frame, Hobby Lobby $3. I'm going to add a Mr. Linky thing so if you have any ideas that have links tell me. Otherwise lets open this up for a little crafty discussing!

Academy for Little Ladies- Session 1 Lesson 2

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Welcome back! We're so glad you could rejoin us. Remember that last time we learned that eyeliner was the most important makeup item a lady can wear. Using the 2/3 method we found applying eyeliner to be much easier... and much more flattering. Today our instructors (below) will be talking about eyeshadow. But before we begin, let's learn a little more about those ladies. Cannwin is the fourth of five children. She grew up in Idaho and considers herself to be a true blue Rocky Mountain Girl. Her favorite color is green and her favorite season is Autumn. Vicbowin is the oldest of four children. She likes to go camping in the mountains. Her favorite color is gray and her favorite season is Autumn as well. Her favorite food is Taco Soup. After you have applied your eyeliner the next item is eyeshadow. Tip #1: Makeup is meant to accentuate that which is already there. For most people finding colors that compliment is a better approach than using colors to wow. Leave the

Etched In

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Here's another project I did a while back. I originally got the idea from an entry at So You Think Your Crafty . Then I found this window--as always on the side of the road--and had my chance to try it out. Can I just tell you, the bottle of etching stuff FREAKS ME OUT. There is this huge printed warning on the bottom saying something like: Warning may cause severe burns upon contact or inhalation, burns which may not be immediately felt. Death or severe injury may follow. I turned into psycho-paranoid-girl when using the stuff and my skin itched for the rest of the day afterward. I'm such a nerd. ::rolls eyes:: Anywho... it's now hanging on one of the doors for everyone to see and comment. I'm quite pleased at it's current location, and at how well this picture turned out. What do you think!?

A Game of Checkers

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This is a project I've been meaning to show you guys for quite a while (understatement of the century). I've never managed to get a good picture of it before the other day, though, so I'm going to blame my procrastination on my lack of a decent camera (until the other day). Please ignore dripping something-something on the side. Alright, so back-story--my friend and I found this sewing table on the side of the road... machine still inside... and I brought it home to see what I could do with it. I love sewing tables. They have so much potential for hidden storage that I find myself hard pressed to resist their siren call. This baby was no different. She was in pretty good shape with only a little jerry-rigging going on (read: duct taped hinges). So what did I do? Moved the hinges to the back. Then I added a little surprise on the inside and what you get is a perfect little-- Ta-Da! Checker board! Or Chess if you prefer. What I did: #1: After sanding i

Day 365

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Today my little Remewin is one year old! Day 1 Day 365 I love my little Bug-a-boo. I'm so glad she's mine.

On Wife-ing

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. - Erma Bombeck  I have been married for nearly ten years now--we've been together for nearly eleven years--and you know what? He still buys me size 20 pants. I used to think it was ridiculous for women to cry over such things... that was before I got married. I used to say it was the wife's fault for marrying someone who can't tell sizes... before I got married. Now I know. "Honey." He'll say in that happy, boyishly excited tone. "I got you something." Two things run through my head at this point--1) uh-oh 2) maybe he got something good this time. Inevitably I get my hopes up. The worst present I've ever received was actually not clothing. "You are going to love this!" He got me so excited. I was practically bouncing when Christmas morning came. It was two boxes. I opened the big one first (because big presents are rarely as go

On Wife-ing

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Blog swapping with Evelyn from Hanging by a Silver Lining again. We had so much fun last week! Thanks, you guys, for being the best blog followers in the world. Evelyn just recently announced that she is expecting her fourth baby! Hooray for her. I'm so in love with newborn babies. Congratulations! Remember, I'm posting over at her place today so go check it out, and be sure to poke around and give her some comment love. ----- I love love love words . But. I hate the word, " girlfriend". And I despise the word, " fiancee". But. "Wife" . "Wife" is a glorious word, don't you agree? Although I was in no particular rush to get married, I did eagerly look forward to the day I would become some one's "wife". When Joe and I were dating, I could just never bring myself to label him as my "boyfriend" or myself as his "girlfriend". I would often just introduce him as "Joe" and let

