Girlymama

I guess revenge is sweet. I got tagged back.

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet and current street name)
Mindy Cedar

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on your mom’s side, your favorite candy)
Dorothy Jelly Belly (Jelly Belly actually was a former nickname of mine. Not because of excess belly, but because my last name started with ‘jell.’ really. stop laughing.) 3. YOUR “FLY GIRL/GUY” NAME: (first initial of first name, first two or three letters of your middle name)
MLyn (cool. i may adopt this in the blogosphere)

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Pink Cat (yawn. What about Yellow Monkey? Or Red Dog? how are these detective-y?)

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Lynn Rockville

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name, first 2 letters of mom’s maiden name and first 3 letters of the town you grew up in.)
AngMeHoVer (now that one rocks. seriously.)

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (your favorite color, favorite drink)
Pink Mojito

8. YOUR ALIBI’S NAME: (your boss’ name, cup size of the last woman you saw)
Nick C

9. YOUR MUSLIM NAME: (name of the cereal you last ate, “X”)
Total X (sweet.)

10. YOUR REHAB NAME: (name of the car you drive, name of the channel you last watched)
Sienna PBS

11. YOUR NASCAR NAME: (first two names of the last redneck you met, unless that’s you; oh, that’s all you need, actually)
haven’t run into any rednecks lately….

I tag B, A and C

after spending a week with her grandparents, Little Sister has taken to calling me “Grammy.”  

We will not be leaving the house until this stops.

…to make this public. This has been going on for almost three weeks and I’ve been keeping it off the blog, because I’m afraid of failure, I mean terrified of people laughing at me, I mean not ready to make it public. But, since quite a few people know already, I guess I’ll put it out there.

I’m going into business with a friend. We’re in the very, very, very beginning stages of this venture, but by this time next year we will hopefully be breaking into the market.  My friend J and I are crafting buddies – we both love to do creative-y things and have very similar taste in clothes, jewelry, decorating, etc. (our husbands even work in the same field 🙂 Anyway, we were talking about how tired we were trying to find really cute kids stuff that was well made and crafty, but not dorky. So we starting throwing ideas and – next thing we knew – we decided to give making our own a try.

This fall we will begin production of two clothing collections (for girls) consisting of two complete outfit sets and accessories. Then our creativity rolled over to include a home collection featuring small quilts and nursery sets (duvet, bumper cover & curtains) and possibly a side collection of diaper bags for the hip mama. We’ll start by hopefully hosting a couple of home shows and, by next summer, begin at craft shows. (Not local-school-cheesy-shows. We mean the rich-people-on-vacation-at-the-Jersey-shore-shows)

We are still in the design stage now, working out our time-line, figuring out how much we can invest in this, deciding where and when we will debut our stuff. My MBA-holding husband is thrilled to have an excuse to dust off those old textbooks and is helping us pick a business model, write up our business plan, plan marketing strategies, and is suprisingly opinionated on potential names.

So that’s the big secret. That’s why I haven’t really been blogging much lately, since I’ve been on-line researching starting a small business, licencing, retail tax laws, etc. J has been checking out the competition (ie shopping ;-). Once we’ve decided on this boring business-y stuff, we can have some fun. This next month is when we get to start designing our stuff, which we’re both really excited about. So this blog will now offer a peak at what its like to start a business. We can look back on this entry when we sell the company to Nordstroms for $11 billion. (right.) 

Let me stress again to my lovely, well-meaning family that this is still in the very beginning stages and may quite possibly be called off entirely after a few months. We’re not advertising yet. We don’t even have a name. i just figured that since its taking up a lot of my free time, I wanted to be able to blog about it. So for now, we’ve both decided to go for it.  We’ll keep you posted!!

We’re back! And since I have been cleaning, laundering, unpacking since then, I am totally uninspired to write anything clever, so here are some pictures.

Husband and Big Sister building sand castles.

Little Sister crying because the sand is dirty.

Big Sister basking in the sun. Just like her mama, she is.

And you cannot go to the beach without ice cream!!

We are throughly enjoying our week at the beach house. Big Sister LOVES the beach and wants to spend every waking moment there. Little Sister hates sand and cried when she sees a bathing suit, sunscreen or hears the word “beach.” Oh well. The girls are getting lots of one-on-one time!!

