Finally introducing: Ladies Craft Beer Society

Miss me?

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, and after alluding to it a dozen or so times on this blog, I’m happy to finally introduce you to Ladies Craft Beer Society! There’s finally a blog and website to accompany the club that has been my primary source of friendship, creativity and beer over the past four years.

We had our March meeting yesterday, and made all natural body wash (while enjoying our first sponsorship.)

I’m reposting my introductory blog entry here to give you a little background. I’ll be back to complaining about motherhood in the near future.

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First Things First

When I started Ladies Craft Beer Society four years ago, I never envisioned it would become such an important part of my life. (Its very premise is about as low-key as it gets: We gather together to drink beer and make something to take home. It’s like those free classes at Home Depot where your kids can make a bird house, except we’re the kids, and there’s beer.)

But LCBS, as silly as it sounds, is also a tremendous source of support and friendship for me. When I started it, I was wrestling with that weird, mid-20s feeling of settling into the place where friendships are hard to maintain. With a demanding job, a new house, a husband and a Netflix account, it was easy to fall into the routine of answering “omg so busy” whenever anyone asks how you’re doing. But I was feeling a little lonely and disconnected and just couldn’t figure out how to make friendships fit into my life in a way that made sense to me (an admittedly socially awkward, mostly introvert).

Ladies Craft Beer Society started out as a dare to myself. I would commit, out loud and to a group of women I admired, to hanging out on a regular basis. I would let them into my house–the one I neurotically cleaned for hours and hours and hours as an outlet for my social anxiety any time I had people over–once a month, and let them into my life and start getting comfortable with being more vulnerable.

I decided to frame the club around crafting to give us something to do that didn’t require homework (here’s looking at you, book clubs).

I invited friends and acquaintances I had met through various jobs, at uncomfortable networking events, through my husband, and even a high school friend or two, to get together.

And I decided we’d also drink seasonally and thematically appropriate beer at each meeting, because I’ve always preferred it to wine (and let’s be honest: 28-year-old me’s solution to social anxiety was to drown it. In beer.)

That first meeting went better than I expected. There was the getting-to-know you chit-chat, there were nametags, there were snacks. There were also sweater mittens, which turned out to be way too hard of a craft to tackle in a couple hours. We were just getting acquainted when the night started out, but by the time the last thread was snipped, we were united in our hilariously ill-executed sewing project.

A mitten, in theory. (Photo credit: Melissa)

When the first guests arrived at the first meeting of LCBS, I wanted everything to be perfect. When they left, it was the first hint of a lesson that the mistakes and the admitting we had no idea what we were doing were what made the night fun, and what made me feel connected to these women.

In the ensuing years since that first meeting, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with imperfection. I never would have guessed my silly little club would become so important to me, and I’m so excited to–along with my esteemed fellow members–finally share it with you.

Cheers!

Reanna K.

(That’s me below dodging an aggressive butterfly at a meeting in the summer of 2014.)

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Pregnancy Week 36: Easy tears (and an easy Christmas craft)

I’m officially 37 weeks now. Which means, in addition to the baby being basically fully cooked and safe to come out, I am officially eligible to labor in the tub at the birthing center, if I want. Hooray!

But let’s talk about Week 36.

The primary features of Week 36 this time around:

• Braxton Hicks contractions
• Lightning crotch
• Hairtrigger crying reflex
• Stress eating, and the subsequent return of heartburn

Pregnancy-wise, it wasn’t too rough of a week. I think I’ve finally completed the midwife circuit at the practice I go to, and I’m now on a weekly appointment schedule. At the 36 week appointment, I got the Group B strep test (presumed negative, as I didn’t get a phone call), so I won’t have to get antibiotics during labor.

Life-wise, it wasn’t an especially pleasant week. I’m still swamped with freelancing work (which is a good thing! And a fun project! But not the greatest timing on my part), had to spend two daycare mornings dealing with minor but inconvenient car issues, and The Toddler is once again going through a weird developmental phase (please, God, let this just be a phase) where he is refusing to nap and regressing with his potty-training habits. The Husband, too, was stretched thin, and worked late three nights last week, so while he did his best I felt like I was flying solo through a lot of turbulence.

The Toddler napped one. time. last week. And has had about four costume changes a day, thanks to his refusal to tell me when he needs to go. On the bright side, no naps means he is crashing for bed by 6 p.m. But then again, so am I.

