ReadySetMom

Peace + pleasure = 3191 photoblog

I used to follow this blog, Little Birds Handmade, until she stopped blogging. Not being a sewing-crafty person I always ogled and fawned over her creations. Then she started a photoblog, 3191, but I only remember to check it maybe every six months. This blog gives me such peace, particularly after a trying day of parenting (see Tuesday's post). She -- Stephanie -- is a mom of two here in Portland, and her photo-counterpart -- Mav -- who lives in Portland, Maine, they each upload a photo every day presented side-by-side. They live 3191 miles apart, hence the name. Neither knows what the other person's photo might be that day, but the photos always somehow just work together. There's this peace about them, this capturing of a moment, and I can spend about 30 minutes looking at months of these photos. Happily, they created a book of the 2007 photos, A Year of Mornings. The 2008 photos are snapshots of evenings, and no doubt a book is to follow. Someone could give me this book for Christmas and make me very happy.

Where to find FREE happenings around Portland

Well, apparently she's not going to make a big deal about it on her blog, so I guess I'll make a big deal out of it on mine. Amy Reyes, who writes the Around the Sun blog, was profiled in the Oregonian recently, and the attention was well-deserved. Amy is a penny-pincher, prefering to spend her money on small luxuries and saving for the future by taking advantage of the bounty of FREE events around Portland. Every week she posts a huge list of FREE stuff happening around town. A lot of it is geared to adults-only, but she does throw in a few nuggets for us kid-toting types. I don't know Amy, but I subscribe to her blog in my Google reader, and I hope she keeps on keeping us all informed and entertained. Congrats, Amy!

(Okay, I just realized that there are three 'Amy's' in Portland I follow closely: Amy Reyes of Around the Sun, Amy Karol of Angry Chicken, and Amy Ruppel the fab local artist. I think there is some kind of message here...maybe if I rearrange the letters I'll understand better...YAM? I need to eat more yams? MAY? May will bring prosperity and fame? No...maybe Amy was just a really popular name in the late 60's and 70's? Fine.)

Hi! See ya!

Why I feel compelled to offer up links that send you AWAY from ReadySetMom is a deep, dark mystery since you couldn't possibly find another site that offers so much, yet asks for so little (sniff, gag, hurl). But we all need to laugh a whole lot more (particularly when it comes to children), which is why, when I first read this paragraph, I knew I'd be sending you away once again:

An open letter to five-year-olds.

Listen up, jerks. You may think your place in the household is secure, but your parents have had it with you, and are seriously considering some drastic changes. Like maybe a move to a Preschooler-Free Household. Yeah, that's right. One of these mornings you might just find your Thomas Suitcase all packed up on the doorstep. Your parents will tell you there's an AWESOME SURPRISE waiting for you outside, and once you're out there, oopsie, the door locked behind you! And why aren't they answering the door? And what's that cab pulling up the driveway?

Meet Finslippy (aka Alice). I love her. Now go away and read the rest of her letter. (I miss you already).

Escape sites

You know how it is. A rainy day. Kids napping. You start to browse. This was my afternoon:

Starting at Parent Hacks, the go-to site by Portland mom Asha Dornfest, I found my way to Nested, a new blog devoted to cool stuff for kids. Immediately fell under the spell of the  Moo Stickerbooks and the Birds of a Feather Mobile by Helen Ige. Also loving the idea of using vintage gameboards as nursery decor -- if I were to have another baby, WHICH I'M NOT.

From there I headed over to Angry Chicken, by yet another brilliant, creative Portland mom. This is what it must be like to have a passion for something: in her case it's sewing. Three children (one a newborn), and she just gets it all done. I love her photos, her creations.

I use to be a lurker at Little Birds Handmade, until she (another Portland mom!) stopped writing. Now I visit her peaceful photoblog, 3191, where every morning she and a friend, who lives 3191 miles away, post side-by-side photos. Both photos, totally random, always seem to work perfectly together.

