Thanksgiving Dinner 2009

Make a Smilebox invite

Are you a foodie if you take pictures of your meals?

In the last couple of years, I have been more inspired to take pictures of the food that I cook or grow.  I'm not much of a photographer so the pictures are all that great in quality but let me tell you how delicious this turkey breast was for dinner!  I've always been someone who, if hosting a holiday dinner or party,  will take a picture of the table before sitting down to dinner.  I'm not sure why now... maybe because I'm making more sophisticated meals (when I have time of course) than I did ten years ago.  Or.... because I watch Top Chef every week.... who knows.....

It's that time of year again....

I'm getting catalogs in the mail for halloween costumes.  It's the time of the year I dread especially now that Gretchen fits a size 4 for girls.  I must confess that I have never been all the crazy about Halloween.  I certainly only celebrated before because my sister-in-law had an annual party.  Living in an apartment in Evanston in our first seven years of marriage did not bring many if any trick-o-treaters to my door.  Once I had kids, all of that changed!  It was fun to dress up the girl as a chili-pepper (1st year), Princess Leia (2nd year), ladybug (3rd year) and Cat-in-the-Hat (last year).  However this year, she would like to be either Wonder Woman or Daphne (from Scooby Doo).  She wants to be one of these because of my bad parenting....  I let Gretchen look at kids catalogs (usually toy catalogs) but this time of year they all have Halloween costumes in them.  Most of the catalogs are okay.  The costumes seem age appropriate.  However we get several catalogs for just Halloween that end up in Gretchen's little hands where some of the sexiest costumes come in a size 4/6 (for kids).  Don't believe me?  Look at this Purrrty Kitty Child Costume (even the name bothers me....).  I have nothing against the company who makes this because I don't blame them for this costume.  I blame fellow parents who buy this costume!  Why would you want your daughter to dress up like this?  At any age but at age 4?  I don't understand it.  There is another costume called Major Flirt where a girl dresses up in a sexy little army dress with Major Flirt on the chest and knee high boots.  Really?  Sigh....  Depending on your political leanings, you may think I'm a crazy feminist (because as I must point out that boys costumes are not nearly if at all sexualized the way girls costumes are) OR you may think I'm a prude because I'm overreacting about a kids costume.  Either way, I don't care.  If you want your child to dress up like a little tart, that's your business but they won't be getting much candy out of me until they put some clothes on and dress up like the little kids they are..... 

Different Fairy Tale Ending

I kinda loathe the fairy tale princess/damsel in distress since the stories are sad usually (mother and/or father are dead or sick or stupid). I try to keep it to myself though because Gretchen seems to like these stories. I try not to push the Disney version on her (in fact I shy away from it) and would rather she hear the Brothers Grimm version since it seems more gritty. Anyhow, this post shows what could have happened to our lovely princesses and it cracks me up!

Progress

Some months ago I posted about learning Photoshop (though it's not technically the Adobe product). I have gotten better with it. I made Gretchen's birthday invitation with it. I also re-did her blog and put up a new banner. I'm going to re-do my blog and the boys' blog too with new banners. I still haven't learned everything I want to but what's important is that I have goals. I've been keeping a personal goal list on my computer for a while and though I haven't updated it in awhile, it reminds me that I want to do more than just work and parent (two worthy activities of course!). Though I won't share everything on my list (too embarrassing!), a few things that I am still thinking about: learning to sew (my mother made clothes for me and I want to do that for my kids), learn to play an instrument (I wanted it to be guitar but maybe piano is more my speed), learn more web 2.0 stuff (I am kind of learning xml to alter my blogs - it would be cool to make my own app for anything!), and of course, lose weight (never leaves the list just moves around it). I have accepted that until the kids are older, it will difficult to spend a lot of doing any of these things but hey, I never thought I would have a vegetable garden but I did accomplish that! (Steve took it over but I am okay with that - he is way better at it than I am).