April 27th, 2012

What’s My Bag?

Audrey is doing a fun what’s in your purse blog hop and since I love this in magazines and recently on the Hairpin, I thought I would join in. First off – the purse itself. This is a relatively new purchase, found at Target on clearance. I’d been carrying the same bag previously since I found it on Mackinac Island on vacation in 2009 (our last vacation before I got pregnant. Ahh memories) and it was gross and didn’t have a shoulder strap. So I’d been looking for quite a while before I found this one about a month ago. This is also the bag I carried at Disneyland.

It looks a little larger than it really is in the picture, it is about 12 inches across. I’ve never really been a diaper bag person. Probably because I never had a good one, so I got in the habit of just keeping everything in the car: diapers, wipes, changing pad and toys. I just grab what I need. Spencer also hates being changed up high, so I go back out to the car for changes anyways. We even did a standing diaper change tucked in an alcove at Disney because he hates the tables so much.

As for the contents, this is literally what is in my bag as of the moment I decided to do the post, but there is normally a collection of receipts and loose change on the bottom, but I just cleaned everything out from our trip. This time there was a bonus dusting of pretzel salt on everything!

Contents:

Things to clean/wipe: paper napkins, bib, baby washcloth, wipe singles (kept for emergencies. I am really stingy with these)

Vitals: Wallet, Sunglasses (both from Target), keys. That elephant keyring was a gift from my sister on my 16th birthday. Many things have changed in my life, but that has always been my keyring. Not pictured: phone that is taking the picture

Make-up: spf powder (I even used this on Spencer in disney. Works in a pinch), spf lipbalm, lip stain

Food: a random variety of toddler snacks (currently fruit snacks, mum mums, leftover animal cookies from Disney and emergency smarties)

I feel like there are some things missing. There would normally be a hair tie of some sort and a pen. I used to always carry a sharpie, but, you know, toddlers…

April 26th, 2012

Dinseyland with a Toddler: What we did right/What we did wrong

First of all, let me just say that I mostly mean me (at least for the mistakes). Disneyland. oh holy hell. So much fun and so, so crappy. All at the same time. I’m still recovering and processing. I think I’ll hold off on the photo bomb post just to get some of my thoughts down while they are still fresh. We decided to go a bit at the last minute. We’d been intending to go before June this year to take advantage of the Southern California resident discount, but hadn’t set a date. Just last Saturday, we realized that Monday-Tuesday of the same week might be our only option so we went for it.

Ultimately, it’s probably for the best that we did things last minute given my tendancy to overplan and stress. We didn’t even have a hotel reservation! But only because the hotel’s website went down when I was trying to make a reservation. We did have a plan. Sort of.

What we did right:

• drove down the night before so we could swim (for Spencer) and get settled before heading to the park bright and early.
• bought park hopper tickets (for only $15 more, could visit both parks (Disneyland & California Adventure) on both days
• packed light (only carried a purse)
• If you are bringing disposable diapers (which we did), bring a new vacuum sealed pack of diapers. When you take the diapers out to bring to the park, they will be super flat and take up almost no room in your bag.
• rented a stroller on the second day (strollers are only $15/day. Don’t be a hero! Or, you know, remember to bring a stroller)
• asked at City Hall about times for cast member appearances (the was a great tip from my Disney-savvy friends at SoCal Lady Bloggers. I asked about Buzz on the second day and not only was given the exact time he would be appearing and where, but she gave us some Fast Passes, too.)
• line snacks/ride cookies (small snacks distract and satisfy a toddler, espcially on longer rides like the submarine)
• don’t buy any toys/gifts/presents the first day (I didn’t have to cary them and we could use the purchase as bribery for good behavior)
• Meal Box for toddler (We had lunch in tomorrowland (and caught the awesome Jedi training live show accidentally) and they had something called a Jedi Snack Pack or something and it was the prefect toddler lunch: yogurt, string cheese, apple slices and goldfish with a juice box. All individually packaged so I could carry what he didn’t eat. Much better than Spence taking three bites of an expensive hamburger and abandoning the remainder. Overall we made pretty poor food choices, but this was a winner.
• I left my big camera at home. Maybe I don’t have the best pictures in the world (photo bomb post coming soon), but have have the memories and didn’t have to carry my DSLR around for two days. We actually just used our phones but a little point and shoot would work too.
• You can see the parade from Alice in Wonderland’s line if you time it right. Also, the lines in Fantasyland are really short right then. We aren’t parade people.