All of which made that freelancing work pretty tricky to tackle, and all preparation for his family birthday party on Saturday had to wait until Saturday morning, which meant by 2:30 on Saturday afternoon I was just frantically running around the house, tears streaming down my face, as I tried to put everything together at the  last minute. I’ve got to stop being enormously pregnant during the holidays.

Fortunately, The Toddler’s grandparents and aunts and uncles were (at least outwardly) unbothered by our mediocre food offerings and only wanted to shower the Toddler in gifts and affection. He had a blast, and is enjoying the infusion of new toys. (And my mom gets to live to see another Christmas, despite her gift of a thousand-decibel tractor toy with no off switch, because she watched him Saturday morning so we could pull everything together.)

I don’t have any additional pregnancy wisdom or whining to throw your way this week, so here are a few shots of the quick-and-dirty advent calendar I put together for The Toddler. Obviously, it’s way too late for this to be useful for this year, but maybe it will come in handy next year if you feel obligated to make something homemade but want to keep it super simple (like, say, if you’re enormously pregnant.)

String paper ornaments across your mantel using clothespins

To make it extra-fun, I clipped a sticker behind each ornament as a special treat for each day

Cut out a green felt triangle and sew 25 buttons on it

Every day, hang another ornament on the tree until Christmas. The clothespins can then hold Christmas cards as they come in.

 

Super-simple Toddler Advent Calendar

Materials

• 1/2 yard green felt
• A way to affix the felt to your wall (maybe Command strips/velcro? I’m lucky to have a brick hearth that holds the felt all on its own)
• Several yards of cotton string (I used craft baker’s twine)
• 25 buttons
• Yarn or ticker cotton string the length of your mantle
• Multicolored cardstock
• Hole punch
• 2″-ish circle template (I traced the inside of a roll of masking tape)
• 25 clothespins
• Metallic Sharpie
• 25 stickers (optional)

Directions

1. Cut out a triangle shape from the felt. (Mine is about 30″-36″ tall and 18″ wide at the base).
2. Sew 25 buttons onto the felt to give your toddler a way to hang up the ornaments.
3. Hang the felt tree on the wall with Command velcro strips/brick.
4. Cut out 25 circles from the cardstock. Number them 1-25.
5. Punch holes in the circles and tie a loop of string to each.
6. String up the yarn/string on your mantle and evenly space the 25 clothespins out.
7. Pin each ornament up on the mantle, clipping a sticker behind each. (For older kids, you could also write something on the back of each ornament — an activity they get to do that day, a special memory you have with them, a riddle, whatever.)
8. You’re done! Just help your little one take down an ornament each day and hang it on a button on the tree. I like to use the empty clothespins to hold Christmas cards as they come in.

String paper ornaments across your mantel using clothespins

Cut out a green felt triangle and sew 25 buttons on it

To make it extra-fun, I clipped a sticker behind each ornament as a special treat for each day

Every day, hang another ornament on the tree until Christmas. The clothespins can then hold Christmas cards as they come in.

Pregnancy Week 25: Nesting mania

Pregnancy Week 25 has come and gone, and with it came a rush of crazy nesting instincts.

First, stats:

Baby is approximately the size of an acorn squash, a rutabaga, a cabbage, or any number of other fall vegetables. (Translation: 13.5 inches from head to toe, and about 1.5 lbs.)

As far as how I’m feeling, mostly the answer is big and cumbersome. I caught myself waddling a few times this week, which horrified me. Mostly it was because I ended up wearing heels to the wedding I went to last weekend (dumb) or otherwise over-exerted myself (which, sadly, means I walked 3 slow miles behind a stroller, but that’s my current fitness threshold.)

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I kept up my once-a-pregnancy tradition of audibly farting in a prenatal yoga class. What is the purpose of a personal blog with your real name attached to it, if not oversharing and publicly humiliating yourself? Whatever, farting is funny.

Speaking of funny, a friend texted me the link to this video comparing a first pregnancy to subsequent ones. Enjoy:

Hehehe. Accurate. (Minus the “all the drugs.” I’m doubling down on an unmedicated birth this time around. Call me crazy, but I’m looking forward to it!)

