The Curtain and Pen

Nebraska Copywriting Services for Small Business

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1.5 Hours of Content Toddler Time

It’s been a frazzly couple of weeks around here. I wrote a post a couple of days ago that was a huge downer, and talked about how I couldn’t get motivated to do anything productive.

Luckily, I couldn’t even motivate myself to actually get that one posted. It really was a bummer.

Yep. The last couple weeks of school around here have been stressful, the house has been a mess, and tempers have been short. There’s not much that can be done about it other than trying to stay positive. SO, I thought it would be a better idea to share an activity that kept Charlie occupied for almost an hour and a half. I got all the dishes washed, and both the kitchen and living room cleaned. It was awesome.

I used a pair of scissors to punch out some holes in the bottom of an egg carton. And then I gave Charlie some marbles.

He totally dug it. He’d set all of the marbles on each hole, and then punch them through. Then he would get them out and do it all over again. And over and over and over. This is what we in the Mom business call a pretty huge success.

Then a couple marbles got loose. This is how we both discovered that our kitchen floor is uneven. Charlie loved watching the marbles roll to the end of the table. I decided to try to add another 15 or 20 minutes on to this and built a little retaining wall.

Once I could tell he was starting to get bored again, I went and grabbed his little race track thing. This added another 25 minutes onto this glorious, glorious playtime.

I’ve learned that playtime is more successful when elements are gradually entered into the equation. If I would have given him all of that stuff at once, he would have had fun for about 15 minutes and then started throwing marbles into the ceiling fan.

And with my luck the marble would have gotten knocked my direction and lodged next to my eardrum.

Also, quickly, I learned that finger painting only looks horrible and stressful. Charlie had a great time and the clean-up was surprisingly quick and easy. I just picked him up by the armpits and put him in the tub. Overall, I’d say it was quite the success.

How’s your week going? Stressful? Awesome? Do you have other awesome toddler ideas to share? Do you know of any toddler activities that come automatically with a chocolate bar and a foot rub?

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New Necklace by KraftyKash!

You guys know I’ve got a thing for words, right? Well, I’ve got a friend who also has a thing for words, but she takes that love a step in the crafty direction, and handcrafts these words into awesome jewelry that is destined to hold special meaning for each wearer.

Meet Kashoan. She’s the super-creative lady behind KraftyKash, an Etsy shop (and blog) with some antique, wordy fare. Kashoan makes jewelry out of vintage dictionaries, atlases, sheet music, and Bibles. When I asked her what she loves most about her business, she replied,

“The stories and kind words from my customers, are my favorite thing about this business. I love being a part of helping create memories through my jewelry. I am a lucky girl.”

I love hearing stuff like that. More people should feel that way about what they do for a living.
Now, come on guys. Vintage dictionaries. I’ll bet if you open up one of those pendants you can smell the old pages. (In case you didn’t know, old pages are one of my favorite things to sniff.)

So, anyway, I’ve been quietly eyeing these pendants for a long time, but I’ve been stressing out about which word to choose. I mean, seriously? How do I even do that!? Do you know how many words there are out there? Eventually, though, I realized which word was the one, and I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it immediately.

You see, I’m not really a tattoo kind of lady. It’s not that I hate tattoos or anything . . . I just don’t like pain. I’m also terribly indecisive, and could see myself looking at my hypothetical tattoo in the future and banging my head against a wall because of it. HOWEVER, I’ve always had an “if I ever got a tattoo I’d get . . .” option in my head.

So, if I ever got a tattoo, I’d get one of the word “aesthetic.”

But that’s just not going to happen. I don’t really want a tattoo. I do, however, love that word. “Aesthetic” is defined as “having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty,” or “pertaining to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.”

Now, at the risk of sounding like an idiot-bimbo-girl, I’m going to admit that I’m notorious for favoring the pretty over the functional. Not really in a “stab-someone’s-eyeball stilettos vs. practical flats” kind of way, but in a personal happiness kind of way. Something that makes me happy is generally going to be something beautiful and emotional, rather than well-thought-out and logical.

This is the pendant Kashoan sent me. It’s perfect. I love that towards the end of the definition, it’s got all the right words. I also like the little pearl embellishment . . . it gives it a nice feeling of completeness.

Mostly, though, I love knowing that an old, forgotten book got opened up and reincarnated into something that can go wherever the owner goes. It’s like the dictionary’s been saving up all its life and is now finally able to travel the world.

So, here’s the awesome part. Kashoan is offering a discount to you guys, my very special readers! All you have to do is visit her Etsy page, make your selections, and use the coupon code FAMILY for 20% off! How rockin’ is that? And make sure you like her onFacebook and follow her on Twitter . . . you never know when she’ll be having a “fill in the blank” contest with a discount as the prize!
Don’t forget, Kashoan makes custom pendants . . . so which word would you choose? Why? I’d love to know!!!

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KARAOKE.

Guys. Guys guys guys guys guys I’M SO EXCITED!