Finally (for those who've been living under a rock) a trip to Dooce is always in order.  Pardon me while I pen a little love letter to this woman, Heather B. Armstrong. She makes me laugh, out loud, on a regular basis. Not only is she a fantastic writer, but she's a funny writer, which is a near impossible feat (hello, I've tried). She supports her family writing this blog, and more power to her. Long live Dooce.

Yep. Could've been cleaning the hair out of the shower drain or trying to locate the source of the damp, urine smell in the playroom. The choice was not at all difficult to make. What sites do you love to visit when you need an escape?

Tell Sam your thoughts about the roads

Commissioner Sam Adams has been holding neighborhood meetings to discuss the state of Portland's roads and transportation systems and how to pay for it all. I attended the one held last Tuesday at the Multnomah Arts Center, and it was quite enlightening. Sam spoke specifically about the state of SW roads and the many challenges to fix them: it is far more expensive and challenging to fix SW roads due to the hilly terrain and water run-off issues. SW also has more miles of roads that need attention (sidewalks, paving, bike lanes, drainage) than any other area. You can read a far more detailed report of the meeting with links to Sam's presentation on Amanda Fritz's blog. There are three more meetings left, so if you feel strongly about safety, access, congestion and upkeep of our streets, then try to make it to one:

TONIGHT: Tuesday, June 26, 7-9pm, North & Northeast Portland, King Neighborhood Facility, 4815 NE 7th Ave.

Wednesday, June 27, 7-9pm, Northwest Portland, Friendly House Conference Room, 1737 NW 26th Ave.

Monday, July 2, 7-9pm, Central Northeast & East Portland, Firehouse #12, 4415 NE 87th Ave.

The one I attended was PACKED, so get there early. I arrived late, so I had to sit in a separate room where it was broadcast on a screen via live feed. I've never attended any kind of government-led forum like this, and was really impressed with Sam -- he's an excellent presenter and facilitator. He gave everyone a chance to speak who wanted to speak, and his staff took notes of ideas and suggestions. We'll see how it all plays out.

Little Birds Handmade is...sigh...perfection

Oh my. I just found this site: Little Birds Handmade. The artist lives here in Portland. The things she makes are the things I wish I could make. Her photos are the photos I wish I could take. I may begin stalking her. Take a look.

Crafting

I really enjoy crafting things. Sadly, I'm not particularly skilled in sewing, reading patterns, pottery, crochet, embroidery, knitting - any of the marketable crafting skills, but I do still enjoy it. My work often resembles the endearing art pieces my kids make. The key difference being that I'm checked out on power tools, and they are limited to crayons and washable paints.

We did just make placemats with clear contact paper and some of their cute school masterpieces. They are cheerful and mostly spill-proof. My friend Lara recently sent me a FamilyFun.com link with 349 craft projects for toddlers. This is right up my alley. Perhaps yours too. Something to do on at-home days.

Then there are the real crafters like my friend Patty. She is amazingly talented in knitting, beadwork, sewing, you name it. Check out the Fiberly One's blog. Her work will knock your socks off. I also just heard about another local Portland crafter named Amy. She too appears to be way out of my league, but in an incredibly good way. Gives me something to aspire to. Amy's blog is angry chicken - check it out.

So while I won't be opening an Etsy boutique of my own any time soon, I would like to encourage the other moms like me to keep on crafting. I realize the crafts I undertake - Halloween costumes, Christmas ornaments and the occasional big project like the tulle ballerina bed skirt won't win any awards. But they do elicit remarks like "oh mommy, it's beautiful" from my girls. And what could be better for the soul than that?

