Island Picnic blog

My son inherited a set of bunk beds from my oldest brother, who is now 40-something (I’ll spare him a little embarrassment here).  These bunk beds were bought for him by my grandparents when he was just a little boy, so they’ve been around a while.  But they were made extremely well, and they have truly held up!

Other than the fuzz.

The fuzz hangs down from the underside of the top bunk.  I’m assuming that 40 years ago, this was some sort of mesh-type fabric that was nicely intact on the bottom of the bunkie board, which holds the mattress.  Well, today it looks like this…

Trevor calls the fuzz “spider webs,” and they really do look like it, hanging down inches above his little face.  Yikes!  Something must be done!

I had a couple ideas of how to cover them up.  One was to make some sort of “road map” that he could drive his cars or trains around on.  But he has a road carpet already and hardly uses it.  So I came up with another plan, based on his newest fascination…

PLANETS!!!

Step 1: Buy a black sheet.  Done.

Step 2: Mark the size you need to cut on the sheet.  (Hint: Chalk shows up great on black!)

Step 3: Enlist your oldest child to help, if he/she is old enough to use scissors.  They don’t have to use them well – see above picture of cut-out sheet.  For a moment I thought she chewed the edges off.  Yikes.

 

Step 4: Time to sketch!  Again, with chalk.  We printed out a picture of the planets, so we had a rough idea of the sizes.

 

Step 5: Start painting!  We used regular acrylic craft paint.  I bought 6 colors, and we were able to mix those together to get all the exact colors we needed!  See, red + yellow = orange!  Thank you, preschool!

 

Step 6: Step back and take a look at what you’ve done.  Mommy moment here – even though I knew Trevor was the only one who would ultimately have to look at this (okay, and all of you who are reading this now), I was majorly critical of how Jillian painted the planets.  This is me, “No!  That’s too much paint!  Watch the edges… THE EDGES!!!  Nevermind, you do the inside.  I’LL fix the edges.  Wait, you did that one all by yourself while I was fixing dinner???  Ooooohhhhh, gooooooood job, honey!”

 

And see those little spots and lines?  Well, we decided our paint splatters would be awesome stars and comets.  Gotta love outer space! Leaves a lotta room for mistakes.

And even though Trevor can’t read yet, I added the names of the planets.  This way, at least when he asks me, “Which one is this?” I don’t have to say, “my very educated mother just sold us nine pizzas” in my head, which I did at least two dozen times during the whole painting process.

 

And yes, I included Pluto.  I’m sorry.  I just can’t not.  But one day, when he’s old enough, I’ll tell him the truth.  That Pluto isn’t really a planet; it’s a dwarf planet, and blah, blah, blah… Or I’ll let his teachers worry about that.

Step 8: Staple to the underside of the bunkie board.

And put it back on the bed!  Hours of enjoyment with ensue!

Or, you know, at least 15 minutes.  But hey, 15 toddler minutes at bedtime is at least 3 mommy hours.  So it works out pretty well!

You know what?  I’m tired of watching all of the other kids around us participating in all the holiday fun, knowing that Jillian’s fun is so limited by what she can and can’t eat or touch.

Since she was a baby, I’ve known she was allergic to eggs, so I never even considered dying eggs for Easter.  Because it’s not just that she can’t eat them (or she’ll go into anaphylactic shock), but even coming in contact with raw egg gives her itchy, red hives.  So we’ve stayed away from the things thus far.

But I guess I got fed up this year.

I got sick of seeing other kids doing what I used to do with my brothers every single Easter weekend, and thinking , “there’s yet another thing we can’t do.”

Maybe I was just in a bad mood.  But it turned out to be for the best.

I bought egg dye kits and a dozen eggs.  Bound and determined to carry on an Easter tradition from my past, even if she had to wear gloves while doing it, I boiled the eggs this morning.

And you know what we discovered?  Thankfully, at the very LEAST, she is not allergic to the egg shells!  Woohoo, success!

And here are our eggs!  There are so many more options for egg dying kits than I remember, I had a very hard time deciding which one to get.  I ended up picking neon colors, which turned out to be AWESOME!  They are this bright after just a short dunk in the water.  Very, very cool!

