Dress up

I loved prom.

I know a lot of people didn't go to theirs or hated the whole thing. Me, I loved it. Maybe it was something about the whole dressing up thing. I love dressing up. Finding the shoes, the perfect dress, the coordinating outfits, the flowers. All that just holds a massive amount of appeal for me. And it was innocent. Back in my day, prom was just a big dance. It wasn't some kind of invitation to sex and orgies. Actually, I don't know, maybe it was. I just wasn't invited to those festivities. For me, it was a night of playing grown-up  princess with the pretty clothes and maybe a prince in a tuxedo.

So when my son was finally old enough to go to his first banquet, I was so excited. I knew better than to try to help him pick out a suit. I sent his dad. Shopping with the boy is always torture, mostly because he thinks that everything I pick out is wrong and ugly. I knew that if I suggested anything, he'd just hate it and I couldn't deal with the rejection from my then 13 year old son. With the help of a salesperson, a suit was selected and fitted. But the day of the dance, I could barely get a picture of him. He wanted to be with his friends. He didn't want to get dressed until he was at his friend's house. Only after considerable begging on my part, did he deign to put on the suit for me to take a picture, but by then my feelings were well beyond bruised. I wasn't going to share even a tiny part of this event.

He just doesn't get it. For him, it is just another dance. He gets to go hang out with his friends, ask a girl on a date, and have fun.

He doesn't understand that for me, there is a fun in just seeing the outfits. That for me --  it is a rite of passage seeing my boy growing into a man. That for me -- finding out that homecoming is this weekend from other people and not him is excruciatingly mean. When I asked him about it yesterday, he said he hadn't told me because I hadn't asked about homecoming.

So this morning, on the eve of yet another homecoming that I won't have pictures of, I picked a stupid fight with my son for no good reason. I blew out of proportion the fact that he overslept and missed his bus. I flew off the handle because he didn't ask me politely for a ride to school. I told him that he was going to be late and that wasn't going to call in and excuse the tardy because he should have gotten ready on time.

Ah, my parenting style at its finest.

So I'll resign myself to not seeing the pretty outfits, or rather, I'll get to peruse the pictures my friends have of their kids on Facebook. If I'm lucky, they'll catch pictures of my son in the background. Just one more thing I'm going to give up.

I hope my daughters will let me be part of their dances. Fingers crossed.

You probably won't find this on Pinterest

I've got a couple of funny problem solving things that probably won't make much of a splash on Pinterest. If you have ever been down that time sink, you'll see gorgeous and perfectly framed photos from all over the net. Most of my friends post craft ideas and food ideas. Most of the time I feel like I'm not creative enough. Lots of, "why didn't I think of that?" moments for me.

But no more.

My Holly is a messy drinker. She's a dog. They're messy no matter what. I bought one of those plastic mats to keep the water she splashes out of her dog bowl to a minimum. Her splashing defeated the plastic mat. If I wanted the thing to be several yards wide, it probably would be okay. But the truth is, I have her dog bowl on the hardwood floor. I'm not pleased with when water lands on it because I'm *supposed* to clean it up right away. I'm just not that fastidious about that. And she's a dog. It's not like she has scheduled times to have a drink of water. We got her one of those gallon sized auto refill type bowls. I thought it would probably be a good thing if I could just raise the lip of the bowl a few inches. Then she'd have to stick her face into the bowl to drink out of it.

Using a cottage cheese container, I cut it in half, cut out the bottom to the desired height, and voila, a splash guard is born. Joy.

(This is the part where people typically post the picture of their completed projects and the steps it took to get there. Unfortunately, I don't have one of those cottage cheese containers to show you the before picture, and who am I kidding if I were to say that I'd post the pictures eventually. Heh, you should know better by now. I am not going to post pictures. If you need to know how to do this, then figure it out yourself.)

Here is my other great idea.

A couple of years ago, one of my kids came home with lice. I know. Gross. I'm actually not too freaked out by it because when it is all over, it wasn't so bad to deal with. I mean, yes, there was the daily washing and drying of the bed sheets and the constant vacuuming, but as far as pestilence goes, lice are not so hard to eradicate. There was the initial poison in the hair and lice combs which was a serious hassle. I thought about shaving her head. Might have been better. So that's the background. The lice combs have been at the bottom of my bathroom drawer for a very long time now.

A few weeks ago, I was struggling with my mascara comb. For anybody who has tried to do this, you know what I'm talking about. You apply your mascara. While it is still wet on your lashes, you're supposed to take your mascara comb, imagine a Barbie sized hair comb with a long handle, and comb through your lashes to ensure they're separated. But if you're a fraction of a second too late, there really will be no way to get the comb tines through your lashes and they'll be clumped up for the rest of the day.

One of my favorite make-up artists on YouTube is GossMakeupArtist. He's awesome. He suggests using your mascara comb to apply the mascara. You put the mascara paste on the comb itself and run that through your lashes which puts a very small amount of mascara on each lash without clumping. It's great. But my Barbie comb wasn't working as I wanted it to. The tines were too short.

Enter the lice combs.

Yes, I used the lice combs to apply my mascara and it works beautifully. The tines are about 2 inches long, all the tips are dulled so I'm not in jeopardy of stabbing my eyes with the metal tines. And the results are perfect.

Who knew there would be a new use for lice combs other than reminding me of a terrible period of time when the whole family had to get their hair ironed daily and the vacuum died from overuse.

So there you have it, two Pinterest worthy how to's without the glossy pictures.... unless I get inspired at some point in the future.

Don't hold your breath.