Kelle, Author at Enjoying the Small Things

A Back to School Party

August 18, 2015 By Kelle

Blame it on the Dollar Spot at Target. Or the fact that you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the Sticker Obsession/Chalk Attraction/Chunky Pink Eraser Love out of the teacher (which is why I still write in D’Nealian, by the way). Whatever the case, our back-to-school enthusiasm met up with the back-to-school dollar treasure aisle and BOOM! A little celebration was born. See also: excuse to make cookies, we missed our friends, we had some apples to use up, kid parties make people smile.

The plan was low key party, treats and a big kid swim fest where moms catch up in between yelling “Careful!” and “Don’t run!” and “Dry off before you come in!” But it started pouring right when everyone arrived which brought us to Plan B-the trump card for everything in life: COZY FALL FEST. Dim the lights, burn candles, play the jazz greats. This advice works for every situation imaginable. Try it.

Witching hour madness? Dim the lights, burn candles, play the jazz greats.
Want to make out with your spouse like it’s your first date? Dim the lights, burn candles, play the jazz greats.
Company coming over in half an hour and you’re not ready? Dim the lights, burn candles, play the jazz greats.
Feel like everything’s falling apart and you don’t know where to begin to fix it? Dim the lights, burn candles, play the jazz greats.

See? Foolproof.

Quick note: I’ve been advised over the years by many wise homemakers/moms/family members that the best way to quickly clean up when you’re running behind is to grab a laundry basket and run through your house putting anything you don’t know what to do with in the basket. The idea–although it doesn’t always work out this way–is that you entirely clean out the basket later. Or leave it in a closet for two weeks, but who’s counting? Anyhoo, in a quick clean-up of my catch-all kitchen counter before the party, I did this impressive arm sweep across the entire length–like the counter was a windshield and my arm was a giant wiper. This collection of stuff avalanched into the basket, and I had to laugh when I looked down to watch The Life-Changing Art of Tidying Up land with a thunk. I see your KonMari Method, and I raise you a Hampton ThrowShitInALaundryBasket Game Changer. Let’s just say the book may have inspired some new routines around here, but we still have work to do.

A few pictures from our Back to School celebration…

For the Elmer’s container for the yogurt, I found a square glass canister at Target and cut and glued some orange construction paper to make the famous orange lid. I enlarged an Elmer’s School Glue label and edited it with a little Comic Sans font. You didn’t ask for my feelings on Comic Sans, but I will tell you anyway: belongs in a classroom or the Sunday funnies, and that’s it. I recall a college professor admonishing a room of soon-to-be professionals: “And don’t you DARE use Comic Sans on your resume.”

Brushed up on my 7’s and 8’s Times Tables because I was a little rusty.

We did a wafer/mini marshmallow version of the ever popular Pinterest cheesestick/Bugle pencil.

The kids decorated their own cookies but I did a few samples for them. I’ve loved my buttercream frosting recipe but tried a new decorating frosting recipe that hardens/sticks/paints on much easier, and loved it. It has a little almond extract in it and tastes delicious.

The kids loved the doughnut competition–a fun game for any party. String doughnuts and hang them high enough for a challenge (right above the nose) above two kids. They can’t use their hands and have to compete to see who can eat the doughnut off the string first.

Turns out the sun did come out–as it always does–and the rest of the afternoon continued with summer-loving kids making waves before they take their wave-making game to the classroom.

And now we swim.
And tonight?
Dim the lights, burn candles, play the jazz greats.

The First Day, The Right Foot

August 17, 2015 By Kelle

I was at Target by 9:30 yesterday morning, one folded laundry load, a mopped floor and a pot of coffee already behind me. I came alone despite requests for tagalongs because I had important business—The Back-to-School Packed Lunch List, one third the holy trinity of grocery shopping lists, ranking (let’s be honest, a huge lag) behind Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas Day. We prepare for this week like a hurricane. Peanut Butter? Check. Sandwich Bags? Check. Pirate’s Bootie, Fresh Fruit, Pretzel Sticks? Check, check, check. Like always, I take advantage of my time alone in the car and call Heidi, continuing my conversation with her—phone awkwardly pinned between my chin and shoulder—as I find a parking spot, throw my keys in my purse and walk to the entrance.

I can’t help but immediately notice the long trail of shoppers in line at the adjoining Starbucks.

“Oh my God,” I tell Heidi, “So much for my latte, the line to the Starbucks counter is out the door.”

“Um, that’s because right now moms everywhere are EXHAUSTED.” She doesn’t even have to use the expletive I would have wedged in there, it’s woven into her tone.

She’s right. It’s a trail of moms wearing yoga pants and ponytails and all too familiar expressions of I’d-travel-to-the-ends-of-the-earth-for-my-kid, fetching espressos before they hunt down that last specific thing on their list—blasted yellow 2-inch binder, overpriced graphing calculator that’ll never be used again, composition notebook in the only color the store doesn’t carry.

I continue my conversation with Heidi at the deli counter until I realize I’m being rude and hang up so I can show the butcher how thin I want my salami without putting everyone on hold. He gives me the wrapped sliced salami—first item on my list—and I set it in the seat of my cart, the place where Nella would be sitting had I not been on a kids-free mission to make everything right with the world before school starts.