The kids had so much fun, we dyed another dozen eggs after this!  I’m so glad I decided to start this “new” old tradition with my kiddos – I know we’ll be doing this every single year.

 

Yep.  Even the doll gets the green treatment in this house.

Jillian got her coveted American Girl Doll for Christmas this year – Caroline, from the 1800s.  Caroline’s wooden canopy bed was a bit too pricey for Santa, but as luck would have it, my mom had an old canopy doll bed from when she was a little girl.  And to Jillian, it might as well have come from the 1800s (sorry, Mom!).

But the bedding was, well… hideous!  And in horrible shape.  So one of Jillian’s requests was new bedding for Miss Caroline.  And she got it!  Thanks to Harmony Art, we have LOTS and LOTS of different organic cotton prints and colors laying around to choose from.  So Designer Jillian picked these two, which happen to coordinate with her new room (what luck!).

Speaking of luck, that is one lucky doll!

If you were to ask either my mom or me where our truest design passions lie, we would both answer the same way, “home decor!”  And shouldn’t we be doing what we enjoy the very most?  Why, yes.  Yes, we should.

And the conversation really was about that simple… “We both love interior design, and we always have.  Why don’t we create a line of organic home decor pieces?”  ”OK!”

And we’re off and running!

Our first collection in our new Eco Home line is called “Wave.”  It was vaguely inspired by the sea, but not in an overly we’re-at-the-beach-yay-for-dolphins-and-sandcastles kind of way.

Take a look…

See the wave?

Luckily, Mom and I have very, very similar design aesthetics.  That makes working together and creating new pieces easy as well as fun.  (See why I love this business?) Our style is clean, somewhat modern, colorful…

Wait, where’s the color, you ask?  Here it is!

We like mixing basics, like black and white, with bright, bold pieces like this fun lime green!  Imagine these pieces together on your living room sofa.

And this gorgeous deep chocolate brown and aqua blue swirled print is bold, sophisticated and whimsical, all at the same time. Now that’s a tricky combination!

Organic throw pillows aren’t the only thing in our new Eco Home line…

Eco friendly placemats and napkins, too!  We’re also designing organic cotton draperies to coordinate with these pieces, and we’re SO very excited about those!!  Pics to come!

Now that’s just a peek at what we’re working on.  The full line will be available this summer on our website and in stores in the fall.

In the meantime, we’ve actually added quite a few Organic Cotton Throw Pillow Covers and Everyday Organic Napkins to our website that are available right now!  Here’s a peek at some of those…

Check out our website for MANY more colors and prints.  And stay tuned as we add lots and lots more to our Eco Home line!  We’re so excited!!!

 

A few months back I was contacted by a stylist who had found our Everyday Organic Napkins on Etsy, and she wanted them for a “Green Wedding” photo shoot she was putting together.  She picked the solid aqua blue – one of my personal faves!

Well, the pictures are in, and they’re GORGEOUS!!!  Take a look at her blog to see them all.

I love the idea of a green wedding, and of course, we’re thrilled to have our napkins as part of the absolutely beautiful setup they created!  Thanks, JennieDee!

There are a lot of reasons I love living on Anna Maria Island.  A lot of big reasons (like the beach, my kids’ schools, the laid-back atmosphere…) and a lot of little reasons.  One of the little reasons is Halloween.

Halloween on Anna Maria is hard to beat.  To kick things off is the elementary school’s Fall Festival, which starts with a costume parade down Gulf Drive – all of the kids in costume, carrying their class banners… led by a police escort, no less!

We have gone for the past three years, because that’s how long Jillian has been at the school, but the festival is open to the public which is pretty awesome.  There are tons of games in the back field, bouncy houses, a rock wall, and even snow cones (yes, in Florida, we still have snow cones in late October!).  The kids buy tickets to play games and then win tickets they trade in for prizes from the super cool (and quite impressive) prize room.  Then, there’s the huge, and I do mean H-U-G-E, bake sale, which gets bigger and better every year!

And that’s just the weekend before Halloween.