What we did wrong

• we didn’t go back for our stroller. I remembered right when we got on the freeway and it was my call to keep going. We could have done one day without, but no way we could have made it through the second.
• stayed at a hotel on the Anaheim Resort Transit system instead of a hotel with a private shuttle. We had to pay, it didn’t come very often AND I lost my ticket and had to pay again for the ride home. We walked the second day, there and back. It took us over an hour to get home the first night, the second night we hustled and were back at the hotel in 15 minutes.
• relatedly: choose a hotel more carefully. This is the one place where our spontaneous trip hurt us. I didn’t have time to research shuttles/perks/free breakfasts and the like. It wasn’t so bad that I would bash the hotel chain on the internet, but I wouldn’t recommend it either.
• I committed the ultimate mom of a toddler sin: I offered a choice and then didn’t follow through on the answer. I asked Spencer if he wanted ears or a balloon. He chose ballon and then I found out they were $12 and I refused. TWELVE DOLLARS FOR A BALLOON. No way. I refused. So we got ears and he is ambivalent. I hope he likes them later.
• check the weather everyday. This is just me being dumb. It was cloudy and awesome the first day and I assumed it would be the second because that’s what the weather said on Sunday. Because I didn’t check the weather, I ended up lugging Spencer’s jacket around all day. It’s not that big of a deal, but it did take up valuable purse space.

I love the girls posing. I have no idea who they are.

April 19th, 2012

Thrifting: Glasses, Snakes and Shrimp Newburg

Thought I would link up with High on Thrifting Thursday again. This is a purchase from quite a while ago, but part of it was a present that I didn’t want to blog about until showed my sister the glasses and then I forgot all about them. I got all of this one morning, the glasses were on super sale, but I thought the books were a little pricey. Or I am just old and miss the 10 cent paperback days.

These are copse glasses, which are what I was supposed to get my sister for christmas, but never did. They are an old fashioned type of non-flute champagne glasses. There are some cocktails they like to make at home that call for them. These are vinatge fun and I adore the little etched polka dots around the rim. Maybe this will motivate me to get them in the mail. Nothing better than christmas in April!

Random purchase, but it was in great condition and I figure Spencer go through a snake phase eventually. I’m keeping it in the emergency toy cupboard for now and will get it out when we get board some afternoon. I had a ton of books like this when I was a kid and I just loved them. I found my whales book the other day and I’ll be stoked when Spencer is old enough to read it.

This has to be my favorite genre of cookbook – hardback with strange printed cover instead of a dustjacket, weird colorization and half black and white photography half color and the crazy recipes. The description for the covor photo: franks with a corkscrew cut are sauced with a tomato soup mixture for Saucy Franks.

This is a glorius 70s printing of a cookbook from the late 1960s. My favorite recipes based on the titles alone are Carrots Piquant, Pampered Beef Filets (pampered!!!) and Instant Pastafazool.

And the winner for grossest picture:

Shrimp Newburg! Ew. Just Ew. I love these things. Also, look at the recipe below: tuna stroganoff. TUNA STROGANOFF. That is like the mother of all ews. And the curly parsley is delightfully dated.

April 17th, 2012

Spring Yarn Wreath

As you might recall, I didn’t love my easter wreath, but I loved the easy ribbon hanger. Luckily, the decorations of the wreath were removable, so after the holiday I simply pulled the bunnies and eggs off and added some flowers and extra ribbon to match the hanger. I think contrasting ribbon would look great too. I love the way it turned out and almost wish it had been my easter wreath the whole time.

Easy yarn wreath hanger in action. Tutorial here.

I weirdly love the look of the wreath in the trees. I think for our next outdoor party, I’ll make a bunch of mini-wreaths to hang around the back yard.

Do you have a wordless wednesday post? I’d love to see! Link up below.