Several people at Blissdom commented on my super cute camera strap cover, it came from this shop, Red House Seamstress.

My husband bought me this purse for Christmas from Paco and Lupe, I love it!  It’s very exotic, it comes from a foreign country!  Canada!

Since many of the men in my life love hunting and guns and man stuff, I’ve purchased two gorgeous rifle slings from this shop, LeatherPro.  I don’t have a picture, but just trust me, they’re manly and slingy.

I got these rings for Christmas, too, ONLY $10!! Such a deal! From Forevermore Creations.

For their birthdays, we bought both of our moms beautiful, framed stained glass from Beaded Glass. I don’t have pictures of these, but they are lovely and I wish I had one for my home.

And finally, I just bought the compassion heart bracelet from Sistacreations, a local shop here in Knoxville.  100% of the proceeds (100%!!!) go to Manna House, a food pantry that feeds hungry families in Knoxville.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

She’s my Polish-American friend who has taught me so much about her culture, through her recipes and stories…and now her book, Wigilia.   I can’t stop walking around saying it, vee-GHEEL-yah!  vee-GHEEL-yah!

Her book is beautiful, both the story and the illustrations, and tells the tale about her family’s Polish Christmas Eve celebration.  You can order a copy of Wigilia (vee-GHEEL-yah!) for your family, today is the last day you can order the book to get it in time for Christmas.

Disclosure:  I bought this book with my own money.  Pauline has no idea that I’m writing about her book.  I hope she knows how much I loved it and how proud of her that I am.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Please remember the Spohr family in your prayers today.  Sweet Maddie, you are missed.

Love, the Playgroupie Family

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

**

My name is brandy. And I have a blog.

And a plea.

I use my blog to showcase the crazy I meet everyday, share the stories of the kids I teach and document my love for tequila, dairy products and the abdominal muscles of Ryan Reynolds. Rarely do I talk about personal issues on my blog- as personal as the dude that I adore (who I actually met through my blog- single ladies, let that be a very good reason to blog, the possibility of meeting someone as wonderful as my man), but I need your help. And it involves my dude.

He’s a guy who made math comics for my class, so they would love learning about addition. He’s the kinda guy who sends my friends gift cards when they are having hard times, who remembers every story I ever told him, who was the first person I celebrated with when I got a teaching job. He’s the guy who sent flowers to me at school- dozens of my favourite pink roses just because he loves me. He’s a guy who has spent a year patiently explaining (and re-explaining) everything there is to know about football during the important games when silence is preferred. He’s made me word puzzles and comics and stayed up late playing Scrabble with me (even though I beat him almost every time). He’s listened to me cry about school and family and jobs. He is everything I never knew I needed and everything I always knew I wanted.

The holidays have hit us hard. He’s recently been told he may have something called multiple myeloma- an incurable cancer, that gives a person an average of five years of continued life. Though this news has came as a shock, he continues to be exactly who has always been- spending his time worrying about me, rather than worrying about himself. He’s the most selfless individual I know- (he stayed late on Christmas Eve to work, so his co-workers could leave early) and a post like this would never be something that he would promote or encourage but when I’m overwhelmed and feeling helpless, the blogging community has always given me tremendous support and comfort, two things I desperately need at this time.

As I write this, the future is uncertain and we aren’t sure what’s happening. He’ll need to see an oncologist soon, to verify what’s going on in his body. My hope is that everyone who reads this think positive thoughts and if you are a person who prays, could you add him to your list? (You can refer to him as ‘brandy’s hot awesome dude’). If you don’t pray, please keep him in your heart.This cancer is only a possibility and I believe that the prayers and positive thoughts of people can make sure it never becomes a reality.

I want to give a big thank you to the blog owner who scraped their original blog plans and graciously put this up. My goal is to get as many people as possible to see and read this post. If you are reading this and want to help, copy and paste my plea into your blog or send a link through twitter, so more people can keep him in their thoughts. I would be so very grateful (even more grateful than I am to my friend who first showed me the picture of Ryan Reynolds on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. If you haven’t seen it, google it. You. Are. Welcome).

I realize this all sounds dramatic, a Lifetime movie in the making- but this is life. Right now. And I’m throwing away any hint of ego and am humbly asking for you to pray or think kind thoughts. If you are able to pass this on, thank you and if you know anything regarding MM- please email me (my email is on my blog). This isn’t a call for sympathy or a plea for pity. It’s just one girl hoping you can think positive thoughts for the person she adores. If my current heartache provides you with anything, let it be with the reminder that life is short, love is unbending and no one knows what could happen next. Maybe it is silly, but I really do believe that positive thoughts can make a huge difference. Thank you for reading this and if you haven’t already? Please tell someone you love them today.

