Help A Blogger Out

Hey Friends, Followers, Stoppers Byers, Former Coworkers, Mom,

If you have about 15 free seconds, do me a favor:

1) Click HERE and you'll be brought to a webpage that looks like the image below

2) Click to the LEFT on the owl that is speaking into the brown thought bubble.

3) When you click on the left owl, you will be brought to a website called Top Baby Blogs and you can close that browser window and go on with your day.

Explanation - Top Baby Blogs is a website that ranks baby blogs. The rankings are based on click-thrus (aka the number of people that click on the owl to the left) and everyone is allowed to click once a day. This prevents me from sitting at my computer, clicking the owl 500 times a day and unfairly (and psychotically) skewing the ranks. The loophole is that you can actually click thru more than once a day if you use different devices (so feel free to do the same 1-2-3 steps on your home laptop, phone, work desktop and iPad and whatever else you own!). 

Appreciation - Thank you so much for your support. Seriously. I'm a one woman shop with no big, fancy site designer or marketing guru or editor or contributor or whatever else bigger, fancier blogs have. Again, I appreciate your taking the time.

It's Bed Time!

The title of this post feels like the title of a Sandra Boynton board book. I think that's Pajama Time! Either way, I'm not talking about time to go to bed. I am talking about time to switch your firstborn from a crib to a bed. When it comes to this transition, I have 2 types of friends. First are those that put off the transition as long as possible, but before college because no one wants to be the parent of the freshman who sleeps in a crib. Second are those that force the transition as soon as baby number two is on the way because there's no budget for another piece of furniture with a teeny life span.

I'm in camp one - hold out as long as possible - but that may be because my daughter is not a climber. If she were scaling her crib walls, I would feel differently. Thankfully, I've trained her to believe that the only way for her to get out of her crib is by me picking her up. Or, her upper body strength isn't there yet (more likely). Either way, I'm in no rush to move her into bed land. 

But, when bed time comes, will I move her straight to a twin bed or will I transition with a toddler bed? I have no idea and would love some input on the subject. I don't know anyone who's done the toddler bed. I think this is because almost all of my friends (even those with 3+ year olds) still have their kiddos in a crib. My one friend who moved her little one into a twin bed experienced some resistance to the change (you can interpret "resistance" in whatever way you like...).

Here is my crib (check out THIS post to learn why I chose it):

(image source)

It's the Robin crib by Oeuf. And I love it. I love, love, LOVE it. It looks as good today as it did the day we got it and as it does in the photo above with that cutie doing downward facing dog. It has the ability to convert into a toddler bed that looks like this:

Comparing images, my daughter looks much closer in age to the yogi than the pirate. So, basing my parenting choice on Oeuf's marketing, I have a long ways to go before I need to purchase the conversion kit. Another thing I'm realizing is that those roll guards are very low...or is that normal height? My daughter is a pretty active sleeper. I didn't think active sleeping was possible, it falls directly into the definition of an oxymoron, but it is. Night after night she defies science by barrel rolling back and forth and upways and downways and crossways, all while maintaining a deep sleep.

With my daughter being a non-climbing, ruckus snoozer and the fact that I'm undecided on the toddler bed vs. twin bed issue, it's clear that bed time is not an impending transition in my household. When the time does come I'll fill you in on which path we choose - toddler conversion or twin bed or some other option that I'm not yet aware of...perhaps floor tent.

What's your plan? Did you already make the transition? How did it go? 

Lindsay Walks Out, Tori Walks In

As the saying goes - when one door closes another one opens. Well, Tori Spelling has opened the door. Or, she walked through it. Or, she is the door. Whatever, you get the idea.

I've already told you about my questionably wasteful addiction to Lindsay (the reality show on Oprah's network). Sadly, that series ended. It was 8 quick episodes and now it's over. I'm holding out hope that Oprah does a post-series interview. There's no word of that happening and after Lindsay's less than cooperative/committed/professional behavior on the series it doesn't seem likely, but one can dream.

