a wonderful gift!

this post has been moved here!

the wonders of being a mamma

this post has been moved here!

end of the year

this post has been moved here!

donne con le gonne: mother awareness

this post has been moved here!

cardboard play house

this post has been moved here!

doll diapers

this post has been moved here!

happy saint's day, sofia!

My daughter was born in August, when pretty much everyone in Italy goes on vacation, so she can never celebrate with her friends and family at home. So we throw her a party for her onomastico, saint's name day, as is celebrated in Catholic countries. I've had a lot of work to do, but I did what I could manage for her party. Unfortunately almost all of the pictures I took of what I did are horrid, but they'll just have to do!

First of all, we made a sort of banner saying "Auguri," (a very generic sort of "congratulations" that is used for every possible occassion). I have pictures of every birthday party I had as a girl with all the guests under a "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner that my mother made from colored construction paper. Every year, the same banner and quite often the same kids.

So I found a couple of shoeboxes, cut out the letters and punched holes at the tops to string them up. Then my daughter and I painted them with acrylic paint. I had imagined doing each letter a different color, but the fact the virtually all our paint had dried up foiled my plans and we had to settle for a different color of glitter for each letter. A nice afternoon project to do together and I assure you that it does look much nicer than you would think from this photo!


Then the favor. I still haven't figured out if it's typical in Italy to give out birthday party favors (it is in the United States), but I prepared them anyway. Last year I brought sidewalk chalk home from the USA and all the kids (including the old ones) who live in our apartment complex were completely enthralled, because this sort of mega-chalk doesn't exist here, and kept asking me for months afterwards if I had any more of "that big chalk" and where I had bought it.

So this year I bought a few boxes and put a package of five with Colombian lollypops and some little plastic toys in cloth drawstring sacks. I made a bunch of these sacks in just a few hours and my daughter helped me turn them right side out and fill them up.

And I made the desserts. I didn't take a picture of the Rice Krispies Treats, a typically American thing, made from the breakfast cereal and melted marshmallows. They're always a success because first of all, they're yummy, and second, nobody in Italy knows what marshmallows are. I did remember to take pictures of the Hello Kitty cake, even though the pictures are horrid. I cut out the shape of her head from a rectangular chocolate cake, covered it with white frosting and added liquorice whip whiskers and candy eyes, nose and flower. Auguri, Sofia mia!

RIP puntino :(

Yesterday was a tough day, the due date of the baby that I lost in October at 9 weeks. Don't worry, I'm not going to bother you all with tales of the despair that a woman who miscarries feels nor how insensitive some people can be (though I should. It seems that few people realize how frequent miscarriage is. Some say up to one in three pregnancies end that way, but it often happens before the woman even realizes she was pregnant in the first place.). Instead I'll tell you a bit about what I did for a little emotional healing.

After losing a baby, many women feel the need to do something to remember it by. Some get a tattoo, others plant a tree or flowers. I've never been able to choose a tattoo that I would like to have for the rest of my days and I was worried that a plant could die on me. So I thought a bit. One of the things that I was saddest about was that I really would like for my daughter to have a sibling, someone to play with. So yesterday I sewed a doll for her. I bought the "John" pattern from the Etsy seller Bit of Whimsy Dolls, a PDF pattern, which is great because there's no need to mail it. I'd never made a doll in my life, but the instructions were really easy and it only took a few hours. I'd never embroidered either, for that matter, but I must say that I found it quite relaxing and I'd like to try more of it in the future.

yah moms!

Happy mothers' day to all you (us) mammas! We even have a lovely sunny day to enjoy, ahhhh!

Seeing as I'm posting a picture of one of my plants, I'm also adding an update to my attempts to grow plants from fruit seeds. In January I wrote about the little lemon plant that was popping out, and just look at it now! And a bunch more have popped out, too!

oh, that's me!

They couldn't have described me better! From "For Better or For Worse".

Gifts without spending

I have decided to buy as few things as possible. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of consumerism, not to mention all that packaging that gets thrown out. For Epiphany (celebrated in all self-respecting Catholic societies) I made paper stockings which Sofia decorated and filled them with homemade cookies. Southern Italian kids don't get stockings from Santa on Christmas, but from the witch la Befana on Epiphany. And I'm happy to say that they were much appreciated by young and old alike. For Christmas Sofia got her Clifford hat and mermaid costumes for a couple of her dolls. I got the idea from one of my favorite blogs, Angry Chicken. She made hers with nicer fabrics, like velvet or something, while I used pieces of fleece I had left over from the Christmas stocking I made a couple of years back.

They're basically fabric tubes closed at the bottom by the fins and an elastic at the top to keep them on different sized dolls, simple and easy to take on and off a gazillion times a day. My husband found the shell-shaped bras a tad excessive for a 2-year-old, but Sofia's already pretty obsessed with nudity and underthings, so who really cares? In any case, she prefers hanging them around her own neck like necklaces. The bras close with velcro at the back. These lovely mermaids can do whatever normal dolls can, such as taking a stroll or having a healthy (or not) meal.

Clifford-mania

this post has been moved here!