I Want to Fight

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I was looking at my BBC News ticker this morning, trying to keep up with the newest and freshest information about the world when I came across the most interesting of articles. Frustration from US soldiers who never went to war. ...[M]uch to the surprise of many civilians, when his service came to an end in 2006 and he hadn't served in a combat zone, Mr Agg was sorely disappointed. But in an all-volunteer military, those who sign up are steeled for their possible fate, so missing out on a battlefield tour can be a source of frustration, disgruntlement and, for some, shame. Many in the armed forces feel that too few civilians fully appreciate the drive to serve in combat. "The root cause of the misunderstanding is that the average person wouldn't actually want to volunteer for the military, so they don't understand that motivation to fight in war zone in the first place," Mr Agg, Okay, first of all, let my qualify myself by saying that I hardly think I

Monday Meanderings

I only have a few minutes before visitor start showing up at my door. Do you think I can write a worthwhile blog post in ten minutes or less? We shall see. I've started trying to decorate my doors and I've run into a slight problem.... I can't decorate. I know you don't believe me but it's true. I can create, but I can't decorate quickly, it takes me time--lots of time. Sometimes years! So I have moved things around a little bit on my walls and created a few more odds and ends. I made one of these wreaths (one a large scale). And  I took an old window that I etched and hung it over the empty space of my third door. Ralexwin thinks it all looks weird and wonders why I can't just hang things straight, but Ralexwin has an engineers mind and thinks about everything logically. ::pause to feed baby more breakfast bar--5 minutes:: Everything in Ralexwin's mind is 90 degree angles. So it's better if I just decorate around him. :) Also, in my

Academy for Little Ladies- Session 1 Lesson 1

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Hello and welcome to your first day of school at the Academy for Little Ladies. Let's first introduce our instructors: Cannwin and Vicbowin have been working together for eight years now. They have planned many gorgeous outfits and coordinated innumerable parties (all smash hits). They decided it was about time they showed some of their tricks to the public at large. Thus the Academy for Little Ladies was created. Today we will be learning about eyeliner application. The above pictures are the before's of our instructors. There are many types of eyeliner as well and many tricks to application. When Cannwin was a child she remembers watching her mother burn the tip of her eyeliner to soften it up a bit. Cannwin has burnt her eyelid with hot eyeliner so she doesn't use that method anymore. Instead she just uses a sharpened tip. The first rule of eyeliner application is to know which color to use. Brown looks great on some people and horrible on others, it all depen

Baby Mine

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Yesterday, my beautiful little Remewin had a really bad day. Her little bum is bright red from a serial case of diaper rash and by late afternoon I finally just stuck in her the bath to clean her off. She cried at the waters touch. I felt so horribly bad for her. We have some prescription strength diaper cream but every time it seems to start working she seems to regress. So after her bath I left her undiapered, wrapped her in some blankets and nursed her until she was drowsy. Then Ralexwin came in and we put the cream on her bum. She immediately woke and started screaming. I loved her and shooshed her and tried to nurse her pain away but nothing seemed to help. In complete despair she bit down on me hard (and repeatedly), causing me to screech rather loudly. This only served to scare her and make her cry louder. Then my mothering instincts seemed to just take over. In that moment, after she'd bitten me, when her face was contorted with pain and fear, I realized she

The Doors

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I'm so excited about this project and I've been itching to show you guys, but to be honest... this was an intense, long process. It's ready for you now, though, so can I present to you my accordion screen: Lighter brown chair no longer exists... If you look closely it is borken. Admittedly the idea of using full doors to make an accordion screen is not my idea. It's my friends, but the first day that I ever walked into her house I wished that I had always had some. So the search began. Do you know what it's like trying to find old, free, usable doors? It took us a year! The middle door we found when the next town over had their city wide cleanup. We got the funniest looks when we shoved that thing into my truck. The two outer doors I got when a family we know was renovating their two room school house-house. Photo by Vicbowin Now I can separate my workspace from the rest of the living room AND block out the insta-view people were getting of the kitc

Z is for Zoot-Suit

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Waaaaay before I was born there used to be this slight, little noticed dance craze called Swing. It wasn't much... just a few kids here and there who discovered this crazy way to dance that made the heart beat as if it was flying out of ones body. Fast-forward to my generation.... and the swing revival of the late 1990's.... and what you would find was a teenage girl discovering the absolute best thing there is to dancing, SWING. That girl would be me. I am in love with swing dancing. Let me give you a little background: Swing music is predominantly a 1930's and 1940's style of music that surprisingly (or maybe not so) created quite a stir. The Zoot-Suit, which is typically connected with swing dance was actually outlawed after the Zoot-Suit Riots broke out in Los Angeles in 1943. Swing dancing also caused quite a ruckus in Germany and during Hitler's reign was outlawed because of the majority of African and Jewish big band musicians. Yet, since dance