As luck would have it, shortly after Lindsay wrapped up, True Tori began. I'm sure you've heard all about True Tori because promos are friggin' everywhere. By "everywhere" I mean all over People.com. Despite being bombarded by clip after clip after news tabloid story about it, I still hadn't decided to watch. It was on the personal recommendation of a friend (thank you, EC) that I finally jumped on board. And what a ride...

This is Dean and Tori leaving the hospital (according to E!Online).
Tori was apparently hospitalized during this whole marriage crisis.
No clue whether the show was filming at the time.
(image source)

Lindsay and Tori couldn't be more dissimilar. Lindsay spent most of her time buying exorbitantly priced coats and perching her lips and sleeping. Tori spends most of time parenting and crying and not eating. Tori is much more relatable than Lindsay, yet manages to stay interesting despite leading the camera crew on activities like dropping her kids off at school and meeting girlfriends for coffee. Of course, the reason why True Tori is so riveting is that Tori's marriage is currently a colossal disaster. Her husband, Dean McDermott, had a 2-day romp session with a Canadian chick (Emily Goodhand...yep, Goodhand...you couldn't make this stuff up) during which he showed said chick a sex tape of him and Tori. I've learned all this from the show. The Canadian chick shopped the story around to US tabloids moments after getting out of Dean's hotel bed and US Magazine made the highest bid. The story went public. Dean then checked himself into rehab for alcohol, drugs and depression and stayed there (without any face-to-face contact with Tori or their 4 kids) for 3 months. Whew. The show begins with Tori and Dean's reunion and is premised on their journey to fix (or end) their marriage.

After watching the first two episode, I have two major questions:

1) Everyone asks Tori the obvious question: How can she trust that he won't do it again? But, no one has asked the other obvious question: How can she trust that this was the first and only time?

2) Much of the show highlights how difficult it is for Tori to parent four young children, but let's be serious - there's a nanny. Or two. Tori and the Lifetime production team's attempt to hide the fact that Tori has help is glaring and annoying.

That's all I have for now. Please tell me that me (and EC) are not the only ones watching!?

The Best of The Land of Nod

When I online shop, I'm a big proponent of checking out the "best seller" section of the website. I like knowing what others find to be tried and true products. I also love when you can sort products by customer ratings. Of course, nothing beats a personal recommendation, but I'm happy to have the readily available opinion of world wide web users.

The bad news is that the algorithm used to rank "best seller" products is often a sham. Why? Because there's rarely consideration as to the number of reviews. For example, Product A has one 5 star review and product B has twenty reviews that average to 4.8 stars. Most websites will rank Product A higher on the best seller list than Product B strictly based on the average number of stars. That's kind of bogus, right? I'd rather buy something that 20 people raved about than something 1 person thought was perfect. Unfortunately, some of my favorite baby product vendors are guilty of this poorly configured ranking system. With this in mind, I give you today's post - my very own "best seller" list for The Land of Nod. My hope is to tackle a bunch of online stores over the next few weeks and find us the TRUE best products from each site.

The Land of Nod reviews are based on a 1 to 5 star system, with 5 stars being the highest. My best seller list will include only those products who've received an average rating of 4.5 stars or higher from at least 50 reviews. And, in case you were wondering, I'm not an affiliate of The Land of Nod and I get absolutely no kick back for today's post. Let's get on with it.

The Straight-Up Crib

Number of Reviews: 67

Average Rating: 5 stars

This crib is made of maple wood and comes in natural (above), espresso and white. For the past 6 years, people have been absolutely raving about it with review titles that include "WE LOVE THIS CRIB" and "Thrilled with everything related to this purchase!"

Beat Our Chest Toy Chest

Number of Reviews: 113

Average Rating: 4.9

It comes in white and chocolate, it has those nice side handles and the lid is designed to hold its position at any height/angle so it never slams down on tiny fingers. 

We're Not Asking For Directions Rug

Number of Reviews: 80

Average Rating: 4.7

This is a hand-tufted 100% wool rug with a cotton backing. Can't you just see your little guy (or girl) racing cars along those tufted raceways?