On the big day itself, the possibilities of when and where to fill your candy bag are nearly endless!  Each of the island cities (Bradenton Brach, Holmes Beach and Anna Maria) participates in the Trail of Treats, where island businesses generously open their doors (and buckets of candy) to all the dressed-up kiddos.

In years past, we have gone to the Holmes Beach businesses, which was always a lot of fun (and yielded quite a high volume of treats), but this year we chose to stroll down Pine Avenue, the City of Anna Maria’s “Greenest Little Main Street.”  My son’s preschool is on Pine Ave., as well as lots of cute shops and our local Green Village (yay!).

I have to say, I was pleased with my decision.  While I heard Holmes Beach was amazing, I enjoyed the quieter walk up and down Pine this year, popping into the shops easily, without getting run over in the process.  My kids are 7 and 3, and they don’t move as swiftly as 11-year-olds on a mission, haha!  Give them a couple years!

After gathering a decently full bag of candy on Pine, we headed home for a quick bite (of real food…), and then we were back out to our favorite Trick-or-Treating spot on the island, 75^th street.  We don’t live far, so we can actually walk there, and we do, because the parking has gotten a bit crazy!

Tons of houses, tons of people, tons of candy!  This year, I decided to bring our new dog, Star.  I thought she might enjoy an evening stroll… but the craziness of the crowded street full of costumed strangers running every which way proved a bit too much for her.  So I carried her up and down the street, lol!

Other than the poor, terrified pooch, we all had a great time!  We even discovered a house we had never been to before where we got to see a magic show.  Trevor was amazed!!  He begged and begged to go back, and we did.  Then after we headed home, he did his own, 3-year-old version of a “magic show” for me for the next 30 minutes… in between mouthfuls of candy.  Ah, the magic of Halloween.  J

Can you believe I have never carved a pumkpin before?  At least until very recently, that is.  I vaguely remember my dad carving pumpkins when I was real little, but as an adult, even with two kids, I had never even attempted to buy a pumpkin, let alone cut it up and make a jack-o-lantern.  But this is our year for firsts (kayaking last week and now pumpkins!), so…

Off we went to the pumpkin patch!!  We picked out the very roundest, orangest, pumpkin-looking-est pumpkin we could find and took it home.  Trevor had brought home three smaller pumpkins from an outing with his aunt and uncle the day before.  So we weren’t just carving our first pumpkin, we were also carving our second, and third and fourth!

Being that I don’t ever remember carving pumpkins, I also didn’t remember what the inside of one looks like.  I figured it was full of seeds and slimy goo, but I was actually a little surprised…

It’s not as full as I had thought, there’s a lot of empty space in there.  And it’s also drier than I imagined.  Sure, the stringiness is slimy, but it’s not all wet and gooey.  Whew.

And then it was time to scoop…

And carve…

and carve…

and carve some more…

Yes, Jillian, you can carve, too.

And when we were all done carving…

This is my attempt at pumpkin humor.  The little one is scared of the big one.  Can you tell??

Our little pumpkin family!

And here they are in their final resting place, the front steps.  If I do say so myself, they actually look really good!  I mean, they’re not those amazing sculptured masterpieces you see online or anything, but come on, this is my first time!

What I did not know was how few days they actually last in our Florida heat down here.  We carved them last weekend, and in 4 or 5 days they were moldy mush… yuck!  Well, you live and you learn.  At least we had fun making them and our porch looked Halloween-y for a little while.  I’ll know better for next year.

I’ve wanted to go kayaking for a long time.  We live on an island on the Gulf Coast of Florida, and we always see people enjoying the water in their kayaks or on their boats.  I grew up boating with my family, spending a lot of our summer Saturdays fishing, swimming and baking in the sun.

As an adult, though, I hardly ever find myself out on the water.  We actually have a really nice stretch of water as our backyard, and I’m ashamed to say we never use it.

There always seems to be an excuse for not doing things.  We’re too busy, too tired, have too many other things to do… But I’m starting to think of things in a different way.  And I’m trying to look at life in a different way.  Less stress, more fun!  I have two young children, and I want their childhood to be as full of happiness and fun adventures as mine was.