We’ll be back tomorrow and we can post some pics!

I haven’t written much this week. Why, you ask? On Tuesday night, my in-laws told me that there have been no plans for the rehearsal dinner at brother-in-law’s wedding. Which is taking place three weeks from today. After choking on the water I was drinking and checking to see if they were truly serious, I realized something. They needed help. This happened last year when my sister-in-law decided to get married less than 6 months after getting engaged, then jetted off on a month-long vacation. So, I was left to pull off the impossible – a big wedding on a small budget on short notice. (and we did it! and – amazingly – I am still speaking to my in-laws!) So, if you were wondering where I was all week, I was planning a dinner for 70 people on the cheap with three week’s notice. And, know what the best part is?

I did it. Really. We have a venue, caterer, menu, invites, plans for the decorations, guest list – done. And it was done under budget. Not to toot my own horn, but I rock. I may, perhaps, be the best daughter-in-law ever.

Now I am off to pack up because we are going on vacation tomorrow!! We’re off the the Jersey Shore to enjoy a week at the beach. (Yes, I realize that the shore is not very exotic. But its free, so we compromised our principles, as would most people for a free vacation house 🙂 So if you don’t hear from me, it is because I am lying on the beach. Or more likely, chasing my kids around the beach, trying to keep them from drowning, getting lost or eating sand. Either way, I’ll be in the sun, so its all good!

Why do I keep taking my children to the mall? Why? Why? WHY???

I simply cannot recount the entire trip because then I will have to go drink a margarita or a very large glass of wine and it is not even close to happy hour. But for your snickering enjoyment here are a few highlights:

• In the next store, both girls screaming at the top of their lungs “NO THANK YOU! MAMA!!!” at each other. Why? One was apparently looking at the other. Horrible. Although, this was in Victoria’s Secret and I must confess that I just love when my kids act up in Victoria’s Secret. (“See what happens when you wear those things? See? SEE!?!!?”)
• While I was browsing in one store, Little Sister dived out of the stroller and conked her head on a clothing rack and the tile floor. Lovely. Screaming ensues. She now has a huge bump on the back of her skull. Wonderful. (But no concussion this time, so I consider this progress!) 
• While in line at the food court, after placing my order, Big Sister announces she has to go pee pee. Now. Right now. Tears. Crotch grabbing. Lifting up her dress. (While in line, remember.) I quickly pay and we head to the bathroom. While holding the tray full of food. And pushing the double stroller. And carrying Little Sis. Into the bathroom. And – you guessed it – the handicapped stall was full. She made it, but barely.

So we’ve learned two valuable lessons here today:
1. Never never ever never take children to the mall.
2. If you purchase an ‘outfit’ in Victoria’s Secret, this could be a side effect. Those things should have a warning label. Seriously.

I recently started using Yahoo! Pictures. It was so easy to upload things to my Yahoo! accounts and was incredibly quick. Its not the best system in the world, but its free so I thought I would give it a shot.

I was really enjoying it. Then I decided to order some pictures. Yahoo! Pictures advertises: “Order prints for pick up at your neighborhood Target store in as little as 1 hour.” Great! Super convienent! Plus, I love Target! So I start the process of ordering pictures only to find out that the nearest “neighborhood Target” was two hours away. Um, what?

Please do not advertise that you have a service available at my neighborhood Target when that service is only available at “select” Targets. Its really mean.

Husband: (calling me from some nice hotel in Virginia) “Hey, if my room service isn’t here in four minutes, then its free! Sweet!”

2 second pause

Husband: “Oh, curses! They’re here.”

yes. curse them for being on time. those jerks.

I just bought this dress. Isn’t it cute?? And I was just browsing on my way to the toilet paper. You just never know when you’ll find a cute dress 😉

And I picked up some gold shoes to go with my bridesmaids dress. Yup. We are wearing gold shoes. With a chocolate brown and pink dress. Gold. Shoes. sooo not me. But I found some on clearance that are nice looking, if you can overlook that they are, in fact, gold. Maybe I can paint them later. Isn’t it cool that they cost $19.99 on the internet, but I just paid $4.97 for them in the store? I rock.