by Sarah Powers on June 10, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Home contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
Last week I took all three kids – ages 5, 3, and 4 months – to buy dog food. It was the kind of errand I try to avoid these days – one where I had to go to one specific store to buy one specific product and schlep all of us in and out of 110° heat just for a bag of kibbles. I wasn’t thrilled about it.
The upside (and here’s a pro tip for all you newish moms out there) was that the pet store is just as exciting as the zoo for the toddler and preschool crowd. My kids love looking at the hamsters and frogs in their cages and watching the dogs in the “doggie daycare” run around in circles. They got extra lucky this time, though, when the sweetest college kid of a store clerk named Mike offered to take out a few creatures and let my kids hold and pet them.
They were in heaven (especially when my dragon-obsessed 3-year-old learned that one of the lizards was a REAL DRAGON). Mike spent a good 10 minutes interacting with the kids and letting them experience the animals. By the time we left the store we had huge smiles on our faces, stories to tell, and a great summer memory to tuck away – all from a Friday afternoon trip to the pet store.
I’ve written here before about how I’m uncomfortable with the notion that we have to try really hard to “make memories” for our kids, how my own childhood memories aren’t of spectacular events but rather a collection of quieter moments, inside jokes, and subtle patterns that evolve and repeat with each season. So while I love the idea of “summer bucket lists” and the intention behind them, my personal style is a little more laissez faire (or maybe it’s lazy mom!). [click to continue…]
by Sarah Powers on June 7, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Home contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
Here’s a little story for you. It’s about a pair of yellow pants.
(Spoiler alert: this story is a little less uplifting than Meagan’s Lesson of the Blue Dress, and it definitely involves more grease. And more stain remover.)
A few weeks ago I was headed out to speak to a group of brand new first-time moms. I was thrilled to discover that morning that a pair of pants I’d gotten for my birthday (ahem, my three-weeks-post-partum birthday) actually fit for the first time. I paired them with a striped tee over an off-white tank and a pair of nude sandals. Then I snapped this little selfie to send off to my sweet mother-in-law who had been the brave soul to buy me the pants for my birthday (right, the three-weeks-post-partum birthday).
They finally fit! I texted proudly.
(Side note: if that photo above doesn’t say everything about why it’s hard to feel stylish as a mom, I don’t know what does. Three pajama-clad kids literally underfoot in a dirty bathroom. Oy.)
So off I went to the new mamas group, thinking I looked pretty put-together as a mom of three. My dad came over to watch the big kids, so there was a hasty handoff and a car seat switch as I left the minivan for him and took the baby with me in his car.
I was almost to my destination when I happened to glance down at my right leg. It was covered in some kind of black car grime from shin to thigh. And where any pair of dark jeans or black pants would have hidden the offensive smear, my Banana Republic City Chinos in Perfect Gold did not.
Oh, no. They did not. [click to continue…]
by Sarah Powers on May 24, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Home contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
photo: dixieroadrash via Flickr Creative Commons
Since joining Meagan as Managing Editor of The Happiest Home last fall, one thing has surprised me time and again: you guys. You, our readers, continue to delight and impress me with your comments here on the blog, on our Facebook page and in our Twitter conversations.
You’re supportive – of Meagan and me, of our guest writers, and of each other. You’re helpful – I mean, really helpful – and generous with your ideas and advice. And you’re wonderfully nonjudgmental, in an environment where it’s become commonplace (unfortunately) to squabble over differences of opinion behind the relative anonymity of an avatar.
Basically? Y’all are awesome. [click to continue…]
by Sarah Powers on May 9, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Home contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
Photo: Anna Hollister Photography
To my first-time pregnant friend,
You’ve been on my mind lately – a couple of you, actually – dearest longtime friends of mine, about to become moms for the first time. I sent one of you a box of old maternity clothes, the few surviving pieces in good shape after my own three pregnancies in five years. To the other I sent a few books (at your request). Toward you both I find my thoughts wandering daily.
With a three-month-old of my own, I am partly of the world into which you are about to enter; but mine is a third and final babe, riding in a car seat that held her brother and sister before her, pushed in a stroller that is not only no longer fashionable but also probably no longer on the market. I am experienced, yes; but I’m out of touch, too, with the trends of new motherhood.