I did.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

On the other hand, BAH HUMBUG.

I think I first began to lose the magic of the Christmas season the first December after Tate and I were married.  Instead of looking forward to all the merriment and celebration, it started to feel like nothing more than a to-do list.

1.  Attend the same Christmas party that had been cranked out every year before.
2.  Fret and stress over over every gift purchase.
3.  Travel long distances home for the holiday and bounce from one relative’s house to another, trying to keep everyone else happy.
4.  Unpack 1,000 ornaments out of their boxes to decorate the tree, only to have to repack them three weeks later.
5.  Hear the same sappy Christmas songs on loop, no matter your location.

And the list could go on and on.  So for the past several years, I’ve invited Scrooge and all his angst into my heart to endure the purgatory of December.

Will Jennifer allow Scrooge to dominate this holiday season?  Will she soften her anti-Christmas stance?  Will she post a video of her singing Christmas carols while hula hooping?

Find out!  Click on over to Blog Nosh Magazine to read the exciting conclusion and learn more about this Blog Carnival, sponsored by the Tide Loads of Hope program.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

My parents are THE HARDEST PEOPLE to buy gifts for.  Hands down.  If there was an award for “Couple who is most difficult to buy gifts for,” my parents would win, blowing their competition out of the water.  If they were to win such an award, the people giving the award wouldn’t even know what to give them.

So, I felt a little bit like a gift-giving genius when I found this personalized sign on Etsy, for their 40th anniversary.  Isn’t it cute?  I think my parents even liked it.  And it wasn’t yet another gift card to a restaurant or framed picture of my kids!  (Sorry I had to pixelate their last name!  The sign looks REALLY great without the pixelation!)

I found this sign at Define Your Space.  I was able to get the sign personalized and I was able to choose the font and colors.   It’s super heavy duty and I love that it’s 100% unique.  Don’t tell my parents (HI MOM!), but it was NOT at all expensive, yet it doesn’t look cheap.  She has all kinds of different styles of signs (not just anniversary gifts!) and vinyl wall decals.  Possible Christmas gift?  Hmm?   Just so you know, if you were thinking about ordering something as a Christmas gift, you have to place your order by December 6!

Hey FTC, I’m not being paid and I wasn’t even asked to post about this!  All I received for this post was the satisfaction of being a pretty awesome gift-giver.  I’m just telling you all about this because I thought you might like it, too.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Anissa, I know you’d appreciate this.  4 PM, Ella still in PJ’s, John Deere PJ’s, nonetheless.  Please don’t hold it against me that she was wearing boy’s dress shoes, I aimed as low as I could.  She put the shoes on herself.  I guess to dress up her look?   (Not pictured:  Me, at 4 PM, still in PJ’s, with unbrushed hair and mascara raccoon eyes.)

My whole family and my Bible study group, we’re all praying for you.  Get well SOON.

For those of you who don’t know the vibrance that is my friend Anissa, or what’s happened to her, she suffered a stroke and is in ICU.  More information on her condition and how you can help her family during this difficult time can be found at Aiming Low.  You can make a donation to the Mayhew family by clicking the button below.

(Comments Closed, if you want to offer support, please leave your comments on Anissa’s CaringBridge site.)

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Purple had never really been a color that I’d noticed or sought out.  Then seven months ago, purple was suddenly everywhere.  Recently, along with the increase of purple in my wardrobe, I bought a purple purse.  It wasn’t that I purposely set out to buy a physical reminder of Maddie, yet everyday I pick up that purse and I remember her.

Today is Maddie’s second birthday.  I’m going to wear a purple shirt, carry my purple purse, and keep Maddie, Heather, and Mike and their whole family on my mind and in my heart.

********

Please consider donating to Friends of Maddie, an organization celebrating Maddie’s life through the support of families with babies in the NICU.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

My mission has been to find a pair of jeans that:

1)  Are one color of denim, preferably a dark wash.
2)  Create a sleek line from my hips all the way to my ankles
3)  Fit my hips AND my waist
4)  Are not too long
5)  Do not have any ornamentation on the pockets or pockets with flaps.

