Thursday, November 19, 2009

Double UGH!

Remember way back in my livejournal days when I heard on the radio that Joni Mitchell had put Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" to music and had recorded it on her new album? Do you remember my hatred for her at that time, and my wanting to scream at David Dye, "I DID IT FIRST!!!" Well, it's happened again!! Only this time, it's with the Advent tree that I just posted about the day before yesterday. I am currently reading Amanda Blake Soule's (the famous "SouleMama" blogger and crafter) book, "The Creative Family." I really like it, not only because it's giving me good ideas, but also because it's full of things that I already do, or already plan to do when Anja and Greta are a little older. (I feel like I've posted about this before... have I?) Anyway, I was just reading along enjoying myself when I come across her part about their family's "Season Tree" and how in winter it is an Advent tree, with "something hanging on the tree for each of the days leading up to your celebrated holiday." UGH!! I swear, I thought of it before I read this chapter! But I always feel like such a loser when these things happen, like no one will believe me that it really was an original idea, even if ten thousand million people have already thought of it before. I DON'T GET OUT MUCH!!!

Another idea in her book, which I got from my wonderful neighbor Tara (and admittedly, is a pretty popular idea anyway, according to the author) is to build fairy houses with your kids. I think this is a beautiful idea, and the Cook children used to do this all the time! They even had this huge old aluminum milk jug that held their "Fairy Food." Tara gave this to me to keep until further notice, and I fully intend next summer to give all the fairies in our neighborhood a good feeding. The cutest part about it, is that when I asked Tara on the phone what fairy food was, she wouldn't tell me "mostly birdseed" she just said, "Oh, you know... fairy food." That was it! She is so fun.

Anyway, I HAVE gotten lots of good ideas from this book and lots of encouraging of activities for tykes as young as Anja. The only annoying thing is reading your own ideas in somebody else's book that is making them rich and famous, while you're left looking like a lame-o who is ripping off other people's ideas and trying to pass them off as your own. *sigh*

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Annie: I swear if you don't do something with your wonderful Christmas song, you will wake up one December day and hear some lame singer singing it on the radio.
Mama

Clare said...

Hi Annie! I know you thought of it on your own and I think it was a lovely idea! I saw a lot of ideas last year online for doing a craft or read a Christmas story each day of advent. I think it is a splendid idea! My mom picked up a book for me with activities/crafts from advent to Epiphany and one thing they had was to write your activity on strips of construction paper and make an advent "chain" and cut a strip off a day. I think we will definately do this!! Heck, I think I will steal your idea and write a whole blog post about it and pretend it was my idea! wahahaha.