A Teepee to Call Your Own

Number of Reviews: 77

Average Rating: 4.8

This adorable indoor teepee comes in four patterns: floral (above), gray and white dot, black stripe and orange stripe. The floral pattern was just added to the mix. Reviewers said that setting it up was "a breeze" and that all the kiddos think it's completely awesome. 

Jenny Lind Bed

Number of Reviews: 185

Average Rating: 4.9

This beautiful twin bed might be the best rated product on the list. It's also ridiculously adorable if ever a bed were adorable. It comes in all sorts of colors (raspberry as seen above, yellow, azure, black and white) and all sorts of sizes (twin, full and queen). AND you can purchase a trundle for sleepovers.

Hangin' Around Lamp

Number of Reviews: 74

Average Rating: 4.8

This simple, classic lamp will work in every nursery because it comes in 11 colors. 11. The diffuser creates a mellow, cozy vibe that many (many) reviewers call "perfect".

Shelf Silverstein

Number of Reviews: 76

Average Rating: 5

It's a 4" shelf and comes in 2 sizes (5 pegs as shown above or 3 pegs). People love both sizes and everything think it's sturdy and good lookin' and very functional.

So, there you have it, a list of truly great products from The Land of Nod. I see the Hangin' Around lamp in my daughter's bedroom's future...

The Garland is Done, Man

It's all done. And I think it's puuurty.

So, before I give you the details, let me first apologize for the pitiful photos. They were taken with my phone on a rainy day (there was minimal natural light...and I hate taking flash photos).

Here's how part two of the garland project went down (click here for part one). First, I decided how long I wanted the garland to be. This was dictated by the number of hearts that I had made (16) and how far apart they would be on the twine (6-8 inches). I pulled the twine to the right length according to my estimation (this wasn't a precise process), but before I made my cut I decided that a single strand of twine wasn't going to work. The twine, as is, didn't seem substantial enough to do the job. My plan became to braid three strands together. With this in mind, I cut three pieces of twine substantially longer than I had calculated because I wasn't sure how much length I would lose in the braiding process.

I knotted the three strands together and used a binder clip to attach the knotted end to a chair. I intended to stand up, pull each strand taut and braid. It didn't really work because the strands were crazy long. I ended up winding each strand in circle and securing it with it's own binder clip, making each strand shorter and easier to work with. When the base of my braid hit the binder clip I would unwind some of the twine and re-clip. Am I boring you yet? Just know that this part was unexpectedly difficult and took a while.

Here's the end of my knotted twin clipped to a spindle on a chair.

Here is the finished braid.
It's a pretty lose, which was intentional.
You could certainly make a tighter, more defined braid.

Once the twine was successfully braided, I began to attach each heart. I used red thread and sewed by hand.

Above shows the twine attached to a pink heart. I chose a back side of each heart and sewed the twine on that side rather than on top (where the heart indents). I experimented with sewing it on top and I didn't like seeing the thread on the front. But, I'm a total amateur at this sewing bit so a more seasoned pro may choose otherwise because they can stitch more neatly than I.

That's what it looks like from the front - you can't see how the twine attaches. I didn't use a ruler to make sure each heart was exactly the same distance apart, I just kind of eye balled it. The imperfections add to the charm.

After about an hour of work, bringing the total project length to three hours, it was ready to be hung. Truth be told, I hung it up for your benefit and took it down shortly after taking the photos, so don't be freaked out by the fact that it looks like my daughter could reach out, grab the twine and seriously injure herself or her teddy bear. My current digs are temporary, hence the extremely sparse decor. I will give you an update post when this beautiful creation finds a permanent home in my soon-to-be permanent home.

Thanks to the low quality photographer photograph, you can't see the color gradation between the hearts, but it does exist. There are four colors in total - pale pink, coral, bright pink, red.

And that's that. 

Any crafting projects planned for your near future? I'm in the middle of a quilt - that's right a quilt. It's my first and I'd love a few insider tips if you have any. Have a great weekend.