Evil roadblocks I encounter over and over:

1)  The jeans are a dark wash, except on the thighs.  Thanks, but my thighs don’t need any extra attention drawn to them.
2)  Most jeans are not wide enough all the way to my ankle, thus creating a “wow, she has really fat thighs” look.  Flare jeans and/or skinny jeans = EVIL.
3)  They fit over my hips but leave a giant gaping space at my waist.
4)  MOST jeans are too long, even those that say “short” or those found in petites.
5)  Rhinestones or buttons or silver designs adorn the pockets and scream “MY ASS IS TRYING TO LOOK LIKE A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL!”

So imagine my dilemma when I walked into J. Crew the other day and found an almost perfect pair of jeans.  They met 3 out of my 5 criteria, but unfortunately were too big in the waist and were too long.  I could hear Stacy and Clinton whispering in my ear that I could always have the jeans altered to fit.  Since the jeans were $98, I knew I couldn’t afford to have someone else alter them.  In a move very unlike me, I decided to buy those $98 jeans and {gulp} attempt to alter them myself.

I’m not a professional seamstress by any stretch of the imagination.  I figured hemming the jeans would be EASY, it would be the waist alteration that would be tricky.  I googled and brainstormed and read sewing forums and came up with a plan to alter the waist.  This is what I did…

Here’s what you’ll need:

1.  Heavy thread. Regular thread won’t work because it’s not strong enough for denim.  I chose blue thread to match the jeans, but I could have chosen a color to match the orange-ish stitching on the jeans.
2.  Denim iron-on patches. Interfacing might have worked, but I wanted something little stronger.
3.  Xanax. Did I mention the jeans cost my $98?

Before cutting on those $98 jeans, I practiced on an old pair of jeans that no longer fit.  I’m glad I took the time to practice because I made a few mistakes.

1. The first “V” cut that I made was way too big, the “V” should have been much skinnier.
2. I didn’t properly attach each side of the “V” to the denim patch and it left a gap at the top.

After practicing, I got to work on the $98 J. Crew jeans.  {Big deep breath}

First, I placed a pin at an angle alongside the two back, side belt loops.  I measured to be sure they were both about the same distance from the belt loop.

Then I cut two skinny “V”‘s into the waistband, along the angle of the pin.  Carefully, I attached the denim patch to the inner side of the waistband, making sure that the sides of the “V”‘s were lined up properly and touching along their edges. Next, I ironed the patch onto the jeans.

With my sewing machine on a zig-zag setting and the stitch length set to 1 mm, I sewed the two edges of the “V” together. I suppose this could have been hand stitched, but it would take a long time.

I tried the jeans on and realized that they still needed to be taken in a bit more.

I decided to remove the upper seam of the center, back belt loop and cut another skinny “V” into the waistband, following the same procedure as explained above.  After sewing the “V” together, I then hand stitched the upper seam of the belt loop back to the waistband.

Originally I didn’t want to remove the belt loops because I was afraid they’d be difficult to reattach, but I wish I had done all three alterations under the belt loops so that the alteration wouldn’t be seen.

I’m really happy with the results, even though my handiwork wasn’t perfect!  Since I NEVER tuck shirts into the waistband of my pants, nobody will ever see the alterations.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

He is holding a cardboard sign with the words “stranded/ hungry/ out of work/ can you spare some change.”  On the ground at his feet is a backpack, dirty and crumpled.  A blanket roll is affixed to the top of his pack with twine or bungee cords.  Sometimes there is a mangy dog, lying obediently at the man’s feet, the leash coiled beside his napping head.

The man is dirty, his face is smudged with dirt, he hasn’t shaved for several days.  If he’s wearing a hat, the hair that is hanging out is matted.  Sometimes he has a ponytail.  His fingers gripping his sign are caked with dirt.  Occasionally a cigarette hangs from his lips.

I don’t know how I know so many of these visual details about the man.  Before braking at the light on the exit ramp, I’ve locked my doors and vowed to stare straight ahead.  I don’t look at him, I can’t look at him.

I feel ashamed to be sitting in my SUV that’s always full of gas, my iPhone sitting in the console, my children watching a non-stop loop of DVDs, my stomach and my children’s stomachs full from a weekly lunch at a nice deli.  I can’t even look at the man, I really don’t have any cash to give him.  I pretend to talk to my children or to be absorbed in finding some fake lost item in my center console.

As the light turns green and start to drive, I feel relieved not to be stopped next to the man that I pretended was invisible.

I wonder about the man’s story.

Is he really stranded?  Does he really want money for food or would he go and buy liquor or drugs with the money?    Does he have family?  Does his family know that he’s standing by an off ramp, holding a cardboard sign that says he’s hungry?

How did he end up here, both HERE at that intersection, but also here in his life, standing at the side of the road asking passing motorists for a ride and money?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.