Oh, yeah, I was going to talk about the nesting instinct. The first time around, I had little else beside my day job and the guidelines that I should avoid paint fumes to prevent me from going buck wild fulfilling every nesting fantasy that crossed my mind at 4 a.m. (Here’s a snapshot of the nursery in our old house–the fruits of my intense nesting instinct and my equally intense ability to boss my husband around.)

The finished nursery – Note the poster (very well secured!) over our changing table.

Dropcloth curtains, a perfect little thrift store chest of drawers and a rocking chair in the corner.

My favorite Jenny Lind crib, with a wooden thrift store duck and a framed set of six vintage postage stamps on the wall.

This time, nesting has been primarily limited to fantasizing about what I would like to do with the house before Baby 2 arrives, because all my actual time and energy is devoted to laundry, chasing chickens off the porch, loading the dishwasher after The Toddler finally succumbs to sleep, reading stories to The Toddler while he poops, vacuuming up broken dried pasta from the living room rug (haha j/k, that’s also just a fantasy), and frantically trying to throw together dinner at the last second before we all starve.

By the time I get through even the most rudimentary daily housekeeping tasks each day, it’s 9 p.m. and I’m falling asleep sitting up against my headboard, waiting for the Tums to kick in so I can collapse for the night.

This week, though… this week is different. The Husband took a bunch of days off and I have mapped out every waking hour of every day to maximize our to-do list.

Already in the past three days, we’ve done a bunch of furniture rearranging, cleaned out half of the garage, moved the goats to a new patch of jungle, taken a minivan load of my grandparent’s stuff to Goodwill, made an equally large pile of stuff to drive to the dump, bought materials to finish trimming the floor in our kitchen (which we’ve been trying to do for more than a year), and ordered a new bed for The Toddler.

And we still have four more days of backbreaking, unrelenting nesting. I’m in heaven.

My feet are in hell, but I’m in heaven.

In the great green room…

there was a telephone, and a red balloon…

Goodnight Moon has become The Baby’s very favorite book. In fact, it was the first book he took any interest in beyond chewing. One day when he was about 4 or 5 months old, he was looking at it on the floor and we had to leave, and he cried as I put him in his car seat until I handed him back his book, and he babbled the whole way to the grocery store, reading to himself (I like to think.)

We ended up being given three copies as gifts before his arrival, and I’m glad we didn’t give any away because I can see we’re going to need them.

Somehow this most classic book wasn’t a part of my own childhood, and honestly the garish colors and lack of punctuation made me wonder what all the fuss was about. (not to mention the third painting on the wall — not the cow jumping over the moon, nor the three little bears sitting on chairs, but the rabbit fly fishing in a river for another rabbit… wth?)

But seeing The Baby’s delight all there is to look at, and hearing the words lilting like a prayer (“Please, God, let my baby go to sleep?”) have cemented this story in my brain for the rest of eternity.

We don’t read it every night. In fact, this is the book that marks that it’s time to go to sleep. But Goodnight Moon will always hold a place in my memories of The Baby’s early days.

Speaking of books, we are nearly, nearly there with fully babyproofing The Baby’s bedroom. (Though I think I’ll keep saying “nearly done babyproofing” until he’s got his learner’s permit… He seems to have a real knack for beating me to the punch in this particular battle.)

I will take pictures of the rest once I’ve tied up a few loose ends, but here is a sneak peak of a new reading corner. We ditched the regular old bookshelf for these book ledges I built, and The Baby loves being able to see (and pull down) all his books. (Yes, we also have two copies of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. One board book and one paperback for when The Baby decides to quit chomping on his books.)

The Baby’s book nook… a great place to take in Goodnight Moon.

I was having a little writer’s block after a work-heavy week or two that kept me from blogging, so I decided to participate in the Daily Prompt: Moon. Further proof that parents can take any word and turn it into a way to talk about their kids! 🙂

Tune in tomorrow for some real, actual, interesting content… so excited to share some wisdom from a mom friend!

First Father’s Day Card from The Baby

I’ve been meaning to share this craft since last weekend, but life got in the way again. It was The Husband’s birthday last weekend, and The Baby and I decided to make him a birthday card. I love how it turned out, and it was easy and fun to make, so I thought I’d share it with the wider momosphere in time for Father’s Day.

The Baby has been a kicking machine since he can-canned his way out into this world. He’s one of those babies who prefers to stand assisted on your lap than to sit. As I’ve mentioned before, his nickname is Kickpuncher because of all his flailing.