Salami, one notch in my belt. Followed by kiwi, a new fancy cereal, the bread Lainey likes, Lysol wipes off Dash’s classroom list and stickers for Nella’s teacher—the high-priced ones because once they caught my eye, all I can think about is how googly-eyed hamburgers are going to make those kids’ day.

I come home and put the groceries away. Organize the pantry. Iron clothes and pin related arts schedules on the cork board in the laundry room. Check to make sure the first day forms are all signed and in folders and then check one more time just in case I missed something. There’s not enough espresso in the world to fuel this job—not so much getting ready for school, but the underlining one this represents…getting them ready for life.

Later in the afternoon, I sit down to edit some pictures. Brett walks over to my desk, squeezes my shoulder and says, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For all that you’re doing getting ready for school. It’s a lot of work.”

I tear up because it feels so good to be validated by him for it and I tear up because I’m a mom and I’m doing that mom thing of holding up the dam—the one that’s always just a first day of school, another “Happy Birthday” chorus, a drive home from college drop-off away from breaking.

We won’t always be this prepared, of course, but there’s something about that first week. I just want to start the year on the right foot.

To make that first impression.
Momentum to set the tone.

It will add up, this thing we do year after year of finding the right gym shoes and writing love notes for the lunch box and waiting in line at Starbucks before heading to the jungle of the backpack aisle. All these years, all these first days, all these tears we wipe from the parking lot because the beast of time cannot be tamed—they’ll compress to form a tiny sliver. A small space in their lives, a great space in ours. Eighteen years to equal one step into all that the future holds.

And I just want to start them off on the right foot.

(First day of preschool, third grade…Dash starts tomorrow.)

Back to School Party pics coming tomorrow.

Happy First Day of the Week, friends. Here’s to starting on the right foot.

For more back-to-school ideas, I’m over at eHow this week sharing school lunch box love note ideas.

BIG READS, little reads

August 14, 2015 By Kelle

For Friday Faves today, I’m bringing you my latest favorite reads both for big people and little people. I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to this summer and have a couple that I’m volleying between right now, but I had no problem choosing four that I loved and am excited to pass on. All four of these books had parts that made me uncomfortable–the good kind of uncomfortable that stretches you and pushes you and pulls the flames of your creative fire higher. If I ever feel that fire fizzling, I know books will always bring it back.

Big Reads

1. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War. It took me a little while to finish this book, but I’m glad I read it. It gives incredible insight to the story behind the photographs we see in the news, and I will never look at war photographs the same.

2. What To Do When It’s Your Turn. I’ll probably talk more about this book later, but it made me cry and I know Seth Godin was thinking of me and me alone when he wrote it. He was up in my brain examining all of the messed up areas, and actually now that I think if it, I wasn’t mentioned as a case study in the acknowledgments and that disappoints me. Remember that game you played as a kid where you close your eyes and spin a globe and then stop it with your finger, and wherever your finger lands is where you’re going to go? This book is the globe. Flip open to a page, any page, and point. Read what it says. That was written for you. Now go there. An easy read with lots of captions and pictures and stories and quotes–about diving in, about not listening to the stories in our head, about being thirsty enough to cut the crap and do what we were meant to do.

3. The Chronology of Water. This was my introduction to Lidia Yuknavich, and now I am obsessed with her. Her new Small Backs of Children is on my list now. Sister. Can. Write. A story of redemption beautifully written with brilliant metaphor. Not for the faint of heart–she’s unfiltered and writes very openly on matters of sexuality. This is now in my small stack of books to reread and reread and reread–saved for the very best books.

4. Letters to a Young Poet. After being introduced to a few Rilke quotes I loved, I picked this up and finished it in a day–super short read. There are treasures on writing, faith, identity and art, and you might as well also buy a new highlighter if you’re going to buy this book. So many yellow pages.

A sample appetizer for you: “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke You’re Welcome.

And now for the littles–books that raise the flames of my creative fire just as much as the big ones do. Bonus: the kids love them too.

Little Reads

1. Good Night Yoga. We took this book to Michigan with us with big plans to wake up and do yoga by the lake every morning. We didn’t exactly hit that goal, but we did hold a tree pose or two on a chilly morning while we chanted some of the darling mediation poems. We’ve since pulled it out several times, now memorizing the words with poses. This is an excellent way to introduce basic yoga moves and accompanying child-friendly affirmations to the littlest of littles–and a fun exercise for parent and child to practice together.

2. Sonya’s Chickens. I don’t know what I love more about this brand new book by Phoebe Wahl–the story and thoughtful approach to explaining a chicken death to a child or the warm details in the gorgeous illustrations. My favorite page in the book (a fun game, by the way):

3. Up in the Garden, Down in the Dirt. A beautiful explanation of what happens both above and below the ground of a garden over the course of a year, this book perfectly marries education, story, poetry and art. You can FEEL the words and pictures.

My favorite page:

How’s that for fall freak flag? I want soup and hay bales and chunky cable knit socks RIGHT NOW. And how about that Nana’s style?

Gimme that hat, Nana.

4. Knowledge Encyclopedia. Everything a kid ever wanted to know about anything. This book will entertain even the most reluctant of readers, and it’s so full of information, you could read a different subject every night and take months to finish. DK knows how to make a non-fiction book–the photos, the colors, the diagrams, the captions. From dinosaurs and the ocean floor to a baby’s life in the womb, this book presents child-friendly information, photos and illustrations and magically spins it into SO INTERESTING. We keep this on our coffee table for bored moments.