I want to say the right things to you, offer words that mean something and aren’t just clichés (though, as you’ll find, so many of the clichés are true). I want to be helpful. I want to make it wonderful for you, this thing that is about to happen. I want to save you from some of the parts that aren’t wonderful, and from the disappointment that comes when you realize that some of it sucks, sometimes. [click to continue…]
by Sarah Powers on April 24, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Home contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
A year or so ago, I started saving glass jars. Inspired by the seemingly overnight rise in trendiness of the Mason jar, and coupled with a sort of obsessive satisfaction I get out of not wasting things, my little collection of old salsa, pasta sauce, olive and jam jars grew steadily.
The problem was, I had no idea what to actually DO with the jars. I turned to Pinterest and created a board called Inexplicable Jar Obsession, which I filled with amazing ideas – like twine-wrapped jars filled with floating candles and ombre tinted mason jars – only to realize when my pinning high wore off that I was never in a million years actually going to do those things.
(By the way, if you are the type to do these things with jars, more power to ‘ya. To paraphrase Meagan in her post about baking from scratch, I don’t do it, but I think it’s awesome if you do.)
It has taken a while, but I’ve gradually found very practical – and DO-able, for me – uses for repurposed glass jars in my home.
Here are 5 ideas for reusing glass jars that don’t require a glue gun, raffia, chalkboard paint, or a crafty bone in your body: [click to continue…]
by Sarah Powers on March 27, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Mom contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
Here in Arizona, we’re on spring break. Only one of my three kids goes to school, and she only goes three days a week, so it’s just an incremental change in our daily life and routine. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like there are more children around, louder noises filling the room, less to do to pass the days at home, and an inexplicably exponential increase in small plastic toys under my feet.
And I’m going to be honest: I’ve found myself thinking, “These kids are driving me crazy!”
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by Sarah Powers on March 13, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Mom contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
This past weekend we got a lot done around the house. Since I’m home full-time (and work part-time at home) with three kids 4 and under, there are a lot of little projects that accumulate throughout the week. Things I notice but don’t get to: a light bulb that needs changing, an overflowing trash can, an empty cardboard box the kids have converted into a pirate ship that needs a one-way ticket to the recycling bin in the sky.
By Saturday morning I usually have a list of small projects and home to-dos that my husband and I go through together over a cup of coffee while the kids play. We divvy up the jobs and he works his way through his list over the course of the weekend, crossing things off as he goes.
Yep, it’s a “honey-do” list and it works for us. But it hasn’t always been this way.
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by Sarah Powers on March 4, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Mom contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
When I became a mom I actively resisted the idea that I should go out and make a bunch of new friends just because I had a new baby. It felt like an insult to my existing social life, for one, to think that I needed to “trade in” my current friends for new ones who were, like me, covered in spit-up and not sleeping at night. It also felt like a sign of weakness to admit that it might actually be kinda nice to make some new spit-up covered mom friends, so of course I stubbornly resisted the idea even more.
And, above all, I was NOT going to lug myself and my baby to some cheesy (I thought) mommy group where I could sit in a whole CIRCLE of spit-up covered new moms and publicly admit to needing new friends. NO WAY.
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by Sarah Powers on February 27, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Mom contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
If there’s one thing that busy moms cling to for dear life, it’s our calendars. Whether you swear by a datebook you carry in your purse, a dry-erase board hung on the wall, or an electronic calendar that lives in the cloud and syncs to half a dozen devices, I’m guessing you’ve got some kind of a system for keeping your family’s calendar.
And as Meagan points out in this post, what works for one mom may not work for another – you’ve got to find the system that works for you. Today I thought I’d share the way I manage our family’s calendar – a simple, 3-part system that combines digital and paper-based planning.
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by Sarah Powers on January 7, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Mom contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
As you can see from the photo above, I’m about to enter the newborn stage again. While I still get excited folding teeny pink pajamas and putting the final touches on our master-closet-turned-nursery, I’ll admit that by the third baby it’s not all sweet anticipation. There’s a healthy dose of realism and – yup – a little bit of dread mixed in there.
Because the newborn stage is hard. [click to continue…]