This craft actually first emerged on Mother’s Day, when I woke up early in the morning and tried it out on a pair of canvas totes for both of The Baby’s grandmothers. My tactics got a little more refined for this birthday card, but the essential formula is:

paint + kicking baby feet + surface = awesome abstract art

DIY First Father’s Day Card from the Baby

Materials

• Watercolor paper
• Non-toxic paints
• Masking tape
• Sponge brush or other paint mixing tool
• A big piece of cardboard or wide, shallow box
• A large container to use as a palette – even big paper plates work
• Dish tub or other baby-sized bucket
• Old towels and old wash cloth
• Baby soap
• Blank card and envelope
• A helper or a place to put baby where he can’t reach his feet
• Mod Podge

Instructions

Take some time to prep. This is best done outdoors or on a floor you can wash up quickly (obviously, avoid carpeting.) Put on some old clothes, strip The Baby down to his diaper and let him play nearby while you set up.

Lay out the cardboard or box and tape a few pieces of watercolor paper to it. You can also use the masking tape to mask off some parts of the paper to make a decoration.

Tape your paper to the cardboard.

Fill the dish tub/baby tub with warm water and add a few squirts of baby soap.

Pick your paints. I used acrylic because it’s what I had on hand and it says on the bottle it’s non-toxic, but do your own research. Tempera paint is probably better. I like to hold up two paints and let The Baby pick his favorite. I squirt out some of this color onto my palette (I used big paper plates for the Mother’s Day craft and that worked really well; I couldn’t find them so I used bread pans for this one. The Baby has monster feet so this was kind of tough.) Anyway, for the Father’s Day card, I cut in some white to whatever color he chose, but only with about half the paint, to give it some variation. The picture below is just the tinted paint, but in the other half of the pan I squirted just the red, so he’d basically get a foot with each color. You can also do two similar colors (red and orange, say) in one go.

Paint palette with The Baby’s first color selection, mixed in with a little white paint.

Pick baby up and hold him over the palette and let his feet press into the paint. Then pick him back up and hold him over the paper. If your baby isn’t squirmy, maybe you’ll get some neat footprints. But as I said, my baby is part Tazmanian devil and I wasn’t expecting or intending to get footprints, just fun colorful smears.

Once you’ve gotten a few good smears of your first color, dunk baby’s feet in the dish tub and give them a decent wipe-off with the wash cloth, pat dry. (Don’t worry about getting them immaculate; as you’re going to repeat the first several steps again.)

This is where it’s nice to have a helper to hold the baby, while you reset your paints. The goal is to keep baby from reaching his lower half, where there could be paint, at any time during this activity.

I did a total of three colors (with the white tint each time), as selected by The Baby. I let them dry for just a few minutes, basically the time it took me to clean baby’s feet and get new paint ready.

A blurry photo of the finished painting. The Baby is an athlete and an artist!

Once you’re done, give your baby an actual bath. (Full disclosure: The Baby had green toenails for a few days afterward… whoops.) Also, the underside of your baby’s diaper will probably be a beautiful piece of art all its own, but resist the urge to keep it.

Once your baby’s artwork is dry, you can cut it to fit the front of your blank greeting card. (I suppose you could paint directly onto the card, but the watercolor paper doesn’t wrinkle when it gets wet, so it looks nicer.) I used Mod Podge to glue the painting onto the card and then put a coat of Mod Podge over the top of the painting too, to give it a little sheen.

Here’s the finished card. I cut and glued The Baby’s painting to a blank craft-paper greeting card.

There you have it! Easy, colorful Father’s Day card. I still have the other half of the painting that I plan to cut into strips and glue onto other, smaller cards I have, to use as thank-you notes. The next time I do it I think I’ll mask off the center of the card so I have a blank strip to write “Happy Birthday.”

It’s clear that The Baby has a blast when we do this, feeling the slippery paint on his feet, seeing the cause-and-effect of his kicking, and getting to splash around in the tub. And I like to think I’m instilling in him an early sense of generosity and the importance of appreciating others. I know he’s too young to really understand what we’re doing, but I figure if I start early, he’ll absorb the lesson more thoroughly as he grows.

Join the conversation: Have you enlisted your baby to help with any gifts or craft projects? How are you planning to celebrate your partner’s first Father’s Day?

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