To be completely honest, it’s too easy to make the excuse that I’m a single mom.  “If I only had someone to do these things with,” I’ll think.

But I don’t (for now, at least…), and my kiddos and I deserve to have our own fun family memories!

And look… the kayak fits the three of us just PERFECTLY!

 

We’ve had it for a week now, and I’ve taken the kids out three times already.  They’re really enjoying it, and so am I!  We got a paddle for me and a break-apart paddle for them.  That way they can take turns with it as one long paddle or split it into two, and they can each help row, row, row our bright green boat (named Lemon Lime by Jillian) gently down the canal.

The best part so far is paddling over the shallow seagrass area across our canal, where it’s clear enough to see right through.  We’ve seen stingrays and lots of tiny fish.  And the coolest part of our marine life is our jumping mullet, leaping out of the water all around us as we paddle through (one nearly leapt right in our kayak!).

I can’t tell you how excited I am that the weather down here in FL is starting to change… FINALLY!  This weekend, we’re supposed to have highs in the low 80s!  The low 80s!  I’m so tired of sweating.  Sounds like perfect kayaking weather to me!

I was introduced this month to Indie Artisans, a very cool, ever-changing collection of handmade items all put together in one beautiful, color-schemed, fun-to-shop-from layout.  They change their collection depending on the season… or their mood!

 

Right now the collection is all about back to school.  The fun finds range from clothing, jewelry, food, purses, aprons, ahem… our sandwich & snack bags…

 

But my absolute favorite find is this little guy:

 

I don’t know what I’d do with a little yellow monster, really, but everytime I see him, he makes me smile.  Perhaps he’d have a good home on my desk. 

This is Star…

I sincerely hope she will be the newest member of our family.  We met her last night, along with two of her other foster brothers and sisters.

Jillian has been begging me for a dog for years.  Probably for as long as she could say, “dog.”  I had three things that had to happen before we could get a dog:

1. She outgrows most of her allergies.

2. We move out of my parents elevated house and into a house of our own, on the ground.

3. Her little brother gets a little older, and subsequently, less trouble.

None of those things have happened.

And yet, here we are, about to adopt a dog.

We always had dogs growing up, and our last family dog passed away just 3 months before Jillian was born.  My parents were so attached to that dog, and so very upset by her passing, they swore they’d never get another dog again.  They just couldn’t bear it.  So I never considered it, as long as we lived with them.  But then a couple months ago, my Mom started talking about it.  We thought it might be good for my dad, who has advanced Parkinson’s disease, to have a pet around.  One thing led to another, and last night we had four doggies running around our house!  (Three rescue dogs/potential pets and one of the foster parents’ own doggies.)

I had found one particular dog I liked on Petfinder.com, and he came out.  And his “parents” brought along two other fosters that they knew would be good with small children.  I had my heart set on him – I had seen him online for weeks, and I kept coming back to him.

Well, when they got here, he didn’t give me, or any of us for that matter, the time of day!  Turns out, he’d been living with them for a year now, and you could tell he was very much “their” dog.  And that was fine.  Because we met Star.

She bonded with each and every one of us, in her sweet, demure way.  I think she’ll fit in perfectly.

She has heartworms, poor thing.  She’s going for her last round of treatment this week.  Then she’ll need a couple weeks of recovery at home, and she’ll be able to come over for a sleepover.  A doggy sleepover!  Who would have thought?!

I’m a little worried about Jillian.  Her food allergies are so severe, that she has reacted to dogs licking her because of what’s in their food.  And sometimes even petting them because of what is in their shampoo.  However, we had four dogs running all over our house, licking her like crazy last night, and she didn’t have any trouble at all.  Thank God.

We’re all crossing every finger we have that the sleepover goes just as well, and we get to keep little Star.  As it was, Jillian cried for an hour after Star went home last night.  I mean really cried.  She was heartbroken to say goodbye for a couple weeks, after just one hour.  It’s a risky thing to even go through with the sleepover, knowing how utterly distraught she’ll be if we can’t keep her for some reason.  But I like to think positively, and I do believe she is the doggy for us.

I’ll keep you updated!!!