If I Were a Rich Woman

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I have a secret. It's not a very big one, but it's a secret none-the-less. Do you want to know what it is?   C ome closer and I'll whisper it to you.... I have no desire to be rich.  Are you surprised? Because I've known people who were. In fact my dad doesn't believe me. He says that everyone wants to be rich, everyone wants more than what they have. Therefore since I'm human I must want more and since I want more, I must long to be wealthy. Well, I don't want more. I really don't. Okay... okay, that's not entirely true. I do want more free time, more family time, and more time to sleep in on Saturday mornings. I even want more fabric and more mod-podge! I'm not saying that I don't want things that require money. I'm just not someone who wants more . I actually want less. I want less junk. I want less house . I want less floor space and less 'decorative items.' I want less collections and less light bulb g

If I Were a Rich (Wo)man

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Today I'm Blog-Swapping with Evelyn from Hanging by a Silver Lining . This means I'm blogging over there and she's here. What can I tell you about Evelyn? I've known her forever (since jr. high)... she's smart, witty, and about as nice a person as was ever made. We'll be swapping posts once a week for the next month and we're both excited to share what we've got with some new people. So be nice will you. Leave a few comments. :) Then hop on over to Hanging Silver and read my post (and see what she has to offer in the way of literary relaxation). -Cannwin (PS there's a time difference so if you want to read my post you'll have to wait a while.... she's mountain time) ♪♫ Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum! ♫♪  Sorry. Couldn't resist. Ahhh. The old proverbial saying " Money doesn't buy happiness " . To which I say, "Well, you just ain't shopping at the right stores then!" Don't think m

School's In Session

I noticed yesterday that Wal-Mart is starting to stock up on their school supplies. Notebooks and folders in primary colors will now start popping up near entrances in stores everywhere (they're the ones right next to the Christmas supplies). School, it's the love/hate relationship of every mother from California to Maine and it all starts with those blasted notebooks. Pretty soon there will be school lists and clothing lists. There will be open houses and kindergarten camps. Parents everywhere will be forking out hundreds of dollars for crayons, pencils, markers, erasers, paper, binders, headphones, and glue, none of which they will ever see again. There will be backpacks, alarm clocks, and shoes to buy. Hair appointments to be made, bikes to fix-up and bedtimes to restart. All in the hopes that the fateful day will come and you can gratefully (yet lovingly) push them out the door with a kiss and a 'Have fun.' Then you'll be able to crash on a chair and jus

You're The Best

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Yesterday as I was getting dinner ready I turned on the radio. It was around 5PM and the John Tesh Radio show was on (probably the most frequent radio show I hear). I tuned in just in time to hear dear ol' John tell his listeners about a new trend invading school systems around the country. "Educators are concerned about bullying and cliques, and think the solution may be to discourage kids from having a best friend.  . . . The New York Times reports that some schools are encouraging kids to have many close friends instead." 'Heaven's above!' I thought, as I sliced into a defrosted chicken breast. "They’re even taking this one step further. If teachers notice two kids spending too much time together, they’ll make efforts to separate them, and this goes way beyond the school playground. For instance, at some summer camps, counselors will put the two kids on separate sports teams or seat them at opposite sides of the table during a me

Speaking of Worst Case Scenario's

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We often tease my mom that she is a 'catastrophizer.' She constantly comes up with the worst possible result of any action. In fact we're all so used to it that we rarely think twice about her thought processing. When the average person would stare in amazement at someone who said, "I don't know, what if there's a flash flood when we're at the lake," my siblings and I won't bat an eye. We'd probably respond by saying, "We should check the weather." One time, when I was trying to talk my mom into going on a trip with me, she emailed me 'Honey, I don't know how I feel about this. What if there's a terrorist on the plane with us?' In exasperation I responded, 'You're right. Maybe we should just row to England.' The problem with growing up with a catastrophizer is the high probability of becoming one yourself. I am a catastrophizer. Albeit a silent one, but a worst case scenario gal none the less.