A group of kick-ass ladies and I are going out for Karaoke on Friday night. This is becoming athing. And by thing I mean we’ve gone twice before and have added about 3 more ladies onto the roster.

I . . . I just . . . I just LOVEKARAOKE! And what’s even better is that we’re going to a Karaoke Bar . This isn’t a regular old bar that forces its regulars to sit through drunken singing one night a week. This is Karaoke that starts at 6 PM and goes all night long. This means that I can go, sing my lungs out, have a blast, and be home for bedtime. (I haven’t actually made it home for bedtime yet, but if I tried hard enough, I totally could be.) And if you’re there, you’re there for Karaoke. If you’re not there for Karaoke, my friend, you are in the wrong place.

Now, all childish excitement aside, I’ve had a realization. If you remember, I wrote a letter to my old friend Theatre awhile back. Theatre was my major in college and a big chunk of my life and I LOVED it. Now . . . not so much. It’s just not a priority anymore, and I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of not loving something I used to have such a blazing passion for.

And then it hit me: Without Theatre, there would be no Karaoke for me.

I know that sounds stupid. I know that I should be using Theatre for some higher purpose, like ending world hunger or something . . . but right now, my main focus is my family, my handful of clients, and my sanity. Enter Karaoke.

I feel comfortable on stage. Being in Theatre, obviously, helped me get that way. Feeling comfortable on stage is always an asset when singing catchy 80’s and 90’s tunes in front of people. Karaoke is providing me with some pretty essential things right now:

A girls’ night out.
An chance to be on stage without having to make a long-term time commitment.
A release of all the routine stress that accumulates after long periods of toddler-time.

What do these things mean? A less-stressed, happier mom/wife. Being with friends and singing my lungs out is one of my favorite things in the whole world right now, and I owe a lot of that to Theatre.

So, dear Theatre, thanks. I hope to do something more significant with you in the future, but right now I’m more than happy to be having fun with what you taught me.

Also, I’ve learned that my black and white stripey vest thing is fun to wear but not so flattering. Meh. I’ll totally wear it again.

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A Couple Random Rants to Ease my Writer’s Block

Hey, Friends. This is a picture of Charlie eating pizza back when he had hair.

I’m going to just be honest with you. I’ve got writer’s block. I actually cleaned my kitchen this morning as a form of blogging-procrastination. I don’t think there’s anything in my brain right now that can inspire a full blog-post out of me, but I think there are some things that will at least draw out a paragraph or two.

1. Crappy Weather
Was anybody else just scared crapless on Saturday? I sure was. Some of you have known me long enough to remember how I would run bawling to my mom’s 5th grade classroom whenever there was bad weather . . . no matter how hard my Kindergarten teacher tried to keep me there. It’s possible that I may have continued that tradition on into my high school years. I don’t remember if I actually went to my mom’s room when I was a teenager . . . but I was definitely bawling, I can tell you that right now. Here’s some weather math for you:

Lauren + Husband + Son = Even more terrified than she was when she only had her parents and sister to worry about.

So you can imagine how mindblown I am to find out that people are actually blaming the local meteorologists for causing an uproar and making them interrupt their daily activities with weather precautions. People are mad because their cities didn’t get ripped apart and destroyed.
I could go on and on about how ridiculous this is (hey, woudja look at that? I think my writer’s block is dissipating!), but it would probably get obnoxious. I’ll just say this: Entire cities spent the day preparing themselves for the worst. This means more people have emergency plans, stocked emergency kits, and a better awareness of the fact that this isstorm season. If you can find a reason to be angry about that, then I applaud you. I applaud you with one of those slow claps that makes everyone feel awkward.

2. I’m sorry . . . Mommy War? Did you say “Mommy War?”

Apparently, folks, moms are battling one another. Some lady who is politically important or something mentioned that Mitt Romney’s wife has “Never worked a day in her life.” This, of course, has sparked a HUGE debate on the social media circuit. Is the debate about politics? About proper media etiquette? Nope. It’s between Working Moms and Stay at Home Moms. Who’s better? Who cares more about their children?

This “war” is just ridiculous. I don’t care at all about Mitt Romney or his wife or the woman who’s mad at them. I care that the mom community has actually let something like this pit them against each other. Isn’t this the 21st century? Do we really think that we can judge a person’s motherly love based on the decisions they make in order to do specifically what’s right for their families?

I choose to stay at home with Charlie. I have my reasons. One of my best friends in the whole world just finished her maternity leave and has gone back to work. She has her reasons. Do I think she’s making the wrong decision?

Let me think about this one . . . no.

Her family’s situation is not my family’s situation. Her career is not my career. Her baby is not my baby. But, really, does any of that matter? I know that she loves her kid like crazy.I know that she would do anything to provide a good life for her child. That’s what matters.

So, hey moms, do we really want the world to think we can be so easily manipulated by politicians trying to make us pick sides?

I’m voting “no” on that one.

(I apologize for any political talk that happened in this post. I don’t know what came over me. Also, I think I’ve gotten rid of my writer’s block . . . so that’s pretty sweet. 🙂 )