Don't buy these toys

Melissa of the brilliant Buzz Off blog shares her Anti-Gift Guide today, which I would like to subtitle, "miserable toys that should never be given as gifts to a child unless you hope to experience a silent wrath from child's mother." You know these toys - they are impossible to assemble and then your child plays with it for all of two minutes before losing complete interest. Or it is so obnoxious that no amount of Advil will make it go away. I would like to submit my own here: any stuffed animal that sings. I have a sister-in-law, who I like very much. But I cringe when my kids open her gifts because inevitably a new singing stuffed animal will join our household. First it was the singing, dancing bear that sings "Raindrops are Fallin' on my Head", followed by the rasta-Gorilla that sings "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Recently we added a horse that offers this intro: "I am a horse. I used to be used for farm work and other hard, cruel labor, but now I'm mostly used for riding and glue" (not really) before launching into "Old MacDonald had a Farm." Please don't buy these for children unless you really, really hate their parents.

What toys do you despise?

Apologies for site access issues of the past week

Well, I never thought I'd spend a Thanksgiving fretting over domain mapping, CNAMEs, Total DNS Control, domain forwarding and masking, and the like. I never really thought I'd know what any of this means. But it's been a techie adventure week for me in our quest to switch over from our old godaddy hosted blog to the new typepad blog.

So first off, I want to apologize for any difficulties you may have encountered in trying to access our site over this past week. It takes 24-48 hours (on average) to set up the domain mapping from our godaddy (registrar site) to our new typepad blog hosting service. I made a mistake the first time, so we got a partial mapping thing going for a few days. Due to my frustration with that, I messed with godaddy Total DNS Control some more, and chewed my fingernails and worried a lot, and was even plagued with bad dreams over getting this darn thing to work properly. After waiting 48 hours the second time, I finally turned to the power of google to see if there were any other resources out there. Lo and behold, there were several kind bloggers who validated my pain and blogged about their challenges getting domain mapping between godaddy and typepad to work. Thank you Mad About Madrid and Blogging Business for letting me know I wasn't the only blogger in the world struggling to set up domain mapping. Also, for clarifying the difference between domain forwarding (and masking) and mapping.

I realize this post isn't the usual cup of tea you may have come to expect from ReadySetMom.com, but I did feel it was important to give back to the blogging community and share the "gotchas" I encountered, so that others may be spared my pain:

1) When I first went to edit my CNAME in godaddy, I changed the first field from "www" to "www.readysetmom.com" which was not right. The first field should remain untouched as "www". The second field is where I needed to put "readysetmom.typepad.com". I did that, but with the mess-up in the first field, we were getting the domain mapping to work only inconsistently.

2) Then I tried to use godaddy's instructions on domain forwarding, and managed to loop between the forwarding and domain mapping. Not what you want to do at all. Some time on the godaddy helpline got me to stop the domain forwarding and stick to the typepad instructions of domain mapping instead.

3) Last, it took over 48 hours for the domain mapping to finally kick in to my servers. I was near the point of panic then, as our site had loaded only error messages for days on end, and I feared all our loyal readers were going to guess we'd gone belly up. It took about 50 hours. So don't panic (like I did) if you've waited the requisite 24-48 hours and it's still not working. This takes lots of patience to give proper time for the mapping to propagate across the internet.

So that's it. I hope this will help others bloggers on the "domain mapping with godaddy and typepad" road. And for the regular ReadySetMom readers, I promise my next post will be more on topic. Happy Thanksgiving!!

A hit of creative inspiration

Every blue moon or so I get an urge to let my sickly muses out of their cave for a little creative muscle-flexing. I've dabbled in many mediums: paint, photography, fabric, paper, and I really don't do any of them very well. I've long harbored a desire to make a living crafting something really cool that other people will want to buy. However this takes patience and a bit o' talent, both of which are in short supply. So I turn to the fabulous site, Etsy, when I need to get a nice hefty dose of other people's creativity. Etsy is a marketplace for people who make stuff. But warning: you can spend hours browsing this site. Check out Tara Hogan's whimsical prints and cards, elsiegirl's adorable embroidered onesies and Angela Liu's vibrant bags. If this site doesn't get your muses off the couch, take a nap and then try again.

(Note: Originally posted by Heather)